A Northern Dragoness - An ASOIAF Story of Starks and Targaryens

[Stewart9]

The grammar could use some work but the story has been a good one so far so keep going with it.

 

[CaekDaemon]

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Castle Darry...​

Though old and strong, Lord Cregan Stark could not help but think that Castle Darry was too small a seat for a house of such power as the family that shared its name, even as he sat in a place of honor upon the dais, feasted and honored by its lord. Oh, he had seen it years before at the end of the Dance of the Dragons as he marched on King's Landing and he had seen it again as he marched north, but in his memories it always seemed larger, like it could comfortably feast a hundred in the Plowman's Keep. Lord Raymond Darry had welcomed him warmly and did all he could to give them a comfortable stay for the evening, there was no doubting that, but the castle itself had let them down, for his first time beneath its roof was the first time he realized how small it actually was. When Brandon the Builder had finished laying the stones of Winterfell, the castle was a far size smaller than it was today, having grown and expanded over the centuries as the domain of the Kings of Winter grew, but there were towers at Winterfell that were near enough as large as the great hall of Darry, and the entire castle could be devoured by its godswood.

There is nothing wrong with small castles in war, Cregan knew, watching one of the jugglers that the Lord Raymond kept in his court throwing his flaming torches up into the rafters, men and women cheering and laughing as the musicians played on. It lets them be manned by less men. Less men on the walls, more men in the fields.

He almost laughed to himself, then. More men in the fields indeed. Half his party was forced to stay outside and pitch their tents, simply because Castle Darry was not large enough to take them all. They barely had enough good chambers for their own household, for Lord Raymond had sired four sons, yet alone enough for all the guests. He had managed to find one for his Jonnel and his bride, and another for the young princess Elaena, but the best he could do for the Lord of Winterfell himself was one of the chambers for a household knight, chambers smaller than the tent that Cregan had brought with him, though certainly warmer at the least.

But there was one thing he did notice.

Wealth. The careless expenditures of the newly rich.

It was everywhere here, yet it was everywhere in a subtle way. Swans from the Gods Eye lake had been roasted and served with rich sauces of onion and garlic, and a whole peacock had been set aside for Jonnel and Daena on the far end of the table. Rounds and loaves of bread as big as bricks were to be found besides every seat. New, immaculate silverware, not the scratchy ones of trifle pewter that might have been there before. Good musicians kept at the castle rather than hired as they came past. It was obvious. New coin had been flooding the Darry coffers, and the sight of it was all around him. Cregan had always believed that a man could learn a lot about his fellows by the state of their homes, whether they be lowborn or not. The same went for their castles. Castle Darry was a small but strong castle, yet its decorations were rich, beyond rich, with tapestries and hunting trophies and fine Essosi artworks.

The wolf lord did not even need to ponder this. It was obvious. It was so painstakingly obvious he would be surprised if none of the other Rivermen realized it themselves.

Lord Raymond Darry was a proud man. But he was the sort of proud man that needed to compare himself to others, and had no qualms about spending his gold dragons as fast as they hatched if it meant he might match the splendour of others. No doubt he had come to the capital for the royal wedding there and seen the grandeur of the Kings on the Iron Throne and felt the urge to try and make a match of them.

And so he wastes his gold on small things to make his house look prouder in the short term, rather than save it to get something grand that might make it look greater in the future and need not nearly as much spent to show that they have gained in power and status.

"You keep a fine castle, Lord Raymond," the Lord of Winterfell spoke, turning towards his host as he began to refill his wine cup. "You should be proud."

His response was all the confirmation that the Lord of Winterfell needed. Lord Raymond smiled widely, beaming, and for a moment seemed at an utter loss as to what to say in answer before a feeble voice cracked. "I...you...you honor me, my lord."

"I do not, not truly, for to give honor in such a way is mere flattery," Lord Stark replied deftly and without even a heartbeat's silence. "This is acknowledgement of a fact."

Lord Raymond swelled at that, swelled as his waist surely had after the riches came, yet ham-faced as he may have been, Cregan knew better than to continue down that path, lest it seem to take on the appearance of idle bootlicking. But this was too easy. So easy a part of him felt as though he was exploiting the poor lord. The man wasn't just envious and proud, he craved approval. A man could make a mockery of him by giving him a few flatteries and Lord Raymond would do whatever he wanted in answer.

And then it clicked. Submissive to elders. Envious of the achievements of those greater. Proud of his own accomplishments. Weak in the face of praise.

Lord Raymond was a spare son.

"Tell me, Lord Raymond, have you any fine brothers to carry the Darry name?" he asked, with a delicate grace that provided half a hundred different safe answers.

"I did, three of them, but they swore themselves to Queen Rhaenyra in the Dance and served loyally," Lord Raymond answered. "They did their duty, but they did it with the ultimate sacrifice. My father and the eldest died here at Darry, Derrick died at the second Tumbleton and Roland at the Kingsroad."

"I hadn't known, my apologies," the Lord of Winterfell nodded, Jonnel giving him a knowing look that said that the heir knew exactly what the father was doing and what he had done. "I had known of Roland, but I was not sure of the relation. I am told it took twenty men to bring him down."

"They tell it true," Raymond nodded, a somber smile on his face. "He was always the best of us with that blade of his. Had there been fewer, might be he would have had the strength to hold off Borros. But he didn't die in vain, eh? Rhaenyra's grandchildren sit the Iron Throne, and look at Darry now!"

"You have grown strong since the Dance, that is so, and they are rewards well earned," Cregan acknowledged. "Even now you hold a powerful position in the Riverlands. Powerful enough that I am sure great lords have taken notice."

"Indeed they have," the Lord Darry smiled. "I recently had a letter from the Blackwoods, offering the hand of a daughter for my good Deremond."

"Have you accepted?" the Lord of Winterfell asked, raising the cup to his lips for a brief sip.

"I was in the midst of penning my acceptance letter when you came, Lord Stark," the Lord Darry answered.

Cregan did a deliberate flick of his cheek's edge towards a frown. The Lord Darry noticed it, exactly as he had wanted, and a brow raised. "Why, good Stark? Is there something wrong?"

"Were I you, I would hold back on arranging a betrothal just yet," Cregan answered, planting the suggestion into fertile soil. "Not for any reason against the Blackwoods, or against your son, whose has proven his grace with his invitation. I would do it to see what other offers might yet come."

"...you...would wait?"

"But of course," he answered, confident and certain and everything that the Lord of Darry was trying to imitate. "I would hold back for the time being. Allow the Riverlands to know of the possibility of a betrothal. Then wait. See who does what. See if any other proposals come. You have risen fast, Lord Darry, yet not all of the Riverlords are aware of just how far you may have risen."

The Lord Raymond was quiet, then. He craved approval. He craved equal standing. He craved something to be proud. Holding back on a betrothal for better offers allowed him to demonstrate his grown power and do so well. Cregan turned and continued eating for a few minutes more, taking a few more mouthfuls of swan, but before the Lord Raymond could answer, the Lord of Winterfell spoke once more, adding fuel to the fire.

"Have you thought of doing more than simply holding feasts here?" Cregan asked with false interest. "Great lords require great castles, do they not? You have the coin to expand this fortress into an equal - nay, a superior - to Riverrun. Why not do so?"

And so the seed was planted. Lord Raymond pondered that question for a time. A long time. A whole course seemed to pass in his silence, and his attentions were only snapped from the knuckles he was resting his chin against when the juggler near enough set fire to one of the roofing beams...a thing that surely, surely only added emphasis to the Lord of Winterfell's point. Ser Deremond looked over with concern, noticing his father's silence, and it was that notice that finally saw the lord emerge from his concentrations.

"It would be expensive," he said at last. "I would have to save for the rest of the summer...and the betrothal...but a greater castle would give a greater union, wouldn't it? Allow the men of the Riverlands to see our power?"

"Curse you, Lord Stark, why do you have to right?" the Darry laughed. "This'll take a fortune, but I'll have it done. Darry power has grown, it only makes sense to grow the castle and our aspirations with it. Derry! Boy!"

Deremond half winced when the lord father called him by that affectation in front of so many guests, and only turned after a quick sip. "Yes, father?"

"You wouldn't mind remaining unwed for a year more, would you?"

"...I hadn't known you were making plans?" the heir to Darry answered with a mild surprise, looking towards the Lord of Winterfell. "I thought -"

"Nevermind that, Derry," Lord Raymond smiled. "We'll find you a bride worthy of you. Worthy of Darry!"

"...I can think of some very, very dirty jokes for a Darry wedding," Daena mumbled to her husband, Jonnel laughing quietly to himself as she whispered a few into his ear, Cregan catching only a few half-whispered words about plowmen in the midst of an entirely different kind of "plowing." He might have glared towards his son to make her put an end to it, at least in the open, but the Lord Darry either hadn't heard at all or hadn't cared.

The distinction mattered not to the Lord of Winterfell, only that Darry rose from the table, slowly, but before the music might stop, he raised a thick hand on a thick arm and waved for the musicians to continue, the lutes and drums and pipers swiftly getting back up to their proper pace, continuing a good rendition of the Bear and the Maiden Fair, to match the mummers and their small show.

"My apologies for leaving you hear in the feast without my presence, but I must retire for a while," the Lord Darry spoke, apologetic. "The privy calls and I must answer. But my son can keep your company well, I am sure of it!"

He didn't even wait for Deremond to answer before he strode off, the son and heir's gaze only able to follow his father across the room before he looked towards the Lord of Winterfell as though he had been thrown to the wolves in truth, not merely as in metaphor. He swallowed, and then he smiled, regaining his grace and dignity.

"I apologise for my father," he said, the words half-statement and half-sigh. "Wealth can improve many things, but it ruined him. Fed his pride till it grew to burst. I trust he hasn't annoyed you?"

"No, not at all," Cregan answered truthfully. "He has gone beyond mere hospitality, I assure you."

"Thank the Seven, I thought you weren't enjoying things!" Deremond laughed. "My father can spend dragons as though they were pennies, but it seems he might have been right for a change. How is the feast, then? Good?"

"...honestly," the new Lady of Winterfell spoke quietly, Ser Deremond's smile slipping off his face at the sound of her voice. "I can't stand peacock at the best of times, and this isn't good either. It was dry at King's Landing, but this is even worse than theirs was. I've seen kindling more moist than this."

"You know, peacock is twenty gold dragons a bird, and that's in King's Landing," Elaena teased from down the table with a playing smile, sat by Deremond's side. "Can you imagine how much it cost to march it all the way here alive and well for this one feast?"

"I've hunted deer before, and other game," the married princess spoke. "But if it was cooked like this, I'd feel guilty for killing it only for it to end up tasting like this. Why is it even here?"

"It isn't here because of the taste," Cregan explained without even turning his attentions to either of them. "It is here because it is expensive."

"So would be a nice cut of pork," Daena sighed, gesturing down the hall towards another table, to the platter of griffin roast that crowned its midst - it was no real griffin, not really, but the back half of a large chicken sewn together with the front half of a pig, with a duck's bill to play the part of a beak. "Why couldn't I have had some of that instead?"

"I'm sorry," Deremond sighed. "Even my father doesn't eat it, but he gets it simply because we are meant to be seen eating it."

"Seven hells," Daena laughed in answer. "We didn't even eat peacocks like this at King's Landing."

"Really?" the Darry heir asked with instant surprise. "But there was one at the feast?"

"One," Elaena smiled. "Just one."

"Viserys doesn't like it either. Even cousin Aegon only likes peacocks for their feathers," the elder Targaryen sister explained, glancing towards the entrance to make sure Raymond hadn't returned yet as she did. "He always gets one, because it's expected to have one. It's tradition. But the actual food we're meant to eat is always something else, like pork."

"How bad is it, truly?" Cregan asked his son and heir, overtaken with curiosity. "Dry?"

Jonnel looked to the entrance to make sure Lord Raymond hadn't returned, then took a cutting of the peacock roast between thumb and forefinger and rolled it quickly, back and forth and back and forth. Dry, dustlike shavings fell off, and when he bent it all the layers of the meat came clear, cracking along what had been individual cords of muscle. Peacock was always a dry meat, dry and tough, but the cooks of Darry must have never roasted a bird that had anything in common with it, that was obvious. It was as thick and hard as a marcher's ration. It was inedible. He didn't need to taste it to know that, yet he gave it a try all the same, taking a small cutting from the platter and dipping it into the swan's sauce before taking a bite. Even with the moisture that came from the swan, it dried his mouth out such that he had to near enough down his cup of wine to swallow it, and worse, it was tasteless, the only hint of flavor being that from the garlic and onion. The Lord of Winterfell sighed under his breath. The Lord Raymond's fattened pride hadn't just left half his party out in the cold, it had given his son and his good-daughter a meat as devoid of life as the deserts of Dorne in high summer.

That was bad enough in its own right, but his good-daughter was exactly that, his good-daughter, a wedded and bedded woman who could be with child for all any of them knew. How could that possibly be a suitable meal for her? How could that be a suitable meal for any Stark or Targaryen or any woman of her station?

It wasn't.

And if it wasn't, Lord Cregan would make it so it was.

"If anyone asks, say that the flavor was too rich for the good princess," Cregan said quickly, reaching over to take the peacock platter from them and swapping it out for the closest one of swan. "That is Lord Raymond's own meat, but he would dare not complain when it is a Targaryen princess eating it."

Ser Deremond laughed to himself at the sight, and Elaena laughed with him, but the heir to Darry made no complaints about the Lord of Winterfell's actions, only smiled. "You will have to forgive him if he does, Lord Stark. He has been rather...down since the wedding."

I thought as much, Cregan nodded knowingly as he refilled his glass. "Your family has grown in power quickly. It only makes sense that you might have a few difficulties getting used to the changes."

"Only he has. I see no reason why we shouldn't eat as we used to eat," Deremond answered, speaking without the shadow of his father hanging over him at last. "It took years to start getting a good income from the new lands, and most of that had to be spent repairing the castle after the Dance."

"You would be more frugal?"

"We're not Lannisters," he reasoned. "We should be building up our coffers in case something happens - a war, mayhaps, or a drought - not trying to live like we have all the gold of Casterly Rock."

"You have a good head on your shoulders, then," the Lord Stark said simply and honestly. "You would be wise to curb his spending. Gold buys many things. Aye, it can buy food like this, but it can buy great sacks of wheat as well. Enough that you can stock your granaries all the faster before winter comes again, mayhaps mend the Kingsroad near you and draw more merchants for it."

"I would if I could, but the wedding only made him want to spend more," the Darry sighed, even as his father returned through the door and began making his way back to the dais table. ""

Lord Raymond eyed the peacock in front of his seat with surprise and confusion, turning towards Jonnel and Daena only to see them eagerly carving the swan between themselves and taking their fill, finally free and able to eat something worth the effort of it. The Lord Darry returned to his seat, but Cregan paid him no heed, focusing instead on his son and his new bride...and they were acting in a way he had never seen them act before. She was smiling. He was smiling. The two were laughing at one another's japes. The two were talking amongst one another about many things. About the journey. About the road. About the wyverns she had been gifted. About what might be happening in Winterfell or at the Red Keep. About all sorts of things.

Laughing.

Japing.

Talking.

For the first time he had seen them together, he saw them happy together. The wine and the food must have done it, surely, but Cregan dared not say anything, not so much as a word, not even to allow himself seen observing, refusing to distract either of them from it. Elaena saw it too. Cregan saw her smiling towards the pair, and their eyes met, his grey against her violet, a knowing look shared, and then the feast went on.

"...but the best swan I ever ate was cooked by...actually, take a guess," he heard Daena speak to her husband. "You won't get it."

"...Aemon?" Jonnel offered.

"No."

"Daeron?"

"Our father did send him to the kitchens to work with the servants if he ever did anything wrong," Daena answered...before growing quiet, not from shame, not from sadness, but to do her father's voice. "If you want to call yourself a dragon so much, why don't you go down to the kitchens and do as a dragon might and burn something?"

Jonnel laughed, and his laugh was a sound that Cregan hadn't heard in a long time. It was the laugh of a younger Jonnel, of a younger world, the laugh he might have made around his brother Rickon in their games, or around the blushing Robyn. Before Dorne. Before tragedy. A different laugh for a different time. There had always been a somberness to him after those twin turns of fate. Somber after Rickon died in the south, somber after each and every one of the miscarriage and somber after the Ryswell's death. How Daena had managed to pry it out of him he didn't know, but the Lord of Winterfell couldn't help but smile.

But the moment was short lived. As much as he might have wanted it to continue, his son was sliding back into his grim shell, much as Daena was beginning to retreat behind her own uncertainties.

Yet progress was progress. Winterfell and the Wall were not built in a day. Aegon did not conquer the Seven Kingdoms in an evening. So what if a marriage might not be made to work in a week or two or three?

"It was Aegon," Daena explained, the moment between the two settling again. "He likes to take long hunts in the woods and some of them can go on for a day or two, so he has to learn how to cook on his own, away from the Red Keep."

Jonnel nodded understandingly, and the two talked more quietly from that point on, talking about things he couldn't hear over the music...things he wasn't sure he was meant to hear. He made no effort to pry, though Lord Raymond's grim face at the taste of his own swan meat made him doubt it was wise to look towards that direction for conversation either, especially when it was clear that Raymond was deep in thought and barely present at the table at all in mind. Instead, he could only sit there, watching and feasting as the evening went on, taking his fill from the courses on offer. It was a welcome change from the simpler fare of their travels, as rich and heavy as it might have been, and the singers that the Lord Raymond had kept were good enough to make the evening pass. It wasn't long before they switched to some Riverlandic tune about the fall of Black Harren - the Towers of Hubris, they called it, though he had never heard its like before - at the hands of Aegon the Conqueror, and hat one certainly brought some life back into the Targaryen guests and would be one they remembered even in Winterfell, Cregan was sure of that.

But other than that, it was an uneventful evening, boring even, for as grating as the young lordlings had been at the royal wedding, at least they were doing something as they attended perhaps one of the single most important feasts of their entire lives, as important as the one they themselves might have for their very own weddings. Here there was a lavish feast for a routine event, held simply because he was there in the first place, with no real meaning behind it, no real purpose for it all. It felt hollow to the Lord of Winterfell, an empty gesture done for empty reasons. He would have been happier being feasted in the Northern way, as his own bannermen had done on his journey south in the first place - pork roasts, a few singers, mayhaps a juggler or a mummer or a gymnast, but little more than that. They did not need to do more than that. It made the atmosphere calmer. It made things more relaxing. It made things more homely and comfortable.

It made it everything that this feast was not. This one was homely or comfortable or relaxing. It was a strenuous game of pretending to be interested and excited in the things that came and went and which were brought forth for no more reason than simply because he was there.

All that meant that Cregan Stark was more grateful when it ended and when the last course was cleared away than when it had began and the first plates brought to the table, and he didn't look to be the only one. There was nothing wrong with holding feasts for a honored guest, but they were tiring, not something one might wish to do after a long journey on the hard road; there was a talent to knowing whether or not a guest might want a quieter meal and a fast path to bed than something more grand and eventful. His Jonnel had the look on his face that proved that. He was dead eyed with the tiredness of their long journey, and his wife was little better, seeming ready to doze off into slumber even at the dais. She rose even before it might have been thought to be polite to do so, made her apologies and thanks, then left. Her husband was not far behind. Deremond retired for the evening, and his own father did as well, saying that he had a matter to attend to in his solar and that he might return if there was anyone else still there.

That left Cregan, slowly drinking his wine as he thought. He had no ill will for the Tullys of Riverrun, but he would not be doing his duty as the Lord of Winterfell and as the head of house Stark if he did not do his duty to both, to ensure that his children and grandchildren and all the Starks to come after him had as many advantages as he might give them. The Darry position was a good opening, a good alliance to strengthen the North and find a good match for one of his daughters. It was a good way to expand Stark influence into the south, and that was anything and everything but a bad thing - though it might mean being entangled in southron affairs, it meant that the problems of the south could be kept in the South.

That was perhaps one of the greatest things he could do for the North. He could ensure that if another war came, if there was yet another Dance, that it would happen outside of the North. There was more to it than that, of course. The Riverlands was fertile. Many a merchant had made the journey from the farms on the banks of the Trident to come north with sacks of grain to help fill Northern granaries. They also acted as a natural check on the power of the Ironborn, a buffer between Winterfell and their old Arryn rivals and so much more.

All that meant one thing: it was in the interests of Winterfell that the Riverlands stay strong and aligned to the North. Tully and Stark should have been natural allies.

But there was the problem. The Tullys.

They were too weak to lead the Riverlands. Their fortress was not placed to control or tarrif some great route as the Freys did. They did not have vast holdings of land like the Blackwoods and the Brackens, nor did they have immensely fertile grounds like Darry. They did not have ready access to a valuable commodity like Saltpans, or access to the coasts and good trade routes like Mallister. They had prestige.

The Lord of Winterfell could not see the Tullys remaining the master of the Riverlands. He couldn't. They had ruled for a hundred and fifty odd years since the days of Aegon the Conqueror and his dragons, but the dragons were gone. They would be lucky to last another hundred and fifty. An alliance with them seemed more likely to pull the Starks into the problems of the South rather than allow the Starks to keep them at arm's reach and away from the North itself. If he was going to make an alliance with the Riverlands, then the master of it had to be strong enough to rule without the challenges of his underlings. He had to be dominant, able to force his will on them, either breaking those who would not submit or having enough power to force them to do so. He needed someone with an uncontested rule of the region.

Raymond Darry was not that man. His house had the power to do it, and if not now, perhaps in a decade or two.

But Raymond was not the man who could do it, even if he had the power of Casterly Rock and Highgarden combined. He didn't have the strength of character to lead their rise. He was a weak man accustomed to ruling a weak family. Strong families needed little in the name of leadership to maintain their power, but if they were to grow it, if they were to supplant their supposed superior, they needed a strong ruler. Deremond could be that ruler. Could. Could. How was a man to plan with such -

A sound of footsteps and a shadow falling over the dais broke him from his concentration, and he turned to see the younger of the two Targaryens at the end of the table, smiling warmly. She was a slight thing, smaller than any of his daughters had been when they were at her age, small and thin as only a girl yet to grow into womanhood might be. Yet whilst she was easily told apart from her elder sister by the difference in height between the pair, they had the same violet eyes, the same silver hair, the same pale skin, all but for a stripe of gold that raced down the front left side of Elaena's hair. He had seen Targaryen women before and all sorts that carried the tell tale marks of Valyrian blood, but never one with that marking before. It was something unique to her, something that her sister could not match with her wild curls of silvery-gold, and as striking a sight as the great black gowns the younger of the princesses wore at every feast and throughout every day.

"Hello, Lord Stark," the younger prince said warmly and with a friendly smile, even as his gaze turned towards the carrying case in her left hand, a leather lined box that the young lady raised onto the table with a little laugh. "Would you like to have a game? I normally play with my sister, but she's gone early."

The Lord of Winterfell raised a brow. "Drafts?"

"Dragonlords!" she answered happily, taking his question as acceptance before sitting in what had been Daena's seat and popping open the silvered latch before reaching in to take out a large, folded checkerboard of woods light and dark, then a bag of blackened velvet filled with the clattering noises of pieces. "You must've played it at Winterfell sometime?"

"I am afraid not," the Lord of Winterfell answered truthfully as Elaena placed the board between them, opening it to reveal a grid of twelve squares by twelve squares marked with strange, foreign letters along the outer edge. "Is this some Essosi game?"

"Valyrian," Elaena smiled again before reaching a slender hand into the bag and pulling out a fistful of pieces - some were horses, some were levies, one was a tower, all were white. "The Valyrians loved board games, and this was one of their oldest. I think the Volantines play it a lot as well, but they like to make new ones up."

"It is the closest they can get to war, seeing how they haven't had a battle in some hundred odd years," Cregan said, his not-jape bringing a laugh out of the young Targaryen girl regardless. "Still, I rarely play these kinds of games."

"How come?" Elaena asked.

"Too busy," he said truthfully. "Why must I entertain myself with strategy games, when life demands enough of it already?"

"I'll teach you," she offered, gesturing to the rest of the room with a half-shrug roll of her shoulders. "It's not like there's anything else to do."

Cregan answered her with a gruff sigh, but watched as she placed the pieces on the board one by one, the Targaryen princess pondering them for a moment before placing them in their proper place on his side of the table...making him wonder for a moment if she herself even knew this game, or where they were supposed to go. The Lord of Winterfell certainly didn't, and only grew all the more confused when she emptied the bag of more than half of its pieces and was still setting up the white side of the board with a vast army, six columns wide and three ranks deep, stretching from the third mark over to the ninth on his side. Where was the black army?

Was there a black army at all?

"It's pretty simple," Elaena said with a tone that asked him to stay and play, if for but a little while, pleading. "I mean, it isn't like there's anything else to do?"

"Perhaps I could..." Cregan paused, looking around for but a moment. The main part of the feast was over and done, and more than a few had retired for their chambers for the evening, yet many more remained at the tables, talking amongst themselves and playing their games and drinking their wines and ale.

They were young men, mostly. Men who had grown into their twenties and had all the vitality of youth. Laughing. Japing. His own Jonnel had retired for the evening with his wife, hopefully to the same bed for a change, yet there were still many more here. Some were surely waiting for him to leave, for there were many who thought it improper to retire to bed before their liege lord. Some were surely expecting him to leave. The journey was long, and even though the night was yet young, he was sure of one thing.

Men were watching to see how much energy he had. How long he could stay around before having to retire for the evening with his dignity intact.

The old wolf would not give the pups the joy. He pulled out the seat opposite and sat, taking his cup and filling it once more from the flagon.

"...I have time," he said, low enough to be polite, yet loud enough to be heard on another table. "How does this work? Do I have to destroy your army?"

"I don't have an army," Elaena smiled as she placed the last white piece on his side of the board, reaching in to take the last group for herself.

Only it wasn't a group. It was one piece. One single, large black piece big enough to cover four tiles and beautifully carved, casting a long and terrible shadow over their mock battlefield. Whoever painted the pieces had known well who would be receiving them, for the creature was one of three heads and whose rider had a shield with the black and red livery of the Targaryens on its surface.

"I have a dragon," she explained, a slender finger resting on the black beast's back, right behind the rider. "I can move eight tiles in any direction, and I don't need to do them all at once. I can move left once, then forward once, all in the same turn, but I have to move eight times in one turn."

Then she reached over the board to his side, pointing to the towers that flanked his army and the siege engines alongside. "These are the only pieces that can kill me, but they can only do that if I end my turn next to them for the towers, or two tiles away for the scorpions."

"And what about the rest?" he asked, gesturing to the wall of levies at the front. "What are these for?"

"I can't end my turn next to them," she explained eagerly. "But I can destroy them by moving through. That takes two moves instead of just one."

"Pity the man that takes a spear against a flying dragon," he murmured as he reached for his cup, the young princess laughing. "And you win by destroying my entire army?"

"I do, but it'll be a tie if I kill your king only for you to kill my dragon afterwards,"

"Someone forgot to tell that to King Mern and the Tyrells."

Elaena laughed, turning her seat to better reach the pieces. "I'll teach you how to play."

"Fine," he relented...and so she gave him a quick explanation of the rules, quicker still than before.

Her dragon could move eight times in sequence. It could move through gaps of a one tile opening, so through a checkerboard, but it could not end its turn if one of the four tiles that made it up were covered. His levymen could move one tile forward at a time. His cavalry could move three tiles forward at a time. His men-at-arms could move twice. On and on. The Lord of Winterfell could say that he was no fool. He was good at learning new things. He refused to get too stuck in his ways as many aging men did. He tried to stay open to the wisdom of the young. He could think beyond the immediate and look towards the long term, and he knew when it was wise to accept a defeat now to gain a victory on the morrow. He knew how to plan. More, he knew how to build towards that plan or how to veer from it when the unexpected came.

But that was helping him little here. Elaena was but a girl yet to flower, a maid and not a maiden, yet she was turning the battle before him into the Field of Fire come again. She would spend an entire turn zigging towards a trap he had set to slow her with mobs of his footmen only to veer around it on the next turn and stay forever out of reach. She fell back towards her side of the board, forcing him to advance, and had no fear of going close towards the edges of the board to try and force him to spread out more. Cregan dared not do so, lest she pick his white army apart one by one. He advanced together, holding his formation, refusing to take the temptation to try and expose any part of himself.

But that meant that his weapons were never getting close to felling her dragon and bringing the Targaryen down. She could fly around the field, circling.

And she could chip. She stayed far away from his host. She stayed very far. But she could dip in close with three moves, take a man-at-arms and then retreat back with the rest.

This isn't working, he thought and realized as another group of levied spears were doused with imaginary flame and taken from the board. The girl has wits and she is better at this than I thought.

He looked down at the board, pondering with wordless silence. Holding together in position was a poor plan he saw now. She had the speed to pick which side she came towards and could attack at her leisure. She was the light fighter, zigging-and-zagging around the slow knight, striking at his weak spots and bleeding him down little by little. But he could not spread out, either. That would turn a slow loss into a crushing defeat in a turn or three, and cost him any chance of turning the tides.

"Having trouble?" Elaena asked innocently.

"I'm concentrating," the Lord of Winterfell answered before leaning back into his seat. "How is this game possible to win as the white army? You can move faster and only four of my pieces can make the kill. The rest are dragonfodder."

"It's actually easier to play the whites than the blacks," she said with that same, innocent, playing smile. "You just need to know what to do."

"And what is that?"

"You only need your king alive at the end to win," she shrugged.

"...and lose the rest of my army?" Cregan asked, laughing to himself. "That isn't much of a victory."

"But it is a victory," the young lady before him reasoned.

He paused. It was no real victory, that much was true. But Elaena was right. It was a victory. He was going to have to spend a great many pieces if this was to be won.

And so he would. He broke his circular formation little by little, first by shifting his scorpions and towers to the edge, then by moving the levies ever further away. What was at first a round ring of troops became a star of four points, then a diamond, then four pips. A stalemate couldn't give him a victory. That played into her hands. She could just move around the board and wait till he had no choice but to move, and so he created a ring, leaving his king in the center with a false wall of men-at-arms around them, with just enough room for the king to pace back and forth.

"...I don't think you understand how to play this game," Elaena laughed to herself as she moved her dragon around to the left side.

"It is my first time at it," he answered, moving his king back a tile. "Besides, it is working. You haven't came near."

"That's because I'm going easy on you," the Targaryen princess said...

...before taking her dragon and going eastwards, into the killing zone he had created. But she still had seven moves. East. Six. His levies on that side were engulfed in flame. Four. The dragon was within striking distance of his king. She fell back and out of range. Scorpion bolts would have struck naught but air and earth.

"But I won't anymore," she said, leaning towards the game, waiting for her turn whilst he moved another group of levies. "You know, you could have won in seven moves back at the start."

"How?"

"Rushing forward and pushing me back towards the edge of the board," she explained. "That's how I bet Daeron."

"You played against him? How many times?"

"I bet him a lot," she murmured with a thought, examining the game.

And then she took her piece once more. Once over. Twice over. Thrice over. She slaughtered another company of levymen.

And this time she went forward. His king was alone, surrounded by a gap on all sides - and then there would have been flame, were it a real battle.

"The worst thing you can do in Dragonlord is try and stay still," she explained as she picked up the piece that represented the Lord of Winterfell himself and dropped it back into the bag, clattering against the others already within. "I can go anywhere I want if you don't try and control the board."

"I thought as much," he answered truthfully. "But you can move eight tiles in any direction, and my army isn't wide enough to cover the entire board. If I tried to turn, you would have slipped past."

"That's why you give up the levies," she said, taking one of the pieces from the bag. "You have to use them to slow me down by putting them in places I'm going to have to move to. I either take them and lose two movements, or have to go around, which could be three or four. That lets you buy the time you need to lock the side of the board."

"But let me show you, if you don't want to continue this one?" she asked sweetly, asking his concession.

He sighed.

Then he nodded.

She smiled and laughed to herself, and she took the piece again and began rearranging them, back to the start.

Only this time, she turned the board around. He was the dragonlord now, and she was the queen on the opposite side of the field, musturing all her strength to defend her realm from his draconic fire and might.

And then they began anew. The game started with him moving forward, then right, then forward, then right, zigging towards the flank of the board and the flank of her army...yet despite how easy she had made it seem the game before, it was quickly turning against him once more. His attempt to flank was met by her moving a tower to cover the wings of her host and surrounding its front and flank with levymen, knowing that if he was to try and push through and take the tower he would spend too many movement points to make the attack and would be slain. She moved her host across the board not in straight ranks, but alternating columns, a checkerboard, and was steadily unfolding its ranks to cover more of the board and confine him from getting around to the aft, letting her king sit in the far corner. And as he desperately picked off the few pieces he could reach safely, eroding her army little by little, she came about on the board, trapping him in the left side corner.

"That wouldn't work in a real battle," the Lord of Winterfell said, reaching for his wine cup with one hand as the other pointed to the marking grid on the outside, looping around behind her army with a smile. "An actual dragon would be able to go around here."

"It works here, though," she answered, shifting a scorpion forward behind a wall of her remaining men, giving them overlapping squares and completing her trap. Even if he slew one, he would be downed on the next turn, and she knew it. "Yield?"

"I was born a dragonlord and I'll die a dragonlord," he made as a rare jape, making Elaena laugh as he took his dragon and defiantly took as many of her pieces with him into the next life. Two columns of levymen, a group of knights on horseback and a tower were all burnt, but what happened next was inevitable. He was surrounded by towers and scorpions, with no room to escape. Were it real war, a half dozen bolts would have buried themselves in the side of his dragonmount, mayhaps struck him directly.

But it wasn't a real war. She picked up his dragon and put it in the bag, and clapped young hands together with another laugh of delight. "Queen Elaena prevails!"

"Long may she reign," the Stark met her triumphant words with a playing bow. "You have more wits about you than I thought you would, good princess. At your age, my daughters were more interested in songs and dresses than in strategy."

And still are, he thought wearily. A lady's work is to run a household, but all they can do is sew.

"My uncle Viserys said I was born with a book in my hand," she smiled sweetly and innocently. "But I'm good with sums too."

The Lord of Winterfell considered that, leaning back into his chair. He considered himself to have a talent for judging the strengths and weaknesses of others, for finding vulnerabilities and ways to approach them that let him grease the wheels of diplomacy and intrigue and all the other works of a lord. It was perhaps the most important trait a lord could have, and one he was working hard to instill in his Jonnel, for it could be the difference between peace and prosperity and an unseen knife in the night. He even knew King Baelor well enough to know that he was a man who would always, always place the principles of the Faith above anything and everything in the material world, and could only be persuaded into action on those grounds. That was why he had sought the leverage of the High Septon.

But he didn't know the Targaryens with him nearly half as well, and Elaena herself was almost entirely a mystery. What was she like? Was she a girl like his own daughters, devoted entirely to songs and romances and sewing and dances? Or was she...more? She certainly had wits. She played the game well, and though she might yet still be a girl and though she might not yet be even a maiden, she was less girlish in action than in form.

"Is that so?" he asked with true interest. "I thought it was true that King Baelor was said to avoid letting you read?"

"He does, unless it is the Seven Sided Star," Elaena admitted before continuing. "But Viserys always brought me books if I asked for them...it was easier to get them to me than it was to get Daena out of the castle, so I could read as much as I liked."

"Winterfell has a library of its own, you know, the greatest in all the North, mayhaps one of the greatest outside of the Citadel," Cregan started, trying to tempt her into revealing more, to tempt her into letting him make his judgements. ""

She should have asked what was there. She should have been drawn in by that love of reading and the many promises of Winterfell's library. That was no lie. It was not even a bending of the truth. Winterfell's vast library was indeed vast, filled with tomes centuries old, and even a few tablets from before the Andal Invasion written with the chiselled runes of the First Men along with a handful of Valyrian scrolls about matters from the stars to prophecy to the study of animals.

But she did something that few men he met did.

She didn't ask. She didn't take the offering that others would take. She knew what it was. She knew he was trying to get a measure of her character.

And she laughed.

"I'll see it when I get there," she deflected with a careful answer. "I've read a lot of books, though. Do you have the full text of the Battles and Sieges of the Century of Blood? The one at the Red Keep was missing the section about the fall of Sarnath."

Cregan paused at that, right when he was about to answer.

She was doing back to him exactly what he was trying to do to her. She was making an account of his character, starting by trying to see how well read he was. From there, she would be able to tell how bookish he was, and how much knowledge he might have of the greater world. From there, she would be able to build her own understanding of him the exact way he had done for Lord Raymond.

Cregan smiled. He smiled a smile born of genuine warmth. She was no fool girl. She did not merely have wits. She did not merely remember the knowledge she had read in her books. This was a girl who took more after her uncle than not. A girl with a cunning of her own.

"You have much more wits about you than I thought you would, good princess," he answered, more quietly and knowingly, dropping any pretense of the game they had played but a moment before. "King Baelor was a fool not to notice it. Did your uncle ever encourage it?"

"He gave me books, like I said," Elaena answered with a knowing look in her violet eyes. "He said that if I was born a boy I would have a seat on the Small Council by the time I was Daena's age."

"Do you remember what I said to your cousin Aemon?" he asked. "Of practice without theory?"

"Baelor didn't let me attend court, yet alone sit in on his meetings with the Small Council," she said sadly. "It was not a woman's place."

"You have a place at my court already upon arrival, but I shall go further still," the Lord of Winterfell spoke, recognizing at last the sharpness within. "When we arrive, I would give you the chance to attend my council. To observe. To learn."

"Thank you, my lord...but why?" she asked.

"Because you are going to be a guest of Winterfell for years to come and I have a responsibility to see you raised well. More, you have a good mind in you, a sharp mind," he started...before finishing. "And I might hope that you set a good example for those daughters of mine."

Her smile was so happy that it made her blush brightly, Elaena looking more like a girl of her age than she had even a moment before, even as she packed the game away. "Thank you."

"I will escort you to your chambers, Princess," Cregan said as he rose to his feet, half the young men who had seemingly been waiting for him to leave having given up on trying to outlast the old wolf and retired themselves. "I would be a poor foster for you if I didn't see you safely to your chambers at this late an hour."

"Thanks again," Elaena said...before flashing him a knowing smile as she pressed the cloth of the side of her dress down upon her left thigh, hinting at the sheath of a dagger hidden beneath. "Daena taught me. She has three or four knives on her."

"Really?" Cregan asked, caught by surprise. "How?"

"A good sister never tells a -"

The main door into the inner keep smashed open with a heavy thud as the Lord Darry rushed through with a maester behind, an old man whose back had grown crooked and arched under the weight of the heavy chain of his office and his eyes baggy with exhaustion.

And there was a letter in Raymond's hand.

"News!" he gasped, clutching for breaths his thickened frame could barely give. "From the capital!"

"What? What is it, father?" a brother of Deremond asked, coming quickly to his side from the lower tables where he had been speaking with the Stark men. "Is it the King? Is it war?"

"It is death," the maester said grimly, speaking for the lord as he caught his breath. "Our beloved Pirnce Aegon's lady wife labored earlier this day, not long after noon."

"Oh, Mother's mercy," Elaena suddenly choked, tears forming in her eyes. "Naerys -"

"Though she gave one of her twins life, the other did not long survive the birthing," the elderly man continued. "Nor did the princess. May the Seven give her peace."

"King Baelor plans to give her funeral as swiftly as possible, so only those nearest will be able to attend," the Lord Raymond said at last, his voice cracked from the exertion.

"We have to go there," Elaena said without room for him to disagree, moving towards the door with fast steps that neared leaps, ordered graces falling apart beneath a growing grief. "I'll find - she'll...she'll want to know!"

"Go with her," Cregan commanded the Lord of Darry, raising his lordly voice. That was proof enough of Lord Raymond's submissive nature, for he nodded swiftly and rushed after her, even as the Lord Stark turned to the men below. "Someone find my captain of the guards. Find Meryn. Tell him he will have to lead the party and all the others but enough men to make an honor guard back to Winterfell on his own. And the wyverns, too."

"My lord?" a guardsman asked in surprise.

"I will be leading the rest of the household back to the capital," he answered, explaining his will. "We will be expected to be there for her funeral, for we are the dragon's kin, now, bound by marriage. Their suffering is our suffering. Those who are not coming with us will be taking the rest north. We can take a ship from King's Landing to White Harbor and be done."

His eyes searched the room, and his voice grew. "And someone find that damned son of mine already! Drag him out of bed if you must - we have preparations to make!"

Men rushed to the command of their lord, rushed and ran as though he had just called them to battle. He had known the Lady Naerys was with child. He had known that there was a good chance she would not survive the birth. But to have her die so soon after their departure was mayhaps the worst thing that might happen, for it would ask them to return to the dragon's lair in a time of grief. But what choice did the Lord of Winterfell truly have, when he was expected to be there as quickly as possible? When he had new Targaryen kin who would need support in their hour of mourning and tragedy?

He craved the comfort of a warm bed he could climb into now and rest, not to make all the efforts of preparing for their return to King's Landing and to start the journey with naught but an hour's rest.

But at least there was oen upside, a part of him reasoned.

He wouldn't have to put up with any more feasts on the way north.

****
End of Part 12!​

This part is off my traditional part schedule, but I couldn't help coming back here to pay a visit before I make that final push to finish off my Raiders of the Lost City once and for all!

And I've done a bit of a power marathon today, so no summary as I best hit the hay!

 

[Enforcer Budu]

Been waiting anxiously since August for this.
So good, can't wait for more.

I do love how each post is many thousands of words, makes it very satisfying to read

 

[TheUnicorn]

Great story, I really like the characterization, especially Cregan's talk with the princess in the last chapter.

 

[Meridian_Prime]

Damn. What an unexpected gem. Excellent stuff - you've really taken the shells of these characters and made them your own.

 

[CaekDaemon]

****
The Red Keep​

Aegon sat in dead silence, with neither book nor cup nor food in hand, only the pommel of Blackfyre, the first and greatest of the two Valyrian steel blades of his family resting between his legs as he sat on guard besides the cradle that held his sleeping Rhaenys, as vigilant and ready as a dragon watching over its clutch. Thin beams of light managed to shine through the closed shutters, a tiny fraction of the golden light of a summer's high sun, but he dared not open them. Not when she was sleeping. The near darkness was enough for him. He dared not move. The sound might wake her. He could be as still as a statue if he needed to be, or as quiet as a ghost when moving. He had taken his shoes off so that he might move as softly as needed to avoid waking her.

But that's not something I need to worry about, he thought to himself with a smile as he peeked over the cradle's edge to see his daughter's tiny cheeks moving ever so slightly in her sleep, his little dragoness wrapped up in the full fur of a bear for warmth and comfort. She sleeps like a rock.

That was one thing she could do very well, even at her age. She could sleep. Oh, how she slept. He had seen other babes before, held other babes before, had other babes before. His son Daeron had been a sobber when he was a newborn, with cries strong enough to wake the Red Keep. His Rhaenys was quieter than that. She was weaker than that. Her cries could be feeble little things, like the mewlings of puppies and kittens, so quiet he wouldn't be able to hear her through a closed door. Sometimes it made him wonder whether or not she might - no, it didn't. His mind refused to contemplate those dark depths, refused to consider them in even the slightest way. He already had one child that hated him. He had already lost one child that week. He would never have the chance to truly know his Aelyx, to see him laugh or cry, or to even spend a while watching him sleep. He would never have that chance to know the son he had loved before he had known the world.

He would not allow that to happen again. Not again. Never again.

And so he watched. He refused to allow a knight of the Kingsguard to watch over them, for whilst she was a member of house Targaryen, he would do that himself, with blade in hand, through day and night.

And so he watched. He refused to allow the maesters and maids of the Red Keep to be the one to look after her in the castle's main nursery, for he dared not leave her alone with those who said that she and her brother were doomed to die.

And so he watched. He refused to let the wet nurses feed her directly, for who knew what those women might do, or what sicknesses they might carry, or anything of the sort, instead having their milk put to bottles so that he might do it in their stead.

He trusted no one with her. Not now. Not after the maesters and the midwives and the servants and all the others had failed so utterly before. He refused to allow any of them to come near. Blackfyre was in his hands, and the Kingsguard was sworn to his protections and to obey his every command. If any dared to come near her, he would meet their steps with steel. That was what a dragon would do. That was what a prince would do. That was what a father would do. That was what he would do. It could be Baelor himself who could walk through the door and ignore Aegon's warnings to stay back only to get Blackfyre through the breast. He didn't care. The only thing that mattered to him now was Rhaenys.

He couldn't leave her alone. Not now. Not when her mother and her twin were gone. Not when he was all she had, just as he couldn't when she was all he had. He had failed the mother. He had failed the son. He would not fail the daughter.

And so he watched. He hadn't slept since the birth. He hadn't slept since he felt his Aelyx fall still in his arms, and he hadn't slept since he felt that last, flickering spark of life go out of them. He hasn't slept. He refused to sleep. He refused to lower his guard. He refused to let his mind go into the world of dream, and see what fresh hells awaited him there. He hadn't slept since then. How long was that now he couldn't recall, not really, for the days and the nights had blurred together into twilight.

His fingers twitched with tiredness, but he dared not sleep. Rhaenys needed him. His cheeks ached with the fresh growths of a mane growing wild, but he dared not grow distracted. His mind refused to veer from her. He loved her the way Naerys would have loved her. He was sure of that. She may not have had a mother, but she had a father, a guardian and a guide. Rhaenys needed him...

...and he needed her. This was not something that he could bury with the thoughts of good wines, good women and good hunting. Not this time. He had lost a son. He had lost the son that could have been a gallant knight, a laughing japster, a quiet reader, a hunter with hawk on arm. He had lost all of them when he had lost his Aelyx. That gallant hero would never ride, the japster would never laugh, the reader would never read. The hawk would not fly.

Would he have liked that, he couldn't help but wonder. Would he have liked to go hawking with him?

He would never know. Not now. The gods had given Aelyx to him. The gods had taken Aelyx from him.

But they had left her. His left hand rubbed her tiny cheek, his right resting on Blackfyre's rubied pommel. They had left his Rhaenys, and all that she might be. She smiled. Even in the weakness that came from her hard birth and even asleep, she still smiled. That made it worth it. That made it all worth it. A smile. That's all he had wanted. A smile. A laugh. A moment's joy.

He adjusted the fur around her, careful to keep it snug and warm. The head had been given to mount on a wall somewhere, whether he wished. He didn't care about that. Not right now, at least. Not when she needed him. But the pelt was vast enough that it could be wrapped around her again and again and again and keep her little body warm and safe. Aegon adjusted the pin that kept it safely tucked - and his brow twitched with the sound of movement in the halls past.

Foot steps. Ser Joffrey Staunton was at the door, the second to last shield of protection for his Rhaenys, only allowed to leave when another white cloak of the Kingsguard came to take his place. Aegon never left. He was her shield. He would fight the Warrior himself if he came near. His hand moved from Rhaenys and to Blackfyre, reading himself to fight.

For a moment, there was silence. His leg's tensed, ready to rise.

Then there were steps away from the door.

He relaxed. He let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding.

Then the door opened.

Aegon rose. He rose instantly and with absolute strength in his breast, with what little fatigue he may have had burning away in an instant. Renewed vigour flowed into him, and he stepped forward with Blackfyre raised and gripped with both his hands, ready for battle, as he moved through the door-frame and into the main hall.

Inside was a man covered from head to heel in full plate that glittered like fresh fallen snow. Around his shoulders was a white cloak, and in the dagger-thin rays of light that pierced the shutters, Aegon could see violet eyes behind that visor.

And in his hand was Dark Sister, sharp and deadly.

There were no words passed between them then. Only a single moment of silence before Aemon dove towards him on the offense, with the bitter, tearful growl of the furious man. Aegon reacted instantly, raising Blackfyre to block without a doubt in his heart of what he was doing- and in that moment, Valyrian steel struck Valyrian steel. Blackfyre and Dark Sister clashed with the roaring clangs of metal on metal, and it was on.

"You whoremongering bastard!" Aemon shouted in his bloody fury. "You murdered her!"

His blade sang out before Aegon could even try and answer, and the prince darted to the side with a quick step. Even if it was more dangerous a move than trying to parry the strike, even if it was all the more likely to see a blade sheathed in his chest, he had to get him away from the door, away from the cradle, away from Rhaenys. Nothing else mattered.

And whilst there had never been a doubt that Aemon was the better of the two fighters in their time together on the courtyard, and even though he was armored and filled with an anger of his own, Aegon had always been the bulkier and the stronger.

And he was beyond such words as anger or rage or fury. All the grief and pain of the days before came surging out at once, blending together and filling his strikes with a lethal energy. He met Aemon blow for blow, blade against blade.

"I didn't murder her, you white-cloaked fool!" he shouted back. "The damned maesters did that, not me!"

"Oh, but you did," Aemon snarled with a weeping voice as their blades clashed. "You raped her. You knew they said she couldn't have any more children without risk, and you forced her. And what happened?"

His weeping turned into a howl. "She is dead because of you, Aegon! Our sister is dead!"

"Do you think I wanted this to happen? I never wanted her! I never wanted to marry her, I had no choice!" Aegon howled in his bloody rage, Blackfyre streaking through the air like a shift of black light to strike against Dark Sister as Aemon raised it to block, the younger Targaryen sent reeling backwards by the force of the strike. "Never!"

Aemon pushed forward to stab, to strike him down where he stood, but Aegon caught the thrust on Blackfyre's edge and tipped it aside, the backswing coming about and gouging into the perfect paint of the Kingsguard's breastplate, sparks shining.

"And where were you, brother?" he asked, going on the attack. "Where were you when Naerys died? Where were you when my son died?"

No strength was being held back, now, neither of them restraining, neither of them not using every last thimbleful of might that they could muster. Again. Again. Again. Back and forth. No one came. No one was around to come. No one was around to interfere. There would be blood.

"You buggered off," Aegon shouted, his voice growing to its full strength. "You joined the damned Kingsguard, and left me, alone, for house Targaryen!"

"For heaven's sake, Aegon, you had a son!"

"One!" he cried. "One son! One heir! One chance to save the house if something went wrong! You know what happened to Daeron!"

"You had a son!" Aemon howled, the tears shining behind his helm. "He was but one, but you could have let her go! Why did you keep her? Why? Why?"

"I had no choice!" he roared back. "You call me a monster, but this fault for this is yours! You failed Daeron!"

"Kinslayer!"

"Craven!"

"Murderous bastard!"

"Oath breaking cur!"

Their blades locked against one another, crossguards pressing and blades screaming, the two brothers pushing against one another, pushing and pressing. Blackfyre and Dark Sister danced against one another, with strikes high and then low, thrusts front and then back, from door to table to window, but every blow brought more tears to Aegon's cheeks. He hated this. He hated it. With every singing clang of steel on steel, with every heavy strike or lunging thrust, he hated it more, even as the dancing grew slower. Aemon was his brother. It was his brother trying to strike him down. It was his brother who wielded Dark Sister, and whose Aegon's every strike was to hold at bay. It was his brother before him.

His brother.

But they had been more than brothers once. They had been friends.

"Why do you make me do this!" Aegon shouted and asked and begged. "Why?"

Aemon didn't answer. He couldn't answer. Not with the fight. Not when Dark Sister and Blackfyre were deafening the world with the clangs of Valyrian steel on Valyrian steel. Not when the strikes rained down one after the other, a furied flurry that grew ever slower with each and every trade. Aegon's heart burnt. It burnt with more than just exhaustion. It burnt for what it had to do. It burnt at having to raise steel against the brother that he had loved, once. His muscles stung. His lungs snatched at breathes he could barely grasp.

He couldn't hold him back much longer. Naerys. Daeron. Rhaenys. Aemon. He loved them. He loved them all. He loved Aemon. Even now.

His brother raised Dark Sister. Grieving eyes shone behind his helm. Aegon's muscles groaned and burnt, hands wobbling as he tried to raise Blackfyre in his defense.

He couldn't. He couldn't do it. He didn't have the strength. He couldn't defend himself.

"I'm sorry, Aemon," he spoke, no more than a whisper. "I really am."

Blackfyre slipped from his fingers, its pommel banging on the crimson stone of the Red Keep.

He was helpless. He was ready.

Dark Sister followed. It fell, clanging off the ground and off its discarded sibling. Aemon dropped it as if he had been caught by their father. He was crying. Aegon was crying. Aemon was crying. The two brothers grappled and grabbed at one another, as if struggling, but it was no struggle. It was grief. True and honest grief, filled with a stream of true and honest tears, a tide, a flood. Aemon was weeping, and Aegon wept with him.

They were brothers.

Even after everything that had happened, they were still brothers. Nothing could change that.

They grieved for their loss like brothers, and they wept. It was a senseless, wordless moment of mourning...but it was mourning. A chance to grieve and grieve truly. To release the woe that lay within. To help the brother that had not had the days of quiet and silence that Aegon had been blessed with after the death of their sister. He could have stayed there forever.

But there was a thud and the wailing cry of an infant. Aegon froze as a chill went up his spine. He felt the same happen to Aemon as the world turned slow and silent.

The nursery, his mind screamed with every fiber of his being howling in choric unison. It came from the nursery.

It came from his daughter. His daughter. His daughter.

Aegon broke from Aemon and leapt through the door in great, vaulting strides -

- and there she was, crying in her cradle, cheeks red and soaked with tears. The side panel had fallen and struck the ground with a bang, which had been enough to wake even her from her deep slumber. He rushed over to see if she had been hurt, if something had somehow managed to strike her, but she was in the exact place she had been before, snuggled up warmly in the bearskin he had made for her. He could not grieve. That didn't matter, not now, not anymore, not when his sweet little Rhaenys was upset and needed him. She had no one else, just as how it sometimes felt like her father had no one else. Not even his own Daeron.

But that didn't matter. Not now. Not anymore. Not when he had Rhaenys. He had been cut in the fight. Dark Sister had hit his left arm, cut through the ebon cloth of his doublet. He felt that now. Stinging and dripping. He didn't care about the pain. He cared that he couldn't touch her with his bloodied hand. So he didn't. He bent down and picked her up with his right arm and his right arm alone, hurrying over to a water bowl to wash the blood away from his left.

"Shhh," he hushed his daughter, doing his best to imitate how Naerys might have done it. "I'm here. I'm here."

A shadow hung in the door. He turned, tears on his cheeks.

It was Aemon. Aemon in all his armor. Aemon in his white cloak and his plate plate. Aemon with his visor raised, and with surprise in his tearful, violet eyes.

Eyes that saw the little bundle in Aegon's arms and melted into true horror and absolute sorrow.

"Oh, oh gods," Aemon gasped in his shock. "Aegon, I didn't know -"

"Be quiet," the prince said, rocking his Rhaenys in his arms as he paced back and forth, her cries growing ever quieter as she gurgled and murmured towards sleep once more. "The more rest she has, the stronger she is."

Aemon stepped forward with one, tentative move, aghast. "I was told that she...that neither of them -"

"I lost my son, my little son," Aegon mourned with a low voice, no more than a whisper. "I lost my Aelyx."

But even as tears began to swell in his eyes once more, he turned towards his brother with a smile. "But I still have my Rhaenys. She lives. She's alive, see? She sleeps like a stone, but...when she cries!"

"I...I wouldn't have...I didn't know. Oh, Mother's mercy," Aemon gasped, staring at his hands in realization. "Brother, Aegon, I'm sorry -"

"Quiet," the prince insisted, his daughter's cries quietening down to a murmur. "We can talk when she's asleep."

Aemon opened his mouth as if to start, as if to apologize once more, as if to beg for his forgiveness, only to close it again and nod solemnly in acceptance of his brother's wish...even as he came across the room with light steps, to peek at his new niece. Even with his cheeks marked by the tears of grief he had shed, Aegon could still see that tiniest flicker of a smile on the corner of his lip, only watching as his brother kept his careful pace back and forth, rocking her to her slumber. Only when her eyes fluttered closed once more did her father gently, carefully, so very carefully, place her back into her cradle to rest, and only then did he let out a long sigh as all the exhaustion of his days long vigil crashed into him together at once as he fell back into his seat, hands reaching instinctually for Blackfyre only to grasp naught but air.

And only then did Aemon speak once more.

"She looks like Naerys."

"She does," Aegon nodded. "She looks more like the two of you than she does me."

"...was it our sister who gave her that name?"

"No," he whispered. "If they had a name for her, I would have known...but Naerys was fond of the name. I know that. Reminded her of our cousin Rhaena."

Then the words came with a tremble in his throat and voice.

"I am sorry, Aemon. Truly. I didn't want this to happen. No matter how little you might think of me sometimes, you know that. "

His brother swallowed. His brother nodded. His brother spoke with a low voice. "Were you...there? With her? At the end?"

"She didn't like having me around when she was pregnant. It...uneased her," he answered honestly and truthfully and with a shake of his head. "I'm no fool, Aemon. She always did love you more."

Those words hung in the air for a time. Aegon knew why. He had known it for years, and the reason for it was that it was true. Naerys had always loved Aemon and been loved by him in turn. Where Naerys shied away from him and could not stand to be around him for more than a few moments, even after the birth of Daeron, she laughed at Aemon's japes and smiled but for his presence. His standing between them was even enough to shield Naerys from the woe Aegon placed her into with him simply being there.

"She loved you too, once," his brother said somberly, meeting him with the tired eyes of a man as wounded as he. "She really did."

"I tried to make her happy. I did everything I could think to do, gave her everything I thought to give her. That was why I was not there," he explained. "I was in the woods, hunting, as much to get furs for her and the babes as to clear my thoughts. That was what I was doing when the rider came. By the time I reached the capital she was already gone...and truly? I never wanted her to die. I can't say it enough."

"...and...your son?" Aemon asked, delicately.

Aegon swallowed. He swallowed hard.

"He died in my arms, Aemon. I felt it happen. Felt him go. I know the exact moment he left...I can't get it out of my head except when I hold her."

He reached down, then, to touch her cheek...and realized it was with his bloodied arm before he could. Aemon's eyes widened at the sight of the wound, and he darted over close, yanking the clasps from the white cloak that marked him as a knight of the Kingsguard, quickly wrapping it around his brother's arm past the elbow. His voice was surprised and quiet. "I didn't even realize I hit you."

"I didn't even realize I was hit," Aegon laughed, offering his arm to his brother and letting him bandage the wound. "I didn't even feel it. The old dragon takes a wound and ignores it protecting the young one. The singers would love that, wouldn't they?"

"Most likely, but I would rather hear no word of this again," Aemon answered with a grim tone, making a knot and tying it tight. "This is...this is beyond shame. The gods hate a kinslayer."

"I am alive, if not entirely well," Aegon said with a flick of his head to the wound. "So long as it doesn't fester, you won't be much of a kinslayer. A shirtslayer, mayhaps."

"Even if it was to make me a kinslayer...I really did want you dead when I came back," his brother admitted, his words heavy and quiet before he stood back and met Aegon's eye with shame. "My anger got the better of me.I didn't think.".

"For what it is worth, brother," the elder brother answered, tightening the bandage they had made for his arm. "I think I would've done the same thing, if the tables were turned. I don't hate you for it, Aemon. I just wish I wasn't wearing my favorite doublet."

His brother nodded at that, the gloom slowly vanishing from him. "I'll try and have it mended."

"And if anyone asks, and if you really wish to make it up to me," Aegon said more quietly. "Tell them I was winning till you got a lucky hit in."

Aemon almost laughed at that. Were it any other day, he might have done so. For now it was still too soon for real laughter, perhaps for the both of them. Aegon had never known his wife's love, but what Aemon had said was the truth: she had loved him, once. Before she was his wife. For all the bitter memories that may have came after that, for all the thoughts of what might have been, he could still remember the time that came before it. He could still mourn that.

But Aemon dragged him from that distraction, perhaps as much for his own comfort out of the silence as it was for the prince's.

"There's only so much they'll believe before the realm thinks we're making things up," his brother teased before nodding. "But I'll try."

"I hope so," the elder prince smiled back, the dull sense of where he was struck starting to swell into an ache. "The scar will be better with a good story."

But then he grew serious once more. There were words that had to be said. They couldn't be japes. They couldn't be thought of as japes. They had to be taken as they were.

"I'm worried for Daeron, though," Aegon said, truthfully. "He...he always did like her more. Mayhaps we might bond from it all, a small bit of luck to counter the bad, but I think he will loathe me even more than he already does when the grief is gone."

"...it wasn't your fault, Aegon, or anyone else's," Aemon said with an understanding nod and a swallow, an acceptance of what he had just said. "I will try and talk to him when I can."

"Thank you, and Aemon?" the prince started, only continuing when he was sure he had his younger brother's complete attentions. "It wasn't your fault, either. I promise you that."

He reached out for his cup of wine, left to rest on the nearby table and surrounded by fallen bottles. Each had as few answers as the one that came before them, alas, but what they could not provide in comfort, they could in quenching his thirst. He wasn't even sure what wine was in it, anymore, other than the dregs of three different bottles of Reachman wine put together...but there was little faulting the taste on a dry tongue.

"How was your visit to Lys, anyway?" Aegon asked with honest curiosity as he placed his cup back onto the table, leaning back into his seat as Aemon carefully took one from the table's side and brought it over. "Was there any fine women there to win the love of a Kingsguard knight?"

"No, but you wouldn't believe me what happened if I told you," his white-cloaked brother answered with a sigh of true frustration and annoyance. "The matter wasn't meant to King Baelor to solve. It was meant for King Viserys."

"Our dear father has succeeded to the throne already?" Aegon japed. "Or did it come from the future? I take it the Essosi wrote his title of Hand of the King wrong?"

"No, they wrote it right. They weren't asking for father. They wanted father's grandfather," Aemon corrected. "King Viserys, the First of His Name, rider of Balerion the Black Dread."

Aegon's brow flickered in a moment's confusion. "It said she was fifteen -"

"She was fifteen...sixty five years ago," Aemon said with a shake of his head and a tired sigh. "She was still alive, and surprised to see a Targaryen coming to her rescue after so long. Not that she needed much rescue. Half the city was doing whatever she wanted them to do. She'd built an empire of merchants and mercenaries."

"How in the Seven Hells did no one realize?" Aegon asked with amazement. "That has to one of the biggest errors the Small Council has ever made!"

"It must have been a misplaced letter from before the war," his brother tried as best as he could to reason. "There was a lot of trouble in uncle Aegon's reign, and most of it was in the Red Keep. It must have been forgotten before the Dance, lost during the rule of the third Aegon, then came up here."

"Did she come back at least?"

"Oh, aye, and the Swanns are in for a surprise. She thought she wasn't welcome in Westeros this entire time, and has sons and grandsons with the Swann name eager to meet their kin. Did you know she comes from the superior line?"

"An uncle of hers inherited?"

"Cousin."

Aegon laughed, but before he could answer, before he could utter a remark, the door out in the main room clattered open, and two men stepped through, talking amongst themselves till they stood in the doorframe. It was his father and his cousin. It was the Hand of the King and the King himself. It was Viserys and Baelor, the former in splendid scarlets and patterned blacks, the latter in his usual flowing robes and with his crown of flowers of seven different shades, a glass amulet shaped like a star dangling from his neck, a small satchel on his hip. Even the way they carried themselves as they came into the room was different, for there was no doubt in Aegon's view that his father was the more regal of the pair, even if he had no crown upon his brow, only the gilded badge of his office pinned to his breast.

But in that moment, even with the differences between them obvious to any man with eyes, they both met Aegon with confusion when they saw the white cloak wrapped around his arm.

And Viserys sighed as their king and cousin shook his head.

"What in the Father's name did you two do this time?" he asked.

"We had a...heated discussion," Aegon said innocently and with a shrug. "That's all. But I'll need a maester."

"A heated discussion that leaves you lucky to still have fingers is not merely heated, Aegon," their father said firmly, before turning his attentions to his younger son. "What of you, Aemon? Do I wish to know why there are dents in your armor?"

"He slipped," Aegon covered quickly. "He wasn't used to walking on the stones of the Red Keep after so long at sea."

"I'll be fine," Aemon smiled, accepting Aegon's offer. "It's nothing a smith can't fix."

"...and I suppose you cut a blood orange with Dark Sister?" Viserys asked, arms crossed. "How else did so dark a red get on its tip?"

"The fruit wasn't ripe."

"Make no mistake, I am very, very well aware of what must have happened in her,e" Viserys spoke more quietly, glancing towards his king before turning back towards his sons. "Have you two settled your discussion? There won't be any more of this?"

"No," the Dragonknight said before his brother had the chance. "There won't be anymore of this. The matter is settled. I swear it."

"Then I accept it happily," King Baelor smiled at the both of them. "The Seven-who-are-One are forgiving, and so am I. Mistakes can be made, but so long as we recognize them for what they are and atone, it makes no matter."

"Still," the king said, reached into the pouch on his waist to take out a folded piece of parchment. "My good Hand and I have been talking about my Great Sept. There has been a change of plans."

"Have the Seven made their will known to you anew, cousin?" Aegon asked deftly. His father glared at him slightly.

"No, this is a mortal revelation, but one I think you would both be interested in...you knew my good cousin better than any, I am sure," the king said, unfolding the paper and placing it on the table between the brothers. "Naerys was a pious woman who loved the gods and a woman of peace. I would have called her a friend of mine for it."

Aegon looked to the paper swiftly, as did his brother, and - he knew this place. He had seen it in the drawings of the first years of King's Landing, when the masons were still hard at work in the years of Aegon the Dragon himself and his sister-wives. It was a vast building, a massive square from whose walls rose seven domes around a vast, center structure, whose massive roofs would have stars of seven sided glass seven feet wide, to bath the grounds beneath in rainbow light. He knew all of this, because he had been taught all of this. This was not the first time he had seen this building, for it was not the first time it had been raised even if it surely would not encounter the same fate as the last time when it was consumed by the ebonflames of Balerion.

"This is the Sept of Remembrance, the one that Maegor burnt," Aegon said, meeting Baelor in the eye. "Why?"

"It may have that name, but it will also have another," his father said, softer. "It will also be the Great Sept of Naerys, for it is for her that it will be consecrated."

"A place where we can remember our lost kin, much as Aegon the Conqueror did when he raised it for his own beloved Rhaenys after she was lost to Dorne," Baelor nodded, coming over to point to the designs with a thin finger. "Work continues already - the vaults, thank the Smith, can remain the same - but the architects are back to the planning of it. This part here was where the shrine to the Mother was kept. I would have a memorial to Naerys there as well, for she too was a mother, along with all the other women of our house who have died in the birthing bed. They were all mothers."

Aegon was almost lost for words. He hadn't been able to help but think that Baelor was a man who loathed women. How else could the prince explain how he could not stand to be around them, how he had locked his sisters away in their chambers and refused to consummate his union with his own wife, Daena, regardless of how often she tried to shame him?

"But why?" he couldn't help but ask. "You had great plans already. The sept was to carry your own name."

"The Seven command men to be humble," Baelor said with absolute conviction. "Humble men do not have septs named for them. They build their places of worship not for their own pride, but so as to better give praise to the divine and to encapture that tiniest ember of their majesty."

And then he smiled, in his usually, beatific way.

"I am entirely content to give the sept to Naerys, and that is why I come to you both today," he continued with his gentle voice. "To tell you that I give the sept to her. One of the artists is already making a charcoal drawing for the sculptors to follow...Naerys, and your son, Aelyx. Together in stone as they should have been in life."

"I...thank you, cousin," Aegon bowed as best as he could in his seat, Aemon bowing with him in honest gratitude.

"Oh, and there will be a need for preparations," Baelor added as an afterthought. "Not just for the funeral, but for the little one's naming. The Great Sept will be many, many years before it is ready to host such an event, but there is still the royal septry. Do you think her ready to be anointed?"

The naming, Aegon realized in an instant. She hasn't had her naming yet.

"I want to be certain she's well, first," Aegon said, firmly...before nodding, a clever thought in mind. "Mayhaps when she is seven weeks old. Seven sevens. The gods do love that number."

"That they do," Baelor smiled, leaning over to glance into the cradle where the littlest dragoness of the Targaryens was gently breathing and sleeping. "And it seems they love her as well, for the gods seem to have blessed her with a deep sleep indeed."

"She doesn't wake easily, though I think that more a blessing than not," Aegon laughed to himself. "She didn't wake even during our discussion, except when the side of her cradle fell."

Viserys snapped his fingers. Aegon looked at him in confusion. He snapped his fingers again, closer to the cradle. A cold knife went through Aegon's chest in reply to the silence, a piercing horror that threatened to eclipse the grief of the last few days, but when he peered inside, she was happily asleep, lips murmuring and eyes fluttering beneath their lids, tiny arms wiggling beneath the furs that kept her warm.

"I would have the maester take a look at her, as well as you, Aegon," Viserys said softly and carefully, raising his hand to stop him from answering. "Just to be sure there is nothing wrong with her hearing."

He knew what his father was suggesting. That she was deaf. Born deaf. That wasn't even possible, Aegon was sure of it. What were the chances of a babe being born deaf? How could that even happen. Surely not. How could the gods be so cruel as to take a wife and a sister and a son from him, all in one day, then follow it up a few days later with the revelation that his daughter was deaf as well? No, that wasn't possible. He was sure she had responded to his voice before. He was sure of it.

Just as he had been sure that his Daeron would go hawking with him.

Just as he had been sure that his Naerys would eagerly welcome his gift of furs.

Just as he had been sure that his Aelyx would survive the night.

Aelyx had met the noise Aegon had made with gurgling too. Then Aelyx was gone. Gone before the father had ever truly had the chance to know his son.

Aegon swallowed. Aegon paled. Aegon turned towards his father and Aegon nodded.

"When I get the chance."

"You'll have that chance now," his father commanded, even if the order was more for his son's own good than not. "We best get you to him, lest that cut of yours go bad."

"Then I shan't keep any of you longer than I must," Baelor smiled to them all. "The High Septon has told me that a great many relics have begun to arrive from the Starry Sept in Oldtown, ready to be put into the vaults when they are ready. I must admit to being more than a little curious of what they have."

"The bones of old Septons?" Aegon asked, almost teased, as he rose from his seat.

"More than that, cousin," Baelor answered, a glint of true devotion, true zealotry, beaming in his eye. "Much more."

Then the King reached into his satchel once more, and took out a small key...a key that was perhaps the most complicated that Aegon had ever lain eyes upon, a thing of seven spokes, and whose ring was marked with a simple cut out of the seven sided star. He turned towards Aemon, who stood at attention, and gave it him.

"Guard it with your life, ser," Baelor commanded, iron forming in his voice - true iron. "Protect it more than you would protect me. It is more important than I. I command you rarely, good cousin, but this is something that I do command."

Aemon was as caught off guard as any of the three, and even Viserys seemed at a loss.. "...your grace?"

"You will only have to keep it for the next seven months or so, when it arrives," Baelor softened. "But until then, do not let it out of your sight. I will come for it then."

Aemon bowed deeply.

"I will do as you command, your grace," the white-cloak answered. "Shall I escort you back to your chambers? Or to the royal septry?"

"No," the king said, half in thought. "Best to act nothing out of the unusual. Go with Aegon."

"Your grace, as your Hand of the King, I do feel that - whatever this is to do with - I should be informed," Viserys reasoned. "If it is of such importance to you, then it is surely of importance to the realm."

"It is too important," Baelor said.

And then Baelor was gone. He turned on his sandals, and walked out the door, stopping only to smile at the trio and draw the sign of the Seven on his thin chest before leaving them be, alone in the chamber...not even waiting for Viserys to follow, not that he did.

"Do either of you have any idea what he is on about?" their father asked, honestly uncertain. "Ever since the relics started to arrive he has been...I would not say paranoid, but guarded."

"It isn't my place to ask him why he gave it me, only to guard it. That is what a Kingsguard does," Aemon nodded. "But if I must say...I suppose it is because it is to do with the Faith."

"I agree with Aemon," Aegon nodded. "He loves his Faith. Look how well he was working to guard the chastity of those sisters of his, and they're just women. When it comes to the Faith itself..."

"...no effort is spared," Viserys sighed, weary, before a tiny smile flicked into being. "At least this Sept of Remembrance is cheaper to build than that damned Great Sept of his would've been. Wider, yes, but not as tall. The walls can be thinner built."

"But there is one thing about the Sept of Remembrance," Aegon said, turning with his weakened hand to pick up the parchment and holding it before the two, pointing with his unwounded arm. "This part. Do you see what it says?"

He moved his finger, back and forth.

"Quarters for the Warrior's Sons."

There was a long silence.

There was a longer silence than Aegon had known in years.

Viserys was the one that broke it.

"These are the old plans, for the old sept," he reasoned, taking the parchment from his firstborn son. "The architects are redrawing them. He has no desire to restore the orders. He has no interest in martial things."

"You heard how much our cousin Daena called him a coward," Aegon countered. "What if he tries to bring back the Faith Militant to show that he keeps all of the Seven...including the Warrior?"

"...I hate to say it, father, but Aegon might be right," Aemon nodded in agreement. "Daena attacked his faith. If there was ever a thing that could make him do it, it would be that."

"Baelor is a pious and holy man, perhaps frustratingly so, but he is not a madman," Viserys spoke, more quiet. "If he was to restore the Faith Militant, reopen the chapterhouses of the Warrior's Sons...it would plunge the realm into chaos. The Iron Islands and the North would see it as a betrayal and revolt. It would be civil war."

"And a chance to spread the Faith by the sword."

"Before countering Dorne?" Viserys caught swiftly. "No. The Andal realms of the south would not stand for it. They would never accept being denied their vengeance against the Martells only to be ordered to war against their brothers-in-arms and fellow Westerosi."

"...unless he was aiming for Andalos," Viserys paused for a moment's consideration before shaking his head. "No, no. Baelor is many things, but greatest among them is his detest for violence. He embraces the Mother and her love of peace over anything else. More, he has a Sept to build, and spends almost all his time on the grounds of it. He has no appetite for a campaign of any kind, other than one of construction and giving the smallfolk bread...mayhaps my nephew Daeron might've, if not Dorne, but never Baelor."

"Now, let us speak not of impossibilities and fantasies of holy war," their father half-japed before continuing on...and growing serious once more. "I am no fool. I know what you two were doing before we arrived, and I know that if the gods were crueler I would only have one son left standing. It ends. It ends now, or I will show the both of you why dragons are said to be fiercer with age."

"You will have no more of it from me," Aemon said instantly.

"Nor me."

"Good," their father said and nodded, sad. "Too much Targaryen blood has been shed. There aren't many of us left, and should we turn against one another now, it'll be the end. Thousands of years of history, from the rise of Valyria to today, will end with us."

Then he turned to Aemon.

"Your voyage to Lys should have taught you something whilst you were there," he said, quieter, more gentle, more fatherly. "They have a saying in that city, or at least the Rogares did: only the luckiest men might go to their graves without any regrets. The other day has proven that we are not the luckiest men."

"If there is anyone within this room who deserves the blame for what happened to Naerys, it is none of you. Neither Aemon, nor you, Aegon, nor her babes. The fault is is mine and mine alone. My hand was the one that drafted that marriage, in the hope that an in-family marriage might avoid the horrors of the Dance of the Dragons come again should something go wrong, and to give the realm some cheer with a union after the grim years that followed our worst hour."

For the first time in many years, Aegon saw an honest regret in his father's eyes. It was the look of a man who had knew he had done wrong. It was the look he had when their mother had left, and gone back across the Narrow Sea to Lys, leaving all of them alone in the west. It was the look of a man realizing his errors, and realizing that there was now nothing that could be done, nothing he could do to make things right again. It lasted but a heartbeat before he spoke on.

"Still, we cannot change the things that are done," the older Targaryen continued. "We can only mend them, much as you need mending, Aegon. Come, let's get you to the Grand Maester."

"I was wondering if it would never happen," Aegon smiled as he stepped forward -

Rhaenys yawned. She gurgled loudly. She cried.

"...could you bring the maester to me?" he asked, honest. "I don't want to leave her."

And then he realized.

"Aemon," Aegon said more quietly, an open arm pointing towards the cradle. "She just wants to be held."

His brother only stared back.

"Even...even after that? Even after I tried to kill you?" he spoke with a vocie so low, so gentle as to be near a whisper. "You still want me to look after her? Truly?"

"Naerys loved you, more than she ever loved me," Aegon admitted with a slow nod. "She trusted you, and I trust you too...you're my brother, Aemon. Now and always."

Aemon looked at him with sad eyes. He swallowed.

And he nodded.

"Now and always."

****
End of Part 13!​

 

[AzraelvonGruber]

my god the feel are strong here

 

[Chojomeka]

I gave a hug instead of a :lol but we all know that Baelor's justification is heading straight towards him what with Cregan bringing back Elaena.

 

[Ezrin]

Absolutely magnificent

 

[Meridian_Prime]

I came here expecting more political dealings, maybe some bonding between Daena and Jonnel. I left with a lump in my throat. Outstandingly written. Real pain in that encounter, and the catharsis feels well earned.

 

[sleepyanon]

Goddamned man why do you make me feel such feels!

 

[CaekDaemon]

What is dead might never die, but rises again, harder and stronger - I have returned to update this story at last, and this time, it shall not waste away in the backpages as it had done before. After many, many years, I'm finally back to my proper output as I had once been before. My health, long in the gutter, is resurgent, and with it returns my writing power. Massive updates will now come quickly and constantly, as they did all those years ago - I'm basically cranking out nearly 10k words a day again, which makes writing story posts an absolute breeze.

But a tiny heads up for those that are new to this story, or returning after the long sleep: this story began and was lain out long before the World of Ice and Fire was released and certainly before Fire and Blood or things like House of the Dragon, and so was planned out without its changes. I am doing my best to reconcile the canons, but my plans for this story have not changed - if necessary, consider the little differences here and there to be part the AU, lesser PoDs lingering in the background. The resulting story will very much still feel the same as ASOIAF, but that just needs to be said before people start coming after me about little things that the WOIAF changed from older canon

With that said, an update! If you need a brief reminder, why not take a peek at the Northern Dragoness TVTropes page? The one for Raiders of the Lost City appears to have been deleted (RIP), but we have that one which provides an excellent little summary of the story so far!

****
Near the God's Eye Lake...

​

Of all the things that might have seen him dragged from his bed in the dead of night, Jonnel Stark had not expected it to be the death of a Targaryen princess. He would have sooner expected Castle Darry to be burning, or for there to be some news that someone had gone missing, and that all men who might ride were needed to bring them home again. He half expected it to be tale of war. Those were all the things that he might've thought of, the first things to flash into his mind when the fists pounded on the door, and the shouts came to drag him from his bed...but they were not servants. They his father's men, yelling and giving him his orders from the Lord of Winterfell. Get dressed, they had shouted, get dressed for a long and hard ride through the night, and bring a cloak as well, and all the fineries that he might have. He had barely understood it at first, so sudden the waking, but he didn't mind their interruption. What he had dreamt of was far worse, a saga of bloody birthing beds and pale hands that was he was eager to be rid of, things that made a midnight ride into a comfort. His belly still ached with all the feed of the day before's feast, and he had stumbled to his feet, dressed well, and made his way to the hall. Castle Darry was half asleep, and all the servants in their beds, but the Lord of Darry had been roused from his own chambers for this as well, and all the Starks and their men were gathered there.

And then the news had came. Princess Naerys, a woman who might've one day been the queen of King Aegon, his new kin by marriage, had gone to the birthing chamber and bore twins, but a mother and a child had left the room beneath a burial shroud. Elaena had wept.

Daena had said nothing. She had tears on her cheeks, but she had said nothing. His lord father had made his will known, and they had mounted their horses and set off, and still she said nothing.

He had barely known Naerys at all. She was a cousin of his lady wife, of the princess Daena whom he knew so little. He had no cousins that he knew much of. He did not know the comforts he might have offered her, did not know what he might have said if they were lost...but he knew he would have said something...he might've found a heart tree, and given ask for them to find comfort.

Daena had said nothing.

The plans had been made. The Lord of Winterfell would lead a smaller party south, and the rest would continue on under Meryn, who'd take their true horses, and leave them with ones borrowed from the Lord of Darry. Meryn would go with the treasures, the gifts and the dowry, and his lord father would take the rest of them to King's Landing. From there, they would find a ship and make it northwards, give their steeds over to the Darry escort that their lord had offered them, and make it to Winterfell in time for the rest to arrive a week or two after. It was all neatly planned, but even the best plan would not stand in the face of time. No rider was fast enough to make it to King's Landing before the efforts of the Silent Sisters in preserving her mortal remains might be overcome. The Targaryens would not wait even half so long. They had days, not weeks. Mayhaps even a single day. His father knew this, but Jonnel had not understood how he planned to do so before he said it himself. For all the distance between them and King's Landing, the Riverlands had the chance to give them a way to get there that not a single one of the rest of Westeros might - a chance to cross a distance vaster than the length of the Wall in a matter of days, and get there in time to pay final respects to the daughter of a house that was now his good kin, and allies of the North.

The rivers themselves. The Blackwater was fast and furious, or so the Lord of Darry had explained, and it was down its currents that the great many sacks of flour made their way to the capital from the fields and mills of the Rivermen, ready to be baked into bread on the morning. They had a way to get there. They had a plan to do it. He had even given them a good local map, showing where the nearest ferry might be. It would a hard ride in the dark, but it could be done.

Daena had said nothing.

That was where they were now. Riding in the dark, over muddy roads. The Darry horse did not respond or act so eagerly as his own might, unfamiliar as it was to him, and unfamiliar he was to it. They had formed into a column, with riders on the outsides, bearing torches. They hadn't bothered to bring a banner, no one would've seen it anyway in the dark, the moon hidden half behind cloud. His father was at the lead of it, along with the heir of Darry, Deremond, riding as their guide.

Daena was besides him. She was his wife, and they were to ride together, even if they hadn't shared a chamber. She was quiet. Sat straight and rigid in her saddle, looking on ahead. He'd never seen her like this before. He had never imagined she could even be this way. Even when the two of them spoke so little to one another on their most troubled and uneasy of days, she was off to speak to her sister, or to anyone, or kept busy with her wyverns and all the rest. Not now. Not here. Not after this. The news had hurt her, and hurt her badly. Jonnel knew too little to know what words he might've had to offer, or if it was even words that she might've asked for. A touch, to remind her that she was not alone in this world? A hug, a moments warmth from another? Simple solace of some kind? A gift, a distraction, to keep her mind from the pain? She did not seem to him the kind of lady that might want such things, but what did he know of that? He had his own weight upon his shoulders...a weight he couldn't shift, no matter how much his father wanted him to. Who was he to try and help another, when he could not even help himself?

The ride was long, and made longer still by the time he spent alone with his thoughts. The ride was quiet, and deafened out by guilt and grief. The ride was dark, and mirrored the feelings of the day.

But eventually, they found it. They heard it first. Rumbling, babbling, the sound of water flowing against reeded shores and pushing against a weak wooden pier.

"Here!" came the shout of Deremond Darry. "All in, now! You won't want to fall in at night!"

"All in!" his father's men echoed. "All in!"

"And you to the front as well, Jonnel!" his lord father commanded. "I want you here, with me!"

He looked to his lady wife. His wife looked to him.

He knew nothing of what to say. All he could do was look back at her, look back, wordless, and watch her look down and away from his gaze.

He knew nothing of what to say. Jonnel rode on, a part of him hoping that he might have a chance to think, and conjure some meaningful words for a wife he barely knew. Urging his borrowed mount to take him to the lead of the column and to the front of their group, it did not take long to make it to the front, not when the torchlight allowed him and horse alike to move more quickly...but when he saw his father at the head of their group, sat in his saddle at the empty mooring, the dim glow of the torches that washed over his deep grey cloak did nothing to soften his gaze. It had only made it harder, sterner, the firelight casting his features in a deeper, darker shadow. For all that, he could still see that his father bore no ill will towards him for this, and more, that this ride had been harder on him than not.

And for all that still, he did not spare Jonnel from his words.

"Do you know why we are returning to King's Landing?"

This was an easier question than anything to do with his lady.

"To give our condolences," the son said to the father. "The Targaryens are our kin by marriage."

"But why do we give our apologies, and offer to share in their grief?" his father asked. He looked to him. "It shows the realm that we will stand with them, and they with us, whether times be good or ill. Friends that are around only for the best of times are not friends. We share in their grief so that, if things turn, they will share in ours."

His father looked out to the river. In the darkness of a young night, the rippling water flowed and shimmered like a sheet of black silk, turning blue and orange as it came near the shore. He called out to a man without even turning to face them. "Ser Deremond, how long might we have to wait for this ferry of yours?"

"It shouldn't be long, Lord Stark," the heir of Darry answered. "There's grain ferries coming down through these streams every morning. The longest leg of the journey is over the God's Eye when they have to switch more to sails, but they'll get you to King's Landing faster than any horse."

"Will it be big enough for all of us?" Jonnel asked, turning in his saddle to meet the heir of Darry face to face.

"These ferries bring the flour for King's Landing to make bread in the morning from grain milled all over the Riverlands. They're bigger than you might think."

"And you're sure it'll be here?" his father asked. "I don't want us standing around, waiting for nothing."

Deremond only smiled.

And then he pointed out into the near pitch-black of the river, drawing all eyes to a shadow that they could not see. "It's already here."

Jonnel squinted. The torches were killing his ability to see in the dark, and for a moment and a breath and a moment more, he saw nothing but darkness there -

- but then he saw it, not on the stream, but in the water itself, in the ripples and the way they moved. Something was cutting through the water, slowly and at its own pace, but moving all the same. His father saw it as well, and waved the torches away with a hand. With the light driven back and their eyes allowed to grow more used to the dark, the shape became clearer still: a blur of dark wood, growing clearer and more shaped with every second. It was bulkier than he had thought, much so, a distant kin to the river galleys he had seen the Rivermen use as much for leisure as they were in war, its fighting decks cut down to make it broader and better able to ferry cargo. A simple mast stood in its midst, protruding up and through a wooden roof that might've protected the sacks of grain and cargo from rain and wet, its sails left limp by the cords of rope coiled around on its deck. For all the size of it, only a single man stood at the front, nudging it here and there with his barge pole, keeping it from coming too close to the shore.

"Hello there!" he called out as he saw them. There was an edge in his voice, a note of difference in the way he spoke from the rest of the Rivermen they'd met so far. "Are you all in need of passage to King's Landing?"

His father saw it too, heard it too, his firm expression cracking with a hint of surprise. His accent as a Riverlander wasn't quite right.

Still, that did not change their need to speak, and his father spoke.

"We are," Cregan called out in answer, the barge drifting closer on moonlit currents. "The whole party of us are to reach the capital as soon as we might."

"These men are Starks, and they're kin to the king by marriage," Deremond said, explaining for them. "My lord father in Darry wants them to get there safe and quick."

"I can promise them safe and quick, but it mightn't be a lordly journey," the man answered...and then disappeared below his decks again, only to emerge a moment later with a rope. That was enough for men to start dismounting, and one by one, the Starks and their household climbed off their steeds, giving the reins over to the Darrymen that had came with. The barge drifted closer, and closer still, urged towards the shallows by the man's pushing and prodding of the muddy earth beneath the water, urging his barge closer to the shore, closer to torch light. Jonnel began to see him more clearly. Broad built, and closer of age to his father than not, he looked almost the part of a Northman - though balding, his beard said enough of his deep brown hair, and his eyes were of a blue that bordered on grey, with a padded tunic and sheepskin leggings to keep warm on the rivers, and thick mittens, too, to keep the splinters of his pole at bay. Closer and closer he came, til he was but no more than an arm's length out.

"It'll need a good knot to stop the Maid from tearing the pier out from under you," he said, pulling his arm back for the throw, hurling it to the shore and to the pier, the rope darting forth like a snake to a dozen outstretched hands -

- and straight into Jonnel's own. His fingers clenched by instinct, holding tight. It did not drag him instantly off the pier, but he felt the pressure on his arm, a tug that was growing stronger with every second. Other hands came to his, joining their strength with his own. One man could not hold back the raw power of a river, nor twenty, but they could get it to Deremond and his Rivermen, who got it quick around a tree near the moorings, tying a strong knot. The ferry drifted, the rope rose out of the water, from slack to steel, and the ferry came to a halt with a groan of timber. They had been slower than most, not so quick to react or to get the knot done or any one of a thousand things. The front part of the barge had gone past the pier, but there was enough of the rear there for them, enough that the man on the barge was able to lay down a board for them and give them passage.

His father was the first to step forth, fingers rummaging through his coin purse. His fingers pulled out a handful of gold dragons, newly minted ones with the image of King Baelor, a tiny fraction of Daena's dowry. "You won't be able to take cargo with us. We go alone, and we stop for nothing."

"I can do that," the ferryman answered, happily taking the coin. "The name's Alaric. I can get you there."

"We're lucky to have found this one," Deremond said, coming over as his men gathered at the end of the pier with the horses.

"Ser Darry," Alaric nodded, and bowed his head. "I was just making my usual runs down, but I'd call it luck as well. I break my fast at this time of night, not later. If you'd come have not long after dawn, I'd've been half way down the Rush, and not back up for a week or more."

"Alaric is one of our deliverymen, taking flour from the mills here down to the city," the son of Darry explained. "I can vouch for him. He's made that trip hundreds of times, with men and cargo alike."

"It's easier with cargo. The currents here are easy, but as you get close to the Rush, you start to see why they call it that name," Alaric nodded, grimly. "If you've got weight, it'd do to have it loaded now so we have time to balance."

"A pity," his father sighed. "I had already sent most of the heavy luggage with the rest of the party on the way north. We'll make do with what we can."

Alaric looked them over, each and every man, each and every woman, as if reading their weights on a scale. Pounds here, stones there. "We'll need to load a few rocks on the way, else we're like to end up smashed on the side of the river before we reach the city."

"You don't mean to say we could die on this journey?" Jonnel asked, surprised. "How is it that dangerous?"

"It's the weight," Deremond said for the ferryman. "Too much and a barge like this won't turn. Too little, and she'll turn too much, and the currents will take you right into stone. Alaric's ferry might carry thrice the weight of all you put together, and centered as well."

His lord father had little interest in the exact nature of it. "But you can get us there?"

"As sure as summer," Alaric smiled. "Done it thousands of times."

Cregan turned to the rest of them. He waved them over. "Come on. We haven't time to waste."

Jonnel was one of the first to board the barge, and soon found himself grateful for that time on the lake with his lady, in a boat far more unstable than this one. The ferry was not nearly so unstable, but the subtle shifts to the left and to the right as the current pressed against its hull, trying to either push it onwards or aside, he could feel that in his ankles, a low pressure that pushed against the way he might stand and walk, feeling the tiniest sway beneath his feet. It felt as if he was on unsteady ground, as if on a hillside that might slip and give way at any moment. He did not like it, and the first few to follow him aboard did not like it either. Ladies were escorted in, helped in. His hand helped his own lady wife, and though their eyes met, it was not as if she was truly looking at him, but through him.

And then behind her came the girl. His wife's sister.

"I'm coming too," Elaena said, stepping forward, reaching for his hand to help her aboard -

- but it was the hands of her sister that stopped her, grabbing her hand and pushing it back. "You can't."

"What?" the younger princess asked, mortified at this refusal. "She's my cousin, too!"

"I know," Daena said, "But what if they won't let you out again, or -"

Elaena crossed her arms, squared her shoulders, and protested. For all the fury of the young princess, her youth and height played against her, and made her seem more a petulant child quarreling over treats than not. "You can't make me stay!"

"No," his lord father said. "But the King can."

Deremond and Alaric looked in confusion. Jonnel spared them. "It is a long story."

"...she's not wanted by his Grace, is she?" Alaric asked, quietly.

Cregan heard him. "Both yes, and no. Were she to come with us, she might be bound back to the halls of his castle. We have no power to keep her from him, if he wishes to have her back."

Elaena looked to her sister, hoping and praying that she might relent...but Jonnel saw it on the younger girl's face more - that realization, sinking in, that they were telling the truth. It had been by the grace of fortune that she had made it out of the capital, and twice again by how the Hand of the King had been able to resolve the matter in a way that worked in their favor. She had been lucky twice. She mightn't be lucky again...and if she wasn't, then she was damned - trapped in captivity within the Red Keep. He might've known little about the deeper thoughts and feelings of his lady wife, but he knew very well how much she loved her sister, and was loved in turn, and how much both hated being trapped within the gilded cage that was the Red Keep. The separation would be devastating, the isolation a torture.

Daena would never have wanted to go back to such a place.

And Elaena herself wouldn't, either. She was caught, trapped, pinned between the desire to pay respects and say goodbyes to a cousin whilst staying out of the clutches of a brother.

"We'll...we'll speak of this away from everyone else," Daena said. It was not a request. She and her sister walked away from the group, his lady wife climbing back onto the pier, towards the fringes of the light. They would see her, her silver hair made orange by firelight, but they would hear none of her words.

And there she spoke with her sister. Elaena's hair was silver and gold. Its strands glittered, but nearly so much as the tears.

It was looking out to them, though, that he saw another group of shadows, one lit by a smaller, paler torch than their own, bobbing along to their steps and the grinding turn of a small wagon pushed and pulled by men. Alaric moved forward before anyone else, and called out.

"We won't be taking no cargo today! Men and women only!"

"They'll need something to eat, won't they?" they called back. "We've come with feed for you, but enough for more."

Cregan looked to Alaric. The man knew the question without being asked.

"The waters on the Rush are good and strong," Alaric said, but shook his head. "But it'll be night by the time we get there all the same. If you want to get there for that, we can't stop for anything other than weight."

His father was quick. He took his coin purse, gave it over to the care of a few of his men, then sent him on their way. They would need food for this trip, and plenty of it. Water might've been no more than a cup over the side away, but better to drink beer and wine than to risk its cleanliness, and salted ham and smoked bacon mightn't be a meal for a lord's table, but it would do for any traveller. It did not take long before the hand-wagon came over, a hefty thing large enough to be drawn by a donkey, were it not pitch black outside the reach of a torch., and too risky for its footings. Instead, the local men had taken to moving it with their own arms and legs, and began offloading almost everything that they had - supplies for a dozen ferries and their keepers, bought out by the Lord of Winterfell with a handful of gold. They began loading it, and as they did, his lady wife came back.

Elaena followed.

"She....she's coming along," Daena said to them, to Lord Stark and his heir both. "She's coming."

"I know the risks," Elaena said....and straightened. "I'm going anyway."

"You have too much courage, princess," the Lord of Winterfell sighed. "But if this is your will, I cannot stop it."

"It is," the little Targaryen insisted. "Besides, Baelor won't keep me."

"You're sure of that?" Jonnel asked. It was not a slight. It was a true question. If it was wrong...

Thoughtless, wordless, breathless, Jonnel reached out to his lady wife.

Her hand did not shy away. Her fingers clasped with his own.

She did not like this either.

"He won't," Elaena said, tired and yet confident. "The letter had the royal seal on it when Viserys came, and that means its bound by Baelor, too, since he named uncle as his Hand. He won't break his own commands and laws. It'd shame the Father."

She was trying to be clever with this, trying to use wit to outsmart the King. That was how it felt to Jonnel, and might've been how it felt to his father. Whatever it was, it was clear that if Elaena's own sister could not change her mind, none of them could. The young Targaryen was stubborn. There was nothing any of them might say.

And so his lord father did something that he so rarely ever did.

He gave in.

"Then that is one matter settled," Cregan sighed. He turned to Alaric. "We leave when you are ready, and not a moment more. Time is not on our side. The Silent Sisters have their work, and they won't burn her so quickly, not before the sun has set at the least, but every moment counts."

"Burn her?" Jonnel asked. He hadn't expected that. A burial within the great sept that Baelor was building, perhaps, but not a burning.

"It is the Targaryen way," the elder Stark said to the younger. "They do not bury their dead, but burn them."

"Dragonfire," his lady wife murmured. Her fingers gripped his own. The tiniest pressure, as if asking to be reminded that she was not alone in this world. "It should've been dragonfire."

He wanted to comfort her more. There would be no dragons to light her pyre, but that did not diminish the gesture. A fire was a fire, and lit by dragon-throat or by flint, the flame did not change. He was not sure how to say such words without the risk of offending her, of salting a wound that was still too fresh. Her sister had spared her from being alone in this journey back to the capital, a journey that was to come far too soon after they had left. He could not even begin to imagine how it was that she might have felt, and yet, on some level, he did. Was this how he might be, when he came back to Winterfell with a new bride and wife?

"Forgive me, lords and ladies," Alaric said. "We must be away now, if we're to get there in time."

"Then let us get going already," the Lord of Winterfell answered. Cregan turned, and walked, looking to find himself a place...though he was able to hide it so well from everyone else, he could not hide it from Jonnel. He was tired, and growing tireder still. Had he even been to bed, his heir wondered?

It did not matter for long. One by one, the rest of the party came aboard, dour faces each and every one. One by one, the sacks and barrels of food were loaded aboard, provisions for a long journey. One by one, they said their goodbyes, and bid farewell to the Rivermen, who took their horses and stood on the pier. In salute, the Darrys drew their swords and held them high, bidding farewell not just to the Starks, but to their royal kin, to the two princesses that travelled with them. It was all in front of his eyes, but all a blur, a blur hidden behind the lingering touch of his lady wife. She could've let go. She could've walked off. She didn't.

She held on.

"It was good to meet you, Starks of Winterfell!" Deremond called out from the shore. "I hope we meet again!"

"As do we," he answered, calling out before his father might. "Thank your father for his hospitality."

"That I will!"

The Darry whistled to one of his men. He strode over to the trunk where the rope had been knotted true and tight. For all the strength of its cords, for all the skill it had been put together with, it took but seconds for them to start taking it apart. One curl, one loop, one fold -

- and then the knot slackened, the rope fell limp, and with one hand on the cord and the other on his pole, Alaric pushed them off from the shore, and the barge began to flow and move once more. Wrapping the rope around his arm as a reel, the ferryman pulled it in bounds, and more than one Stark guard came to help, having little more else to do. His lady wife's grip was softening, and he looked to her, and she looked to him, and with a glance, she let go. Daena left with her sister, to go and find some part of the barge to be their own, to talk of things that he might not need to know, or mightn't, he didn't know for certain, but felt it better to not intervene in this, to avoid intrusion into a matter that was all too personal, a thing no one should come into unless invited. It was what he had wanted, and what his brothers and sisters had done, back at Winterfell in the days and weeks when his children came dead and his wife lay dying in the birthing bed.

That thought made him want to keep busy, too, and that thought saw him walk towards the ferryman, to offer some use of his hands, and keep his mind from the darker places it might wander.

"I'd've saved the lanterns til we're further south than this, kept them to stop us from smashing into the other ferries," Alaric said to one of the guards. "But with the coin I've gotten, I don't see why you can't burn them now. Light them if you want."

"Be careful of them," Jonnel said, a rare command offered in his father's stead. It felt wrong, giving such words from his mouth. "We bought passage on the barge, but we didn't buy the ferry. Don't break anything if you can help it."

"Aye, and especially don't break the lanterns," Alaric laughed. "Nevermind the clay and glass, you wouldn't believe how fast a wooden ferry like this will burn."

Jonnel reached out, taking the rope from Alaric. The ferryman seemed surprised that the heir to Winterfell would take it and do something so lowly as cord it, but such surprise did not stop him from quickly walking over to the fat ferry's bow, and carefully nudging a correction into their course with his bargepole...mumbling some ferryman's curse of tillers and oars as he did, not that Jonnel knew anything near enough about barges to understand. Instead, he focused on the busy work of looping the rope, and soon began to realize that it was longer than he had thought. Foot after foot, yard after yard, and yet more still seemed to come into his hands. With no hourglass nor light to tell him of how time passed, he could've called it an hour, or minutes. The clouds had barely drifted in the sky by the time he was done. He didn't know if that said more about the clouds, or about his work. In the end, it was all neatly coiled on the deck, a deck now awash in light. The household guard had gone around lighting torches, and after some talk amongst themselves, had started to take watches through the night, four men to a side. There was still gaps in their reach, but it was enough to see, and enough to patrol with. It was only now in all that light that he could see what the barge was truly like, and that was that it was a squat and ugly thing. A wagon that might've frequented a castle might've had some little ornamentation here and there, some carvings to make it an easier sight on the eyes, and a ship or boat of nobles would've been a masterpiece of woodwork. This barge had none of that, but was rugged and sturdy, more like an old knight's trusted shield, all dented and scratched from years of use.

For all that, though, the deck still felt strong beneath his feet - the Rivermen might've built her cheaply, but they had built her strong as well. Wide and shallow, she was built for exactly this kind of river, with a short railing around the edge more to keep tumbling bags from going overboards than to protect men, and most of the party had head below to its one deck underneath, bundling together into the hold beneath their cloaks, trying to get the little sleep that they might on the way to King's Landing. Only perhaps some three quarters of a dozen stayed on the deck, some eight men and women. He looked about himself, for more to do. His father was at the aft, talking with one of his guards and men. His lady wife was there as well, but nestled into a corner with her sister. They spoke quietly, and spoke with the kind of expression that said that this was a talk for them alone. There was another man back there as well, another ferryman he hadn't seen in the dark, working to correct the rear as much as Alaric did the front.

That left Jonnel with but one man to speak to, one man that might spare his thoughts from the lonely dark.

"You have...a fine ship," he said to Alaric. He knew little else of where to start.

"My lord is too kind," the man smiled. "I wouldn't call the River Maid a ship, else she might start gettin' ideas, and take us all out onto the Blackwater Bay."

Jonnel leaned against the railing. It creaked in answer, and he leaned no more. Still, he spoke. "She could do that?"

Alaric laughed, but his amusement didn't' stop him from nudging another rock with his pole, and letting the current do the rest. "Oh, you'd need to be a fool to take a river barge out onto open water. She's too shallow for it. The moment you see a storm, she'd flip on her back, and that'd be that. We'd all wash up on Dragonstone like a bunch of drowned sealions,"

Jonnel looked back at him, grimly. This was not the kind of talk that he had hoped for.

But Alaric seemed to be able to peer through him with all the ease of crystal glass, and spoke more kindly, and more cheerfully.

"But, truth is, you wouldn't need to take her that far," he admitted. "We built this one for the Blackwater, and she sails it well. It takes her a day to get down there, faster than half the rivers in the Trident, but a week and a half to get back up," he explained. Jonnel was no fool. He knew the man was talking in such depth of his trade solely for his benefit, to keep the Stark busy. "I have to have a workhorse drag her from King's Landing back to Darry, and that's half my earnings."

"My father's gold must be a comfort, then?"

"Aye, it will be," Alaric nodded. His pole rummaged through a reed, and some hidden duck burst out and quacked its way into the sky. "She's been needing some time in a yard, and there's this good one by this old tavern on the lakeshore. Your father's coin buys me a place, and coin to live on whilst we get things done."

"Like what?"

"Ah...well," the man started, starting to struggle with his words. "I'm not much meant to be doing this with a pole. The Maid had a tiller at the back for us to turn, and she'd have just gone on her own with not much need for poles...we lost that on the Gods' Eye."

"How?"

"The summer was hot and dry, so the lake was lower than usual. We went over one of the deeper parts, and hit this great bloody big piece of bone, black like coal," Alaric said. "Must've been from one of those dragons back in the war, and looked it, too. It scraped its way over the bottom, and smashed the tiller in half."

Jonnel looked back at him.

Jonnel realized.

"You were in the war?"

Alaric smiled, but the curve of it didn't quite reach his cheeks. A sad smile, then.

"When the wolf knocks at the door, you must come answering," he said.

Jonnel realized.

Alaric did not simply look a Northman. Alaric was a Northman. The dark hair, the grey eyes, the fractured accent that had been bleeding away for years, yet flavoring his Riverlander talk with its hues and colors.

"You came south with us? During the Dance? You were -"

"One of the Winter Wolves," the ferryman nodded, and raised a hand to beg his forgiveness for interrupting, even as his other nudged their course again. "Aye, I was. Fought with Roddy himself, and lived when he didn't. That father of yours realized it not long after he came onboard, I think, or before. No man who lives so long in Winterfell wouldn't be able to recognize another Northman before long, eh?"

A part of him was not sure if that was a jape, and Jonnel cursed himself for not realizing sooner, and cursed himself again for how his thoughts and feelings had left him witless. "Had he realized earlier, we might've waited for another ferry."

"Mayhaps, but I've no hard feelings for Lord Stark, or you. The war was the war. It's easy enough for the singers to say that we were dead men walking, and they might've been half right...but that's the lie, that is. We knew what we were getting into," Alaric said, quieter, less eager, less japing. "We knew we weren't coming back. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, eh? We knew."

Jonnel was, for a moment, for a breath, at a loss for words. What was a man to say in response to such a thing? Alaric didn't seem to care for what words he had, and simply shrugged with his hand resting on the tiller.

But his words were quiet all the same.

"It was only ever meant to end the way it did."

A voice called in the dark, beyond the light of the lanterns.

It was his father's voice. Heavy steps on heavy boards.

"There was a bad harvest at home," the Lord of Winterfell said in the shadows, before coming through and into the light. "Too many mouths to feed, too little bread to fill them. No aid was coming from the south, dragonfire had seen to that, and war at sea meant there were no merchants coming from Essos, either. Bad harvests in the North are not unheard of, but rarer are those times when we cannot do something about them through trade or call on the Targaryens for aid. That was one of those times. If we could not get more food, then we had to split it less ways."

"And so we did," Alaric nodded.

"And so we did," Cregan echoed, his face lit by the barest edges of the torchlight.

Jonnel could only stare at him. There were words he wanted to say, things he wanted to answer. You sent them to die, he wanted to say. You sent men into a war that they couldn't win. You sent thousands of Northmen to their deaths, he wanted to challenge, you spent their lives like coin at market. He wanted to say all that, and more still. He wanted to confront him over the deaths he had caused, over the lives he had ended, over the marriage to a second wife that he had forced him into in the name of the North so soon after the first. He wanted to push back. He wanted to do something, to say something.

In the end, Jonnel didn't say a word.

He didn't need to.

"I know what you are thinking, Jonnel," the Lord of Winterfell said, quietly but not unkindly. "But the truth of it is that it was never about power, not really. It was about the North. It is the duty of every lord to protect the wellbeing of the people beneath their rule. Indeed, that is their first duty, and their last. A lord who does not do right by the ones that are sworn to serve them is no true lord."

"You sent them to die," the son said to the father, a rare act of defiance, a step out of a vast shadow.

He half expected a fury in answer.

Cregan was not furious.

He simply answered.

"Yes, I did," his father said, retreating back into the dark, pacing across the deck. The evening ride had made him restless. "But those men were as good as dead, whether they went to war or not. Harvests were failing across the North, and if you want proof of that then I can show the ledgers to you when we return to Winterfell, and you can see for yourself. Even if a dragon never once burnt any of our fields, the North was going to starve all the same. Numbers do not lie. They are one of the things that can be thought to always be true, if you can see them in front of you, and I did. I had them matched to the records of White Harbor and the Dreadfort both. The crop was dying in the fields, and by all the thoughts of lord and maester, we knew the yields would've been down a full fifth from how they were the year before, mayhaps even a quarter, or a third, if we were truly cursed."

His father halted his words for a moment. He halted his pacing, and stood besides his son. This was no challenge, this was no argument. This was talk, talk between a father and a son. It did more to salve his mood and thoughts than any cup of wine might. "I couldn't have known for certain at the time."

"Why?" Jonnel asked. "Why was this happening? What could kill the crops of the North?"

"The maesters write that the Doom of Valyria threw the world into a winter two years early," his father explained. "I am no maester and have not nearly read as many books as they might have, but mayhaps the same could have been said for the Dance. So much of Westeros burnt in dragonfire that it was like the Doom writ small, so much ash and smoke there was in the sky. You cannot imagine it if you were not there. There was not a part of Westeros that did not smell like cinders, and the sunsets turned red with the haze of smoke...the wind carried the ash of burnt hovels for miles around, and burnt flesh as well, and a man couldn't know if his lady was cooking pork, or if the village over had been burnt. For the rest of Westeros it would have merely been a cool summer, but for the North it was far worse. The summer snows came, and they simply did not stop for weeks on end, as if it was an autumn that came years before it should."

"Normally, it would be a simple matter of writing to the King and asking for aid and he would make the arrangements for the Rivermen to send whatever they might have to spare to ease us through the hardest months, then we would return the favor when we were once again on a good footing by giving them cheap timber to refill their wood stocks for the winter after. The realm can look after its own...but the realm was in chaos. There was to be no aid from the south. They could barely feed themselves when their fields burnt, yet alone us as well."

His words lingered.

Jonnel spoke.

"It can't be that there was nothing to be done? Was there no other way?"

"There were ways," his father said, earning a glance from the ferryman. "But at the time, there seemed none. No one could be sure what was to happen come the next morn, or how long the south might destroy itself, or whether the North would soon find itself chained to a corpse below the Neck, and end up having to give aid to them in turn."

His father drew a breath. He spoke more quietly, and met his son in the eye. He did not feel the judging eyes of the Lord of Winterfell. He felt the gaze of a man, trying to teach his son a lesson. To give wisdom.

This was a father, talking to his son. This was rare. Jonnel knew his father best as the Lord Stark.

This was simply Cregan.

Jonnel listened close, and Jonnel listened well.

"In the end, it is why I married Alysanne Blackwood, who would go on to be the mother of four of your sisters...I had no real fondness for her when we were wed, of course not. I hadn't known her for more than a day. My first impression of her was poor. But the dowry, that promised a chance to put food on the table for countless Northmen, and as peace came, we got our first shipments, and perhaps a fair few wagons packed with the spoils of war. Combined, it staved off starvation long enough for a second harvest."

"You wed a woman you didn't even know," he echoed. Tendrils clawed at him. Thoughts. Feelings. Robyn, they whispered. Robyn.

His father banished them all with his words, a fire to drive back the dark.

"Familiar, is it?" his father said, and sighed. "You're not the first to have wed so soon after a widowing. There have been women wed so soon after the death of their husband that they are still carrying the child of their first groom, made on their wedding night before he died on a hunting trip the morning after. One's feelings have nothing to do with it. The house, the realm...these things come before any man, or woman, or thought, or feeling."

"You can't expect men to feel nothing for this?" Jonnel asked. "For...making these choices? For being made to carry them out?"

"I would be more surprised if they felt nothing, Jonnel," his father spoke. "But the two are not one and the same - there are the duties we have, and the feelings we bear. Meeting the wants of one might mean failing the needs of another, and every man has their own view of how they must be handled and separated...but they are separate. Our feelings are not our duties, and our duties are not our feelings."

Jonnel might've answered, but it was Alaric that spoke.

"Wise words, my lord," the ferryman said, and looked to Jonnel in turn. "I didn't want to go south. I was leaving everything behind. My home, my family. But I did it anyway, because I had to. It was my duty."

"And you've done well for yourself," his father said. "Coming so far south, it was inevitable that I would meet one of you here. How are things here? Are you well treated?"

"Five sons and three daughters tell the truth of it, my lord. My eldest serves in Darry's guard."

"If you would ever wish it, the door of the North is open, and wherever you came from would be eager to have you again."

"It'd be good to see the North again," the ferryman said, wistful...and then shook his head. "But that time of my life is over, my lord. Might be that it'd bring more sorrow than good."

Cregan nodded. Cregan understood.

And then he turned to his son again.

"He knew his duty was to come here, and I knew it was mine to send men to a war they mightn't win. What is the power of swords and spears and bows, weighed against dragons?"

His father stepped back. He looked out towards the shores. A moment passed, and then another. "And like you, I wed for duty...for the good of the North, for Winterfell, and for all the Starks that might come after us. It was as much a work as tallying taxes."

And then Cregan looked to him, as if expecting his son and heir to answer him, as if expecting him to mention how his father too had wed for duty. Did he think that would comfort his son? To know that they had shared that? Jonnel was less certain. His father had borne the choice of his bride, been free to weigh whether he did or not. He chose. Jonnel did not.

"That was your choice to make," Jonnel said, stiffly.

"A duty you choose is still a duty," his father answered. He had a tiny smile. "Few men choose the Wall, but that doesn't mean that the Night's Watch hasn't become a duty."

His father saw through him, and that smile slipped and faded like snow in summer. His words were not the comfort he had hoped them to be. Jonnel did not see how they could be. His father had chose his duty. His son had it chosen for him, and chosen twice at that. Robyn had been no match of love. Their betrothal was short, hastened by the sudden death of his brother in Dorne, a son of the North slain at the hands of a poisoned blade. He had met her once at Winterfell, once again on a trip to the lands of the Ryswells, and then the third time on their wedding day, stood before him as his father told him that she was to be his bride. He had known Daena for little more than that when they were wed. His father could and would call it a duty...but it did not feel a duty.

He did not know what it felt like, in truth. He knew nothing of it, except perhaps one simple thing.

It was too soon. Daena had done no wrong. She bore no blame for this...but to Jonnel, it felt as if the warmth of Robyn Ryswell had barely even begun to turn cold before the Lord of Winterfell was drawing up plans for another marriage. That was no fault of hers, no fault of either woman, but Robyn had deserved more respect than that. She deserved to be remembered. She deserved to be mourned. She had dreamt of nothing more than motherhood, and she chased that dream into an early grave. It was all that she had ever wanted. She had prayed every day at night. She told him of her dreams every morning. A boy. A girl. A child.

It was all she had wanted.

It was all the both of them had wanted.

"I did not want my marriage with her, but what was one union compared to feeding the North?" the Lord of Winterfell asked his son. "The Blackwoods had crops, they had allies, and those friends too had crops. We needed their resources, and Lady Blackwood needed a groom. Love had nothing to do with it, nor feelings. It was duty."

"In the end, Jonnel, there comes a time when a Lord must do what is good for the realm, even if it is not what they might wish for themselves," he said. "Our line might be ancient, but the name Stark would mean nothing without the North to give it weight, just as the name Lannister or Arryn would mean nothing without the Westerlands and the Vale. A lord must do whatever it takes to protect their land and people, no matter the cost, for in the end, it is the realm that matters. Men die, but the realm remains. Roderick knew that as much as I did, and went off to die for the North with a smile. He said it himself. It was time to go. Better to die in battle with a blade in your hand than to watch your children starve, or see a wife smother a newborn babe for a lack of milk to give them."

"So yes," he said, "I sent those men to their deaths. Alaric had the fate I might've hoped for them to have, making a new life for himself here, but for every man that might've had such fortune, mayhaps twenty more are dead in the ground."

The Lord of Winterfell gestured not to Jonnel nor to Alaric, but to the world beyond the railings of their barge, beyond the waters, to the Riverlands and to Westeros, lit as little as they were by the stars overhead and lantern glow.

"But that is what any lord in Westeros would do. When I am rotting in the crypt of Winterfell, its lordship will be yours. You'll have to make those kind of choices for yourself."

"And send men to their deaths, fighting a war you knew they could not win?" he asked. "There must have been a better way than that."

Cregan looked at him, then, and spoke all the more honestly. "If there is one lesson I would have you take from me, it is this: sometimes a man can do everything right and still lose. You could be the wisest Stark to have ever ruled Winterfell, the most cunning, and with a strength of sword arm so great as to be able to shatter even the Wall itself, but for all that you could still see our house to ruin. You can search for better ways as long as you like, but often there are none to be found, and the time you spent looking for one might've been the time you could've used to make things better than they were with a worser choice, to mend the ills of that decision. It does not matter what hand the gods deal you. You use the one you have, not the one you want."

"There is a lesson for you, Jonnel," his father said at last. "There are times where a lord faces a problem where there are no "good" choices, and must make a choice as to what they think is right. Even choosing to muddle along without a decision is still a choice."

Jonnel thought on that for a moment. He did not agree with all his father's words. There had to have been a better way, then. How terrible could such a famine have been, if it only took the lives of so many men to go south to ward off? What exactly had happened in the days after the end, when Cregan came home with his food? How did all this make sense? Something was missing. His father had not said everything there was to this matter, and Jonnel was sure that he never would.

But it wasn't those thoughts that dominated his mind.

It was marriage. First to one woman, and then to another. His father called it a duty. Jonnel did not see how one could put it into that shape or form. It was not just his wife that had died. It was their children. Their daughters and their sons, unborn, never to draw a breath. Was that the duty? To keep rolling the dice of fate, regardless of how many died? To raise one's hopes, then see them dashed, again and again?

That was not a duty, Jonnel felt.

That was a nightmare.

It was a nightmare that was plain on his face.

His father's words were sudden. "It gets easier, you know."

Jonnel looked to him, ready to speak, ready to ask how, but his father spoke more. "I will admit, I have not done much to help. The wounds are fresh, and rather than give time for them to heal, I threw you into another wedding. I had the hope that it might've helped with the healing, though it seems it is doing more harm than good."

Jonnel shook his head. He remembered that day. He remembered being on the lake. He remembered the little joys they had taken, and the promise she asked for. Don't leave me alone.

Jonnel spoke. Jonnel understood. "We want to make it work. Neither of us are without our burdens, father. I...we...we both need time, but we want this to be better."

"A good start, then," his father nodded...and accepted. "You would get nowhere without that. Wanting things is the first step to having them."

His father turned again. He looked at the two Targaryens at the end of the barge, and looked back at his son and heir.

"If you want a marriage of peace, now would be the time for you to be more careful with them then ever."

"I want to give her some comfort," he said. Comfort as I needed, he felt. "I don't know what to do. I don't know if I should."

"Mayhaps you should, or mayhaps you shouldn't," his father offered, and reasoned. "You know what happened to the princess, more than most men might. If anyone knows how to give her comfort, it would be you...but I do not know if you should."

Again, Jonnel hesitated. Again, Jonnel spoke. "Why?"

He realized the answer. He realized it instantly. His father looked to him knowingly, and said the words that Jonnel himself knew to be true.

"Because it wasn't just that a cousin and her infant died," the Lord of Winterfell said. "It's the way that they died. The princess died in the birthing bed. Your lady wife is a woman wedded and bedded. If she is with child from your wedding night is a thing that only the gods might know, but there is no reason why she wouldn't fear it after this."

The thoughts came creeping and crawling, tendrils in the dark of his mind, twisted and corrupting, and so black as to poison any mood. They were memories of Robyn. How happy she had been, how eager, and then the birthing bed became a bloodbath. She had been ready for it, and it had taken her life all the same.

And it could do the same to Daena, too. It could take her life. So close to freedom out of the Red Keep. So close to living in peace.

She could die just as Robyn had. The very closeness that she wanted them to share could be the thing that took her life. The very thing that might have most sang of love could be the herald of death.

He could not survive another loss. Not like that.

Not again.

Jonnel turned as pale as winter snow. He felt sick. A sickness in his gut. It was in his heart. It was in his soul. It pervaded through every fiber of his being, a lingering, hungering cancer that wanted to devour him whole...and when someone called his father, when his father walked and his father left, it had the chance. He was slipping and falling into his worst -

- and then Alaric spoke, and Jonnel snatched for his words as a drowning man might for a rope.

"I had a love, once," the ferryman said suddenly. The look on his face was one of quick regret, but Jonnel caught his words all the same. A part of him wanted nothing more than to find some idle, empty place on the barge, to try and purge all thought and feeling.

But another part welcomed this. Another part wanted to hear his words. Another part thought that he might dull the edge of his own pain, by hearing another talk of theirs.

So he stayed.

And he talked. "One that isn't your wife here?"

"Aye," the man answered. "Back in the North. She wasn't no great beauty like the 'ighborn ladies might be said to be, but she was always giggling here and there, and when she did, gods, it was as if the Wall itself might melt from the sound. She loved me, too, so there was talk of marriage all around. Couple of more months, and we'd have been wed, no doubt."

Alaric sighed. Alaric breathed.

"But you heard your father, and heard it true. The fields weren't doing well. Old men were going off into the woods on their own, and they weren't coming back...but even that wasn't enough. Every village had to give up a man, and so they took us together and we drew straws. Mine was the longest, so I should've been safer than any other. "

Alaric pushed another rock with his pole. His words were a murmur. "But my brother drew the least."

"You would do anything for them," Jonnel nodded, needing no more to be said. "I know. I have brothers, too."

"Aye, well, I had his straw, he had mine, and that was that," Alaric said. He shrugged, innocently. "I still think about them back in the North sometimes, but as much as I might miss them and think of it as home, it wasn't my life to live anymore. I picked my path and walked it, and here's where it got me."

Alaric looked about himself, at his barge and river. He spared the Stark a smile. "Could be worse, eh? I get to spend my days on this water. It's...peaceful, like. A wife, a home, an honest trade, children that love you, and a peaceful day. A man can't ask for much more."-

"Don't you think of them still?" Jonnel asked. "How did...how could you get past it? The girl? Do you never think of the life you could've had with her? She must've told you what she wanted?"

"Gods, now isn't that something for the singers to go on about," the ferryman answered with a quiet breath, a quiet laugh, and a scratch of a balding scalp. "It ain't easy, I tell you, but the stuff's like mud. The more you fight it, the harder it is to get out. You can't lie to yourself about what you felt, and you can't lie about it being gone. You've gotta go with it, work with it, if you're going to be free in the end."

"You have to say you loved them," Jonnel understood. Had he loved her, once? Mayhaps. Perhaps. Was that the truth of it all? That some part of him still yearned to see his Robyn again? Had he lied to himself about it not being love, but friendship?

Was that it? Was that the truth of hers? That he had denied how he felt, that he had loved her? That he loved her and the dream she had?

Perhaps.

Perhaps so. When she had found she was with child for the first time, the joys she had felt, the way she had acted...there was no way that he couldn't've shared such happiness. He had been delighted. He had stayed with her for hours. They had talked of names. They had talked of things they might need and do. They had told his father, told her kin, told any and all that might listen. It had been one of the finest times in his life. Even his brother Rickon had been a part of it all. He had been alive back then, with two daughters of his own. He gave them words. Gave them advice. Little secrets for a mother and a father who wanted nothing more than to keep their child close. Let the babe stay in their shared bed at night, so as to be warmer still than the nursery. Avoid honey for the harm it might do. Stuffed dolls. Woolen blankets. Tiny shoes.

Then there was loss. Misery. Tears.

Pain.

So much pain. Too much.

And that was the end of delight.

"...my lord?" the ferryman asked. "You've gone pale. Are you well?"

Jonnel could not put into words how grateful he was for Alaric to talk, then. A piece of him felt...broken. Irreparable. Dead and buried with Robyn and their children. To call on it hurt too much. To talk of something else...that was a comfort he needed. He had enough of this for one day.

"I am," he answered. His voice was tireder and weaker than it had sounded in his head. "I'm well."

"Forgive me, if I roused bad memories." Alaric apologised, quietly. "I thought to talk, for the boat's small, and there's so little else to do."

"Talking only seems to make it worse," the Stark said. "It opens the wound again, makes it bleed."

Alaric seemed fit to say something, but didn't. Jonnel looked to him, and still, no words came. "Speak your mind. Everyone else has."

"...might be that the wound is bleeding because it hasn't healed at all, my lord."

"I have said as much to my father," Jonnel sighed. "It hasn't even been a year since Robyn died."

Alaric seemed to quiet at that, and seemed content to say nothing more. That was what Jonnel felt of him, til he asked. "Might I say words?"

Jonnel nodded.

Alaric spoke. His voice was soft, like rain beating on a linen sheet.

"It isn't easy, moving on from the things you love. When I first came to the South, I thought I'd die here. For a while, I wished I had," Alaric admitted. "It wasn't that they treated me bad. They needed hands, and they didn't care whose they were...it was what I left behind, in the North. It wasn't just a girl, it was everything. My father's workshop, games with my brothers, my mother's oats in the morning. I had to leave it all behind. It ain't the same as what happened to you, but...it is. Loss is loss."

"It cuts a hole in you, and it hurts," the ferryman spoke on. "Gods, does it hurt. Everywhere you go, everywhere you look, you see the little minders. Things that make you think."

Jonnel looked to him. Jonnel listened.

"I didn't have the Maid then, but I knew how to work a saw, but just smelling the dust, hearing it chew into the wood...it was enough to make me want to walk back. It was the same with tavern gruel, and so much else. It all reminded me of home. Coming south, I'd lost everything. Everyone I'd knew, everyone I'd ever cared about."

The man looked, wistful. He shook his head, and turned his attentions back to his pole. "Ah, forgive me. I'm rambling, mayhaps doing more harm than good."

Jonnel could have left it there. Jonnel could have ended this talk, and walked his way into the shadows of the barge, and stayed. No one would've faulted him.

He didn't. For perhaps the first time, this felt like he was talking to a man that understood. Someone who knew. They had lost everything. They had lost their love. They had lost their life. They had lost their love for life.

This man had lost so much. This man knew what it was like to lose.

This man knew.

"No," Jonnel said. "Tell me more of this, please. I want to know more."

"Are you sure?" the man asked, surprised. "My tale is no happy one."

"You're talking more sense to me now than half the men I've met," he answered, quiet. "You can understand."

"I...gods, well, I never thought me much the talker," Alaric said, allowing himself a small smile. "We're on straighter waters, flowing on her own. I can talk for as much as you want, if that is it."

He looked to the ferryman, expectantly. His words were so quiet. "How? How did you do it? The hole?"

"I said it's like mud, and it is. The more you try and fight it, the harder it gets. You can't beat it that way. You've got to work with it."

"How?" he asked again. "I would be mired in it. I would never get anything -"

"Forgive me, lord, but not like that," he interrupted, and cursed himself. "I can't put it into good words. It's...it's about knowing what you felt. You've got to be honest to yourself about what you had, else you'll never get over losing it. You've got to mourn, and there ain't a thing in the world that can stop you from doing that."

The words went in. Perhaps. Mayhaps. He still did not know what to make of all this. He mightn't for a while. He could not deny it, though. The man was talking more sense. His words felt right.

A part of him answered. He was right.

Jonnel answered in turn. He dared to smile, if perhaps only a little. "Did you mourn your oats?"

Alaric laughed.

"More than once. Making a good bowl of oats takes more skill than building the Maid did," he answered, then nodded. "My wife makes oats for me in the day before I go. Hers is different than the one in the North was, but...I can like them both because of that. Love one bowl for the berries, and another for its honey."

For a moment, for a breath, Jonnel was lost in his words: a talk of love and loss, turned to a talk of breaking one's fast.

Then he realised. Alaric hadn't the words to express it. He didn't have the courtly manners. He had an idea he couldn't quite say.

He still found a way through.

"That's what love is like with women, isn't it?" he said. "I'm no singer...but mayhaps the truth of it all is that we don't love one woman more than we did another, just...differently. Love one for her smile, love another for her laugh. Might be that's the truth of it, eh? That one love doesn't mean others aren't worth as much. It's just a different kind. That's what it was with me. I had a girl I loved in the North, but here, I have a wife, and I love her, too. They're not the same, but loving either of them doesn't mean what I felt for the other one wasn't true."

"You mean to say that my new marriage to Daena doesn't mean I didn't care for Robyn," Jonnel said, and understood.

"If you feel the way you do, then you must've," Alaric reasoned. "You've got to admit that, too. That hole ain't something that you can fill, it fills itself. You just have to let it do that."

"How?" he asked.

Alaric could only shrug. "It'd be different for any man, I think. For me, it was accepting I'd chose this, that I gave up all that to live here...I had to make peace with that, and I did. I can't say I'd know what it might be for you. You might know it when you know it. You might never know what it was, til you wake up one day, and things don't hurt as much as they did."

That was the truth of it, Jonnel knew. This was no sorcery. There were no magical words that would make the pain go away. There was nothing that any one might say that would suddenly make things better - it did not matter if they were his father, or Alaric, or even Daena. None of them could do it.

"It has to be me," he murmured.

Alaric nodded, slowly.

Jonnel breathed. Jonnel swallowed.

He knew what he had to do, now. He had been through some of the worst losses that any man could ever know. He knew pain. True pain. Real pain. Pain that could cut into a man's soul, and change him forever. It could not be forgotten. It could not be ignored. It was a part of him, now. Forever and always. It could not be conquered easily. It would fight back. It would chew and gnaw at him, forever and again. It would wait for him. It would be there in the morning when he woke, and there again at night when he climbed into bed.

But it could be conquered. It could be done. The battle would be long. The battle would be terrible, and yet it could be won. The proof was in front of him. Another man, another war. So different, but so similar.

Jonnel looked out to the waters. The Maid had gone further from the shore, following the currents. They were making good progress, but for all that, the waters still shone and shimmered like black satin. The air was calm and still. The clouds had retreated, bathing them all in ceaseless starlight. It was a beautiful night.

"You've helped more than you might know," he said, honest and true. "Thank you, but I have to go."

Alaric nodded, knowing.

Jonnel turned, and Jonnel walked. The words pounded inside him, beating at his heart like a drum. He was not the first to be widowed. His father had done this before him. Alaric had left a love behind. What even was love? It was not something you could cut with a knife, or burn in a hearth, or spend at a market. What was it, truly? What made one man love one woman, and not another? What allowed one man to love one, and then another? Was that a good thing? A bad? Was love the cause of this pain? Did he love Robyn? Did he love their children? Did he love Daena, too? Was that where this pain came from?

Love.

Love.

Love.

One step, two, three. It took only moments for him to reach the end of the barge. Elaena wasn't there anymore, the younger princess gone below to find somewhere to rest and sleep. Daena was. She had traded more of her rare ladylike fineries for the travelling wear that seemed more her taste - leggings and not a dress, boots and not slippers, shirts and not gowns. Her silver-gold hair tumbled wildly past her shoulders, and she too looked out to the water and to the heavens, lost in thought. Was his father right of her fears? Mayhaps, perhaps, but there was no doubt in Jonnel's mind. This was the true Daena. This was her as she truly was, a Daena who was not adorning herself for his benefit, but who came as the minimum she thought she should. Rougher. Wilder. Less practiced, less neat. That was the woman he had married.

And she was beautiful.

For a moment, he had no words at all to give her.

She looked to him. He could see the upset in her eyes. The pain.

He had no words to give her. He did not know what words to give. As at the start, as now.

So he didn't give words.

He reached out. He touched her, fingers brushing on her arm.

"Jonnel?" she asked. Her voice was the ghost of a whisper.

He pulled her into his arms.

He held her close. On a rickety barge floating down a starlit stream, he held his lady wife. He embraced her. He did not shy away. He did not flee as he had done before. He did not succumb to his grief.

He held.

He loved.

And he knew exactly what it was that he was meant to say.

"You told me to never leave you alone."

****
End of Part 14!​

Ah, that glorious new update smell. It's been so long! Normally, this is the part where people would be sad that they won't get another update this year, but good news: now that I've got my writing power back (I was basically crippled by awful health which is now, at last, recovering) I've got another three chapters completed and ready to post, and another four after that in varying states of completion leaning heavily towards "done". I was tempted to hold them all back until I had either seven (seven updates for the Seven Kingdoms!) or eight (Make the Eight!), but I figured it'd be more fun in general to bring these updates forward before Easter.

And whilst it was super tempting to post them as a gargantuan tide, I'm going to space them out a little - the next update will be up the day after tomorrow, which gives plenty of time for discussion and talk before the next update arrives, and gives people a brief chance to reread anything if they must before we start the march forward again. The exception to this will be on Saturday and Sunday, most likely, as I'll probably dump the remaining two then. It also gives me a bit of time to get another PoV done and a teeny break to get some certain ovoid shaped goodies before Easter (caek devours chocolate), as this total update cluster will not stop (and thus updates will be continuous) until eight updates are done, after which I'm off to do a bit of novel work and then around to the Trial of Winterfell. Considering that I'm at speed again and have already written massive chunks of the ToW update cycle, it shan't take long before I'm back here again, and you'll probably get updates between the cycles anyway. In other words - there's not merely a rain of content coming, but a flood.

But still, after a long, long hiatus, we are back. The story never ends

 

[Thelunarwolf]

It never ends.

And it was superb. Grief is hard... shared grief is harder still but better in some ways.

Great writing.

 

[CaekDaemon]

I did say another update was coming

****
King's Landing​

Of all the days that Aegon knew, there were few so cold as a breezy summer's night. The warmth of the day tricked one's senses, making the chill of a low wind feel as harsh as a winter's gale. It was a false cold, and yet it was a false cold that could find its way through even the thickest of clothes, push aside even the warmth of a torch held in hand. Aegon had neither. Instead of a warm cloak or a padded jacket, he had his finest clothes, a doublet of black and red, trading brocade flowers for draconic patterns. He had a mantle that covered but a single arm, bearing the symbol of his house, the three headed dragon proud and royal. He was freshly groomed, silver hair neatly combed and chin and cheeks neatly shaved. Blackfyre was sheathed at his side, and gloved fingers stood at rest on its bejeweled pommel. He was dressed as he was the day that his cousin Baelor had taken the throne, and Daeron before that. He was dressed the way he had dressed on the day that he was married. Neat. Strong. Towering. He was the very image of a Targaryen prince, all grace and dignity. He stood as straight as an arrow in flight, and wore an expression as steady as a stone.

That was what his father had asked of him. Come well, come proud. Come as he should be, and not as he was. Viserys had asked for the very best of everyone. He had come with the very best of himself. Viserys did not look like the Hand of the King.

He simply looked like the king.

Aegon had followed his lead in it. His father had took him aside and told him words of how dressing well was not for the benefit of the crowds, but for themselves. A veil of cloth. A shield against the woe. A reminder of how things had been before. A thought as to how they would be again. So it had been on the day that Aegon's own uncle, his namesake, had been lain to rest. So it was now, when a son and a wife were to join King Aegon III in the next life. Reminders, reminders. The whole day had been little more than reminders of this and that. The whole day had been preparation and making ready. Bathing. Grooming. Finding his finest clothes. Making final arrangements. Seeing that his newborn daughter might be nursed. Seeing that his son Daeron would be ready. Seeing it all. Doing it all.

And yet for all that, there was that part of him that still did not believe that this had happened. A part of him, trapped in shock.

His sister was dead. His son was dead.

And this was their funeral. Their goodbye.

This was not the first that he had been to. His uncle. His cousin. Megette. She had no royal recognition, but he had spared respects for her. He had done all this before, but for all that...it still didn't feel real. He felt detached from it all. Separated. Cut off and distant. His father had seen it. His father had knew it in an instant. Shock. Surprise. The entire day seemed a blur. He knew so much of it all. He knew he had done those things. He knew he had got dressed, but what servant had helped him? He knew he had given his daughter to the care of a wet-nurse, but what colour was her hair? What was her name? A Kingsguard had protected him whilst he bathed, but which one?

So it had been, on and on and on and on, til at last they had came forth. It was time. The septon's words had cut through the fog. It was as if Aegon was seeing for the first time.

Of all the days that Aegon knew, there were few so cold as a breezy summer's night.

He was stood on the grounds of one of the largest squares in the entire city of King's Landing. He was not alone. This was no private thing. The Red Keep was vast enough, but that was not how it was done. It was done in the open. She was a daughter of the crown. A daughter of the realm. The Red Keep's men served as the honor guard between them and the crowds. All the Kingsguard were there. So too were a hundred or a thousand of the peasantry, or thousands. They watched quietly. Some wept. A princess was dead. Her son had died with her. This had happened before, Aegon knew. Over a thousand had followed his cousin Daeron on his procession from the port to King's Landing, and more still had stood and watched the pyre burn. They were not the only ones there. Every Targaryen who could be there was there. His cousins had come. Daena was there, her sister too. Rhaena had been released from the Red Keep to bear witness to it all, veiled in white at the side of King Baelor. For all her piety, she still wept. They were silent tears. Even in grief, she was a grand beauty, but such thoughts were an after echo. They were all together. They were all there. Watching. Listening. Taking comfort in the words of the septon.

His son was there. Daeron, stood at his side.

Aegon was not looking to him now.

He was looking to the septon, and listening. It was not any mere septon. It was the High Septon himself, an aging old man, but the High Septon all the same. There was some great honor in that, somewhere, not that Aegon cared for it.

But he did care for the words. He welcomed their comforts.

"...but for all that has happened, we must remember these people for who they were. Aelyx, who was no more than a newborn babe. Naerys, a mother and a wife, beloved by all. They are the most innocent of us all, and so the Seven welcome them with open arms, wayward children come home again. They have gone to the Seven Heavens, to live in peace and love at the side of the Seven-who-are-One. They shall know no more pain. They shall know no more suffering. They shall know of no evil, but only of the truest joys of life."

Aegon was not a godly man. That part of him had withered years ago.

But for his son, he could hope and pray. For him, he could hope that he found life in the Seven's hands. Life, and love.

"And yet such are simple, easy words, that do not say enough for a father in mourning, or a grieving son," the High Septon offered, his voice quiet and sorry. "They say so much and more, but still not enough to solve the pain in our hearts that comes from such loss. In that, we must remember one thing."

The High Septon looked to him. The High Septon looked to Daeron.

"One day, we will see them again. Our pain is temporary, as are our lives, but the Heavens are eternal. Naerys, a mother, Aelyx, a son...both lie waiting only beyond the door, sat besides the Seven, where all the innocent and the loved might go."

He looked to his son.

Daeron was dressed like his father writ small. The same clothes. The same mantle. He was trying to stay brave, but Aegon saw the tears in his eyes. He touched his son's shoulder. He squeezed. Daeron looked to him, and what Aegon saw was grief. Grief, and pain. Too much for any boy his age.

Aegon did not know what to say, but used the words his father would have given him. "Be strong for your mother. She would've wanted that."

Daeron nodded, wordless, breathless. Daeron looked back to the front, and his father looked with him.

The High Septon walked, climbing the steps of the pyre. His attendants came over to him with their holy oils by the jugful, and one was bearing a crystal amulet with a gem so large as to rival an orange. Aegon might've took some amusement in that, but there was none to be found this day. There could be no laughing. Not now. Not here.

The oils were offered to the High Septon. Reaching down, it was but a single finger that went in, his other hand holding the amulet. Even in the dim light of torch fire and night, there were ripples of rainbow light slipping through its glass.

"I would ask for a moment of silence from all, as I recite these final verses of the Seven Sided Star, and give a daughter of the realm and a son of the house of Targaryen their final rites, and give them over truly to the care of the gods."

Viserys looked to the Kingsguard. Aemon stepped forward with blade in hand, and raised it high for all to see. The rest of the sworn brotherhood followed his lead, and formed a Seven Sided Star with the pyre at its center.

The market square was nothing but silence. Even the winds seemed to have died, and no bird dared to make a sound. There must have been thousands watching, and for all of them, Aegon heard no one.

No one but the High Septon.

"By the Father, we pray that their souls are judged fairly, and by the Mother, we pray that they are given comfort in the Seven Heavens."

The hand of the High Septon dipped low. He did his work.

"By the Warrior, we pray that they are given peace, and by the Smith, that all their works are finished and done."

His hand dipped low. The gem rattled.

"By the Maiden, we pray that they look after these innocent two, and by the Crone, that we remember them as we loved and cherished them."

He stood, the oils done.

"And by the Stranger," he called out. "We pray only that they are led swiftly to salvation, where all the innocent and the pure might join them when their days are over and done."

With the crystal amulet held in his hand, he made the mark of the Seven Sided Star in the air. "In the name of the Seven-who-are-One, let it be so."

"Let it be so," the crowd echoed. Aegon echoed it with them. His son echoed it with him.

And then the Septon climbed down from the pyre.

It was time.

Aegon straightened. Aegon swallowed.

It should have been a dragon to light her funeral pyre, Aegon knew. That was their way. That was the Targaryen way, the way of the Valyrians that came before them.

But there were no dragons left. The last of them had died some twenty years before Aegon himself was born, and it was not merely the last dragon in Westeros, but the last dragon to be found anywhere. It was the last dragon. They were gone from the world, now, with nothing left to say that they had ever existed but for the words of books and the great skulls that adorned the cavernous halls of the Red Keep, shadows of a splendour so grand as to be beyond imagining.

But a dragon still came forth, and its name was Viserys Targaryen. He stepped forth with a torch in his hand, burning brightly, and the wavering orange light fluttered and flowed over a face that was as hard as stone, as if his father had been hewn from cold, unfeeling granite. There were no tears upon his cheeks, no grief. Just the cold and utter silence of a father who had lost their child. Aegon might have never known that. Aegon wished he had never known that.

But he knew. Aegon knew that pain far too well. There was a bundle in Naerys' cold arms, and his name was Aelyx.

Viserys looked to him, father to son. No words had to be said.

Aegon stepped forth. He did not take the torch from his father, no, but their hands shared it, carrying it forwards together, father and son bearing the flame together. The pyre was but a few dozen feet from where he had stood, but what came was the longest walk in his life. It felt as though it took hours. It felt as though it took an eternity. It felt as though it took far too long, silent steps in a silent world. They were watched by all on the market square. There were thousands of eyes. Aegon felt none of them. For what he felt, for what he saw, it may as well have been as if there were none of them there at all, as if they were walking through a featureless, grey plane, and not a city.

One step.

Two.

Three.

He was at the altar. He was at the pyre. It was a simple thing. It was a thing he did not care for at all.

Aegon looked.

Aegon saw.

Naerys was lain upon a cloth of black and red, but it was white that she wore. Even the lightest of silks would have struggled to rival her pale skin, so cold she was now. The Silent Sisters had done their work. They had done it well. Her hair flowed so neatly as to be like spun silver. They had posed and placed her well. She looked more as if she was asleep. She looked peaceful. More peaceful than he had seen in years.

In her arms was a bundle. So very still. So very quiet.

His son.

His boy.

His Aelyx.

Aegon could not bear to look upon his face

It was almost a comfort when he his father spoke.

Almost.

"No father should have to ever outlive their child," Viserys said, words that were only to be heard by Aegon. "We should not have to do this."

Aegon had no words. There was not a man in this world that did.

His father spoke for him.

"And yet we do," the elder Targaryen breathed, so quietly as to be barely heard. A father caressed a daughter's unmoving cheek, his fingers seeming to have aged twice their years in a single moment.

Aegon could only nod.

And then, as if on a dare, he reached out. He touched them. A sister and a wife. A child and a son.

One final moment. One last touch.

They were so cold.

Aegon straightened. Aegon and Viserys lowered the torch. They lit the bonfire.

And then the flames rose, and that was all that there was.

It was a blur, in truth. He had gotten down off the pyre. He could scarcely remember how, but he had, else he would've burnt with the both of them. He walked, and as he did, he saw a horn be ran to his brother's hand, a horn that Aemon swiftly raised to his lips with one hand, even as the other never wavered from its steel salute. It was a horn made not of mere cow's bone or wood, but of dragonbone, hewn from one of the Targaryen mounts of yore. The flames crackled on the bonfire. For a moment, he met Aemon's eyes.

For all the strength that he had, his brother was nearly in tears.

But for all that, he still blew. With all his strength and breath, Aemon Targaryen sounded the horn of their forefathers, and blew.

And for a moment, for a single, precious moment, it was as if the dragons of old were still amongst them, and roaring in their grief.

Then his lungs gave, his breath ran low, and the horn fell silent.

All but one of the Kingsguard sheathed their blades. One to stand by the pyre. One to keep a final vigil, surrounded by the honor guard.

It was over.

It was done.

Aegon breathed. Aegon sighed.

It was finished.

And yet it was not. No sooner did he draw that breath and return to the side of his son to rest, and mayhaps find a deep bottle of wine, than his father came over. He was worse in this than Aegon, he knew. His father seemed...smaller. Diminished. Weakened. The flame of his strength was wavering, here, but for all that, there was yet more work to be done, and it was work that he spoke of.

"Her ashes and those of your son will be collected when the flames are out," Viserys said. His voice was low and quiet. "They will be gathered, and sent upon a strong ship for Dragonstone and to the crypts there, within the Dragonmont."

"Would you have them near Daeron?" Aegon asked. "Naerys and Daeron were friends enough in life -"

"You need say no more," Viserys nodded. He seemed to welcome that thought. Some moment of compassion. "It'll be done."

A slender shadow came, and Aegon looked to see his cousin, the king. Even today he maintained his beatific look, his long hair and little kept beard, but he had changed his normal robes of white for a deep, mourning black, so undecorated and plain as to seem like flowing robes of pure shadow. It was no wonder why. Naerys had been a godly woman even before Baelor had ascended to the throne, and had read of the Seven Sided Star to the swell of her belly before their son Daeron was born. Aegon did not see the king as a kind of man to make friends with women, but Naerys would have counted for certain.

"That is a sweet thought," Baelor said as he came close. The Kingsguard were close around, and his brother Aemon trailed behind. "I would offer another, if you would have it."

"I know of your plans for the Great Sept, your Grace," his father nodded. "If you are offering to have her interred there, then it would be a fine place...but a lonely one. They were Targaryens obth. They should be with kin."

The king nodded at that, joining them together. "That is a fair judgement to make. I am still uncertain as to whether we should move the urns from Dragonstone, but mayhaps you are right. It would be best to let the dead rest where they are."

"Better that than risking a storm," Viserys answered.

"We would never forgive ourselves, if we lost them," Baelor agreed. "But I would mention something else as well. Whilst the Silent Sisters made ready and the pyre was raised, the masons took their sketches. I am a man of my word, uncle, and there is no bargain I make that I do not keep."

"Then...it will truly happen?" Viserys asked. He was quieter, now., and their walk had stopped as he looked to the king and talked. "The statue?"

"They will start cutting the stone in the morning," Baelor said, allowing himself a small smile. "Naerys was such a godly woman...she was an inspiration to us all. It is only fair and right that she have her place inside the Great Sept, and so pure she was that she might give her face to the Mother herself."

"Will you still make her forty nine feet tall?" Aegon asked. It was no jape.

"Exactly so," Baelor nodded...and then he looked to the both of them, and bowed his head. "My condolences, again. I will ask the Most Devout to see if all the septs of Westeros might sound their bells in their memory."

"That would be most kind, your Grace," his father thanked. "Thank you."

Baelor nodded, and Baelor left. Two of the Kingsguard knights went with him, but Aemon joined the two of them, his brother and father. He seemed ready to talk to them, to talk of this for himself, to give his own feelings. He seemed ready to say something,..but then more came over. He recognized these ones instantly. They were the Starks, the new kin of the Targaryens through marriage. They had came by barge over the night before, or so he had heard, but their arrival had been a thing of little celebration or announcement. Aegon could scarcely remember any of it, though that was little different from the rest of the day. But for the blur of it all, they had came. They had came quickly and by a rickety old Riverman's barge, but they had came. They had barely made it in time, but they had still came. They were new kin by marriage, and for that, still mostly strangers, but they had came, and that meant something.

That was plain in his father's face, too. Lord Cregan Stark walked over in his best fineries, fully cloaked in the depe grey of his house. His son and heir trailed behind him, and with him, Aegon's cousins - Daena and little Elaena, too. He might've remarked on the beauty of the elder, might've noticed it properly...but not today. The day was such a blur of one thing to the next, and that part of him was one of the blurriest of all. Half the time he might've blurred out the worst thoughts with a haze of wine and women, but no haze was strong enough for this. Not now. Not today.

"Lord-Hand," the elder Stark said. "Forgive us for being later than we might've been."

"I am surprised you came at all, Lord Stark," Viserys said. He had lost some of his finer graces. Losing a child might do that to any man.

"You are our good kin," the Lord of Winterfell answered. "It would've been wrong for us to be away from this. The condolences of Winterfell are yours."

Viserys and Aegon both seemed quiet at that...but Aegon nodded, grateful, and his father spoke for him. "They're much welcomed. I will have chambers made ready for you and yours when I can. I have matters to attend to before then, you understand."

The Lord of Winterfell nodded, the Stark accepting his reasonings. Viserys turned away as quickly as he had noticed them, and Aegon followed his gaze, but it was not back to the path to the Red Keep, but to his cousins.

It was Daena that came forth.

"Little niece," he smiled, for perhaps the first time that day. "I am glad to see you...I wish it were for better reasons, but it is good that you're here."

Elaena stepped out of her sister's shadow, peeking...and the smile that Viserys bore for one niece carried to the other.

"And you as well, littlest niece."

"I'm not little," Elaena protested.

"You'll always be little to me, and the littlest of the three of you," Viserys looked to the both of them, then, though more to Daena as the elder. "You're lucky to have made it in time. Were it not for that barge..."

"It goes faster than you think," Elaena said, innocently. "They don't call it the Rush for nothing."

"Especially since it was just us," Daena added...but nodded. "I'm glad to be here, uncle."

"Naerys would've been glad for it, I think. You need not ask for hospitality here," Viserys smiled. "You have it, now and always. Your old chambers have scarcely been cleared -"

"Not those," Daena insisted, quickly.

"- but the one you spent your wedding night in is ready enough," his father said, knowing.

"That will do," his cousin said. She looked to him, to Aegon. "I'm...sorry about everything that happened."

"As am I," he answered, grim, and with none of his usual joys. He had few words to offer.

Daena seemed to realize that, and Elaena realized it as well. This was not something for him to talk of. Talking might make it worse. Talking might pry open a wound best left to heal on its own. They said some more words to Viserys, to his father, but the truth was, even now, Aegon did not seem to care for any of it. His mind was elsewhere. Away from this, away from himself. Distant. It was not here. It was there, on that day when he had ridden back to the Red Keep with hopes of a bear blanket, only to find that his sister was already gone, and for his son to die in his arms. He felt their last movements. They had been so weak. So slow. So quiet.

Aegon was not here.

He was there. For all the pain, he wanted to be there. The agony of it was beyond the gift of words, but he wanted to be there. He wished he could be there, so that he might have a chance to know his son that moment more. He wished for a second chance, so that he might see if he could not make things go differently. He wished that little Aelyx might've lived to be a man.

It was not Viserys that broke him from his daze.

It was not his brother.

It was his son.

It was Daeron. He didn't say anything. It was not words that did it.

It was a touch. A brush. A bump into his sleeve. It reminded him in an instant of how small his son was. How young. Daeron was no more than eight years of age. He was younger than Aegon had been when he had lost his own mother, though he had the comfort to know that she had gone across the sea. She was alive, but not to be seen again. That was not this. He had seen his mother die. He had watched her pyre burn. There was no lingering hoppe that she might come back, slowly fading away over the years as the wound did. She was gone. Naerys had died, and she wasn't coming back.

And for all the strength that he should've had, the young prince was crying. Silent, weeping tears.

"It'll be alright, Daeron," he tried.

"No," his son sniffed. "It won't be."

Daeron looked to him. He had his mother's eyes. So small. So full of grief.

"Why?" he asked. It was a plea. "Why did this happen?"

Aegon couldn't answer that. He had lost a son. HE had just watched them burn on the pyre. Who was he to give grand reasonings and answers after that?

Aegon couldn't answer.

No one could.

No one but his brother.

"It is no one's fault, Daeron," Aemon comforted, softly. He knew what to say when Aegon didn't. "It's the war women face...more dangerous than any battlefield."

Daeron went quiet at that. He was quiet for a while, but when he seemed fit to talk again and answer, he had no chance to. Viserys turned, coming back to them. Viserys spoke.

"That is the last of the well-wishers. It has been a long day, but it is over. "

"I would hope that is the end of it," Aegon breathed. "I need a break of this. A rest, for a day at least."

"I am not one to share in my brother's tastes, but I could use a rest as well," his brother agreed. "Some wine might do us all good."

"It is a wine that I would be glad to share," their father sighed. "There's still some in the deeper cellars that was meant for my brother's coronation, and it has aged well. It'll do for us all, I think."

But then their father sighed again, and drew a weary breath. He was tired.

"But there is still one thing to do. The Silent Sisters, they've...."

Even Viserys could not seem to find the words, then. But the father straightened, and somewhere in himself he found the strength to harden his heart, to hide his grief, to show the strength that he needed those around him to share. His words echoed enough for one of the wives of the Stranger to come forward, carrying a small and humble box. It might as well have floated through the air on its own for all the attention that Aegon paid the woman that carried it, but the care that Viserys showed when he took it from her, the respect of the bow of the Hand of the King and a Targaryen prince in his own right, it all said enough for him to understand without it being said. Aemon understood too, and turned to leave -

"Not you, Aemon," Viserys said. "This is as much for you as it is for us. You were her brother as much as I was her father and Aegon her husband. Your place is with us."

Aemon nodded, wordless. Aegon turned, and saw his son in the distance, watching with empty, glassy eyes as the flames burnt. "Daeron."

Daeron looked towards his father. There was no hate in his eyes, no unease, only the unfeeling sadness of a boy who had lost the mother he loved. Aegon waved him over, and the young prince came to his father's side. "You have as much a part in this as I do, Daeron."

"With...with what?" the young Targaryen asked.

"Aegon," Viserys asked, his voice a shadow of itself. "Are you sure? He is young, maybe too young."

"He was her son," Aegon said. "It is...only right that he has a part in this. Gods only know she loved him more than she had ever loved me."

There was no complaint from his father or his brother, no reasonings, only a solemn nod.

And then he spoke.

"Her heart," Viserys explained, as much for himself as it might have been for the young prince, holding it so tightly in his grasp that his knuckles turned white. "It is to go to her favorite place...to wherever she belonged the most. I...was never as close as I might've been, as I should've been, but that would be the godswood, no?"

"She liked it there," Aemon said, his words a whisper. "She liked the peace there. To sit amongst the flowers and read, or sing..."

Daeron was looking down at the ground. He nodded, wordless.

"Then it should go there," Aegon agreed. "Beneath the oak, where she might've sat."

There was a quiet moment between them, then. A silent moment. This was more than the funeral had been. There among the crowds, it could've been said that the burden was split over thousands. Here, it was over four. It was more personal. They were not simply burning a pyre. They were carrying a piece of her. A piece of his sister. A piece of the girl he had chased with a spider on a stick when they were young. A piece of the girl who had wept when their mother left them. A piece of the girl who had cried so horribly when they were wed. A piece of the girl who had given birth to his son. A piece of the girl who had died giving birth to his daughter.

It was a piece of Naerys.

It seemed for a moment that each of them was waiting for someone else to talk. Viserys, waiting for one of his sons or his grandson to ask if they might carry it instead. Aemon, waiting to see if one might ask him to guard the nursery where Aegon's daughter was so that he had to take no part in this. Daeron, waiting to see if he might be sent aside so he would not have to do something so deeply personal. Aegon, too. A part of him hoped that something might happen - that someone might slip and fall and need his graces, that his notice for the beauty of women might surge back into him and draw his attentions away. He did not want to be left with this. It was not a matter of anger. It was not a matter of hate. It was not a matter of laziness. It was just...something. Something that had to be done, and something so important that it might never be forgotten.

No one spoke.

They all knew what they had to do. They all know how this was to end.

Viserys took the first step. He held the box in his hands so tightly that it was as if Naerys was born again, a newborn in his arms.

Aemon followed. Aegon followed. Daeron followed. They all followed, walking together. No one said a word when they left the market square. No one said a word when they left the city of King's Landing, and came through the gates of the Red Keep. The servants saw them walking past together, and they said nothing. The guard saw them walking past, and did nothing more than stand to attention, sometimes offering their blades in salute, but they said nothing. They walked through the castle like ghosts, shadows of black and white. No one stopped them. No one said a word. They went up steps. They went through the higher bailey, and past the throne room. They went through the twisting hallways and passages, dimly lit in an empty castle.

No one said anything.

And then they came to a banded door. Thick iron, lashing over old oak. A chill breeze passed through its creaks and cracks. The night was growing truer, darker and colder. When Aemon pulled the door open for them, it was as if they had stepped into another world. There was no sun at all in the godswood. Not now. Not here. The sun had retreated into its rest before the burning, leaving only an empty sky above...

...but even in its darkness, there was light.The stars twinkled in such distant peace, shining brightly overhead. It was as if they themselves had came closer, coming down from their place in the highest heavens to watch the four Targaryens do what they had to do. The world was bathed in their light, accentuated and flavored by torches burning on the walls, casting everything in a faint, orange glow. Slender elms and alder trees rose here and there, bushes huddling around. At the center of it all was a massive oak tree, planted on the day that the Targaryens had made footfall in Westeros, on the very day that Aegon's Conquest began proper and the Iron Throne no more than a dream. It's trunk was wider in raw length than the span of his arms, its boughs ancient and heavy, laden with leaf and bloom. Around its gnarling roots sprang dragon's breath - scarlet flowers that bloomed in shades from red to gold, creeping from hue to hue in their petals.

This was the place.

This was her place.

It had always been her place, in truth. The three had been closer when their mother was around, but after she left, they began to venture their different paths, walk their own lines. This was hers. Peaceful, tranquil. A quiet place for a quiet read and a quiet thought as to the wonders of the world. Whilst he was off discovering the joys of girls and women, and Aemon perfecting his swordsmanship, Naerys had been here. Reading. Thinking. Resting.

Aegon knew why in an instant.

It was peaceful here. Quiet. Soothing.

Comforting. Comforting like a warm, gentle hug.

Viserys breathed heavily, as did his sons and grandson. The air tasted sweet with flowerscent, perfuming and playful.

"Let's get this done," Viserys spoke...and turned to his grandson, to Daeron. "Are you sure you want to be a part of this?"

Daeron hesitated. No one would've faulted him for leaving this.

But then he nodded.

"I am."

Viserys added with a nod, and led the way. Again, Aegon's hand found his son's shoulder. Daeron looked to him. Aegon nodded. He didn't smile. "You're doing well."

Daeron simply looked back at him, as though Aegon had spoke in another language...but the eyes, the eyes told him the truth. He understood. Daeron had held it well. Even a youth of eight could be excused for weeping at this. The boy had lost his mother, and he had always loved her more. Now she was gone. Mayhaps on some level, he blamed Aegon for this. For giving Naerys the children that took her life. He did, or he didn't. Aegon couldn't know for certain, and there was no time to think of it. Not now. Not when his father and his brother were walking to the tree. Not when they were to do this last part. He stepped forward and his son trailed in his steps. One step, two, three.

He was under the branches of the great oak tree, sheltered beneath its leaves. They did not place it merely anywhere. They walked. They turned. They circled the tree, until they found a familiar clearing, made alien and strange by its emptiness. None of them could deny it. This was the place. This was the place she sat. This was the place she sung. Where she read. Rested. Dreamed.

This was the place.

This was her place. Sheltered, shaded, and yet for all the leaves above, the stars still shone.

No one spoke. They all knew what they had to do.

It was their father that dug the hole with his hands. It was young Daeron that placed the box where it would rest forever. It was Aegon's hands that moved the earth into place to cover it. It was Aemon that placed a flower plucked from the oaken branches upon its resting place.

It was done.

In an instant, Daeron's facade cracked. The tears flowed. "M-mother..."

Aemon looked to Aegon, and knew instantly. His brother's hand reached out, and took Daeron's own. His voice was soft. "Come on, let's get you out of here."

The young prince wept in answer. Sobbing. Crying. He didn't struggle when Aemon took him away. He only wept.

It was his father who went then. Not without last words.

"I should have done better," he said, as much to his daughter as he did to Aegon. "I should have known her more..."

His hand tapped Aegon on the shoulder, just as Aegon had done for his own son. A clap. A reminder.

Viserys left, wordless.

Aegon looked down. He saw his hands.

They were empty hands.

Empty, where Aelyx should've been.

For a moment, he could only stare.

His fingers tightened. His hands clenched into fists.

His fist raced forward. It smashed into the bark without the slightest hesitation. His knuckles cracked. Pain shot up his arm, but he did not feel it. He felt nothing.

Nothing but loss.

Anguish.

Pain.

Suffering.

At last, he felt it all.

Aegon shouted.

Aegon roared.

And Aegon wept.

****
End of Part 15!
​

For the keen eyed, a little something. You'll know to look in this if you've noticed:

Spoiler

You might've actually realized that the times as described don't seem to match up with one another - the journey as mentioned in Jonnel's chapter you had right before this don't seem to align with the ones given here in regards to the amount of time that it all took. That's not a writing issue, but a use of the unreliable narrator; it's not that people are travelling faster than time should allow, but more that people's perception of time is being warped by their mental state. You see this especially with Aegon in this chapter, who's in such grief that his perception of time is warped. It's that part of grief that makes this chapter so short, because he doesn't actually notice anything of the world around him. In that, the chapter's length is itself a writing tool, because it shows so well how Aegon actually feels. Compare and contrast that to Jonnel, who is so living in the moment that he notices every single detail, and compare that again to Aegon, who notices almost nothing about the world around him, even his cousin Rhaena...which starts to get a bit funny on a meta level considering that this is her first direct appearance in the story.

 

[Thelunarwolf]

Maybe this Aegon won't be so Unworthy.

 

[Chojomeka]

Here's hoping that Jonnel will be the one to talk to Aegon here about losing one's wife.

 

[CaekDaemon]

And here we are once more!

****
The Red Keep.​

When Daena left King's Landing with her new husband, she could've imagined that her first return to the capital might've been a thing of joy. Years might've passed before she saw the walls of the Red Keep, and its people would've become almost strangers, but not quite, not truly. They would have met in the yard, gasped at how they had all aged and changed. They would have laughed, and loved, and a good time might've been had for one and all. She might've seen her cousin's son as a man grown, and Viserys might've finally tamed the fire of Aegon's passions, and all that and so many other things. She had not expected to come back so soon. She had not expected her return to be so bitter. The Red Keep was no stranger to her. From Maegor's Holdfast to the outermost baileys, the entire castle felt too familiar. She wanted to be away from it. Away from the tower. Away from the chamber. The singers might've been poetic, and called it a cloud hanging over the sun of the day, a daughter returned to her home too soon for her own comfort. In that, they might've been half right. The darkness of it all had hung over the return. It should've been laughing, and japing, and warmth.

It wasn't. The cloud of discomfort at being home so soon was nothing but a mere puff of smoke in comparison to the reason for why they came back. A wisp, a campfire staring down the Doom of Valyria come again. Daena had not wanted to come back to King's Landing so soon. It was too early, her marriage too young, her time away from the locked chamber doors too short.

That was nothing in comparison to the death of her cousin.

It was not even close. When she had first learnt the news, her first thought had been confusion. A complete lack of understanding, born of a mind that was still half asleep. Then the words had been said again, and like a hammer driving a nail into a wooden board, it had gone in whether she wanted it to or not. Dazed. Confused. Shocked. She had been shocked more than anything else. They had made their moves. They had rode through the night to a river barge, then raced their way down the Rush til they found yet another barge, smaller and sleeker and quicker still, and went on that one to continue the journey. They might've died at least three times, smashed onto the stones and rocks. They nearly drowned. Too little weight threatened to tip them into the ferocious current. For all that, they still made it. For all that, they got there in time to witness the funeral of her cousin Naerys.

And then it was real. No daze, no confusion, no shock or surprise.

Just one grim truth. One unquestionable reality.

Her cousin Naerys was dead. Her son, Aelyx, had died with her.

Even now a part of her would not have believed it, were it not for watching the pyre burn with her own two eyes. She had seen her uncle and cousin light the fire. She had watched the flames grow. Even for all the exhaustion of the journey and for the lack of sleep that came from it, she and her husband and his kin stood a vigil until the fire went out, and the silent sisters came forward to collect the ashes in their black urns. She had been so tired then that she had nearly fallen asleep in her husband's arms before they even reached the Red Keep, but for all that, she still remembered every part of it. The long, quiet walk. The eyes of the people of King's Landing. The cold. The stars. The look of her uncle, aged so much in a moment.

But with every moment that passed, with every breath she drew, the moment became more real.

But one thing had done it most. The strike that drove it in, and made it more than real.

She had woke in the morning in her bed. She had dressed, and came down. Viserys had arranged for all of them to break their fast together, and Jonnel too was to be there. It was to be a good, filling meal after their journey, with all the tastes of home.

And then she had walked into the room, and the table was there, and her cousins, her uncle, all of them...and an empty chair, where Naerys might've been. The servants hadn't even realised what they had done. They had set the table for her. Placed a plate, knife and spoon, bowl, a bread roll steaming fresh upon its center, ready to be buttered. They did all that for her, but she was not there, and never would she be there again.

That made it real.

That made it true.

And that killed the last doubts, the last vestiges of hope.

Her cousin was dead.

Viserys had somehow managed to arrange a small feast for the morning. There were wonders there. Fresh cakes and creamed buns, Bacon, fried to perfection. Eggs that had been placed with such care into the pan as to seem almost entirely round. Bread. Honey. Sausages. It was all there. Such meals had been rare ever since her brother Baelor had taken to the throne, frugal and austere as he was, preferring to break his fast with bowls of oats, and preferring still to keep the women of the court in their own chambers. It was exactly that which made it hurt. For all that was placed before her, for all the sweetmeats and treats that might've been given to a house in mourning and morning alike, there was no delights to be found in their taste for her. She and her cousin Naerys had never been as close as they could have been. Their interests had lain in other things. Even when her father had still ruled as King Aegon, even when they were all children, Naerys had preferred her books, and Daena had her bow. For all that, she was still kin. She was family. When her brother Daeron died, Naerys gave her comfort. When Baelor took the throne and banished all the other ladies of the court and confined the Targaryen women to their chambers, Naerys was one of the few he might allow her to see, another Targaryen woman. For all the time that they had spent apart in their youth, that had given back with more hours still. They spent more time together in a year than they had in a decade.

Naerys had liked her courage. Daena had envied her patience.

Naerys wished she could ride a horse so well. Daena wanted to learn how to sing.

They were not born friends, but they had became friends - so different, and yet alike. Losing her cousin rattled her, and then there was the new fear that came from it. A new fear. A fresh fear. Naerys was dead and gone, but what of how she had died? She was not murdered by a knife, slain by an arrow, or trampled by a carriage cart. She had died in the birthing bed. What of that? Her Husband had shared his deepest fears and regrets with her on the lake, on that day they went to the Isle of Faces. His last wife had died the same way, and now Naerys...and what of Daena herself? She had seen fit to consummate their marriage with her husband, desperate to be free of the Red Keep in the way that only a bedding might allow. What of her? What if she was with child since their wedding day? Was her death already growing inside of her? Would she finally escape from the Red Keep by marriage, only to die because of it? The thought seemed the thing of nightmare, for the very thing that had taken her to freedom could just as well take her to her grave. Before, the very thought of it had all been so distant and far away...

...but now, now it wasn't. It was a new fear, pervading her, following her, stalking her. She could already be dead. Her fate might already be sealed. It might not have come to be yet, but it could. Uncertainty. Fear. Unease. It all wormed its way through her veins like poison.

For all that, she could count but a single comfort.

He was sat across the table from her. Her husband. Jonnel. Something had changed in him on that riverboat. Something for the better. They had shared a bed together for the first time, for the very first time since the two had been wed that day. They had not been intimate. She hadn't wanted that. Not now, not with that fear...but for all that, she had welcomed him, and held, and shared warmth.

It was a reminder she needed.

She was not alone in this.

She was not alone in her fear.

That made it bearable, and that alone was perhaps the one thing that kept her from being terrified senseless.

That was what she had thought about as they broke their fast, and it was a wheel that spun around itself, like children frollicking around a maypole. One fear led to the next, and then to the next after that. On and on. Round and round. She ate in silence, tasted nothing, and looked to no one.

It was her uncle that finally broke the grim quiet of it all. The man had lost a daughter and a grandson, but still, he was the truest strength of their house. A column, a pillar, holding up the rest on his own, unbreakable shoulders...but for all his strength and power, it was clear even he did not have many words to choose from.

He still tried.

"Tell us, Daena, how have things gone on the road?"

"Quietly," she answered. "Slowly."

Jonnel took over for her.

"The Kingsroad needs...work," her husband offered. "The wheelhouse rolled along well enough, but there's chunks of the road missing."

"Missing?" Viserys asked. Daena knew him too well. He wanted to know all the details as a good distraction. "How so?"

"People have been stealing the road bricks," she said....and softened her own words. "Not stealing, more like...mining. Houses here and there have bits of the road in them."

Her cousin Aegon laughed. "What next? Are they going to mine the castles, too? Will I wake up one day to see half the floor gone?"

"Why do they take it from the road?" Aemon asked. "A few stones can't be worth that much, surely?"

"The war did much harm to the peasantry," Viserys said. "It was their homes that burnt the most, and quarrymen are strong and tough, good soldiers if you put a mace in their hands. The first takes away a great many houses, the second takes away their chance to get cheap stone. The damage to the road wouldn't have happened all at once. One brick here, another there, and little by little the Kingsroad turns into a muddy track."

"Couldn't you have it guarded?" Aegon asked. "Fines for anyone whose home has pieces of the road?"

"The road's too long to guard without spreading men too far apart," his father answered. "For fines, that would do, but those that are taking the stone won't have much to take in the first place. More, it mightn't be that they aren't even doing it themselves, but are buying the stone from another man, telling them that it came from some old ruin."

"We'll have to rebuild the road, or at least the damaged parts," Viserys sighed. "A pity that all the masons we have are already working on the great sept. Mending the Kingsroad would've done much good, and it needs fitted blocks if wagons are to roll well."

"There's always the Essosi," Aegon reasoned.

Viserys almost smiled at that. "Only if you want to pay a gold dragon for each brick."

He looked to Daena, then. "I suppose it is best for you and your groom to travel by ship."

That was a good feeling, and a good thought to have. Daena hadn't been on a ship in years, and the river barge most certainly did not count. When her brother Daeron had been king, and when her father was as well, they had sometimes gone on ships to Dragonstone. It was a fond memory. The island was wild and rugged and rocky, but it was that which made it beautiful. Not the rolling plains of the Reach nor the glittering waters of the Riverlands, or the peaceful fields of the Crownlands, but jagged lines that looked as if the entire island had been sculpted by a mason's chisel. The trip itself was a thing of adventure. The Blackwater Bay was calmer and slower than the Rush, but there was something about the ocean air, cooling and comforting. She liked that idea. Some peace. Some quiet. A chance to rest a little.

Jonnel seemed ready to mention some of his father's plans for the return trips, mayhaps the hiring of a merchant's galley, but before he could say anything at all, Viserys turned to him.

"King Baelor may be a man of peace, but the royal fleet is still strong," he offered. "A war galley would be hard pressed to take you to White Harbour, but the fleet still has sailing ships. Enough to take you and your kin there, and enough to give a worthy escort."

"My father would be glad for that," Jonnel agreed. "Thank you, good-uncle."

Aegon laughed into his oats. Even Daena could not help but smile at that.

"And whilst you take that trip north, it mightn't do any harm for us here to do some travels of our own," Viserys offered, looking to his sons. "The wedding brought a great many lords to guest at the Red Keep, and more than a few would be keen to repay that favor. We could travel to the Reach and to the Westerlands, and anywhere."

"Truly?" Aemon said, surprised at the offer. "Would Baelor be right with it?"

Aegon spoke, eagerly. He liked this idea. "Do we need to ask him? Why can we not simply walk out the door?"

"I doubt he would mind much, given what has happened," Viserys said more honestly, and with a sigh. "Truth is, I think all of us could do with some time away from here. The Seven know, these walls are becoming far too familiar -"

The door opened. Daena turned. Daena looked. Daena saw.

It was her brother.

It was the king.

That alone was enough to darken her mood again. She could have came back in twenty years, and it still would have been too soon. When she left King's Landing after the wedding, it had been a joy to think that she might never see him again. He might've been a brother, but he had locked his sisters in gilded cages. He might've been a brother, but he had failed to avenge Daeron and, more than, he had forgave his killers. He might've been a brother, but he would have been content to keep her locked in her chambers until she might've died of old aged, her life wasted, and he would've done the same to Rhaena and Elaena, too. The peasant crowds might've cheered him for his charity, but Daena knew the truth of him. No man that would treat his kin in such a way could be called good. No man that would treat women as little more than pests to be tossed aside and forgotten could be called good. He was no good. No. He might've been a brother by birth and blood, but he was no true brother.

He was no brother at all.

And yet for all the hatred she bore him, he only looked at her with a smile.

"Dear sister, it seems we meet again," Baelor said, sweetly and with tender graces.

Any joy that she might've had slipped off her face in an instant. "Oh, gods have mercy."

"Mercy is something they have in great abundance," Baelor agreed, walking towards the table, escorted by his sworn Kingsguard. "That, and wisdom too."

Daena was in no mood at all for this. Her response was quick and hard.

"Would they give you the wisdom to fu-"

It was a response cut short by her uncle, rushing in to keep her from trouble.

"Wisdom such as they have been so kind as to grace us with this day," Viserys said. Daena felt the distinct pressure of a foot pressing down on her own. Viserys smiled at her. "Wisdom to know the power of words, and what they might do."

It took much and more for Daena to hold back her tongue this day, but she did.

"The Crone ever blesses us," Baelor agreed, happily...and then turned his attentions towards Viserys, Aegon, and all the others. "My condolences again, but I have seen it done as you asked. A galley is already bound to Dragonstone, as we agreed. They will be interred within the Dragonmont, as planned, and blessed again seven times by the High Septon himself."

"It is...not usual for you to see to such matters yourself, your Grace," Viserys said, delicately.

Baelor nodded, knowingly. "That is so, but seeing what has happened, I thought it would be a comfort for you to not have to settle such things yourself."

"Then...I must thank you," her uncle nodded, grateful. "Even a little help in that is a wondrous thing. Is that not so, Aegon?"

Aegon's eyes widened, and Daena knew it was not merely her who was being directed by the Hand of the King this day. "It is so."

"I am gladdened to know that I have done right by the both of you," Baelor smiled again...and then turned to his sister at last. "And it is so good to see you again, Daena. Have you come to regret our last meeting?"

Daena glanced at her plate. The bacon and sausages were there, and with them came a lovely, sharp little knife.

She would have lied to herself if she said she was not tempted to use it.

Again, Viserys pressed on her foot. Again, he tried to get her to talk carefully.

Daena was not so easily tamed.

"No. I don't," she said, honestly. Viserys sighed instantly. Aegon, again, laughed into his food. He was enjoying this. "Why would I regret saying something that is true?"

Baelor looked back at her. He was not smiling, now.

Viserys rushed in once more. "My little niece speaks her mind with honesty, your Grace. The Seven would not have otherwise, and is it not said in the Seven Sided Star that all things appear true to the eye of the man that sees them?"

"That is so, good uncle," Baelor agreed...but then turned back to Daena. "But I had hoped my sister would have come to appreciate all that I have done in time. I see it will take longer before she comes to see the truest truth of all, and that what I have done and did was for her own good."

My own good, she thought. Daena scoffed openly. You banished all the women of the court because you didn't have the balls to control yourself, and you talk of my own good?

She was ready to say exactly that. She was ready to wage a war of words on him, and remind him again that she knew what he truly was. A godly man without the strength to maintain his own vows. A coward. A weakling. A wretch.

But before she might say it, she saw her uncle. She saw him pleading. Not this. Not now. Not after that. He was the spine of their house. He settled its faults, resolved its quarrels, kept the dragon strong and true. He had lost a daughter. He had seen her burn only the night before. It was a wordless plea. Not now. Please.

Daena loved her uncle. He was like another father to her. She was not the kind to relent or to back down from a challenge, and most certainly not from her brother...but for her uncle, for this, she could.

She said nothing, returned to her food, and she let her uncle pick up the pieces.

"In any case, your Grace, it is rare to see you come to break your fast with us. Is there a matter we must discuss before your morning prayers?"

"I had hoped to come and give comfort to my kin," Baelor started. Daena sighed again. "What has happened is a terrible thing. It is not a burden that can be bore alone."

"Every man has their way of bearing such things, your Grace," Viserys answered. "We will find our own ways."

"And...you?" Baelor asked. If it was honest concern or not, Daena did not know. "The Seven-who-are-One guide me, tell me what I need to do, but I give those instructions to you to turn into deeds."

"I can still perform my duties, my king. Seven know, they are a comfort to me, now."

"A welcome distraction," the king nodded, and understood. "Mayhaps then it is not the Stranger and the Mother who give you comfort these days, but the Smith. He works to mend the things that are broken. Today, it seems that must be our hearts."

Viserys only nodded, and even Baelor was not so fool enough to not notice how their uncle felt, and that he wanted to speak so very little of this.

"Still, I must say that there is at least the benefit of this becoming something of a reunion of our house," the king said, with his sweet and gentle voice, so soft and kind that it made her want to strangle him with her own two hands. The king looked to his Kingsguard, and spoke. "Please, bring my littlest sister in."

Daena blinked. There was an order in their names. It was Viserys that gave it. Daena was the little niece. Rhaena was the littler niece.

Elaena was the littlest.

She looked, and saw as the door came open. Ser Joffrey Staunton stood in the door, her cousin Aegon's favorite Kingsguard, his white armor still shining like molten silver from the polish of the day before, almost blindingly bright in sunshine.

It wasn't to him that she looked.

It was to the young, scrawny lady that walked at this side. Neatly dressed with new clothes taken from her own wardrobe, and with her hair starting to work back into the old braid she had cut off all those years before, she had copied her elder sister came in black and red.

It was Elaena.

And she was smiling.

"Elaena?" Daena asked, a crack of horror surging through her voice. She looked to her brother. "What are you doing with her? Let her -"

Baelor smiled, and gestured with an open hand. "I am offering her food."

The table was silent, silent but for the steps of Elaena Targaryen, coming over to the table, taking an empty seat for herself. She looked to Daena with a knowing smile.

Daena blinked.

This was exactly what her sister had said would happen.

"You....you mean to let her leave?"

"She is not mine to let leave," Baelor said, daring to reach to the table, and daring to take nothing more than a single, simple roll of bread, not even buttered. He looked to Viserys, to his Hand. "You placed her into Daena's care, did you not?"

"That I did, your Grace," Viserys said, finding his footing quickly. This had caught him off guard, but not for long. It was enough to cut through the grief. "She is a young princess, better to be learnt in the ways of the world beyond the walls of the Red Keep, and your sister Daena had no one else who might keep her company in the North. I thought it better to settle two matters with one solution."

"And the letter bears the royal seal," Baelor said, and nodded. "It is a lawful command from the crown for you to look after her."

Daena blinked again. He had not expected her brother to be so...conciliatory.

And then it came.

"I might not agree with it being given," the King said. "But it is lawful. The Father watches proudly over those who follow laws, and keep agreements to the letter. Our sister Elaena is yours to look after."

Viserys spoke before she might, paving the way for her, cutting a path for her words. "I am sure the new Lady Stark will watch over Elaena like a dragon does its hatchling."

"I would hope so," Baelor said with his usual, gentle smiles. "She is our sister, after all. She tells me that you are both learning much of the Seven as you travel?"

Daena looked to Elaena.

Elaena smiled.

And her little sister took the lead on mayhaps the greatest lie that Daena had ever known.

"We've read so much of the Song of the Seven Sided Star in the wheelhouse," she said, sweetly and with such innocence...it might've been true. "Your charity does so much good for the realm."

Again, Baelor smiled. "It is the command of the gods to share what we have with others. The old stories tell of dragons that sit on hoards of gold, though it does them so very little in the end. I am glad that the people do so well."

Elaena looked at Daena.

And then the elder sister felt the pressure of a small foot, pushing down on her toes.

She had learnt that from Viserys.

Daena spoke quickly.

"It's just a shame there isn't more of it to be found in the realm," she said. The words felt like fire and poison. "You do things so well here."

Baelor smiled at Daena. It was everything the Targaryen could do not to recoil in disgust.

"I am so glad that you are starting to understand why I make my choices, sister," Baelor said. "The Seven did not merely make this realm and world. They have lain out a path for us to follow...a rainbow road, which light take us to a better place. We can walk a better way, and live better, following their guidance."

"Such wisdom," her littlest sister cooed. "I feel closer to the gods than ever when on the road. You see the wonder of what the Smith has made..."

Again, Baelor smiled, and looked to their sister with delight. "I am so glad for you, to see things as they are at last. I would hope that you come to embrace it all as I have. It is one thing to take notice of the wonders of the world, and another still to commit yourself to serving the Gods."

"I'm too young to take holy vows," Elaena said, sweetly. "But I'll think on it!"

Baelor looked at her with what might've passed for pride, were it not for it being a sin. Then he turned to Viserys.

"But for all the good of this talk, I must admit, there is something of a selfish reason for me to come here this morning, away from my morning fasts," the king offered, half a lament and half a prayer. He looked to his Hand, drew a breath, and spoke more openly. "I mean to take a...retreat for a time."

Viserys looked at him, curiously. They all did, but it was only the Hand that was willing to speak up. "Your Grace?"

"These last few weeks have been all too stressful, and the loss of Naerys has only made it worse. She was a lady of great faith. I need a chance to get my thoughts in order, away from the Red Keep," Baelor explained. "A time away from all this would do me well. I do not mean to be long, merely seven weeks of seven days -"

Aegon laughed, quietly.

"- at a septry on the Quiet Isle, at the mouth of the Trident," the king continued, ignoring their cousin's amusement. "I would leave King's Landing in your hands til I might return."

It would have been fair in Daena's eyes for Viserys to decline such wishes. He needed rest as well, she felt. A chance to mourn, and to grieve. A chance for those travels that he had spoke of. Instead, he rose to this challenge as he had any other: he nodded. "If that is your will, your Grace, then I will take care of the realm til you return."

"Thank you. I know the kingdom is in good hands with you, uncle," Baelor smiled, and nodded. "You have been guided by the Crone herself."

"Will you be joining us to break your fast?"

Baelor shook his head, and showed only the little roll. "This is enough for me, I feel. I expect to leave before long, and many and more will most likely offer me something on the road. It would be impolite to decline the gift of men and women who might have so little."

"Would you have the Master of Coin prepare a coffer? For charity?"

"As it was with the galley, I have already taken care of that, uncle," Baelor smiled. "Ninety eight gold dragons. I was told that it might take two weeks to ride to the Quiet Isle, and that sum lets me give seven gold dragons a day."

"The gods will smile on your gracious charity, my king," her uncle replied. "If you have taken care of everything, then I must wish only that you have swift travels, good weather, and the reflection that you desire."

"Thank you, uncle," Baelor smiled again. "It is most welcome. If you would forgive me, I would depart now."

"We will await your return with eager arms."

Baelor looked to them all in turn, smiling at each and every one. There were nods from the men, and nods from Elaena. Then he looked to Daena, and though it felt like her neck would surely snap in defiance of the gesture, she did the same as well, bidding him a good journey. With that, Baelor turned. With that, Baelor left.

And one step turned to two, two to three, and still no one spoke until he was well out of view. Half the Kingsguard had remained behind, the king having taken two of their number as his escort, mayhaps a dozen more of the household guard as well. Daena wondered if he was even going to ride on this journey, or ride a horse at the least and not a donkey or in the back of a wagon. Baelor had walked through the sands of Dorne on foot with neither food nor water, and though that might sound impressive, even the Dornishmen are said to have thought him a fool who had killed himself as surely as if he had drank a vial of poison, and more than that, he had done so with a smile. Pious and trusting in the will of the gods was what Baelor had said of it, but Daena herself had thought it madness even then. He had spent weeks in his bed, unable to be roused by maester or septon, and the realm seemed ready to lose another king right after Daeron...already, the maesters had said that the journey had damaged the brain that was the home of his wits and mind, and that he might never wake. Eventually he did, and embraced the gods all the more for saving him, but somehow she doubted that he would be so inclined to do that walk again, even in the more comfortable and friendly climes of the Crownlands.

Then, when the door to the Red Keep opened and closed, and Baelor was out of ear shot, Elaena laughed.

"I told you so," she said, knowingly, barely able to say the words through her giggling laughter. "I told you!"

"Gods, Elaena," Daena breathed, suddenly. "I thought he might've kept you here."

"I told you he wouldn't," her sister laughed. "The decree had the royal seal on it, and that's an oath made of wax. He can't break it without insulting the Father by ignoring a command given in his own name."

Viserys smiled. "He has no choice but to let you go. Clever."

Daena smiled, but her uncle's gaze turned to her as well. "But that means that you must do everything that letter commanded. You must watch her. His Grace surely doesn't like this, but he will hold his terms to the letter, so long as you do the same."

"I'm keeping her safe," Daena insisted...

...but with a hungry mouthful of sausage, her sister laughed again. "And away from food!"

Viserys seemed to smile at that. It was a comfort for him to see his nieces at least. Daena was happy for that. "And...that's fair, I suppose."

"Fair it might be, but it is also something you cannot risk at all," her uncle counseled. "The terms of the letter were that she was taken care of very well. The king will keep his part, but so must you. Elaena will have to be pampered."

Elaena laughed. Daena asked. "Pampered? Really?"

"Pampered, yes," Viserys continued. "Other men around the realm might write to the king, and even a mention that she was hungry or that she needed new clothes might be enough for his Grace to say that you have broken your side of the bargain. There can be no doubt whatsoever about her being well kept and looked after."

It was her husband that spoke. She welcomed his words, but they were not as reassuring as she might've hoped. "It might be hard to do that in the North. We don't get southron fabrics in Winterfell."

"But you do get fabrics," Viserys answered in turn, and looked to Daena. "Keep her wardrobe full, see her learn, and make sure that she does not get so much as a scratch, or lose a hair upon her head that she does not want to keep, and Baelor will be happy."

"I don't want to end up back here, but we do have to do what he says," Elaena reasoned. Her hand reached out for the breakfast wine, but Viserys was quick to move that aside, and found her juice instead. "It isn't me you have to worry about, it's others telling him."

"This doesn't sound too hard," Jonnel reasoned. "We simply need to treat the princess...like a princess."

"Hang on," Aegon asked, looking to her husband and to Daena both. "I know you ran away with her, but how? How did you get her out, and how did you keep her? I hear this about the royal seal?"

"That was my doing," Viserys said. "I am bound by oath to my brother, may his rest peacefully, to watch over his children. Elaena would have lost her wits if she had to stay in that chamber, so when given the chance to let her go, I took it."

"But getting her out," Aemon asked. "How? I'm Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. How did you get around me?"

"And since we don't need to worry about you taking her back, I can tell you," Daena said, with the first true smile she had worn all day. "We got her out in plain sight, pretending to be a servant girl."

"A pregnant serving girl," Elaena said. "I had to get my egg out."

"...you used the dragon egg to pretend to be pregnant?" Aemon asked, astonished. "What?"

"It worked," Elaena shrugged, innocently. "I didn't think it would, but it did."

"That is madness," Aegon laughed, skewering a slice of yet more bacon into his mouth. "How did you get past the guards like that?"

"Father, did you help them?" Aemon asked.

"Only a little. I had the feeling that Daena would try and help her sister escape the moment she had a chance. It was easy enough to make a...vulnerability in the guard patrols," her uncle reasoned. "It was never at risk from the outside, but one person, looking as though they belonged? That is how you escape a castle."

"Dearest uncle, ever a schemer," Daena laughed. Jonnel smiled at her for that. "I wouldn't have believed it, were it not you."

"...and better him than anyone else," Aemon said with relief. "If that was not done on purpose, and Elaena slipped out on her own, I would've been worried that someone else could slip in. Still, it wouldn't be a bad idea to do some fresh rounds of the castle. If Elaena made it that far before a brother of mine realized she was pillows in her bed, then that holds ill for defense."

"You needn't worry about that," Aegon offered his brother. "So long as you look like you belong, they'll let you in through the front gate."

"Let me guess, you got women into the castle that way," Viserys said, with honest amusement. "Did you hide them in a wagon?"

"You don't even need to hide them half the time," Aegon said with a shrug. "Just hold them on an arm, tell the guards you're a prince and she's your companion, and they'll let you through."

"That is not something easily fixed," Aemon nodded.

"Nor is it something that should be fixed," Aegon offered. "My daughter has a wet nurse, and Baelor won't let her stay overnight in the castle. I won't have her missing her morning meal because some guard at the door thinks he's Symeon Star-Eyes."

"And you can't have the women...examined to see if they are the nurse," Viserys said. "That would be a worse indignity for the king than letting them stay here. It is a good thing for you to mention, though. I will see about having some quarters made available for her in the nursery."

It was Jonnel that spoke.

"How is she?" he asked. "The...princess?"

It was mayhaps only an outsider that might've had the courage to ask that, but it was a question that they all shared. Daena would've asked it herself, but after what had happened with the king, with her uncle's wordless plea, she felt it better not to.

And for what it was worth, Aegon nodded.

"Doing better, and if there was ever a thing to thank the gods like Baelor does, it's that," her cousin answered, softer than he usually might. "I spent so long in the bedchamber with her that I lost track of half the time. She was born not even a week ago, that raven must've reached you in a day or two, and then you spent...how long on the river?"

"Two days, and a half, I think? More, less? I don't know," Jonnel answered, honestly. "It all blurs together after so long with so little rest."

"The same was true for us in Dorne," Aegon agreed. "No wonder everyone only ever talks about the battles. They're the only part you can remember. The rest is just a blur of marching and resting."

Aegon dared to smile, then.

"But she's doing better, that I know. Maester Munkun says we're past the darkest moments, she's only got stronger since she started to nurse at the breast."

"That is good to know, brother," Aemon agreed, happily. "That was the darkest time I have ever seen you in."

"I take my victories where I can find them," Aegon agreed. "We've all had our losses, too many, I think. It is about time we start to get some fortune."

"I would raise a glass to that," Viserys said. "To fortunes to come."

Jonnel raised his cup. "To fortunes to come."

Daena agreed. They had given her a wine glass, and it did well enough. "To fortunes to come."

Aegon extended his cup with a wavering arm and a well gloved hand. "To fortunes!"

Aemon and Elaena joined, and cups and glasses clinked together. Daena drank, and drank deeply. This was a good thought. This was a good thing. With all the misfortune they had, surely things were due for a turn for the better? Naerys and her son were dead, but her daughter was alive and growing stronger. Her husband had been through a nightmare, but perhaps the door was open to something brighter at last? Her uncle had seen his daughter burn, but now he had a granddaughter to carry on her legacy, and could see his nieces free.

It felt to her that there was a chance for things to go right again. The years had not been kind to the Targaryens, or to Starks, or to anyone, she felt. Perhaps things were about to change. Perhaps it was now that things might take a turn for the better.

She liked that thought. Daena liked it a lot.

It helped that the wine was nice, too.

"And how is your arm, Aegon?" Viserys asked.

"Healing well, though the stitches still pull if I reach too far," the prince said. "Munkun says I can have them out in a few more days at the least, though he would want them in longer if he had his way."

Daena looked to him curiously at that. "You were cut? How? Did you get in a fight the moment I left?"

Aegon looked to Aemon.

Aemon looked to Aegon.

"It's a...uh, story for another time," Aemon offered.

Daena leaned forward. She was smiling at this.

"Now, saying that, I want to know."

Viserys stepped in quickly.

"It was a simple thing. A training accident. Aemon had returned from Lys and needed a chance to test his arm, and Aegon had came back from guarding his daughter's chambers."

"You fought a practice bout with real steel?" Elaena said with surprise. "And...without armor?"

"There's no fooling her, father," Aegon laughed. "She's too much like you."

Viserys seemed to laugh, and let his son speak more freely.

"Aemon and I hadn't quite seen...eye to eye on his return from Lys," Aegon smiled. "We came to blows. Real steel."

"Gods, do I regret it. I let my feelings cloud my judgement," Aemon apologized. "I had only learnt that Naerys had...gone. I hadn't thought, and -"

"It does no good to brood on it. I've forgiven you already, brother," Aegon offered...and then he turned to the others, smiling. "And for what is worth, I was winning."

"You were winning?" Daena said, surprised. "Against Aemon? Really?"

"I was," Aegon smiled.

Daena looked to Aemon. "Really?"

Aemon sighed.

His voice was quiet. "He was."

"Gods above!" Daena laughed. "As if the duel in the yard was not enough. Aemon, you must be losing your edge."

"Cregan was the best swordsman I've ever faced," Aemon admitted. "It was just in the room, I couldn't...move, not with all the tables and chairs in the way, and it was so dark I could barely see a thing."

"It wasn't even that," Aegon laughed. "All that armor was slowing you down, and Blackfyre gives me reach and strength that Dark Sister doesn't."

Still, Daena laughed, and Elaena laughed with her. Even after being confined to her chambers, she had seen Aegon and Aemon on the practice yard more than once - both of them were battle hardened warriors with real fighting experience won in Dorne, and that meant that Aegon himself was no poor sword...but Aemon had always seemed to be even better than him, a grade of his own. Then Cregan had shown him that there was yet another floor atop of Aemon when he disarmed him so easily into their bout in the courtyard on the day she left, and then this talk now, of Aegon besting Aemon in a real duel with real steel, and Valyrian steel at that! And without armor! Oh, Aemon.

"My boys, that is enough of that," Viserys said, looking to Aemon and Aegon both. "There is a matter we must settle. I had hoped to do it myself, but..."

He sighed.

Aemon was quick.

"Is something wrong, father?"

"I will need the both of you to leave the city, and the castle," Viserys started -

- and Aegon was quick and confused. "But I haven't done anything wrong? Why would you send me -"

"It is no punishment, Aegon. It is a mission," her uncle said. "Gods know, it is a thing I would've done myself, but the king's retreat forces my hand. Whilst he is away, I must manage things here."

"What is it you need, father?" Aemon asked. "Whatever it is, we can get it done."

Viserys went quiet. For a while, he seemed so very little like the man that Daena knew. He seemed older. Weaker. Tired. Too tired.

And then he spoke with certainty, and those weaknesses fell from him as quickly as they had came.

"Someone must tell her mother," he said to the both of them. He straightened in his seat. Daena knew why. There were reasons why Larra Rogare was not around in King's Landing, reasons why she had left all those years ago. She knew little more than that there had been great troubles, terrible problems that saw their union fall apart not long after they came back to Westeros....a story rooted in the war of her grandmother's time, in the Dance of the Dragons. "She has every right to know of what has happened to Naerys. If I cannot tell her myself, then it must come from you two, her children."

Aegon almost choked on his meal. "You want us to find -"

"- your mother," Viserys said, and nodded. "She is in Lys."

Even Aemon seemed to hesitate. "Father, are you sure of this? She left us so long ago..."

"She has a right to know. She must know," Viserys nodded. "For all that we have came apart...it was still her daughter that we lay to rest last night. She must know. She deserves that much, even now."

Jonnel looked to Daena in confusion and uncertainty. There were questions here that he did not understand. Elaena leaned in to whisper, but Viserys waved her off.

"I don't know if she does," Aegon said. "She chose what she wanted in her life. It wasn't us."

"....is that fair?" Elaena asked. "She birthed you."

Aegon glared at her little sister, and Elaena hastily retreated back to her meal.

"She's not wrong. Those are harsh words, brother, but...maybe not untrue," Aemon said, half agreeing and half not. He looked to their father.

Viserys shook his head. "It was neither of you that drove her away, I can tell you that now. She loved all three of you."

"But not so much that she might've stayed?" Aegon asked. His voice was harder, darker. "What is a mother's love for her children, if she cannot stand to be around them? She didn't give a damn about us, and was gone before Naerys had even been weaned!"

His father did not rise to a fury, or to strength, or to anything. He looked to Aemon.

Aemon spoke honestly.

"Aegon's words are...not the way I would say it, but I wouldn't say that they're wrong," the Dragonknight replied. "We did not leave her, father. She left us."

Viserys drew a breath. Viserys nodded. He didn't have the fight in him to press this.

Daena spoke, almost without thinking.

"Does Naerys not deserve for her mother to know?" she asked.

Aemon looked at her with uncertainty. Aegon looked at her as if she had just slapped him.

Elaena looked at her as if watching her sister throw herself from a balcony.

Still, Daena spoke.

"It isn't for your mother that this has to be done. It's for Naerys."

"She left Naerys before she was even a year old," Aegon said. "If mother loved her, she would've stayed for longer than that."

"No," Aemon agreed. "Daena's right. We're not doing this for her. Naerys would've wanted her to know."

That gave Viserys a push, reigniting his determination and hope to get this done.

"After all this?" Aegon asked. "You think Naerys would've forgiven her that?"

"Naerys could forgive anyone," Aemon answered. "You know that."

Aegon looked down at his plate. Aegon looked down to his hands.

Aegon looked to his father.

And at last, Aegon smiled.

"You say she went to Lys?"

"It was her homeland," Viserys said, refreshed, ready for another round of verbal dueling. With Aemon, he only had to tempt the one, now, and knew exactly how. "I would've gone myself, but work leaves me busy. If you wish to stay here as Baelor's acting Hand, then that can be done. It will be ceaseless work overseeing the construction of the Great Sept, managing the affairs of the realm, and much and more."

"Or," Viserys offered. "You might travel to the city of Lys, the lovely, famous for its courtesans, pillow-houses and wine."

"You play to that part of me?" Aegon asked, with a playing smile. "It is now that you approve?"

"No, it is now that I understand that my son needs a rest as well," Viserys nodded. This was not bargaining, Daena knew. This was raw honesty. "We have all lost and suffered as of late, but you especially, Aegon. I know. You wear your smiles and say your japes, but I see those gloves on your hands, and I know you beat your fists bloody on that tree. Even a prince needs rest, and I would rather my son settle his grief on the sands of Lys than be devoured by it here in King's Landing."

That seemed to rip through her cousin. It revealed the wounds he had tried to hide. Leaning back into his seat, the prince sighed, and breathed. He seemed so tired, and so unlike himself. No japes. No lust. Just a tired man, weary beyond his years.

"Is that to be my part of this, then?" he asked. "A pleasure trip to Lys whilst my brother delivers the message?"

"Call it an errand you must do. I will give you coin aplenty, though you might have until Baelor returns. He would not approve of either of you being in Lys for so long, It will take you nearly a week to get there at the least, and that might give you six weeks there. Time aplenty to rest, and time enough to find her and bring her word of what has happened here."

"And time enough to recover after telling her," Aegon said. "Fine. I will go, but I would have you swear -"

"You do not need me to swear a vow to keep an eye on your daughter, and Daeron too," Viserys answered. "It is always there."

Aegon nodded at that. To the surprise of all, he stood. "If we're going to go, we may as well go now."

Elaena was surprised. "You haven't even finished breaking your fast?"

"I've broke enough of it," he said. "Gods know, my father was right when he said these walls were too familiar. I need to be away from this place."

"Take your leave, and prepare whatever things you might take," Viserys said.

Aegon nodded, and marchied swiftly to the door. Aemon almost had to leap from his chair to keep up with him.

But before he could go, before he might leave, his father spoke again.

"And Aegon?"

The son glanced to the father.

"I had planned to offer you this journey, even if I could go. Your part is not merely about your mother, I know that there is no lost love between you and her," her uncle said. "What is it, then, is to come back refreshed, and without this weight on your shoulders. It doesn't matter what you must do to get it done, just do it."

"I have lost one child already," Viserys said, so softly, so gently. "I will not lose another to grief."

The two looked at one another for a while, for a second, Daena thought she saw a tear in her uncle's eye. That would not at all have been like him. He never cried. He never wept.

He was the might of their family. The pillar. Towering and colossal.

And his children were the mortar that gave him the strength to lift the world upon his shoulders.

Aegon saw that. Aemon saw that. They all saw it.

Aegon nodded. Wordless thanks, so much more powerful than those said.

Then the two brothers left, and that left Viserys alone with her, her husband, and her sister.

"Do you think they can find her?" Daena asked. "Did you never look yourself? Didn't you try try and find her after she left?"

"Larra made it clear she did not want to be found," Viserys said, grimly. "It was not what she wanted. She had enough of this place for a lifetime."

He shook his head, then. "But that is enough talk of my own ghosts. What of you, niece? Has all gone well on the road?"

Jonnel looked to her, as if asking if they should be honest. Daena gave her answer with her words. "We're...working on it."

"We've had our troubles, things from before we were wed," Jonnel added in honest agreement. "We're trying to sort them out."

"That you can even say that at all shows you're already leagues ahead of half the marriages in Westeros," Viserys smiled. "There's few who get to choose who they marry in this land, but it is what happens after the wedding that matters. Most try only to share some respect with one another, others pay no attention at all until the time comes to make heirs. If you are honest about working on it as a relationship at all, then things will surely only get better and brighter from here."

Daena seemed fit to smile at that...but it didn't quite appear. She knew where his experiences of this came from. "Uncle, I know when you are trying to distract me."

"Is it that obvious?"

Elaena nodded.

"Then I will be honest. It isn't you that I am trying to distract," he said. "It is myself. All this is giving me much and more to think about. Too much, even."

"Is it because of...?"

"My wife?" Viserys asked. "A little, perhaps, but Naerys has her part in it as well. As she should, mind."

"What happened?" Jonnel asked, openly.

"That's a story for me to tell you when we're at sea," Daena offered -

- but Viserys cut her off with his own words. "It is a long story, one that starts here, goes to Lys, and then ends up here again. You already know of the Dance of the Dragons, my mother's war. I escaped that war on a galley, and found myself in the care of the Rogares, who took me in, ansd raised me as if I was their own...but they also had a daughter, a few years my elder. Suffice to say, you do not need to know the rest of that tale to know where it leads. A certain evening later, we were...discovered, and wed not long after."

"My uncle, with his secret lover?" Daena laughed. "I hadn't expected that."

"If there was ever a lady of the court you might've liked other than your sisters, it was her," Viserys said. "Larra was a woman who would bow to no one. She had her ways, and everyone else had theirs, and not even the Seven would be able to move her from her path. You could call her stubborn, but a mule would be no match at all for her in that. It would shame even a dragon. She was a true fighter."

"All was well until we returned to Westeros, but it was there that things began to grow troubled," her uncle continued. "Lys is a city of merchants and magisters as well as courtesans and pleasure houses, and the Rogares were masters of a bank that was every piece its equal to that of the Iron Bank of Braavos itself. Wise investments and clever use of their coin had carried them high, and for a time they might've even matched the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, coin for coin...but for all that wealth, they were not noblemen. Westeros and Essos are different places, more than just for the nature of lords and the like. The way that things are done here is different. We have our practices and procedures, our expectations and duties."

Viserys sighed, then, and slumped back into his chair.

"It was doomed the moment we came to Westeros again. More than that, you needn't much know."

"But I want to know?" Elaena asked.

"You might want to know, but I do not want to say," Viserys answered, firm, but not harsh. "Mistakes were made on all sides, but what happened...happened."

A part of her wondered, and a part of her thought. It almost sounded like he still loved her, at least a little, at least in part. She would never be able to get him to say the truth of it, if that was so, at least not directly...and a part of her wondered if she should even try to learn that. Her uncle had never been anything but kind to her, kind to her and to her sisters, and to both her brothers, too. It was clear he did not want this to be pried at, did not want to be questioned, and that was clear without him even needing to say that he did not want to talk of it. She felt like she should not ask.

Elaena started to speak, but Daena reached out.

"Leave him be. If he does not want to talk of this, let him not."

Elaena looked to her sister, and then to her uncle, and then to Daena again. She nodded.

But still, Daena wanted to talk. Not of that. Not of a thing that might've marked him with unease. She had been on the road again. Amongst the trees, on the shores of the God's Eye lake, in the rolling rooms of the wheelhouse. She wanted to talk about all of that, and yet, and yet...the thought of this to do with his lady wife was all that came into mind, all that she could organize into words. It was all that she might think to talk about.

Viserys saw that. He knew. He was not unkind. He never was.

He spoke before she might.

"The singers like to compare women to the sun, but that is a fool thing, really," Viserys said. It was not in him to ramble in this way, to trade practicalities for poetics. "Most men prefer days of cloud, without the heat beating down on their backs."

But still, it was poetics that came.

"It is true, though. When the sun shines so brightly, we relish in its warmth. When it comes with fury, we hide from it, rushing to shade to flee from its strength. We notice it most only when we see that it is missing...but it is only when it is about to leave us that we look to them, and see how beautiful they are. And when they are gone, we want nothing more than to see them shining anew."

Daena was almost breathless. "Uncle..."

"That, Daena, is love. At the worst of it, I could not stand to be around her, nor she around me. I had chosen my work as Hand and Westeros. She chose freedom of courtly practices and Lys," he said, quietly. "We hated each other...now, I would wish her back here, if only to give her the chance to mourn our daughter."

Her uncle sighed, wearily.

"Does that sate your curiosity enough?"

"You didn't need to sate anything," she said. "You can keep your feelings and secrets to yourself if you want them, uncle. I would never want to force these words from you."

"It was not you that forced them. It is this day," Viserys said with a low shake of his head. "I hide it well, but even I tire, and need to make peace with myself every once in a while. All men do."

"That I know," Jonnel echoed. "This world is not a kindly place."

"But it has its little joys," Viserys added, a counter. "That is what we should be remembering, now. Joys. Joys and the good of life. That is what Naerys might've wanted. Good moments, and happy ones. Things to laugh, and love."

Her uncle reached to the wine in the midst of the table, pouring himself a fresh glass.

And then he looked to his nieces with a smile, and asked.

"So, tell me more of how you got out the Red Keep."

For a moment, neither of them did anything...but Elaena giggled, and then it was on.

"Well, you already know she used the dragon egg to pretend to be pregnant," Daena said, smiling. "We made a story about the Master of Coin, Manderly?"

"Lord Manderly, with a bastard?" Viserys asked, and smiled. "You would be like to see Baelor throw him out on the streets if you said that."

"It was a good story to get her out of the castle with a party of Northmen, though. We used ash to make her silver hair a lot darker."

"We?" Elaena asked. "You mean me."

"Elaena did it," her sister admitted. "But Jonnel came up with the idea of using a pillowcase as a cloak. That was clever."

"And he covered my cheeks in grime," her sister murmured.

Jonnel smiled. "It did work."

Even still, Viserys was smiling. Daena knew he wanted this. Their happy stories, their warm tales of being on the road. They told him everything. They told him of how they had been feasted at Darry and fed roasted swan drier than the dust of Dorne. They told him of how they had gone to the Isle of Faces and found naught but bones where they landed, and were driven off by a flood of tree sap. They told him of how she had slipped on the sands til she cursed the Seven, and that made him laugh. They told him everything. They sat there long after the plates were cleared away, just talking. Elaena, asking constant questions. Viserys, eager to listen. Jonnel, awkward in his answers, btu trying his best. Daena, ever leading them onward.

She knew her uncle needed it. She needed it. Jonnel needed it. Elaena surely needed it as well. They all needed it.

They all talked together as friends.

They talked together as family.

And when the time finally came that saw them rise from the table and make ready to go about their days once more, she saw something that had been so absent from her uncle's eyes for the whole time she had seen him that day.

Joy.

Warmth.

Happiness.

It was a good day. It was a good thing.

It felt to Daena as if she had paid him back, ever so little, for all that he had done for her...and when she left King's Landing again, the pain was not nearly so great as it had been when they came.

End of Part 16
****​

Slight lore thing that might be noticed here: Larra Rogare. We never really knew what happened to her before Fire & Blood (she died not long after leaving), but since this work was published before then, she's actually still alive...or should be. See, back when I was writing this story, I put the mention in one of the earliest Cregan PoVs that she was actually dead, but didn't even realise that went against my own part plan from back in the day = even when that part was written all those years ago, although closer to lore accuracy, it wasn't actually correct for the story, and would've busted up Aegon's storyline: a thing I only realized after writing not just this point of view chapter, but the one that might've came after it. As such, I've corrected that to the story version, which allows things to continue.

Now, I'm gonna go paint, as I do need to rest a bit more than I have

 

[Chojomeka]

Hopefully maybe Viserys will be able to convince the Befuddled One to switch from a temple of his own hubris to remaking something for the actual people he claims to be the king of.....like the King's Road.

 

[CaekDaemon]

Happy Easter!

****
Somewhere in the Narrow Sea...​

If there was one thing that Aegon Targaryen could say that he had little fondness for, it was sailing. It was a slow thing. Crude. Dirty. Devoid of the little pleasures of life, and packed with many of its irritants. Travel by galley stunk of manflesh, sweat, and the grime of hundreds of unwashed men toiling away at their oars. Travel by sailing ship was cleaner in that regard, but cramped and tight, carracks trading more than just oars for sails, but bulk for speed. Even a prince could expect no fine chambers or quarters here, and though it would have been then that the singers or mummers would have said that the captain so kindly gave him his own, that was not so. The captain's chambers were packed with maps and instruments of sailing, as much a war room as a tent pitched before battle, with furnishings nailed to the wooden boards. There had been no room for him there, and so they had to find a space elsewhere. It was good enough, he supposed. Fighting in Dorne at the side of his cousin Daeron had given him a certain softness for simpler chambers, an acceptance that he might not always have a featherbed beneath his back, wine in his cup, or a woman in his sheets...but that had still prepared him little for near enough having to share with his brother Aemon. Their beds had been so close together as to be near enough one and the same, the room so tight packed with their belongings that he could barely climb from his bed without tripping over some fastening for his brother's breastplate, and even sleeping at all was a challenge when every wave that kissed the hull made the mail rattle on its rack.

That made it a comfort to get out of the wooden box that was their room, and into the fresh, pure air of the deck. The sky burnt so bright and blue as to seem like a vast sheet of azure satin, broke only by a handful of clouds as pure and pale as a woman's veil. The ocean beneath it was like the color of good steel, deep and flat, and the wind bore the smell of sea and salt as it flooded their scarlet sails. Aegon Targaryen had little love for sailing, but a view such as this was one that he could grow to love. It had played a part in this. For all that he had fought and resisted it when the idea first came, Aegon had found himself growing more and more eager with every moment that passed on the waters of the Narrow Sea. He was looking forward to Lys. The drama and talk had struck him at a weaker moment, helped little by the time it had taken for them to make the journey work. The ships had needed to take on supplies to make the voyage. The Grand Maester had needed to tend to his stitches and deem him fit for travel. Daeron needed comfort. His daughter needed a nurse, and guards, and a bed, and for her father to be comfortable with the idea of leaving her for even a moment. All that had needed to happen.

Aegon had not been eager to start.

But now that he was here, the ocean seemed a wonder. Vast. Beautiful. Like the skirts of some maid, rippling beneath his touch. Stood at the prow, atop one of the ship's twin structures, its castles, Aegon could only smile, even as he looked down, watching the water split against her bow, the very forward most piece of the ship. It was not merely water he might see from there. Gazing down, he saw that the Quicksilver, this ship of his, was graced with the figure of a woman: a silver maiden with long curling hair, whose arms became the wings of dragons, and who had, to his amusement and comfort, a more than ample chest.

"My prince, we have made the last correction to our course," the captain said, walking over to his side. Aegon had learnt his name. Baldrick. He had fought beneath the banner of King Daeron, ferrying troops to a conquered Sunspear. The years had not been kind to him, Aegon thought, for he was bald in truth as well as in name. The lack of hair had left him defenseless against the sun, and its light and rays had carved deep wrinkles into his brow, seeming to set dark eyes even further into his head. "It shan't be long before Lys comes into view, if our numbers were right."

"All the better, then," Aegon smiled. "I'll be glad to get off."

The captain seemed to smile. "Few men aren't happy to get off at Lys, my prince. My crew might be born of King's Landing and have brothers and cousins working on the Great Sept there, but that doesn't mean they aren't eager for their own chance to walk the docks of Lys."

"You'll be staying with us for a while?"

"For the whole time," Baldrick nodded. "Your royal father would have us as your escape, if you must need it."

Aegon smiled at that. "And to drag me back, if I want not to leave?"

"That too," the captain smiled. "We've our duty to do, those this one might be more pleasant than most."

"We have our duties as well," his brother said, walking over in his armor, his white cloak billowing in the wind. "This isn't merely a trip of pleasure."

Baldrick nodded, and took his leave. That left Aegon with Aemon, and Aegon was less eager to be reminded of that part. The duel had changed things between them...but that did not mean that it was less fun and joyous to be reminded of what they had to do. "You heard father. That's just an errand."

"An errand, yes, but one that we must get done," Aemon nodded. He stood at his brother's side, gazing out into the distance. Lys was still as yet out of view, but would be soon crossing the horizon. "You mightn't wish to see her again, but we have to tell -"

"- mother," he nodded, and sighed. "If there ever was a word I wish you didn't need to say..."

There was a truth if there ever was one. He had no lost love at all for his mother. He barely remembered her, but that fact alone was reason enough to think of her solely as Larra Rogare, and not mother. He hadn't even been five years old when she left his life, and what he remembered of her was a blur: a blurry voice, a blurry face, a blurry figure leaving a blurry dock. His feelings, though, they were not at all a blur. They were anger. They were loathing. They were hatred. How could they not be, when she had walked out of his life without so much as a care? When she had abandoned them all? His father, left to shoulder the realm alone. Naerys, a baby still in need of milk and a mother's warmth. Aemon, yet to see his third nameday, crying so much his tears could've drowned the world. And then there was Aegon himself. He still remembered the day around him as a blur, but inside, he knew it well. Confusion. He couldn't understand why she left. He couldn't understand why he might never see her again. He had stood on that blurry dock, and watched her go over the sunset. He hadn't cried. He hadn't wept.

He just hadn't understood, then.

But he understood well, now. Too well. He had thought but rarely about it over the years. He had forgotten her, but he had not forgotten what she had done.

She betrayed them.

She had abandoned them.

She had left them.

As far as Aegon was concerned, she had no right at all to learn of anything of their lives. She had forsaken that years ago.

That look and thought must have surely been plain on his face, for Aemon knew exactly what it was that was in Aegon's mind.

"I'm sorry that I must mention it," his brother apologized. "But it is a thing we must see through. Your part is a bargain that our lord father made, but we must hold up our end."

Aegon nodded. These were not thoughts that were strangers to him. There had been times in his life when they had dominated him, a festering wound on his heart...but that time was long and gone. The wound had been purged. Cleansed. Sealed. His heart had hardened, from stone to steel. It was an unpleasantry to remember. It stung.

But it could not dominate him. It could not control him, as it once had. He had made peace with it all, so long ago. She had abandoned him. She had betrayed him. She had left him for the shores of Lys.

And he had forgotten her entirely.

He did not remember her face.

He did not remember her voice.

She was dead to him.

She was gone.

It was that lack of remembering that got him out of it, in the end. The pain could not burn so sharply when he did not even truly remember who it was that it came from.

And that meant that it could not be a true damper of his eager spirits, and after a moment and then another, Aegon was smiling again. He knew where they were going. Lys was a city that needed no introduction whatsoever. It was famous. It was more than famous. It was legendary. When mighty Valyria had still stood atop Essos, the city of Lys had been the playground of its elites, of dragonlords and Freeholders alike. It was the very image of leisure and luxury, of such opulence as to go beyond the meaning of any one word. He had never been for himself, but he had read and heard stories...and if it was anything like them, even in the slightest, then he was sure he might never want to leave.

That was the thought that kept a smile on his face, and made him look to his brother with eager eyes.

Aemon's look back was not quite so eager. He seemed to Aegon as if he might've been expecting some words more about the errand that they had to run, but Aegon did not care for such things. It was other thoughts that were going through his mind - fountains where wine flowed and sprayed like water, women in satins and silks so thin that it was as if they wore nothing at all, and velvet cushions to rest upon as they tended to him.

Compared to that, what was any errand but a chore to be done? What was the worth of a careless mother, compared to the ceaseless throngs of women that his charms might win or his gold might buy? Even empty hands could be filled here.

Aegon could not help but smile, and the smile blossomed into a grin.

"You spent ages here," Aegon started. "What is it like, truly? Beyond the stories?"

"There's...a few words I would use," his brother answered. "Decadent is one."

"You say that like it isn't meant to be decadent. It was the leisure-land of Valyria."

"That it was," Aemon agreed...but countered. "But there's a difference between rest and being this...licentious. I couldn't walk more than twenty feet at a time without being offered a place in a bed."

"You should've taken that as praise," Aegon smiled. "Most wenches expect you to come to them, not the other way around."

"It is not an honor I want," his brother sighed. "And...it was not just the women."

"Oh, I remember that from the stories," Aegon laughed. "They have pleasure boys in Lys as much as they have pleasure girls, don't they?"

His brother's answer was amusingly meek. "They do."

"More luck for you then that you have me here," Aegon smiled. "All the women, and mayhaps the men too, will be looking at me instead."

His brother smiled at that. "A comfort for you then. You do love the attention."

"I am a Targaryen, a dragon, and dragons do so love their attention."

"What of me, then?" his brother asked. "I am a Targaryen, too."

"You're the Grey Ghost," Aegon answered. "All white and pale, liking no attention at all...but still dangerous."

Aemon seemed half amused by that, but accepted the comparison well enough. "Mayhaps I shall hide in your shadow, then."

"And miss all the glances and looks of the Lyseni?"

"If they wish to applaud my skills and chivalry, then fair," Aemon said. "Simply...lusting for me is improper."

"Improper it may be, but I promise you, Aemon," Aegon smiled, clapping his brother on the shoulder. "By the time we're done in Lys, you won't be a man-maid. I'll find the best woman for you."

Aemon stared back at him in horror.

Aegon laughed.

"Or not," he offered. "You being so chaste only makes me look better. The less keys there are on the ring, the more locks one of them can go into, eh?"

"...only you could make talking of locks and keys into something lewd," Aemon sighed. "Besides, I couldn't even if I wanted to."

"Because if you did, then you would be Ser Lucamore the Lusty come again, and we all know what happened to him," Aegon nodded with a smile, and made his jape. "A pity he wasn't one of the Fossoway apples. He was all fruit and no seeds after they gelded him."

"Land!" someone shouted. "Land ahead! Land!"

Eager to see if the stories and tales were true, and even more eager to see where he would be spending the next few majestic weeks, Aegon peered out to the horizon, looking, searching. For a moment, he saw nothing. It all seemed a hazy blur to him on the horizon. Still, the shout came out again, and the captain went to his work of bringing them closer still, and Aegon looked, and squinted -

- and saw. What was in the distance was so faint and pale that he was shocked that any had seen it at all, a barely visible thing. It was no shore. It was no city. It was the very uppermost steeples of the greatest towers of a daughter of Valyria itself, one of the great Free Cities of Essos. The wind turned in their favor again, carrying them further and faster. He knew no good measures of speed at sea, had no feel for it as he did on land with a horse between his legs, but he was sure they must be going twice as fast as even the quickest of galleys, mayhaps even thrice as quick. Because of that speed, Lys drew ever closer with every moment, and more and more of her was being revealed before his eyes like a woman emerging from a hot, steaming bath in all her beautiful nakedness...and like with a woman, he could not avert his eyes until he had his fill of her beauty. Before long, what he could see were no mere towers, but a city proper, built on a scale so vast as to dwarf even King's Landing itself. As they came closer, the towers resolved from blurs into shapes and structures - curving, curling spires that were distant and lesser kin to the lost buildings of Old Valyria, where dragonlords might perch in comfort, and survey the world on the ground as they might from the sky above. Some bore bells, the upper most parts of temples that had risen over the years. Others seemed more martial and round, younger, fortifications within the city itself that had surely been raised in the years after the Doom and the Century of Blood that marked the collapse of the Freehold.

And then he saw more. Massive monolithic walls, a match for any of the great strongholds of Westeros bar Harrenhal, hewn from vast blocks of milk-white stone and not raised by sorcery as they had been at Dragonstone. Banners fluttered from them, the city banners and not those of any one house. Pink, white, blue, carried by cloth of such length and scale as to be the size of their ship. Lys was a land of leisure and luxury, even after the Doom. It was no city of warriors and armies, and its colors seemed to mark that. Lighter, softer, a delicate hand inside a delicate glove. The island too came into view. Shallow, sprawling, a paradise of fertile soils, sandy white beaches, palm trees and turquoise shores. The sprawling mass of Westeros stretched for a thousand miles and then a thousand more, but Aegon could not think of a place in that land that was anything like the one that he began to see more and more of in front of him. Idyllic, and peaceful. A land that looked as if the gods themselves had descended from the sky to shape it into perfection. It bore the mark of artistry, rather than the crude beatings of the Smith's hammer that had shaped the rugged hills of the Stormlands, or the jagged rocks of the Vale. The only equal it might have bore in the Seven Kingdoms was perhaps the Arbor, the closest kin it had as an island, and that would've seemed to him more as a sculptor's practice, testing their hand before going onto the real work.

And then they came closer yet, and he saw more. The walls rose up over the horizon, and beneath them came the port. Even from so far away, he could tell it was busy. Even from so far away, he could tell it was massive. Enormous quays had been raised out into the water, piers built not of wood, but of stone. The same white stone that had raised the city had been used to build its harbors, tainted and tinted a murky grey and green by the water and the things that grew in it. Everywhere he looked, there were ships. Ships of every kind. Fat bellied carracks from Lannisport and Oldtown, ready to turn their sails back to the west after a long voyage. Swanships from the distant Summer Islands to the far south, lean and long, their great triangle sails looking like the wings that gave them their name. Galleys, galleys of all kinds and sizes and shapes and colors, from every part of the Narrow Sea. Trade galleys carrying goods that had been sold and bought and sold again at the market. War galleys that prowled hungrily for anyone that might think to break a merchant's peace. Pleasure galleys that idly lingered in the waters, where wealthy men and women alike basked in the sun with their servants and slaves. Siege galleys, of a thousand oars and more, bristling with scorpions and catapults, castles ready to put to sea, yet sat at their moorings in peace. The colors of cities he knew and ones he did not were everywhere. Red and black from King's Landing. Red and gold for Lannisport. Purple and gold from Braavos. Yellow white, surely the mark of far Yi Ti, or black and white, he did not know. Rainbow stripes, the sign of Tyrosh. Purple and white, regal Volantis. There was even the bronze-gold that stirred some dim memory of a maester, lecturing him about the realms of Slaver's Bay. Plain white, for merchant men who bore no flag, there in the hundreds and the thousands.

Here, in Lys, countless people from across the world met in one place, to do but one of two things.

To have fun and make trade.

"And if there was ever a sight," Aegon smiled to his brother. "How could you not love a city that looked like that?"

"By remembering what it was built on," Aemon answered. His eyes were on the city as well, but not nearly as eager as Aegon's own. "Lys may be so beautiful from afar, but when you are there, it feels...wrong."

"Only you might find guilt and woe in a city built to make people happy," Aegon laughed.

"My princes," Baldrick said, coming over to them again. "It shan't take us long from here. My men area already reefing the mainsail, lest it carry us into the port so fast we smash ourselves on the dock."

Aegon knew little about sailing, so he nodded, and smiled with his usual charm. "I'm glad to know that we're not going to die before having all the comforts of Lys."

"There was never any risk of that, my prince," Baldrick smiled, and nodded. "Our escorts kept us safe through the Stepstones, and our course was clear and true."

"You have much to be proud of," Aemon agreed. "It took nearly two weeks to get here before."

"That is so. Much depends on the winds for this, but...still, seven days to Lys," Baldrick said, smiling. "We've travelled very quickly, my princes. A best of mine, I'm sure."

"Is it not common to make that speed?" Aemon asked.

"Comes down to how well and neatly you make the travel on the map," the captain answered, eager, excited by his own success. "That was some one thousand five hundred miles by my reckoning. We must've made seven knots a day to make it here like this, mayhaps even gone to eight...hard, but doable. A galley wouldn't even have you past Tarth in that time."

"You do good work," Aegon smiled. He didn't know enough about ships to know if it was good or not, not really....but it felt right. "I'll have my father give you some gold when we get back."

"Aye, thank you, my prince. The gods must've wanted you here quickly, if they were so kind with these winds."

"More like they wanted us out of godly Westeros, Baelor might say," Aegon japed. His brother could not help but smile, but the captain laughed. "Thank you again. The quicker we get here, the more time we have to enjoy the company of Lys."

Baldrick nodded, and pointed out to a small galley, one of the smallest that Aegon had ever seen, already heading towards them, slowly pushing its way through the waters. Its sails were furled, but there was no mistaking the blue-white-pink of the painted hull, matching the city banners. "Inspection, my princes. Once we are done with them and they know who you both are, they will have us taken to a better port than this. This one is a more...common port."

Before either of them might answer, the captain looked to his crew, and barked out another command. "Reef all sails! They'll tow us the rest of the way!"

"How nice of them," Aegon smiled to his brother. "They're going to guide us in."

Aemon looked back at him, first thinking that his brother's words were innocent...and then realizing. "Is there not anything else that you think of?"

"In Westeros, plenty. In a city famous for its brothels, pleasure houses, wine and women, I just think of what everyone else is thinking," he said, eagerly. He looked to the captain, then. "Isn't that what all men think of this place?"

"I would be lying if I said that it does not test one's...wedding vows," Baldrick laughed. "There are no women more beautiful in this world than the ones that might be found here, in Lys, nor more skilled."

That only made Aegon all the more eager to set foot ashore. "Is that from your own experience?"

"Even a captain from the royal fleet hasn't the coin for the best pleasure houses, but even the cheaper ones...they're better than any you might find in Westeros."

Aegon's smile became a grin. He looked to his brother, eager. He did not need to say anything for his brother to sigh, and Aemon seemed to welcome it when the little galley's horn rang out.

"Hail to you, Westerosi friends!" a voice shouted, perfectly uttering the words of the Common Tongue as only a man with years of practice might. Aegon looked, and saw a man stood at the prow of the lesser ship, wearing a thick, padded jacket striped with the colors of his city. Long, silver hair flowed down past his shoulders, and purple eyes peered back at them - not unkindly, but curiously. "What brings you to lovely Lys?"

"We bear two princes of House Targaryen!" Baldric answered. "They come to Lys for pleasure and comfort!"

Aemon looked astonished, and was quick to try and intervene with that statement. Aegon was faster to confirm it. "That is so! We come to see the wonders of your island!"

"Then you shan't be disappointed, good princes!" the man answered, and looked to Baldric. "Shall we guide you to a better port than this? Away from common traders?"

"It would be much welcomed. We sailed quickly, but the winds are behind us still and might carry us too fast. I wouldn't want to risk an accident here."

"All the better that we have came," the man said with a smile again....and looked to the two Targaryens. "We will have matter of an inspection after you arrive, good princes, but you and yours will be free to disembark as soon as you are able. It is the honor of Lys to see you here."

Aegon only smiled. "It is an honor to be here!"

Aemon reluctantly echoed his words. "It is."

Within moments, the little port galley came up alongside them, and Baldric and his men found a ladder and lowered it down, allowing one of the Lyseni to come aboard, and quicker still to come to the rear, to the tiller that had steered the Quicksilver in its journey. Taking control of the ship from its Westerosi masters, their hand was delicate, and enough to steer and balance the ship as the galley came ahead of them. Aegon and his brother had to do nothing through all of this. All of it was to be done for them. It let him watch, and watch curiously. A grapnel was thrown from one to the next, tied around the railings of the Quicksilver's forward castle, and then another, and another still, till some half dozen ropes kept the two ships docked together, the galley leading the ship that dwarfed it. They signaled with a mirror and a flash of sunlight, and another ship came over, one of the larger war galleys that protected the harbour. For a moment, he thought there to be some issue of trouble, but that grander ship did the same to the lesser one, ropes and grapnels, till all three were docked together, locked in place. The small galley was caught between them and the warship. The entire thing conjured thoughts to Aegon, cruder, lewder images of a smaller lady caught between two burly men.

But then the galleys rowed, and the Quicksilver lurched into motion. They came about, moving not towards the shore, but along it, revealing pale cliffs of the same milky stone that had been used to build the city that stood over them. There, nestled with natural walls of sheer rock, he gained his first view of the city proper. Every home here seemed a manse, sprawling and vast, white walled and black roofed, with windows of the finest crystal glass. Balconies peered off the cliff face, giving a clear view of the sea. Palms loomed over head, and throngs of people, the wealthiest and greatest of Lys, watched as they sailed by.

Almost as if to mock them, Aegon waved.

And then they were out of sight. Naked cliff, dotted by what must've been tunnels for war.

Then there was their port. Nestled in a protected cove, fortified and rebuilt over the years, a second harbour waited for them to arrive. Where hundreds of ships had fought for their place at the moorings, here, there was only some two dozen amid space for twice as many. The rock here was younger and better kept, the same brilliant white as the city. Trees had been potted and dragged along the quay. Guards were everywhere, dressed in blue and white and pink. Slaves were there as well, or what he thought must be them. Slaves to take cargo, slaves to bring shade, slaves to carry one's belongings, already mustering to receive them on the dock. He had no need of them. His guards and escort were servants enough for that. With the cliff so close, the entire thing was stepped and terraced, with winding steps zigging and zagging their way up a hill. At every part of it was another great, ornate building. Places to deal with the most exclusive matters of trade. Taverns as grand as palaces to make rest in, better and comfier than any ship. Markets for certain luxuries best kept away from more bustling squares. This was an exclusive place. This was a wealthy place.

And there, at its summit, he spied what must be none other than a pleasure house. It was a manse in its own right, mayhaps home to some two dozen women, but two dozen women who might've lived in such luxury as to match that of any highborn lady in Westeros. Even from here, he could see veils of silk rippling in the sea breeze, and the palms looming overhead. What beauty lay beneath that shadow? What wonders were beyond the silk? Silver hair? Did they dye it strange colors like they did in Tyrosh? Was it gold and silver, like his cousins? They bore the blood of Valyria, but how true? Did they have the violet eyes? Indigo? Blue? What would they think of him when he came through the door? The gallant prince, come to take them across the sea? The charmer, who would whisper sweet nothings into their ear? And then, when he was in the bedchamber, what then? It was said that the Lyseni had written books on the nature of love. What new pleasures could they teach him? How far could they take him from the things he wanted to forget?

It was looking at it and thinking of it that kept him from realizing that they had arrived, not til the galleys cut away, and left them bobbing against the dock. Even that was not enough to keep him from gazing there. It took Aemon's hand on his shoulder to truly bring him back to the present, to the here and now, and not to the wonders of what might unfold in but a matter of hours.

"Aegon, we're here. We can leave now."

"I'm going there," he said, pointing to to the place. "That's a pleasure house, isn't it?"

"Even the Lyseni are not so lovestruck as you, Aegon," his brother sighed, but seemed to smile. "That's not a pleasure house. That's a place to eat in the shade and sea breeze. The city is hot and humid at night."

Aegon's disappointment was obvious, and he sighed, and turned to his brother, and then towards the ramp, already being lowered onto the harbour. Aegon walked, and Aegon spoke.

"But where are the pleasure houses, if not here?"

Aemon seemed hesitant to answer that. He was quieter. Acting as if he had not heard the question. Aegon knew what that meant, and what disappointment he might've bore boiled away.

"My white cloaked brother," he laughed. "Did you go to a pleasure house?"

"I...had to," Aemon admitted, quietly. "It was where she was. The girl I was sent to find."

"How convenient! You get to play the hero for a dozen women at once!"

"It was not like that," Aemon pleaded, innocently. "I had to find where she was, and that meant finding the house she was sent to. It was in the reign of great-grandfather, King Viserys, but that meant -"

"- you went to a pleasure house," Aegon laughed, louder still. "Oh gods, Aemon! The Dragonknight of Westeros in a Lyseni pleasure house! The scandal!"

"I didn't do anything," Aemon insisted. "It was just a step through the door and then out again! I was barely even inside!"

Aegon smiled at him, knowingly. Aemon was flustered, and realized. "Not like that!"

"And here I was thinking you might've kept your chastity after all, but don't worry," Aegon said with a teasing smile, clapping his brother's shoulder again. "I won't let the others take your pips away."

Aemon's sigh was long, so weary he was of these games, but Aegon could only smile as he walked down the ramp, and onto the certain, solid surface of Lys. There were no gathering throngs of inspections and tariff-men, and all the others who might be needed to make a port profitable and organized, but the slaves stood, waiting, and he waved them off with a flick of his wrist as he found his footing on dry land, or at least a less wet quay, after a week at sea. It was good to feel firm earth beneath his feet, rather than the subtle rolls of the deck. It bore a good promise. The promise of chambers of his own, a bed of his own without the rattle of his brother's mail, good food, and so much and more. Lys was a chance to rest. Lys was a chance to relax. To unburden himself. To make new memories, good memories, so strong as to be able to drown out the bad. To dull the edge of this year.

Lys was a good place, Aegon knew. This was a good place. A place for things to be made right again.

He was going to like it here.

"We shall wait here for you, my princes," the captain announced. "We shan't leave until you return to us."

"Then you won't be leaving for a while," Aegon shouted, words that brought laughter in answer. "We'll see you for more coin soon!"

"Try not to spend it too fast, good prince," Baldrick smiled.

"And try not to steal any," Aegon answered. More laughter, more smiles.

Turning towards his brother, they began their walk to the city. The quay alone was near a hundred feet long, easily compared in his mind's eye to the length of the lists at a good tourney, but that said much and more of the scale that Lys was built at. Where King's Landing had sprung up around the Targaryens like mushrooms after rain, Lys was a city built with the wealth of the Freehold to fund its construction. It was a planned city, designed from its inception to be a gargantuan edifice, built for the pleasures of Valyria's greatest. In that way, there was a certain come around of fate, it felt. The Targaryens had been dragonlords themselves, and here he was, the heir of dragons, in a city built for the joys of his kind. That was a good thought, and a pleasant one. He doubted the Lyseni would be so quick as to fall to their knees in submission and awe as they might've done if he had Balerion the Black Dread walking in his wake, but it would be worth it for the mentions, for the sweet whispers he might give. For all that their name was worth, though, it would have been foolish to come alone. A trip to Lys for pleasure and luxury, and something of a side errand, was not some great, dangerous quest...

...but with Baelor committed to chastity and no heirs sure to come, his father Viserys was the obvious heir to the throne, and then it would be Aegon. He was the heir of the heir, and that meant heavy protection to keep him from harm's way. A full half company of Targaryen men had been sent with them from the Red Keep, twenty good men in strong armor and with strong sword arms, more than enough to keep them safe when he had his brother's blade at his side and his own sheathed at his waist. For all their swords, though, there was little expectation of trouble or danger in this place. Lys had no quarrel with the Iron Throne, nor would it want one. Their guards were not there because they expected trouble, they were there in the case they stumbled into it by accident, walked into a tavern brawl or found themselves lost at night. Theft was a bigger worry, and so he and his brother had to leave their Valyrian blades at the Red Keep for his uncle to watch over, leaving the two with but good, King's Landing steel.

That was more than plenty, Aegon felt. He doubted there could be any trouble in this place, decadent and luxurious as it was. Still, their guards fell in behind them, watching, protecting, a few bringing their belongings in bags and doing the work of squires and pages in the process. That left the two brothers free to admire the world around them, in all its artistry. The wealth that Valyria had poured into this child was clear to see, even on the steps of this secluded, elite port. It must have been one of their most favored children. As Aegon and his brother ascended the path, one step at a time, the thought only seemed to grow more and more apparent that this city, Lys, was on another scale entirely compared to the capital of his homeland. It was far removed from King's Landing as a boy in his first year of squiredom might've been to a battle hardened knight, stood in the prime of his life. It was vast. It was enormously vast. It was so large that King's Landing, the largest city that Westeros had ever seen, could be devoured in its entirety, with room to spare for Oldtown, or at least most of it. The entire city seemed to sing to his senses. It was more than sight. It was sound. The sweet lulls of the waves echoing off the stone. The murmur of distant clouds. He could feel the stones click beneath his boots, hear the gentle jingle of his knightly spurs, gilded, as they turned. He could feel the warmth of the sun upon his skin, felt the heat break by the flicker of palm shade.

He could smell it in the air. Ride away from the city for a time, and King's Landing smell like a chamberpot. Like garbage, and waste, and refuse, left to cook in the summer sun.

Lys did not. Lys smelled like water, and salt, and flowers.

The city soothed his senses like a lover, and in some way, on some level, it reminded him of how he was alive. Of how he had walked through that market square and felt that the world was naught but a featureless plain stretching on for eternity, of how he had walked through the streets watched by faceless throngs, and came to a castle he could barely remember.

He had done nothing here. He had not yet partaken of any joy that it might offer him.

But it reminded him that the world was so much and more. It reminded him that there was warmth in this place. That flowers bore scents. That sunlight felt warm. That the sea lapped at shores. That everything was bathed in wondrous color.

It reminded him of the beauty to be found beyond the door of woe.

That was enough in its own right. That helped. That thought helped. It made him feel as he should. As he had felt in the woods, taking the head of that bear.

Lys made him feel alive.

Aegon drew an eager breath.

He looked to his brother with a renewed energy, a renewed strength. Aemon seemed to notice that, and smiled at the sight of it.

"You look well, brother."

"I am well," Aegon smiled. It was only half a lie. "I need this place. I can't describe why, but I do."

"You needn't say such things to me," his brother nodded. "I know what you felt. If Lys helps, then for all I loathe this place, I would gladly escort you around."

"Do you know it well, then?"

"I was led on a merry chase to try and find the Swann girl, seeing how the missive we had was years out of date," Aemon acknowledged, and nodded. "I know the city well enough, but if we start to get too deep, we'll need a map. They sell them here, cheaply too."

Aegon smiled at that, and breathed. They had walked past a bush, its scent filling his nose with sweetness.

"She doesn't smell like our King's Landing, does she?"

"She smells like salted fish," Aemon answered, glancing at the dock beneath them. "The rest of the city, well, it smells like..."

"...a whorehouse?" Aegon asked, and laughed. "Maybe so. That is what Lys is, more or less."

"You needn't remind me," his brother nodded, grimly. "Where shall we start, then?"

Aegon was tempted to answer with wherever the most beautiful women were, but held back on that...for now at least. There was no denying that the city was vast and full of equally vast beauty, but also vast enough that he had not the first idea of where to walk or go. "You're the one that came here only a little while ago. Where would you have us start?"

"Well, the first thing we should do is try and find the Rogares," Aemon reasoned. "That way, we can get that part of this journey over and done with, and leave the rest to you."

Aegon had no real problem that. It sounded reasonable enough. Get the hard part over and done with. Get away from that place. Get away from her, as she had got away from them. Get away from this last reminder of who he had lost, and the empty hands that bore at his sides.

And then there would be joy. Joy and fun. That was what his mind was on. Focused, like a lense. Women. Wine. More women. More wine. Comfort. Rest. Living. Living as a living man should.

He shrugged his broad shoulders. "Alright then, if that is what you think we should do. We'll find them, do our errand, and then get straight to the good parts. You said we might need a map? Will we for that?"

"Not as much as you might think. Lys is well planned," Aemon answered, with rare praise for the city. "If that is not enough for us to keep our way, we need only ask. They speak Valyrian here. Lysene Valyrian, but closest to ours out of any of the Free Cities. You know your High Valyrian well?"

"All the better that I do," Aegon laughed. "My best charms are in Valyrian. I can use them here, and mayhaps learn new ones."

"If I was any other man, I would've thought you talking of sorcery, not...seduction."

"Are they not one and the same?"

His brother shook his head, and sighed...but when the breath left his lips, he was smiling all the same. Their duel had changed things. It had reminded them. Reminded them that they were brothers. Reminded them that they had lost much together. Reminded them that they shared a bond. Reminded them that they were almost alone in this world and life. Where Aemon might've once stirred to some resentment over his japes, now, he took them as the japes they were.

And now, as he so rarely had before that day, he gave him a jape in return.

"With how well you might charm them, Aegon, you must clearly have some magical power over women."

"A warm smile, a good joke and kind words open many, many doors," Aegon answered, eagerly.

His brother shook his head, not in shame or disagreement, but in knowing Aegon too well to not know that he spoke of experience. By then, they were in the city, or at the very least, at its maw. Stretching out before them was one of the great streets and roads of Lys, and for all the thought that it might be similar to those roads and paths of King's Landing that he knew, it wasn't. Like the port, it had trees. Buildings stood tall and proud, washed and white and clean. Glass windows were here and there. The street was bustling and alive, and though they had surely walked out into one of its wealthiest parts, it was alive with vibrant energy, not the rigid practices of merchants wanting not to be disturbed. Laughter and song, and a street merchant with his cart, offering fish sizzling atop a pot of coal, smelling of herbs and spice. Wine, chilled with chips from a block of ice brought quickly from the North and the Vale of Arryn, wrapped in blankets meant to protect the chill. Aegon could not help himself. He found a silver in his coin purse, and bought a skewer of fish and a cup of chilled wine, served to him in a simple and quickly fired clay cup. He found another silver for his brother, and offered him the same.

Aemon smiled. "Thank you, brother, but you've forgot one thing."

"What?" he asked.

Aemon looked to the merchant, and spoke in quick Valyrian as Aegon took a long sip of his new drink. It was Lysene wine, different from the tastes of Westerosi. Sweeter, and yet sourer, too. Not the greatest that he had drank, but with a chill on it, it was worth the drinking, and worth the moment of standing around and simply admiring the city and its people. It gave him some ideas, some thoughts, some questions. Why was King's Landing so unlike this place? Could it not be made more like this? More comfortable? Could they not put trees in its streets to give them shade? Could they not vanquish the smell that plagued it?

That was not the only thing he noticed. What he noticed was the lack of notice. The lack of wandering eyes. The lack of hidden gazes, and surprise. It made him feel oddly at ease. In Westeros and even in the streets of King's Landing, there was always something to be said about carrying the Valyrian look: the violet eyes and silver hair of the Targaryens was rare enough in those lands that there were always those who had never seen it before, and their eyes were drawn and caught, and before long, one would notice the stares and surprise of those who learnt that all the stories were true. Here, that was not so. Here, in Lys, the blood of Valyria flowed so strong that almost everyone bore the look. Merchantmen called out their prices and bargains with hair of white and gold flowing past their shoulders, guardsmen looked at him curiously with familiar violet eyes, and only the slaves and visitors from other cities lacked the look. Lysene women walked by with their silver hair flowing. Lysene men glanced at him with violet eyes. It felt strange to him, to not stand out amongst the crowds.

It was almost enough to distract him from the fact that the merchant seemed to be arguing with his brother. Aegon glanced over, but by then, the man sighed, threw his hands up in defeat, and said whatever it was that his brother wanted to hear with a wave of his fingers and the pointing of hands.

Aemon looked back to him, done with his merchant's words. Aegon smiled. "How much did I overpay?"

"Oh, by all rights he shouldn't have even taken your coin," Aemon said, leading them on. He nibbled at his fish skewer. A few of their guards had paid for more of their own. "Lys does not usually take Westerosi coin, you're meant to change it first, but you paid him a full silver for what might've cost half as much. The cups were the biggest expense. You weren't even meant to take those."

"Did that silence any complaints?"

"You could say that for the wine and drink," his brother nodded. "But I also asked where we might find the Rogares. He...didn't like that very much."

"Do they not like asking for directions here?" Aegon asked. He nibbled on his own grill. The fish was so soft it fell apart between his teeth, and tasted of smoke and salt. The wooden skewer had started to char, but that seemed to add to the flavor. "You told me they were nicer than that."

"They are, but...for the Rogares, it seems they might make an exception."

"Did they tell you where to go, at least?"

"Only after telling me where I could find a...never mind, you needn't know," Aemon sighed. "But yes, I know where the manse is. The good news is that it isn't that far. This is a wealthy part of the city, so it makes sense that they'd be around here."

"And the bad news?"

"It is...a longer walk than we might've hoped. An hour, maybe two."

That did not sound so terrible to Aegon. The streets of Lys seemed a pleasure to walk through. "Then all the better that we have a meal!"

His brother seemed to smile at that, and led the way through the streets. One bustling road led to another bustling road, and then to a bustling alleyway, that gave way to yet another bustling street. With Aemon ahead as his shield and the guards behind and around, they had enough weight to push through the thickest crowds, but it was still astonishing to him how may there was to actually call the city home. The houses here seemed sprawling monstrosities, taller than those in Westeros. Most seemed to creep to four or even five floors, fighting for space on the narrow streets. For all that, they were well built, proud, better than any merchant's house in the city he knew. One road led to another, and then there were these strange, squat little grey creatures walking on four legs and with giant ears wider than a dinner plate, pulling carts and wagons with little trumpeting noises from their long snouts. Then there were their vaster siblings, or parents, or kin, he knew not. Tusked, and towering, they dragged the biggest bulk, or carried the wealthiest of the wealthy on their backs, sat in little palaces with silken veils.

"Elephants," Aemon explained. "The little ones are their cousins, like...ponies to horses."

"The maester's drawings aren't very good if that's what an elephant is," Aegon said, and laughed as a long snout reached out for his fish, nearly snatched it from his hand. "Away, you!"

The giant creature tooted and trumpeted, walking on...and found a young boy, whose attentions was away, reaching down and taking a skewer of grilled fruit from his hand without him noticing. Aegon could only look to his brother. "They steal?"

"There's monkeys as well, here," Aemon explained. "They'll take your coin purse, too, if you don't keep it safe. They sell coats with the pockets on the inside to keep them away."

"Monkeys?" he asked. He knew what monkeys were. He had seen them before, or at least one of them, brought along for some show of entertainment with a band of mummers. He could think of no better words for such creature than a toddler that had drank nothing but pure honey, so excited and energetic they were. "What can they do with coin?"

"A merchant cares not who the buyer is, if he has money in hand," his brother answered, wisely. "They'll take your coin and buy bread with it, or wine."

"Gods above!" Aegon laughed again. "Thieving elephants and pick-pocket monkeys! What next? Will the birds take my jewellery?"

"Mayhaps, if you leave it out too long."

Aegon was not sure if it was true or a jape, but made sure to keep his eyes on the gulls, which seemed more eager to try and take his grilled skewer than anything else he might have had. Still, the prince ate his fill and drank his wine as they walked, and could not help but notice a multitude of women walk by, laughing at one another's japes, merchant's wives and daughters and sisters, with more silk and gold and gems than half the ladies of Westeros. They didn't notice the black and red of his clothes or the dragon that marked his breast, and he did not know if he should have felt insulted by that, or challenged. He had little time to decide on that or act on it, however, when Aemon continued on the way ahead, and forced Aegon to keep track. They walked for an age, and just when it seemed that Lys had shown them all that it might have to show, it brought more still. The city proved its scale. It went on, and on, and on. It seemed endless. Towering merchant houses had grown wider, not smaller. They began to blossom into manses, into palaces of brick and mortar. They grew taller. They began to space themselves out, with fences and walls and the protection of their own guards and fighting men. The city around them blossomed with wealth, and its rich grew richer still. Common bakeries had glass windows, a thing he had never even imagined, displaying fluffy pastries and delicate treats for all to see. Tailor shops hung Myrish silk in the window, with Valyrian glyphs speaking of prices, marking as much that the man inside could read and write as they did tell of extortionate prices. Trading halls and private markets rose here and there, where alliances of merchants and magisters could work together to buy cheaply and sell for riches. There were banks, too, a half dozen of them, and even one that bore the markings of the Iron Bank of Braavos itself, a subordinate, a sworn vassal, so far from their liege lord in the city of the Sealord, ready to lend coin to any sailing venture that might need it.

This was the power of Essos, displayed plainly for all to see.

Coin. Wealth. Riches.

Money. Ceaseless, endless rains of money.

"Ventures!" one shouted out in the common tongue, calling out for merchantmen. "Ventures to far Yi Ti and beyond! Pay for a share of the cargo, earn wealth when it comes back again!"

"Arms! Arms and armament! War to come in Essos as Braavos and Pentos rally for war!" another shouted, then said those words again in Valyrian. "Swords and shields! Buy for silver, sell for gold!"

"Slavers bound for the Summer Isles! Buy ahead to get the best men and women!"

"Glasswork for King's Landing! Invest in the workshops of Myr for enormous returns!"

"Aegon," whispered a woman's voice. She was so close he felt her warmth on his neck.

Aegon blinked, and looked around himself. If a woman in this place knew his name already, he wanted to meet her.

Except he saw nothing. He found no one - the crowds were there, the city life going on as it did...but the speaker, they were nowhere to be found.

"Aegon?" Aemon asked.

Aegon blinked, shrugged his shoulders, and looked back to his brother. He took a bite of his fish stick, a finishing taste, and threw the empty skewer aside.

"Are you well?" he asked. "You do not think you've been poisoned?"

"Not unless hearing women's voices is a sign of poisoning," the elder prince said, and sighed. "Ah, nevermind. Lead on."

"Women's voices?" Aemon asked, perplexed. "What?"

"Someone said my name," he answered. "I heard it."

"No one that I heard, brother. Are you sure?" his brother asked. His concern was growing -

- but Aegon only laughed. "Ah, I must be so used to women saying my name that I've started to hear it here as well."

His brother laughed, awkwardly. "If you think you're well -"

"I'm well. Come on, let's get going. I want to get this meeting with the Rogares over and done with already."

Aemon nodded, leading them on still. They walked, and walked, and walked further still. Before long, he found himself craving another of that fish skewer he had thrown aside, and more still for the wine. Though the sun had still been high in the sky by the time that they arrived in Lys, it was now already trending past its peak, and growing lower just as the day grew darker. The day was beginning to wane, and Aegon did not want this errand of theirs to take any longer than it must. They would find her, Aemon would talk to them, Aegon would stay well removed, and the moment it was done, he would go find himself a pleasure house, a courtesan or two, or three most likely, and then have his rest. Still, he could not help but let his mind wander as he walked, and his thoughts turned towards what his kin here in Lys might be like. His father had wed a Rogare girl, and that woman had brothers and sisters, and they would have wealth and family of their own. He might have cousins he had never heard of here...though it was hard to think of them when Aemon walked past manse after manse, each one seemingly smaller than the last, and bore no sign at all of stopping.

That should have been a sign, in truth.

Aegon expected that the manse of the Rogares would be a sprawling, vast thing - some monumental edifice of marbled walls and slated roof, a palatial castle built as much to show one's wealth as it was to live in luxury. For all that was said of the Rogare Bank in its prime, he expected it to have gold as much on the outsides as on the insides, nestled behind its own battlements and patrolled by the very best mercenaries that money might buy. Hordes would be thronging at its doors, asking for entry. More still would be perched in its shadow, begging for charity. He expected all these things.

What he did not expect was his brother to stop them all in front of a squat little thing of three floors behind a brick wall so short that both princes could look over it. The Rogare manse was no great wonder. It was barely worthy of the word "manse" at all, and was more alike a common merchant's house in King's Landing than anything fit for a family that had wed into the Targaryens themselves. It was made of the same white stone as the rest of the city, but it seemed rougher and less finished, less fine. The grey mortar was more prominent, only scarcely covered. The roof was strong, but not glamorously trimmed by metal work. Its gardens were plain and humble with a tree here and a bush there, not the carved masterpieces of living branch and leaf that had dominated vaster manses.

And there were no guards, either.

"Aemon," Aegon asked, looking to the green door. "Are you sure this is the Rogares?"

"It must be," his brother answered, pointing. "That's Rogare green."

"You must be japing?"

"It is no jape, brother," Aemon answered, though even he seemed surprised. "This...is the place, it seems."

"I was told our cousins were on harder times, but...not this level of hard times, surely?"

"The Rogare Bank fell apart when everyone came to get their money at once," Aemon offered. "They didn't have the money to give out. They slew our grandfather on their side for it. Mayhaps this is all that they could have left?"

"Gods be good," Aegon said with surprise. "And here I thought I might be feasted when we came."

Aemon took the first step. The gate was not locked, and spread easily when he pushed on it. Aegon half expected this to be some trickery of his Rogare kin, some clever play of hiding in plain sight, but as he walked into the manse's grounds, what was there seemed even more disappointing than what he had seen from the road. The mortar was not merely painted white, it was starting to crumble here and there for a lack of repairs. The grounds was not merely unadorned with lush growth, but uneven in some places, and not at all cut or trimmed. The gate creaked when they stepped through. The paving stones that might've bonded it to the street wobbled beneath his feet. This was not merely as bad as a lesser merchant's house, it was worse. Aegon had bedded craftsman's wives who had lived in better homes on the Street of Steel, and the disappointment grew worse when they came to the manse door, and saw bare wood where flakes of paint had came off. The manse looked as if it had not been lived in for years, but for all that, he could smell woodsmoke outside, a sign that someone lived within.

"I don't think she's here," Aegon said, honestly. "I don't think she would've stayed here, not after everything."

"Mayhaps, but if anyone is sure to know where she is, they have to be here."

"Are you sure this is not a waste of time?" Aegon asked. "Might be we should look elsewhere, ask for her directly."

"Then...why not start here?" Aemon asked, and countered. "If anyone is going to know where she is, it is them."

"Fine," Aegon acknowledged. "I'll see if I can't talk some words out of them."

His fist reached out, and tapped gently on the door.

No one answered.

He tapped again.

Then again.

And again.

And then with more force.

And then -

- and then the door opened, and what stood in its view was a single, tired man, draped in robes of green and white, his fingers clutching at the hoop of a small oil lamp, burning slowly.

Aegon recognized him instantly. It was their cousin.

The very cousin that had came to King's Landing with mayhaps the worst wedding gift that he might have brought.

The very cousin that they had thrown out into the streets near as soon as he had revealed himself.

The very cousin that their own father ordered removed from the castle.

Moredo Rogare looked at them blankly.

The Targaryen found his footing quickly. Aegon smiled, and stepped forward, ready to come through the door. "Oh, hello cousin!"

The door closed.

Aegon knocked again.

The door stayed closed.

"I don't think he wants to talk to us," Aemon said. "Might be we should look elsewhere."

"No, he will," Aegon said confidently, knocking the door again. "If anyone knows, it has to be him."

And again.

And again.

"No, I don't think he will," his brother sighed.

"Then we will be here all night," Aegon said as he smiled, talking loud enough to be heard inside. "I'm happy to knock this for as long as it takes. I want this errand over and done with."

"And if he doesn't open?"

"Then we have enough men to man a battering ram," he answered, and laughed. "We're getting in, either through an open door, or a broken one."

He knocked the door once more.

And this time, a window opened. Moredo Rogare leaned out, looking down at them, tired.

"What is it, Targaryens? Why are you here?"

"Can't a cousin come to meet another cousin?" Aegon said, innocently.

The quickness that the man had for closing his window was not so fast as Aemon's voice.

"We need to talk with you, on an important matter!"

"And why should I help you all?" the Rogare asked. "You threw me out into the gutter over a wine bottle!"

Aegon was quick. "We weren't the ones to throw you out!"

"No," Rogare shouted down. "It was your father!"

It was Aemon that took over.

"We mean no disrespect to you," he said. "We just need to talk with you."

"And why should I listen to you, when you and yours won't do the same for me?"

"Because it is about the family," Aemon said, delicately. "We won't need much of your time."

Moredo sighed.

"Fine. I will give you a moment, and nothing more."

"Thank you for your kindness, good ser."

The man grumbled in answer, then closed his window. Aegon looked to his brother, who only smiled. "A kind word can open many, many doors."

The door clicked, and clunked. It opened again, and Moredo stood in the door frame. He seemed even more tired and haggard than he had before, and looked all the years of his age. He was a man older than their father, and now, it showed in a way that it had not on the day that he came to their cousin's wedding. There had seemed a beggar in silk. Now, he seemed a beggar in truth...and yet for all that, when Aegon looked at him, he saw his own eyes looking back. They had shared the violet of their mother, and their mother shared it with her brother. Moredo was not the firstborn heir of his family, but he was a tougher sort, a soldier, perhaps one more at home in the castles of Westeros than in the merchantry of Essos. Aegon knew very little of the part that the Rogares had played in his uncle Aegon's return to power and the aftermath of the great war that saw the dragons dance themselves to death, but that was something that he knew. He even vaguely remembered him, memories stirred from his deepest youth. In another world, this Moredo might've been bearing the white cloak that was wrapped around his brother's shoulders.

But in this one, he did not. In this one, he was a tiring man, growing older, weaker, and yet struggling still to rebuild the glory of his house.

"We will make this fast. I need my evening rest," Moredo said, weary. He threw the door open wide. "You two can come in, but the guards stay outside."

"Fair enough," Aegon said, and waved to the men, ordering with a wave for them to stand back and wait. He stepped forward, and spoke more kindly. "Thank you for letting us in."

"Thank you, uncle," Aemon said. Moredo seemed to sigh at that word, and closed the door behind him.

"What is it, then?" Moredo asked. "Why do you come all the way to Lys?"

Aegon looked to his brother. Aemon stepped away from the door, wanting this to be more private. The Rogare did not seem to be so eager, but sighed, and followed them inside his own home. For all that the building seemed to want for outside, the interior was more homely and comfortable. Good, wooden floors and walls, a tapestry here and there, and most invitingly, a hefty dining table, with a platter of fruit meant as much for art as it was for the occasional hunger, and a bottle of wine, too. Finding himself a chair he kicked out into place with his foot, Aegon fell into place comfortably, and began examining the bottle.

"Westerosi manners are still as I remember them, I see," the Rogare sighed. "Go on, help yourself."

"Gladly," Aegon smiled. He took a grape, and then poured himself a cup.

The Rogare sighed again, but his attentions were soon on Aemon's words.

"We...need to find someone," Aemon said. "We're looking for your sister. Larra Rogare. Our mother?"

Moredo looked at them, blankly.

"You're looking for....your mother?" the Rogare asked, and scratched his head.

"You do know where she is, don't you?" Aegon asked. "She is your sister."

"My sister, yes," Moredo answered, hesitant. "But where, no, not truly. She went into hiding not long after the bank collapsed. It was a wise thing, in truth."

"Oh?" Aegon asked, biting into a grape he hadn't been offered. "How come?"

"We have had rough times since...then," Moredo answered, trying to evade the question.

Aegon looked at him expectantly.

Moredo surrendered.

"We Rogares are...not as popular as we once were," he admitted. "We were a candle that burnt bright and fast, and one could say that others began to envy our flame."

"How poetic," Aegon said, taking another grape. "You mean to say you made enemies on the way up, ones that are now looking to avenge themselves on your way down?"

"A...crude way of saying, a Westerosi way," the Rogare replied...but nodded. "But an accurate one. Yes. When the bank rose to power, we trampled a great many others under our feet. Now that the bank is in ruins, those we walked on want revenge. I haven't the coin to put guards outside my own home, yet alone protect everyone. I have to sleep with a sword under my pillows."

"And so...what?" Aegon asked. "Does she and the others live as beggars?"

"No, surely not," Moredo said, quickly. "We took what wealth was left of the bank after everything and split it equally. She has her share, wherever she has gone, and I know enough of the banks we shared to send coin every once in a while, though where it goes is not known even to me. Not immediately, at least. All I know is that I put some coin in, and some leaves before I come back."

"You still have money?" Aegon asked. "You would've surprised me, living here."

"You can say that, Westerosi, but a manse such as this is not cheap. It says more of how expensive the others are than how cheap this one is," Moredo answered, defensively. "But yes, I have coin."

"That can't be easy if you're so hated?" Aemon spoke with surprise. "Is the bank returning?"

"We could wait a thousand years, and that bank would be as dead as it was before, believe me," Moredo sighed, grimly. He seemed to age even more with that. "Nowadays, we make our money with insurance. It is a hard trade to master, but has great fortunes in it. Slave barges are especially good."

"Do you not feel bad profiting from the misery of those men?" Aemon asked.

"If you ask how well I am sleeping at night, the answer is that my costly featherbed is better than cheap hay," the Rogare answered. "Besides, if it is not me, then someone else. At least this way it is me that profits, and I can use that money to get us all out of our hole."

Aemon seemed ready to challenge his words, but Moredo looked to Aegon, the elder, and spoke honestly as he came over.

"We're not the family that dominated the Narrow Sea and were fit to marry a Targaryen, not anymore," he said, honest, his arms stretching, gesturing to the house that loomed all around them. "This home is not the manse that we once had, but it is the best that I might have. Of the fleet, a dozen ships remain, but they are not the great income they once was. We are...we are spent."

"Then no wonder you came to King's Landing," Aegon nodded, more fair. "You've little left."

"Exactly so. I had hoped that your father might've taken some kindness on me. I knew him before he was wed. We played games in the yard together, and loved him like a brother," Moredo sighed. "Alas, he had no kindness for me because I was fooled by the damned Dornishmen into bringing the worst gift I could to that wedding, and came looking like a pauper wanting a hand out. I thought it a kindness....I never meant any offense. Why would I, when I needed that meeting to go so well?"

"It was still a bad thing you brought," Aemon said. "But knowing that you didn't mean to..."

"That's more fair," Aegon nodded. He took yet another grape. They tasted like summer and sweetness. "I'd clutch at anyone if it kept me from drowning."

"Drowning is a good word for it all," Moredo sighed. "With as few resources as we have, it will be hard to find her."

"If things are that dangerous and that bad, then are you even still here?" Aegon asked. "Why not come to Westeros? At least there you won't need to worry about your enemies."

"Believe me," Moredo said. "If I had the chance, I would move to King's Landing, where I needn't worry about a knife in the back everytime I climb into bed, or poison every time I open a bottle. Alas, your city is not nearly as busy as the Free Cities, so if I am ever to rebuild the fortunes, it will have to start here."

"Even at the risk of your life?" Aemon spoke with surprise. "You would risk that for coin?"

"It is more than coin," Moredo answered, grimly. "It is about the Rogares...we have no future at all without money. Trade is to us what land is to you Westerosi, and we need it if we are to survive."

"We?" Aegon asked. "You have a family?"

"One that I had to send away from this place," Moredo sighed. "There are not many of us left. The rest are...elsewhere. I cannot say, even to you, my own nephews. Not til we're back on our feet."

"Then how are to find her?" Aemon asked.

"A good question," Moredo breathed. "If you have an answer, I am glad to hear it?"

Aegon looked to Moredo, and gave him a better offer than simple askings.

"You know, our father is Hand of the King, and he has coin aplenty," Aegon said. "If you can help us with this, then Aemon could speak to him?"

That made Rogare pause. Aemon understood quickly, and came over to the table for himself. "You never got your chance at an audience. Not with the wine. But if we speak for you, and say that you helped us, we can get you to him. Our father will listen if you help with this."

"I need more than a single chest of gold," the Rogare answered. "I need regular trade, constant payments. I need that in the ledgers, with good backings, for the Iron Bank to allow another loan. That will help most."

"You said you sell insurance on ships?" Aegon asked. "What for?"

"Do you know what insurance is?" Moredo asked. "It is...protection for ships. Travelling far is risky, and losing a cargo is ruinous. Insurance gives a shield against it, but you have to pay constantly to be covered. Do you have anything that -"

Aegon laughed.

"We're building the largest sept in Westeros in King's Landing, Baelor's new grand sept," he said. "They have to bring the stone in by ship from the Fingers for the sculptures, and glass from Myr."

"Gods," Aemon said with surprise. "You remembered that after all this?"

"I can remember more than faces, Aemon." Aegon looked to an intrigued Rogare. "Help us with this, and we can speak to our father. He'll listen to you, and then you can insure all those ships carrying stone and glass from there to King's Landing."

"And that'll give the constant income I need for my ledgers," Moredo nodded, with growing eagerness. "And with that, the Iron Bank will see that I have coin coming in enough to settle debts and interest, and accept the loan I need for a new fleet of ships."

"And everyone gets what they want," Aegon smiled, taking his cup. "What say you to that, uncle?"

The man laughed. For perhaps the first time that Aegon had seen, Moredo Rogare seemed genuinely happy.

"My nephews, I think we might have much to gain from one another on this. You need to find her, and that I will try and do, so long as you uphold your side of this bargain."

"I swear it," Ser Aemon said, placing a hand over his heart. "On my honor as a Kingsguard knight, I swear."

"You have my promise as well. It'll be Aemon who handles all this. I just want to get to the pleasure houses," Aegon said, honestly.

"I'll need time, and you'll need to spend much of that in the pleasure houses you want," Moredo said, carefully, quietly. "This will not be easy, but it is doable. I will need to use my own coin, and I might need you both to do certain things for me, but it can be done. We need us to keep this secret."

Aemon looked at him, confused. "We need to hide? Why?"

Though the thought of being hid in a brothel was a tempting one, Aegon could only agree. "The others want you dead, not us? Why would they be interested in us?"

"You need not remind me that I have knives looking for my back," Moredo sighed. "But if I find her, then anyone who might take an interest in following you after you came to my home will follow you to her door, and that I cannot have. I won't have my sister murdered because we rushed too fast. I will make all the arrangements, but I need them kept secret."

"And the best way to keep it secret is to keep you from us," Aemon understood, and sighed. "So we have to hide."

"Exactly so," the Rogare said. "The best thing we might do is hide you here. Not in my home, but in the city. It'll give me the time I need, and you wouldn't be the first Westerosi to have came to Lys for pleasure. Half of the city will know you're here already, but with Aegon's reputation..."

"Am I that heard of over here?" he asked, surprised. "Really?"

The Rogare nodded, and that gave Aemon a chance to talk.

"...pleasure?" Aemon asked. "You don't mean -"

"The pillow houses are everywhere," Rogare shrugged. "Go find one that you like, and before long, I'll find you again. This might take longer than you might want. We Rogares know how to hide when we must."

"So, let me talk of this plan, and let me know if I make any mistakes," Aegon started, eagerly. "We make this arrangement with you. You start searching the city quietly. You don't bother us, and we go hide in plain sight as two Targaryen princes enjoying the company of as many Lyseni women as we might find?"

"...that is correct," Rogare answered, and laughed for himself as he poured a glass of his own. "Let's not pretend that this is some great burden I have given you."

"Aemon," Aegon smiled. "This is a wondrous plan. We're not merely going to the pleasure houses, we're going to sleep in them."

Aemon stared at him, aghast.

Moredo offered him his glass, and a toast. "To a wonderful time."

"I can drink to that," Aegon grinned and laughed and toasted and drank.

"Gods," his brother lamented, his voice a whisper. "This is a nightmare."

Aegon could only smile.

"No, Aemon, I think this is going to be fun."

End of Part 17
****
​

This was the last one of my pre-written batch, so there's gonna be a bit longer of a wait between updates from this point on as I'm going to be posting them as I write them. Still, being that I'm increasingly back in the game, it won't take very long to get that done! If you're liking and enjoying the story, though, be sure to comment - it helps keep the story on the front page, which means more people can find it and join the fun

 

[Thelunarwolf]

Aegon is drowning his grief in everything he can find joy in.

Interesting.

 

[Chojomeka]

This is both hilarious and heartbreaking, two brothers are bonding once more while seeking a mother whom abandoned them, the reasoning being the shared tragedy of the passing of the woman they loved.

 

[Shane_357]

Butterflies, butterflies everywhere. We might get a more civic-minded King Aegon, who wants to make Kings Landing more alatable.

 

[Ezrin]

@CaekDaemon you forgot to threadmark the last chapter.

 

[CaekDaemon]

Aegon is drowning his grief in everything he can find joy in.

Interesting.

Click to shrink...

This is both hilarious and heartbreaking, two brothers are bonding once more while seeking a mother whom abandoned them, the reasoning being the shared tragedy of the passing of the woman they loved.

Click to shrink...

I'm glad the tale of Aegon continues to resonate with people - he's probably one of my greatest creations as a writer. You see the worst of him, the best of him, see his joy, see his sorrow, and in the end, what you see is that he is a human being. You see him in the absolute prime of his life, long before he became the Unworthy, as the handsome, clever prince that he was...but you can also see the parts of him that led him down that path as well, just as you see how he did not necessarily have to walk it. He's no saint by any means, but altogether, you get a rich and deeply complex character who is probably one of the very best that I've ever written.

@CaekDaemon you forgot to threadmark the last chapter.

Click to shrink...

Fixed!

 

[RichardWhereat]

And Aemon's spawn takes the throne.