Blood of my Blood

by Armaria

Summary:

‘one loved power, one loved wealth, one loved the Realm’

70 𝕬𝖋𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖖𝖚𝖊𝖘𝖙.

Three daughters of Aenys I Targaryen, three effectual queens of Westeros - three deeply traumatised ladies in the ever-distant shadow of Winter.

Notes:

• Inspired by Tyger Tyger burning bright,  (--In the forests of the night:) by llamallamaduck

Chapter 1: Prologue

“‘One would not profess that King Aenys had pursued much policy in his short reign atop the throne, but it would be his daughters who would emphasise the importance of marriage alliances; of the three there would be a ditty: ‘one married for love; one married for honour; one married for duty’.” The ensuing scoff echoed over the trundles of the wheels ‘neath the carriage-boards that swung uneasily up and down the pot-holed Riverlands. “The Citadel’s maesters have gone much too far, my princess!”

Said princess had leant her head back as she listened to her companion reading aloud, violet eyes closed as though by such she could will herself not to see the gold and green gilding of the wheelhouse decoration. Amongst the gilding the braids of her own silver-gold tresses fell back, as though vines to root her in place.

“They are all admirable means to marry,” she said.

Lady Ambrose’s nostrils seemed more like those of a stampeding bull’s as she continued: “That may be so, Princess Vaella, but who is this maester to comment on his betters, either way?!”

“One who speaks true,” Vaella Targaryen made a careless gesture. “Though if he was naming them in order, I would imagine it would be ‘one loved power, one loved wealth, one loved the Realm’ – Rhaena, myself, and Alysanne. Thus the elder two are queens, and I remain but a princess.”

“Had the Queen Mother agreed to Prince Duilo’s suit, mayhaps my princess would be a queen in all but name – queer Dornish tradition there, but as Princess of Dorne…” and then as expected of a Reacher lady, the comment was then quickly followed by: “…it would not be seemly that royal blood be lost to the Red Wastes, and Lady of Highgarden is a very grand honour.”

“T’was Mother who wanted Duilo… it was the first time I had seen Uncle Aerion and Lord Rogar come to an agreement so quickly,” Vaella shook her head, her eyes glazed as though recalling a distant memory, before she frowned in thought. “I am uncertain of this maester’s historical tract, my lady – had our marriages truly spanned the realm, I would have married to Dorne. Yet Rhaena married the Stark – how that happened I dare not know – and Alysanne married our last remaining brother, and I married Garth – two queens and one lady of a great house does not make a grand union for the Iron Throne.”

“No doubt it would check Dorne, my princess,” Lady Ambrose’s absent defence seemed almost an instinct, as though long depredations from Dornish raiders had aroused the hatred in her Reacher blood. “And it would be much better if the Prince of Dragonstone would favour our little lady Galatea! The late Prince Aerion must be properly mourned, of course, and no doubt Their Graces would make every arrangement for his widow and little Princess Laetitia… and no doubt many suitable ladies would be present for little lord Gaunt.”

At this Vaella fought a snort. “I would not have my son be a consolation to those chits who vie to be Princess of Dragonstone – for every day Aegon does not marry, every day the eligible maids of the Realm would not rest. Like as not Lord Garth already has plans – Rhaena’s girl, mayhaps.”

“Princess Maeve Stark?” Lady Ambrose echoed, shuddering. “No doubt born outside the light of the Seven, raised under the gaze of bloody trees.”

“The Conqueror lost one dragon and one sister-wife before the Conquest even began to the Winterlands, and it took but one visit before he turned the Dread around to battle Dorne instead of conquering the Winterlands,” Vaella’s gaze fell onto the fine embriodery of her dress. “It was only an incautious word…”

And our family died for it, and so much sadness, from one of Viserys’ ill japes. Oh, Grandmother Rhaenys, would that you had told us more to frighten the children.

“…” Lady Ambrose turned her head to avoid the gaze directed, and started as she peered out of the wheelhouse. “The ruby ford.”

Vaella sat straighter to peer out, the better to see where two decades afore the Lord Commander had battled the Faith Militant. The Washing of the Faith had left the Faith Militant defanged and dependent on her royal brother to succour. And to further restrain the Faith after the loss of the Tyrells so long ago and the Gardeners an inconstant ally, her hand in marriage had been offered…

The Vaella back then had no knowledge of these matters; the Vaella of now, four and ten years hence, understood better, but all of Vaella Targaryen stared at the ruby ford and then upstream and froze as every muscle locked in place, her skin jumping with each step taken across the surface of the Trident–

A whooping cry like a bird with a laugh, a breeze fluttered past the tassels that hung overhead as the splash of footsteps dashing across the Trident echoed; there the figure rose from the waves, the longboats up and down the rivers so much flotsam as that figure emerged like the rising sun from the edge of the world, as though dawn personified to walk amongst mortals. With each laughing stride that echoed in her wake, the silence or murmurs echoed of awed terror.

Where those who rode dragons were akin to men without their mounts, for that one moment Vaella remembered her late Mother’s second wedding, where once and for all the mythic Einherjar proved to exist – those born of Stark blood and learned at the feet of the Lord Commander, who each could fight an army on their lonesome and assume the magics of the rivers and mountains.

“T- T- That…” Lady Ambrose frowned as far in the distance, the roar of dragons echoed past the rivers. “That… Queen Rhaena? Her… child?!”

“My niece… an Einheri,” Vaella echoed in a hushed whisper. “That… I think Alysanne’s hopes for her eldest to marry Dany would be dying. My late uncle had argued for a union with the Starks – one that would have Stark blood and a link to the Lord Commander birthed to House Targaryen. And now that my uncle has passed to his deserved rest… His Grace would no doubt listen.”

“I daresay Harrenhal had never seen such a surfeit of dragons since its burning,” was Lady Ambrose’s parting words.

Notes:

Due to butterfly effect Vaella lived and Alyssa lived a bit longer, so there are now three Targaryen sisters. I sort of based the three sisters around the Soong sisters: one loved power (Rhaena), one loved wealth (Vaella), one loved the Realm (Alysanne).

In case it's not clear, yes due to butterfly effect Jaehaerys' firstborn son Aegon lived and the fic is half of how his mother's generation sees the world around them, and half them trying to set him up with a wife because he stubbornly resists all attempts to make him marry his sister.
Candidates:

• Princess Daenaerys Targaryen: Prince Egg's younger sister, fell ill from the second Shivers epidemic, survived but the resulting cerebral damage affected her life. Remains on the list mainly due to Doctrine of Exceptionalism and Alysanne's concerns for her eldest daughter who is nonfunctional.
• Princess Laetitia Targaryen: only daughter of the recently-passed Prince Aerion Targaryen and Lady Alys Harroway of Harrenhal. Since Maegor was butterflied out this also makes her a direct cousin of Jae and the Targaryen sisters. Undecided on dragons.
• Princess Maeve Stark: daughter of Rhaena with King Walton X Stark of the Winterlands (AKA canon North, the Wall and beyond the Wall all the way to the Milkwater). Due to wild tales around Stark magic proven pretty recently to Jaehaerys and House Targaryen, proven 'magical ability' and tutorage at the feet of the immortal Lord Commander makes her a strong candidate.
• Lady Galatea Gardener: Vaella's daughter. Comes with strong Hightower links and a decent relationship with the Faith.

More to come!
- Armaria

Chapter 2: Alysanne I

Summary:

“If you have nothing good to say to your cousin, say nothing at all.”

Alysanne regretted many things, but she would not regret telling her older children: “If you have nothing good to say to your cousin, say nothing at all.”

It was days afore Rhaena’s arrival – Dreamfyre aside, the retinue for a Queen and Princess of the Winterlands would still be a significant size – mayhaps around two hundred, Alysanne hazarded. Alysanne had brought most of the family to Harrenhal to see off poor Uncle Aerion and bring solace to his grieving widow and daughter – between other concerns such as the Ladies Tarbeck and Bolling’s open grief, and a Pentoshi woman whom Aerion Targaryen had known on a diplomatic sojourn asking in King’s Landing, but all was to dust with his death.

“Like as not it was mere happenstance, but mine own brother Viserys had spoken ill words before the grieving Lord Commander, and thus invoked the wrath of… the good neighbours,” Alysanne overlooked young Maegelle making the seven-pointed star quietly at the very mention, as though to ward off the Stranger’s gaze. “My sister is blood of the dragon, certainly; your cousin, however of the dragon she is, also holds the Stark blood.”

“Septa Maryam says that she’s a heathen half-wolf,” Alyssa piped up.

“Septa Maryam is still preoccupied that she could not follow Rhaena to Winterfell,” Alysanne sighed. “And with the White Kirk as the Faith north of the Neck, no doubt it shall continue… you will not say that to your cousin, Alyssa, or I shall confiscate your waster.”

Alyssa’s lopsided smile was more an entreaty now.

“Is it true, Mother? What they say about the Starks?” Baelon’s voice cracked even as he scowled through growing as a man.

“I… have not heard what they say about House Stark, no,” Alysanne demurred. “But we all saw what was on the Iron Throne, no?”

The children – those present, at least – exchanged looks. No matter the madman who folded a sword into a five-point star, said star had been melted into the blades that formed the Iron Throne, and no doubt it served as some cautionary tale – the sort whose lessons Jaehaerys had taken very hard, that House Targaryen had bled to learn in their sorrow.

The Targaryens are cursed now, Alysanne remembered the whispers and fears, both in the first ill-wished Shivers that had taken half her family, and the second time when her poor girl had received the cure too late to save her mind. Their blood is thickened with the abomination of incest and hubris; their tongues spoke ill of the Stark at the Moat. Winter is coming, for them.

“What about Dany?” Sensible, sweet Aemon piped up.

Alysanne’s grip on her armrest tightened, before she forced her fingers to loosen. “Dany will… remain as she is, yes.”

Her sweet Dany did not deserve to be locked away in Harrenhal…

“Dany is simple,” Alyssa carelessly shrugged, her face petulant with the mention of her eldest sister.

“Dany is well,” Alysanne spoke. As though with enough repetition, the Mother Above would hear her words, and come the dawn her sweet girl would be mud-spattered and grass-stained and the lively, happy girl she had been.

The gods took wroth against the Exceptionalism of their House, and her sweet girl was the casualty.

 

---

 

“Are we certain that the Strang- the Lord Commander, he would not come?”

“Quite certain, dear aunt,” Alysanne hoped that the queenly mask helped hide any doubt she felt herself as she assuaged her late uncle’s now-widow, the mother of his sole daughter. “Aside from where Uncle Aerion was born by the Moat and the Lord Commander attended that birthing, they did not have… quite the close relationship.”

“The Stranger comes for all,” Alys Harroway Targaryen wrung the hands that had been clawing between themselves throughout the funeral, the reddened eyes and handkerchief dampened with tears a sign of sincere mourning. “What if he takes the prince away? What if he takes my Letty-?! Nothing good comes when a Stark goes South, but here we are atop the steps to the Hundred Hearths, awaiting the winter.”

“His… Grace of Winter has acceded for Rhaena to come with a smaller retinue, and not to follow as assurance to the riverlords,” Alysanne sighed even as her eyes drifted to peer around to the banners that fluttered in the courtyard of Harrenhal. “My sister is his queen, but she is still a Targaryen, and her child bears the blood of the dragon...”

“But she does not worship the Seven, Mother.”

“That…” Alysanne froze, before she turned to gaze at the entire gaggle of gold-haired children that were her brood.

“Why does the toddler Saera get to hide with the nurse?” dear Vaegon mumbled. “I could be reading Old Places on the Trident, Harrenhal actually has a volume. Or Dany!”

“I hope our cousin would be nice,” sweet Daella fretted even as she clung to beloved Maegelle. “Dany is nice, even kept away from the Red Keep.”

“I am sure Septa would be teaching Dany her prayers, Daella,” Maegelle gently assured. “The Seven-Pointed Star is open to all, even to those who would turn to trees.”

A laugh, and Alyssa broke from Baelon at last to hug her sisters. “That’s dull! Mayhaps she can swing a sword!”

“Mayhaps our aunt would have a woman as her sworn shield, like Mother,” Baelon agreed.

“Mayhaps she’ll bring an Einheri down with her.”

Alysanne dived alongside her cousin to catch the swooning aunt.

“My thanks, cousin.”

“My queen,” Laetitia’s melliflous voice was sweet and clear, a singer’s voice even as she assisted her mother to her feet.

It left Alysanne clear to turn to the speaker:

“Aegon!”

“It is possible, Mother,” her firstborn son, her handsome and strapping lad, made a face at the reproach. “The ravens have been aflutter all morn, besides Aunt Vaella’s retinue being sighted, there were… reports.”

“Oh, surely not,” dear Aemon made a face at the mention. “I was astride Caraxes and saw nothing!”

“You were at the Gods’ Eye, Aemes – this was at the Trident.”

“I wonder how would they fight,” Baelon mused, ever the brave.

Alysanne held back her sigh even as she accidentally raised her head and spotted the look on her shadow’s face.

“Jonquil, you have a query?”

Lady Jonquil Darke had been her protector after Maidenpool and into the unknown – the Winterlands, that was, and the look on her face was the exact same as when Alysanne had set out to seek physic in the Winterlands for little Aegon, the reluctant sort of those about to begin an infantry charge against a dragon. “The Royal Guard exists for this, my queen. I fear that Ser Gyles would not be… best pleased.”

“Ser Gyles has not been pleased since Jaehaerys renamed the post of Lord Commander, and opened the Royal Guard to forty-nine warriors over a decade ago,” Alysanne sighed. “Yet he cannot contest it when the Lord Commander entered His Grace’s solar past stone walls, oaken doors, and Ser Gyles himself –  a white-cloaked knight who had sworn his life to protect the king, and failed. His Grace intends that the Kingsguard would reach ever higher to reclaim the lost honour.”

Jonquil’s cheeks pinkened even as behind her, her fellow warriors of the Royal Guard shuddered. Not yet Kingsguard, they were still handsomely clad in armour and cloaked in red hemmed with white.

From the skies the song of dragon echoed, and with a ripple of banners a flash of flame caught Alysanne’s eye. The queen turned around, taken aback even as the run of flame stopped, almost a foot before Dreamfyre clawed through a patch of dirt on her landing.

“Oh, Maeve, you silly girl,” Rhaena’s laugh was gay even as the clink of chains echoed and she swung a leg over to dismount. “The race was supposed to begin once we reached Fairmarket. You actually skipped over all three Forks of the Trident?”

“It was faster, Mother – the Twins have not been built up from the time when Tobi washed down the eastern castle and its bridge- ah, hullo.” A sniff, and the girl raised a hand as her nose twitched, before setting it back down to peer around with her bright eyes, burning like embers.

Her dress was… Alysanne could only praise it as eclectic; a grey surcoat with running direwolves thrown over a leather doublet, leggings under a knee-length tunic that fed into solid leather boots, the sword belted at her hip, along with the drum strapped to the baldric over her left shoulder.

And the flame that had caught on the tail-end of her long silver plait of hair.

Mannered as Alysanne was, no doubt everyone behind her was equally at a loss for words when confronted with this… this…

“Your hair is on fire,” Alysanne started when she finally realised what she had spoken.

“Aye,” An absent slap put out the flame, and with a shrug the plait fell off of her shoulder and left her face bared – the Stark features were clear in the set of her face and accented with Valyrian beauty, and yet she carried herself as though a direwolf.

Or a dragon, Alysanne’s thoughts helpfully supplied.

“Rhaena, dear,” Alysanne walked over to embrace her sister and kiss her cheek, before receiving a kiss in return. “You… look well.”

“I am well – and thirsty. The wines beyond the Neck are mostly of Braavos, I hope my Lord Harroway has decent Arbour wines,” a faint complaint from Rhaena, before she leant over to contemplate the children. “Good morrow, nieces and nephews.”

Alysanne let the chorus of greetings wash over her. “And… your daughter…”

“Aye,” the Northern burr slipped into Rhaena’s accent as she spoke. “My firstborn, Maeve Stark of Winterfell, Princess of the Winterlands. Maeve, come and greet Her Grace your aunt.”

“Your Foreign Grace,” the princess sketched a short bow rather than curtsy, and then turned to bow to the children. “Cousins. Good morrow. I have brought some boiled sweets from the Hornwood Maple, a small gift for our first meeting.”

“That is very kind, princess. Thank you,” Alysanne beamed a smile over the queenly mask even as her eyes trailed over the girl, the brilliant eyes curved behind a fanged smile so much… so much of the wolf, or dragon, or the wild, so much of... a force o nature unto her own, magic and so very other.

Targaryens rode dragons, but were otherwise flesh and bone; Maeve Stark herself was fire made flesh.

Jaehaerys had wanted Stark blood introduced into their house – Alysanne fretted if her son would survive the bedding.

Chapter 3: Rhaena I

Summary:

“Alyssa tells me that she saw Princess Maeve break three bricks with her bare hands. Together.”

It was a testament to how oft she shared a bed with His Grace of Winter, that Rhaena was awoken and mildly disturbed by her chilled toes. Moments passed as she stared at the canopy overhead in orange and black, before the humidity of water registered alongside the exhaustion of the journey.

“Ugh,” Rhaena’s hand stretched out to the canopy, and then landed on her face in exhaustion.

A light tap on the door, before it swung open. Where on Dragonstone or the Red Keep there would be servants that bustled in on contact, the Winterlanders were the catspaws that crept up in silence, as though they learnt it from the Stranger’s knee. Mayhaps some had, was the common jape shared in Wintertown. There was only one set of footsteps that actually reached her ears.

“…good morrow, Lady Sam.” Rhaena finally conceded to the dawn of day.

“Good morrow, my queen,” Lady Samantha Stokeworth murmured even as she loomed by the foot of the bed. Of Rhaena’s original posse of ladies, Lady Sam was the last one still in her service, having married and settled north of the Neck – by Southron standards, Lady Sam was big and boisterous and a heretic who followed not the Starry Sept; in the Winterlands, any of Lady Sam’s Whitehill good-sisters would horrify Southron lords and Septons more.

“I was unsure if Your Grace would attend the prayers this morn, but Berena had carried up a bowl of oat porridge if you would hear the Septon give mass – quick, get the chamberpot.”

Rhaena groaned over the shuffling behind Lady Sam. “I forgot… the garderobe.”

“…indeed,” Lady Sam’s expression mirrored Rhaena’s own feeling on the subject. “Harrenhal has yet to be rebuilt – certainly, one has a rather bad feeling of turning back to the chamberpot after the closets up north. Yet it cannot be helped…”

“Leave it, Lady Sam. His High Holiness has never done a single thing for me, cooped in Oldtown and far from his flock. Should a dragon-rider turned to the Snowy Sept, let it be on him.” Rhaena shuffled from under the bedclothes as from behind Lady Sam, two quiet servant girls carried a wash-basin and a tea-gown. “The tea-gown this morn, and the porridge – and the princess has long departed the bed, I see.”

“Princess Maeve has her own audience in the training yard, aye,” Lady Sam gave a rueful grimace over the wash-basin. “Even His Grace had stood down from his… vigil… to peer from the Hall of a Hundred Hearths.”

“…mine Uncle wrote of offering my daughter as Aegon’s bride, even on his deathbed,” Rhaena felt her face, dampened from scrubbing a hot towel, twitch in a grimace. “Jaehaerys is her uncle, but he is also King on the Iron Throne.”

“Then the princess…” Lady Sam furrowed her brow in a beat of contemplation. “That could not be. His Grace… King Walton, that is, would not hear of it.”

“Trying to press a marriage suit on an Einheri is not a good idea, when the bedding would withdraw any scant protection afforded to the spouse,” Rhaena conceded. “The choice would lie with my daughter. And that… lack of control, over the blood of the dragon, is what our Uncle Aerion could not abide.”

Rhaena shrugged on the tea-gown, a comfortable affair of tabby-weave silk dyed a careworn grey and red that passed as suitable for a morning audience, but not for Court. “Prepare the black mourning gown if you would.”

“Very good. Of the jewels we have packed the cairngorm parure. The brooch and diadem would be nice enough.”

“…” Rhaena froze, before she snapped her fingers. “I knew I left it, forget my own head next… the greeting gifts, we should have presented it the night afore.”

“I am sure Her Grace would welcome the gift, though it be late.”

“Oh, Alysanne and Vaella will,” Rhaena puffed her cheeks at the thought. “My little brother, however, would see it as Walton’s offence afore a distraction of the highest order.”

A light tap, before whispers to the servants, and then one of the servant girls stepped forth with a curtsy.

“Lady Wihtburg reports that one of Queen Alysanne’s ladies sent an invite for midday, Your Grace, to welcome her sister.”

Rhaena felt her face fall into a grimace. “She does this not as my blood-sister, but for the same reason that Jaehaerys and her would have me withhold Dreamfyre’s eggs from mine own children. She does this as a Targaryen queen.”

 

---

 

The luncheon was arranged at the Queen’s temporary apartments, the window overlooking a small potager by the Kingspyre Tower of Harrenhal. In the distance the Tower of Dread loomed fairly over the nearby mews, and the smell of horses passing by was only faintly accompanied with the scent of burning meat – no doubt Silverwing, Vermithor and now Dreamfyre were housed and fed somewhere. In the distance was Harrenhal’s twenty-acre godswood where her wayward daughter had no doubt disappeared to, and even further past the curtain wall, was that patch of red over the Gods’ Eye lake which was the Isle of Faces.

Alysanne sipped a tisane. “Alyssa tells me that she saw Princess Maeve break three bricks with her bare hands. Together.”

Rhaena cast a distant memory of the cut-steel brooch and necklace she had packed to be offered at the night’s supper feast with Vaella’s arrival. Would it be enough to pacify this offended mother dragoness?

“My royal daughter has the heart of a warrior – and the brashness of a boy, unfortunately for her sex,” Alysanne cast an eye towards Rhaena. “Whereas Princess Maeve was so graceful… even when performing feats of brute strength. Your daughter is… to be complimented, sister.”

“…thank you, sister.”

Rhaena wondered over the light luncheon – crusts of hard-baked crusty bread, cold cuts alongside pots of jugged hare, wedges of sharp cheese and a bowl of blackberries, alongside flagons of tisane and wine. The sort of food that could be lingered and picked over, rather than pottages or meats that would need much washing of hands betwixt messes.

No doubt, Alysanne expected this to be a long talk.

“Jaehaerys thought the same when he would have her as bride to my Aegon,” Alysanne was speaking now. “Save that she is not, in fact, King Walton’s heir.”

Rhaena could not help the scoff. “If Jaehaerys thinks he would marry the Winter Throne into the Iron Throne, I scarce doubt if your firstborn would survive my firstborn.”

“…unfortunately, I must concede,” a rueful chuckle followed the admittance. “Where is the princess, now?”

“Mayhaps the godswood, mayhaps the bathhouse. She shares the northern tendency for long, hot soaks,” Rhaena fought to keep her eyeballs from rolling at the thought – she was the Queen of Winter here, not just Rhaena Targaryen. “Maeve is wise enough to stay discreet – though I promise nothing should the Harroways call a hunt. No doubt the riverlords would have a collective fit at the Einheri in their midst.”

“I suppose it too much to hope that the Princess Maeve would share nothing else of the Winterlanders,” Alysanne grimaced. “Young Alyssa already prefers swords and armour to the bodkins and raiments. I shudder to think if she would chop her tresses short in the squire’s fashion or break her hands to emulate her… cousin. Why, I presume it is only the lack of dragon that would give Alyssa pause in worshipping the Princess Maeve.”

Rhaena felt the vein at her temple throb at Alysanne’s hint. “My daughter takes after her Stark father, aye,” she defended. “Though she had never needed to steal an inheritance from any of the Stark multitude. Your young Egg, though – I heard in a stopover at the old inn by the crossroads. He claimed Alkahest, did he not? Before our uncle’s corpse was even cold. Our Naunt has this draughty castle, but what of our cousin Laetitia? Would she claim a mount at Dragonstone now?”

“Jaehaerys… a Targaryen princess should not take the dragon out of our family.” Alysanne’s voice was tight. “Laetitia is… a sensible girl.”

“……”

Rhaena gave a rueful chuckle, even as she twisted the ring on her finger and manhandled the cairngorm set in white gold.

“You are too young to remember our grandsire, but he truly favoured our uncle. Mayhaps were the Conqueror’s sons born of Visenya and Rhaenys both, he would favour the line of Rhaenys – as it were, Rhaenys bore him both sons, and thus he truly favoured the younger, who he saw himself in. Our father was a nice man, but a weak king – I will admit this on hindsight, no matter how it pains me. Alysanne, were it not for our uncle’s childless marriage with the late Princess Ceryse, our grandsire would have prayed that nothing comes betwixt our uncle and the Iron Throne."

Rhaena had scarce swallowed a morsel of bread and tart blackberries, wetting her throat with a sip of wine next to appreciate the Arbour Red – the wine imported into the Winterlands tended come by way of Braavos, if not the local iced variety made of Brandon’s Gift or the mead that came of Torrhen’s Square.

“If I know this, no doubt any old courtier would know, and with this slight to our cousin family, Laetitia would be perfect to foment treason within these lords, ever dissatisfied with our family’s rule over the Realm.” Rhaena leant back, the better to look at Alysanne and ponder.

Jaehaerys was many things, but not fool enough to court trouble in the Riverlands and at once bait the Winterlands just beyond the Neck. Trouble…

The game of thrones had too many turnings, Rhaena fumed. She should have just stayed north.

Chapter 4: Vaella I

Summary:

“My gift – that you may see our grandsire in yourself now, little brother.”

Prince Aerion of House Targaryen, formerly Hand of the King, formerly Lord Regent and Protector of the Realm, was laid in state at the Tower of Ghosts. When she arrived at the bier, the silhouette that shielded them from the terrors of the night in her youth lost its vitality, the magic of their uncle’s formidable figure vanished with his passing. The silent sisters had dressed him in mail and plate, and clasped in his hands unsheathed was the greyed ripple of metal that seemed to swallow what little light there was…

“Greetings, sister.”

Vaella blinked, before she turned to the foot of the bier where little Laetitia sat in vigil accompanied with her royal brother.

“Your Grace. You gave our uncle Blackfyre?!”

“It was the sword that he used to slay the first Vulture,” Jaehaerys rasped. “We are blood of the dragon, our ends writ in flame; and yet, he should still face the dark with sword in hand. The Stranger had to take him sleeping – else there would have been a fight.”

Her brother looked every inch a king now – tall and handsome, his hair was wound in a thick braid that fell almost to his waist, and the full golden beard that he wore was was shot through with veins of silver. Under the mourning tabard, he wore a tunic of black velvet, the three-headed dragon picked out in scarlet thread on his breast. He wore no crown for the nonce, the war-helm set by the side a show of regard for the deceased – that is, had the pall of sorrow not weighed over him in visible, tangible mourning.

Vaella bobbed a curtsy with fair decorum, her head inclined even as she walked up with white gillyflowers in hand. They were laid in reverent offering at the feet of their deceased uncle, before a moment of silence was stood in vigil.

“The Royal Guard could have stood vigil,” Vaella murmured. “You look as though you’ve observed however many nights of vigil on your lonesome, brother.”

“Alysanne said much the same, though, I had… much to speak of to our uncle,” the admission came from unexpected quarters, that Jaehaerys would even admit to weakness. “There are others who stand vigil, and the older princes have a rotation to join… When our father passed, Uncle stood the seven nights in vigil on my behalf. I must do this.”

Vaella had only observed her third name-day when King Aenys, the First of his Name, had passed – she held not a memory of him. Despite the fond remembrance that her queenly mother would mention well out of earshot from Lord Baratheon, the old stewards of Dragonstone would add how their grandsire bemoaned his firstborn. Mayhaps had the sons of the dragon held different mothers, had their great-aunt Visenya Targaryen lived to birth a child, the Conqueror would favour his son by his most beloved.

As it were, when both his sons were born of Queen Rhaenys, clearly their grandsire had been dissatisfied with his firstborn – their father. “Were it not for his troth being promised to our cousins, mayhaps he would have gone to forge a chain,” Rhaena’s old absent remark occurred to Vaella.

If only Aenys were born female, mayhaps the Dragon would have seen the heir of his blood on the throne… mayhaps then, we would have had a royal father worthy of the name, instead of an Uncle that was Father in all but name-

“The gods make cruel japes,” Jaehaerys murmured by the wayside, with Vaella absorbed in her brown study. “Uncle had no children of his body with the late Aunt Ceryse, so I had thought… well, he has a girl now, but she has no dragon…”

“Because you were a third son, brother,” Vaella agreed. “But this is the first I heard that Laetitia has not a dragon. What of Alkahest?”

“My firstborn claimed Alkahest.” A slow breath, and Jaehaerys continued: “Aegon claims he did not mean to – of course not. Zaldrīzes buzdari iksos daor.”

A dragon is not a slave.

Vaella did not know what to think, if dragons could indeed choose their own riders. Unfortunately, her cradle egg had yet to hatch, and she doubted if it would and had not the intent to claim one for herself or House Gardener, so she did not understand the creature that was the dragon any more than a non-dragonrider would.

“Our uncle’s widow and orphan are of course cared for, and no doubt Alysanne would extend an invitation for Laetitia to attend her at Court, no doubt with an eye to match her…” A huff from the King. “There leaves the matter of Harrenhal.”

Vaella felt her brow twitch. “I… do not follow.”

“Lord Lucas died in the Shivers with many of his sons. And then, what were left were decimated when they raised their swords to follow the Faith Militant into the Washing,” the admission came like the truth pried from a confessor’s pliers. “Even Horas Harroway, the simple one, passed on.”

“That leaves… Aunt Alys to inherit, and Letty, of course,” Vaella observed. “…no doubt there is… debate that Harrenhal should not fall outside of the house, but there is only Letty’s aunts who would contest it.”

“And therein lies the problem,” Jaehaerys blew in consideration. “Lady Jeyne Harroway married Ser Bywin Strong, the Knight of the Stronghold, whose grandfather Ser Osmund was once the Hand to our grandsire. His brother Ser Lucamore is a Royal Guard.”

“Lucamore… Lucamore…” Vaella raised a hand to press the furrow of her brow down. “He won the grand melee a few years afore, yes. I had thought you would appoint him as Kingsguard. Who was it again, who said that assassins rarely come on horseback wielding lances? Only the best fighters should rise to command the Royal Guard and guard the king – was that not why you expanded the Guard, dear brother mine?”

“T’was I,” Jaehaerys admitted. “I am… of Ser Lucamore, I would think… mayhaps a lady of the Reach would do as his bride.”

Vaella felt herself freeze to stare at her liege, king, and brother.

“…dear brother, I understand that the rule of celibacy is only mandated for the foremost seven,” she said after a long moment. “Though I am uncertain if the Guard would be used to matchmake cadets… they are alike to the young acolytes of the Citadel’s order, are they not? All young cadets prepared to an oath of celibacy.”

“So I would ponder, yes,” her brother admitted. “But House Strong is descended of the First Men of yore, and occasionally they have welcomed brides from north of the Neck. Ser Lucamore and his brother, in particular, descend five generations from Lady Ishild Greystark of Grey Wethers.”

Vaella hummed, the better to give consideration. “Grey Wethers… Greystark? You mean… a Stark cadet? A distant relation to the lordship, no doubt.”

“How ever distant the kinship, through his ancestress Ser Lucamore is indeed the blood of Hagun Stark.” A light made his eyes glow, like brilliant amethysts. “I would have had Aegon marry Princess Maeve Stark and be done with, but one does not leave matters to chance – should Aegon choose another as bride, one of Ser Lucamore’s get would enter the family years down the path.”

“For the blood of the Einheri,” Vaella breathed, recalling the distant figure of the sun goddess, who walked the Blue Fork like solid earth. “I have never seen one, but… my lord husband… has spoken of… of his foster fathers. How he would have our secondborn Galen be fostered at the Moat.”

“The Gardeners… I regret that a sister of mine had to lower herself to marry the green hand, but our house have had tense relations with them since they assumed Wardenship of the South and the Tyrells were gone,” her brother sighed. “The weakness of the Arryns against northern influence, meant that we needed to emphasise support of the Andals – it was the Gardeners or the Hightowers, and I did not wish to promise that schemer and sulker Donnel Hightower your hand.”

“No doubt to his son Horace, not himself,” Vaella defended. “I am well, brother. No matter my lord Garth learnt the fell arts at Lord Hatake’s knee, the virtue of respecting the fairer was emphasised much. He would have escorted me, were it not for some dispute with Old Oak and Goldengrove.”

A searching look was cast towards her, before Jaehaerys gave a small nod. “No doubt you would look forward to seeing our sister Rhaena.”

 

---

 

“My sister,” Rhaena embraced her and kissed her cheek when they met that night at the welcoming feast, her gown of sober black velvet and the few jewels that she wore – a crown, a girdle, and paired droplet earrings, all outfitted in smoky quartz. “You look very well, though I do not see the Gardener lord.”

“He is unfortunately debarred at Highgarden – the Rowans and the Oakhearts have waned much,” Vaella demurred even as her nose caught the pomander of scent around her – sweet citrus, sticky labdanum, woody moss, and all under that the distinct fiery-smoke trace of dragon.

“You mean, since they and the Septon they held up had his head cut off by Danny Flint- ah, there you are,” Rhaena bluntly pointed out, even as she took Vaella’s hand to head for the high table, the Hall of a Hundred Hearths spread out. “Daughter, dear, I see you’ve met your cousin.”

“Cousin Galatea was rather lost, I fear,” the response came, as Vaella turned around to finally look upon the Einheri birthed:

Despite the silver of her head – cold silver that lacked any of the warmth of her Valyrian heritage, indeed – that distracted the eye tied back with a bit of ribbon, Maeve Stark was very much Stark in the frame of her long face, though her eyes seemed to flicker and carry with the incandescent light of the nearby torches. Her clothings were… not very conventional was the kindest judgement Vaella could give, after so many years spent in the Reach – the blackwork embriodery of the princess’s long-sleeved shift was hinted under the white… smock or tunic, Vaella could not tell. Whereas, the pleated long red skirt snatched at her eye like the tongue of a flame, where the princess walked in wide-toed shoes with the same facility as in riding leathers, but also highlighted the lack of farthingales, kirtles, foreparts or foresleeves.

The princess’s own jewels matched her mother the Queen of Winter – the arm-ring and the penannular brooch that pinned her half-cloak closed were also outfitted with the same cairngorms, though the distance allowed Vaella to perceive how the smith had carved the layers of metal as though it were white bark that covered wood, given away only by the metallic lustre. Yet unlike the cunning artifice of her jewels, the princess herself bore no sign of deceit as she embraced and kissed her cousin; Galatea, on the other hand, was flustered as Maeve pulled her by the arm towards the older women.

“That is well, daughter mine. Come and greet your aunt now.”

“Aunt,” the Common was spoken with the barest accent and a short bow was sketched – indeed, as daughter to a reigning king and an Einheri beside, she need not bow any lower. “I fear that we have sent our welcoming gifts ahead to the Hall, I had brought them for our family.”

“That is very nice of you, my thanks,” Vaella gave her own greetings even as they moved towards the Hall of a Hundred Hearths.

In deference to the solemnity, the high table had been lowered and the other tables placed to a level by it, though the seating did not stop the politics. Many a lord, especially of the rivers and streams, stuttered or tripped afore greeting the princess, and even more stood wary when the princess produced her own spoon and eating knife – as though she intended to kill them all with that tiny bodkin, Vaella scoffed in her heart.

Vaella saw her sister the Queen Alysanne frown, as Prince Aegon was imperiously chivvied by his royal father to attend on his northern cousin. Her second sister was very much clutching at the girdle book clasped to her body, as though the Seven-Pointed Star that she carried could ward off the Old Gods that hung around this goddess of flame and Winter. Yet she could not openly intervene, for the feast began then:

As it were a wake that they came for, no meat was observed with the relative lack of festivity. The feast started instead with a pottage of oysters and onions, cooked apples, and a salad of cress and sorrel dressed with vinegar. The subtlety was a porridge of pease in almond milk, coloured golden with the spice of the saffron crocus. Next were doucetes. What followed were messes of eels butterflied and prepared in the northern fashion, the savoury sauce fresh enough to make Vaella swallow her own tongue and reconsider if Lord Garth’s ravings of the Moat’s table was embellishment. The meal then ended with roasted figs baked in laurel leaves.

Seven dishes for the Seven who are One; a good way to see their Uncle off.

“Eels at Bitebay would be cooked over steam afore the grilling; the sauce would be sweetened and heavier to penetrate the softened flesh,” Vaella heard the lecture from the northern princess, turning her head to see the princess explicate to her southern cousins. “We had brought some fermented sauces – they are a joy in the late summer with many a meat or fish, and a way to use the harvest of fingerlings whilst stretching the use of salt.”

Despite the solemnity, the presentation of gifts were as much a pageant as any Court attendance – it was important that the Stark princess was seen as giving gifts to the House Targaryen, as much for the Crown as it were for those gathered to see the gifts. Vaella remembered there were books and swords, openwork girdles and a hairpin of glass shaped like a blooming flower, a fan or eight ironwood ribs with openwork cover, furs and excellent carvings.

For the lack of memory, Vaella blamed the penultimate gift, the one that Rhaena had unveiled with immense pride:

“Behold, they uncovered the plate and finally managed to produce a decent copy to be coloured with pigments.”

It was a picture or a drawing – if those words could express as though the Smith had had a hand in its creation. Composed of light itself, from within the frame of heavy dark wood, a man and woman peered out in cheer and happiness. The woman was seated, in her arms a babe swaddled in red and black; the man stood, truly showing the broadness of his shoulders and the beauty of his Targaryen features. They were Targaryen indeed, for Vaella had only the fainted impression of them – that, and the little hatchling of blue perched on the man’s shoulder, poised as though to dive and swoop the babe from his mother's arms.

“A portrait of our grandsire and grandmother King Aegon and Queen Rhaenys, alongside the newborn Prince Aerion and the drake who would be Alkahest, taken in their retreat to Bitebay at the Moat Cailin,” In the absolute thunder of silence left in the miracle’s wake, so Rhaena proclaimed. “My gift – that you may see our grandsire in yourself now, little brother.”

Notes:

This chapter was me partially addressing the curious incident of Lucamore the Lusty's arrest for bigamy and Kingsguard oaths, in the same year that his brother was awarded Harrenhal. Possibly the canon gelding and Night's Watch exile was meant to check House Strong's position in Court, Jaehaerys could have intended that. Not that marrying three women and fathering sixteen kids wasn't equally terrible...

Alright, the reason why this chapter took so long was because of planning - me planning Jae's impending stomach ulcer, that is, because we're talking dragons ;D.

And since Maeve directly took Aerea's place here... 😈

-Armaria

Chapter 5: Alysanne II

Summary:

If only Alarra Stark was unpromised, Alysanne lamented. Jaehaerys only wanted a Stark bride, he did not mention any which Stark in particular. As trained as Alarra Stark would be, she would not be an active danger to Alysanne’s son as Maeve Stark.

 

---

There was an uncertain silence there, unexpected in Alysanne’s little circle of ladies – now joined with the Winterlander ladies. Northron and Southron, and clearly the definition of ladylike behaviour took on a different cant depending on which side of the Neck one was born.

And that was the issue, Alysanne despaired. For one, her daughter Alyssa now looked at her older cousin the Princess Maeve with all the stars in her eyes. She even emulated her cousin – plaiting her hair rather than whining to chop it short, wearing split skirts, even sitting straight to watch with intense focus as said cousin was crocheting socks mid-speech:

“So you see, a lot of the skills that are taught in textile work carry over to the march. Aye, Mormont women are all fighters – they can darn a sock equally well as darning flesh, but if you don’t patch up a greatcloak soon enough you’d lose bits to frostbite. That happens on both sides of the Wall, and in Winter. We Starks say that Winter is Coming for that very reason.”

Would it be that Alyssa would take interest in her bodkins for a different reason, Alysanne quailed. All around, Southron ladies had their embriodery hoops and needles and thread in hand, and yet the bustle to be expected of basting and attaching different gowns for mourning or the babble of passing conversation had somehow quieted in favour of eavesdropping on the Northron princess.

Even around her, the ladies of the north did not show discomfort or umbrage as their liege lady spoke of men losing… bits of flesh. Mara Manderly’s poise was to be admired, as was Alarra Stark’s polite rebuttal to queries if the Winterlands still sacrificed criminals to the weirwood groves.

Alysanne gave a gentle cough, the better to intervene before more description of men losing parts was repeated for Alyssa’s morbid amusement. “Speaking of the Wall, I had heard tell of some unusual cases round the Gift. Within twenty-five leagues the land is held in perpetuity for the Watch’s sustenance and support. I had… wished to make visit to the Wall, but… well, circumstances did not allow.”

Those selfsame circumstances accounted for why Jaehaerys had cancelled his progress into the Vale, and never considered pressing Vermithor past the invisible latitude of Coldwater or Seagard. Not a single dragon save Dreamfyre had yet to fly that far north.

“The Law of the Gift, aye,” Maeve agreed. “My aunt, may I presume those… unusual cases… being that of women taking shelter from the first night?”

“Quite,” Alysanne agreed, started out of her thoughts. “The Grand Maester Benifer is a tad unclear on the vagaries of Winterlands law, though his understanding of its jurisprudence is as such: as the Night’s Watch oath swears its men not to father children, within the twenty-five leagues of the Wall there should not be a lord who would claim a bride’s maidenhead.”

“An old practice, Your Grace,” Beside her, Septa Lyra approved. “Although, as the man who saw off the Age of Heroes, I would presume that the Lord Commander has more than his share.”

It was as though a pack of wolves had heard a startled hind – Maeve’s head snapped over, Mara Manderly froze mid-sew, and Alarra Stark shot towards the Septa a look that definitely showed the ice in her Stark blood.

“You misunderstand, Septa,” Rhaena glared in the ensuing beat of silence. “The only weddings where one would see the White Wolf, are those where nobody would offer him the bride, or where he represents his liege Prince Eddard. There are a fair number of those who come to Court who would beg my lord husband for such a blessing – ‘tis the same for any of the Einherjar.”

The same for any of the dragonseeds, was Alysanne’s passing thought. The smallfolk of Dragonstone viewed their beautiful rulers of Valyrian origin almost as gods. Thus, when a Lord of Dragonstone took his right the bride was blessed, and the children born of such unions were often given lavish gifts by their father.

“Although I concede, the right of the first night is a concern,” Rhaena added. “There are lords who have died in the ensuing retaliation – one house, one of old Valyria, even died to it.”

Alyssa perked up. “One of our blood died, Aunt?”

“Aye.” A pause, and a scoff from Rhaena. “And they made our grandsire swing the sword. The last lord of House Qoherys of Harrenhal was beheaded by his own liege lord for attempted rape of a Flint bride; it was his own ill fortune that when he turned up to honour the bride, the bridal cortege and the bride’s relatives took mind.”

Alysanne hummed in thought. “I think I would have to find that case, mayhaps it would help… though Rhaena, honestly, I doubt anyone could make our grandsire execute one of the old blood.”

“When Danny Flint dragged Gargon Qoherys before the Iron Throne, there is no option that does not end with the lord’s head on a pike,” Rhaena bit back.

Alysanne flinched at the memory.

“Danny Flint?” Alyssa echoed.

“It’s a… rather a tale, dear cousin,” Maeve supplied. “The Southrons tend to sing only the first half, which is sad.”

For the second half is horrific, was Alysanne’s thought in her heart.

“Though the song is not appropriate for a funeral,” Maeve conceded. “So we may speak of other matters, cousin dear. Such as dragons – besides my mother’s own I saw many a fine specimen of dragon this morn, and all of them lively and eager to take wing to the skies.”

Alysanne fought to ignore the aside glances in her direction for the nonce, even as she faked a cough.

“Yes, Maeve dear, the dragonkeepers brought it up to me over the breaking of fast, how… how you brought Dreamfyre trotting about and stalking goats on Lady Harroway’s shore by the Gods’ Eye,” Alysanne felt a stab of pride at how her voice never wavered in relating that tale.

“Aye, Your Grace my aunt,” Maeve gave a sharp nod. “Dreamfyre needs some moving to get started – all beasties do, lest they would grow lethargic in the passageof time and their joints locked up in the bitter chill. Enrichment such as letting them stalk prey or burn rocks would help. They were kept away from Lord Harroway’s Town and thus safe.”

Alysanne tried not to think of the impromptu parade when she arrived that morn – Dreamfyre, Vermithor, Silverwing, Caraxes, and even crabby mourning Alkahest, all snout-to-tail chasing behind her brilliant figure. Maeve ran across the surface of the Gods’ Eye from time to time, and with each leap back ashore a coney was flung in some direction, one dragon loosing belches of flame or a quick strike of claw or snap of the neck.

The Baratheon retinue that had arrived earlier in the day had almost collectively drawn steel at the sight – poor young Boremund needed to retire early, and young Jocelyn had swooned and needed Aemon on hand. Aegon, though… her firstborn son had the look on his face, the look of the punch-drunk that Alysanne was sure was on her own face in her sojourn with the babe Aegon in her arms and from the wheelhouse on the road to Winterfell, there loomed in the distance the pavers of the Night’s Watch and the giant hauling the roller-

Doubtless, it was from catchuing that sight that Alyssa wished to learn – how to dance amidst dragonflame like some nymph of the lake, that is. Alysanne dreaded the thought.

“I would not know, having not a dragon,” Vaella spoke up now, putting down her own embriodery hoop, “though most would not be… so very close to a dragon not their own.”

“Dreamfyre is a lovely beastie – or so my father would acclaim, dear Aunt Vaella,” Maeve gave a smile which was mostly a flash of bone-white incisor. “Aye, it would be usual for Father to provide Dreamfyre’s enrichment – I would be taking the pack for their run come sunup and sundown. There is a Northern jape here – the Wolfswood is not a nice place for pannage.”

“The Pack?” Alyssa asked before Alysanne could – rather a breach of royal protocol, but Alysanne would not lose her poise as queen of this realm.

“Direwolves.” Maeve huffed, her eyes glazed in thought. “All of them – my Skadi, Father’s Olwen, Aelfraed’s Haakon, Uncle Alaric’s Talvi, Alarra’s Beira… I do a lot for the castle, don’t I, my lady cousin?”

By her side, Alarra Stark put down her own hoop. “Yes, my lady cousin, you do – if only you could tackle the darning with as much vigour as you do a direwolf pack.”

And the girls exchanged a laugh, heedless of the Southron disapproval around them.

Vaella’s eyebrow twitched, before she leant in Rhaena’s direction. “Dare I ask, sister dear, are there some… differences to the styles used in the Court of Winter?”

“Technically the Winterlands adopted the style of Grace for royalty much later,” Rhaena explained. “And in order not to let any of the royal children get a swelled head – Walton’s own words – the Stark of Winterfell ordered that all children of House Stark up to princes be addressed as ‘my lord’, and only the King and Queen to be addressed as Grace. Hence it is entirely right that, in spite of a relative difference in rank, that each address the other as ‘my lady’.”

“Our Alarra is soon to be a princess, as is right,” Maeve proclaimed with great pride. “She is trothed to our cousin Prince Harald Seaward of Sea Dragon Point, and granddaughter to a king besides. Tobi got her a polearm and everything.”

Alysanne had turned to take a deep draught of her watered wine, and it was only with great effort that she did not lose her dignity. Alyssa did not share that notion, cooing in awe instead. “Do all Northern ladies receive weapons?!”

“Alyssa!”

“There are… a fair few, aye,” Alysanne noted the delicate response from Maeve towards her young cousin. “For Alarra her case is… different. In the Winterlands, we hold that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. As Princess Seaward, Alarra would have to perform that duty of judgement and justice in absence of the Prince – and using a glaive to perform the decapitation is easier for women than the sword, what with its longer reach.”

Alysanne let her eyes trail over the slight Stark woman, long-faced with the wild, enduring beauty of Winter – a winter rose, the thought came to mind. Alysanne could not imagine her, or any woman really, ascending the platform to stand before a block, watching as a man laid his head atop his final pillow, swinging the blade to fall, hopefully only once-

But that was the same for dragonfire, Alysanne caught herself.

The Winterlands was cold, cruel, stark clarity – the silver hair only distracted Alysanne’s eye from noticing that Maeve was very much… not a courtly woman. No, this was a woman who seemed to tackle horse-sized direwolves and play catch with great dragons on a regular basis – a woman who was magic and wild and free and fire made flesh.

If only Alarra Stark was unpromised, Alysanne lamented. Jaehaerys only wanted a Stark bride, he did not mention any which Stark in particular. As trained as Alarra Stark would be, she would not be an active danger to Alysanne’s son as Maeve Stark.

Alyssa no doubt came to the same conclusion, if only with a different focus: “And… what if she cannot?”

“If I cannot bear to do even the mercy of ending his life,” came Alarra’s bland response, “then mayhaps, the man does not deserve to die. But if he does deserve it, then it will be done.”

Alysanne: “……”

Mayhaps, the Court of the Red Keep was not quite ready for a she-wolf queen just yet.

Chapter 6: Vaella II

Summary:

“My lady cousin truly has a pleasant temper, if she would still entertain vying for Prince Aegon’s hand.”

“My lady Maeve is not interested in the prince our cousin, Mother.”

Vaella pondered at her daughter, the current Rose of Highgarden, and wondered what magic the Stark princess had wrought to get her dutiful daughter to relax her mien. Galatea was beautiful – well-turned out, of Gardener and Hightower and Targaryen and Velaryon blood, her father one of the richest lords of the realm, born of royal stock.

“She is your cousin, but she is also a princess,” Vaella huffed. “Mind how you speak of her, my child.”

“She was the one who asked me to address her as such – the royal scions of the Winterlands are usually styled as ‘my lord’ or ‘my lady’ like their lordly cousins,” Galatea made a face at the thought. “Save for the ruling princes of the Atheling houses, so the princess Maeve said.”

Vaella made a hum, even as her eyes did not depart where straw dummies were being hacked to pieces. “Mayhaps, a revision of the Winterlands would help,” she murmured. “Daughter mine.”

Sunlight fell on Galatea’s hair and lit up streaks of gold-beaten highlights within her hair, even as her brow furrowed. No doubt she was confused, but she obeyed:

“The great- I mean, the royal house of Winter is, of course, House Stark of Winterfell. Winter is Coming – are the words that even His Grace would take heed. Since the Long Night they have built up the Winterlands. The heir to the throne would be styled as the Prince and Great Steward of Winterfell – for the nonce it would be our young cousin Prince Aelfraed, still left north of the Neck.”

Vaella made a noise of approval.

“By the custom of House Law as founded by King Harlon Stark, First of his Name – apart from the heir, the children of cadets should be downgraded a rank with each generation departed from the Winter Throne, and after five generations to no longer be regarded as of royal blood, though the nobility of their line is noted,” Galatea reflected. “The exception are distinguished cadets who are assented to establish branch houses as part of the Atheling – ‘those of kingly material’, whom in absence of the Stark main line may provide a successor to the Throne, with the proximity of succession ranging from time of house founding.”

She hesitated then. “I… had heard afore from Septon Barth, when he was still serving in Highgarden, that the specific wording would place the Prince of the Moat first amongst the Athelings… Father had confirmed it too. Though…”

Vaella understood her confusion: the fact that the Prince of the Moat had never actually produced an heir of his body or that said heir was oft married back into the Stark main line was its own mystery. If the Moat was an appanage for Stark cadets, the criteria for assuming the title was its own arcane mystery; if it were simply a princely title to manage the Lord Commander, then the title should have been merged into the Winter Throne, since the King of Winter should manage such a strong vassal.

“Your lord father learnt at the White Wolf’s knee for a year and a day, and my lord Garth said that it benefited him all his life,” Vaella mused aloud. “Mayhaps the best interpretation for the Prince of the Moat would be a life tenure. Leave the mystery that is the Moat, daughter mine – it does not bear thinking on, else the good neighbours would note us, as my lord Garth would say.”

Galatea blanched when she glanced down from the tower of Harrenhal, and saw her silver-haired cousin gesture and blow a great plume of flame that swallowed the straw and wood to catch alight. “Gods above!”

Despite sharing the sentiment, Vaella found her background causing her to reproach: “Galatea.”

“Y- Yes, Mother,” her daughter tried to recover her poise.

“All is well… your cousin… merely has extraordinary gifts. Now… right after the royal Starks of Winterfell and the Stark of the Moat?” Vaella questioned.

“House Karstark, the first and longest continuing cadet house of the Atheling if the Moat is discounted,” Galatea recited, tearing her eyes off from the distraction of Maeve Stark. “Founded by the Einheri Prince Karlon Stark, known as the Wolf-Star, of the line of Queen Beira Stark, the First of Her Name. They guard the north-eastern coast by the Shivering Sea – the Sun of Winter, so Prince Karlon swore his line would be – the Karstark words and name were determined then.”

And of the blood of the Army-Breaker, Vaella forbore to mention. A man born of the Moat with ability stepping into divinity, if she dared to compare her Targaryen blood. The latest scion of such blood had just demonstrated her gift, after all.

“And then after the Karstarks, would be House Seaward of Sea Dragon Point – my lady cousin mentioned that her cousin Lady Alarra was trothed to Prince Harald Seaward,” Galatea mused.

“Very true,” Vaella confirmed. “Though I had always thought that, for a house descended of the wolf’s blood the sigil is… rather odd. Red waves and three plovers counter-charged on white.”

“The Records of Wintertide states that its founder, Prince Wulfstan Stark the Seawolf, was fighting a heavily outnumbered naval battle against Ironborn reavers by the Stony Shore, when a flock of three plovers crested a coming wave, the sight of which he took as a sign of overcoming adversity in harmony,” Galatea provided. “After he won the resulting Battle of the Stony Shore with his Einherjar father and brother, he took the birds as his sigil in remembrance – By Sea or Land, Prince Wulfstan swore to ward the western seas; hence, the Seaward name and sigil was made.”

Vaella hummed, turning to lean slightly against the railings of the balcony as she awaited her daughter to continue.

“But those are the Atheling houses of the Winterlands proper,” Galatea’s words swiftly changed tack then. “The remaining two houses stand beyond the Wall – House Wihtburg of Hardhome controls their coast of the Shivering Sea, and the House of the Fist is postulated as another lifetime tenure since the title of its head, the Fist of Winter, was left defunct upon the death of its last holder Prince Wulfric. My lady cousin states that both houses are even more reclusive than most of the highborn north of the Neck.”

“Since they are beyond the Wall, the rule of Winterfell and the Night’s Watch is a bit looser amongst the Free Folk, so Hardhome’s Prince is its warden and the Fist of Winter is the foremost Einheri of the generation,” the voice echoed behind Vaella.

Vaella felt her slipper slip from one foot, with how her soles had burst into cold sweat and she turned.

Her Einheri niece crouched upon the railing of the balcony, her haunches resting on her heels perched atop the railing. The elbows of her arms balanced on her knees, in a gesture that was… both unladylike, and all the more impressive.

Vaella leant over. “M- Maeve. Princess, I thought you were at the yard!”

Three floors down.

“Oh, aye I was, Aunt Vaella.” Bright eyes twinkled. “The master-of-arms decreed that he was going to run out of sword dummies soon, hence I requested his assistance to set up the archery butts. Or mayhaps my lady cousin would not mind fishing? Our great-aunt Princess Alys did mention that the Gods’ Eye is pleasant for boating, though the Isle of Faces had drowned many a riverlord that tried to get close. ‘Tis the season for eel, and we did bring the sauces down south with us, for preparing eel in the style of the Moat.”

“That is… a lovely offer, cousin,” Galatea managed to squeeze out – Vaella was simply too overwhelmed to figure out how the Stark princess had cleared three stories of the tower without anyone’s notice. “Erm, mayhaps our Targaryen cousins would like to join? The wake and vigils are…”

“Aye, our uncle and mothers are preoccupied with the vigil and wake, the least we could do is manage the young ones,” Maeve contemplated, and then answered with a smile like the sun. “My lady cousin, I am unfortunately not acquainted with the Southron bounty, mayhaps you would ask the cook to prepare some dishes whilst I ask our Targaryen cousins?”

“C- Certainly.”

Vaella could not help the gasp as Maeve then fell backwards off the railing. Galatea was already racing forward, but the impossible girl had somehow twisted mid-air, landing on her feet with the surety of a cat, as though she had only done a springing step rather than make a near-impossible jump. In the distance, Vaella could see the retinue around the princes – the older ones, including Prince Aegon – stiffen and regard the Einheri approaching them, spread out as though to rally some charge in a grand melee against the witch, the goddess.

“Mother,” Galatea murmured, “My lady cousin truly has a pleasant temper, if she would still entertain vying for Prince Aegon’s hand.”

Despite herself, Vaella could not help the sudden snort of laughter.

 

---

 

No doubt Alysanne was even more unnerved by their niece – as Queen she would be the highest-ranked woman in any retinue, and yet there she was, watching as Maeve with a wooden comb was styling a cheerful Daella’s hair with flowers effected from twists of silk ribbon, all the while Alyssa took unusual focus and Maegelle infrequent chagrin and Vaegon unfamiliar attention:

“Afore this journey south we visited the House of Extensive Things – the Watch had very kindly lent an exhibit of artefacts, Weapons of the Ages and all. All hands were required – weaving the cords, repairing the scabbards, rewrapping the fittings, polishing and sharpening the blades all.” Her eyes sparkled as she added, “Commander Flint let me polish Dark Sister, the lost Valyrian blade of Visenya Targaryen that was taken into the Watch possession.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” Alyssa’s umbrage stood at contrast with the awe in her mismatched eyes. “That our House should lose a sword. Especially a Valyrian steel sword.”

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law – and the Conqueror never asked for it back,” Maeve chuckled, even as she set down one lock of Daella’s hair and then a nice bit of red and white silk was bent and twisted and plaited before a lovely pimpernel of silk was conjured to Daella’s delight. “The way Tobi puts it, there are lots of silly boys who come north to take on some adventurism and conquest and what-not and end up leaving bits of them all over the place – Valyrian blades, armour, the Boltons left their bones, that one Argos Sevenstar left behind the whole prow of the ship – oh, and our antecedent Visenya, she left her blade and her dragon. The bones were cast and copies made, the skeleton takes up a whole new wing planned to exhibit Valyria.”

Even Alysanne had abandoned the pretense of reading to listen, her blue eyes flickering with each artefact listed – the Argos Sevenstar one drew no reaction, though the Valyrian blade and the dragon did.

Maeve frowned here as she fiddled with Daella’s hair, before finally tightening the knot. “There you are, young Daella, flowers in your hair and not a bee in sight. Oh, mayhaps Her Grace Aunt Alysanne could teach how to make a pomander, the smell of cloves and mint would repel insects – or Maegelle, yes? We could visit the stillroom, Harrenhal’s maester could assist if not our aunts or companions. Cousin Letty?”

Laetitia jumped at being addressed from her place by the hamper – Laetitia was a Valyrian beauty, of course, but before Maeve’s vivacious presence she faded like the moon afore the sun. “Ah- yes-  a stillroom? I… doubt that Harrenhal has that.”

“Oh, well then,” Maeve’s smile turned radiant, “Certainly the masons could help with assembling the crockery needed to improvise the alembic, Mara has the alchemic knowledge and I did learn some bits and pieces of joinery. We Starks are blood of the Builder – not that our fellow cousins lack skills of their own. Vaegon, surely… No, scents are not your thing, but I think you could carve a bookplate and have it infused with scent – and ink! I think bookbinding would do nicely, and your lady cousins surely knows to help with the binding. Her Grace has a girdle book – no doubt you could make one. Well, Her Grace is a pious woman to carry the Seven-Pointed Star, but mayhaps you could make a commonplace book? A journal, yes. Lady Maisie does very nice sketches – and cartography, her map of Bear Island and the Westwatch-by-the-Bridge is now the definitive map. No, Maisie, be proud of yourself, that Farman woman wanted you for the North-West Passage expedition… mayhaps one day we could welcome you to the House of Extensive Things and you could meet Vhagar, young cousin Vaegon.”

“That sounds lovely to see,” Vaegon spoke, even as his brows tightened. “Though the House of Extensive Things does not sound like it has a library.”

“You look at the wrong place, cousin dear – the House of Runes is the foremost library at the Kingsway, but the Permafrost Library at Hoarfrost Hill by the Wall is the oldest continued library,” Maeve spoke with relish even as she wiped her hands on a small handkerchief. “Aye, I’ve seen them, those acolytes and maesters who come draped in the dark wool of a needed educational departure, and who end up throwing their chains aside to take the hat as Scholars of the Lyceum or taking the black simply for a chance at the Library…”

Notes:

This chapter might seem all over the place, but I thought it needed to show how Maeve's building friendly cousin relations with her Targaryen cousins - sure it's like Addams Family and non-Addams cousins, but the younger Targaryens appreciate the attention. As for the non-Targaryen Galatea, she's definitely sensible enough ;P.

- Armaria

Chapter 7: Rhaena II

Summary:

“I had thought your Nuncle would have returned to the Moat by now – the harvest feast should have ended. Else your father should have written…”

“It did – Nuncle remained at Winterfell to discuss the financing for expansion of the Snowroad as well as the river runners along the White Knife. Father was caught by both uncles trying to shirk his duties – or so Uncle Alaric wrote.”

Notes:

The plotline got away from me as Alyssa crashed in and other kids demanded a voice ;P Maybe next chapter would be an interlude.

- Armaria

There was a mild altercation afore the day that Prince Aerion of the House Targaryen, once Hand of the King and Lord Regent of the Realm went to the fire.

“All of this, over a five-penning coin,” Rhaena felt the vein in her temple throb, even as she avoided looking at the Hand of the King. “Truly?”

By her side, Maeve frowned even as she regarded the coin on the table, the subject of the current discussion. “It is a fifty-penning coin, Mother – a Great Holey, that is. Whoever donated to the community chest must have truly wished the child’s health.”

The Hand of the King pursed his lips, and coughed. “This was the touch piece that lay around Prince Aerion’s neck for most of his life. I do communicate the opinions from many a man of the Faith, which holds that leaving the coin to be burned with him would have… some implication for the prince’s soul…”

The Hand was dissuaded from a wave of the king’s hand. “Half the Realm would pray to the Lord Commander if they thought he would listen. What Septon Barth means, is that the Starry Sept fears if the inclusion of an item so bound to the Old Gods – or, the heterodox Snowy Sept – would interrupt our Uncle’s passage into the Seven Heavens.”

Rhaena fought back from letting the incredulity show on her face, and she saw Jaehaerys knit his brow in a similar effort, leaving peacable Barth at the table. All of this over a gods-be-damned coin – not even legal tender, merely some disc of copper that was cast with the hole and runes, then chained before the nearest heart tree before distribution at Dafttide for the Ne’erday saining. Walton had distribuited similar coins at Wintertown. “Alright, then. What is so special about this coin?”

“…Our uncle was born north of the Neck,” Jaehaerys admitted. “The picture of our grandsire and grandmother reminded me, and I checked the court records before asking our sister my queen – the coin was given from the… Lord Commander.”

Possibly there were any number of epithets that had crossed her brother’s mind afore his speech – all the gods knew Rhaena had had the same reaction the first time. Jaehaerys had ever right to his caution – as though by speaking the man’s name he would appear.

And yet, two decades of lending out the Wolfswood hunting lodge or quiet family dinners – or so Walton called them and the accompanying ball scrummages plus drunken open necking – had crumbled and stomped over any illusions Rhaena might have held of the White Wolf. Or had elevated Ned Stark of all people.

“I doubt the gift was anything more than a routine gesture,” Rhaena fought the urge to cover her face with her hand. “Many a northern lord would given out coin to the smallfolk as a Ne’erday – the lords of the Moat simply stamped theirs as non-legal tender due to hoarding of associated coinage. You could just send the thing back – ravens do still fly across the Neck, unlike dragons.”

The look that Jaehaerys bore now was akin to having been told to fall on the Iron Throne. “You are… certain? I… I would not like for a misunderstanding to occur.”

“My little brother, you could not be any worse than Viserys, whose jape cost his life,” Rhaena huffed, only to clamp her lips as the cause of His Draconic Grace’s worry just occurred to her.

Her ill-fated first wedding was behind her – hindsight and later knowledge had furnished her with the exact knowledge of how even-tempered Lord Tobirama was, not to depart from guest right and then turn around to rightfully drown all of King’s Landing for that offense. Rhaena doubted if she had any cause to make an enemy of the man now – he had accepted her contrition before the heart tree of Winterfell, and expressed his own regrets that treatment for the Shivers came too late. He was a kindly man – he had set out to battle the Faith Militant alone not for lack of mustering, but that winter was coming and the harvest was to be brought in.

Jaehaerys had not such the benefit of hindsight, she realised. The first exposure Jaehaerys had was at his seventh year of life in that selfsame ill-fated wedding in 41AC; the grieving Lord Commander stepped out of legend, whose arrival came with the north wind and the snows in summer, and whose departure in offense to Viserys’s jape had heralded the Stranger walking the Realm and the Shivers taking half of their House. Afterwards, the next time they met was at their late mother’s second wedding – the one with the Lord Commander fighting what must be the whole Realm’s knights on his lonesome and winning, and then throwing down a fucking wight as though tossing the gauntlet in challenge. After that, no doubt it was the equally overwhelming Washing of the Faith at the ruby ford – the Washing which no doubt took a fair number of Riverlanders at that, being on the banks of the Trident.

Whenever the Lord Commander was brought up, it was some trouble or disaster spelled to Jaehaerys in the south, far from the Wall and the truth of the north – and he had not even the comfort Walton had; of Stark blood, and very strong antacids passed down the Kings of Winter.

Poor boy, Rhaena decided. He truly needed a healer. Which healer would go to King’s Landing, though…

 

---

 

“Must we visit the dragon’s city?” Maeve plaintively complained in bed – the lack of another presence had driven Rhaena to request her daughter.

Despite that a fair number of her ladies were around, past and current alike – dear Alayne Royce looked well turned out, no doubt her cousin Yorbert was a perfect knight – but no ordinary lady felt as hot and powerful and alive as Walton did. Her daughter made a good substitute in all but frame.

“It’s a stinking place,” Maeve continued. “Mother, you may have shared stories of your grandsire and the Targaryens, but the Southron viper’s nest stood out. You would not even let Aelfraed come to see his cousins here, mere leagues from the Neck and Greywater Watch.”

“Mayhaps not King’s Landing, not for long,” Rhaena agreed. “But I had thought of Dragonstone. The old and first home of our house, of the blood of old Valyria. There are many dragons – Jaehaerys would forbid sharing an egg, but I would have that he could not object to an unmounted wild dragon.”

“Prince Aegon already shared that most of the dragons take residence at the Dragonpit – some great stable built atop one of the three hills around King’s Landing,” Maeve shared with a careless wave of one hand. “His Draconic Grace our Uncle made the offer, though Her Draconic Grace our aunt interrupted the conversation – that was when Alkahest cut afore Vermithor this day towards the pyre.”

“Oh, that,” Rhaena hummed. “Walton would call Alkahest an intelligent beastie – I can think of it now. But there is something to be said, that his dragon cared for Uncle Aerion so much to send him on… the final journey.”

The crypts or the lichyard of Winterfell did not look pleasant to her, what with the blood of the dragon in her veins. Walton and she had spoken on the matter; in her death she would be consigned to the fire and her bones carried to be interred at Dragonstone.

Such was Winter. There was no shelter, no warmth, no respite, no hope, and no help, and nothing but the will to live. That savagery was never meant for the South with its warmth and bounty and wealth – and for a Southron like Rhaena, even after so long in the cold snows, the land itself was ancient and alien alike.

It was the first time then that Rhaena had considered death; her own mortality – as though a veil was lifted from her eyes and there was nothing to feared, for there was nothing to be helped to arrest it – she was not the White Wolf that just would not die until Ned Stark was avenged, or so Walton had japed once in his cups.

“What happened?” she had asked.

And the resulting chuckle: “The white walkers killed him.”

…Rhaena had kissed him then, the better to avoid thinking about how that sounded; standing watch atop the Wall for eight millennia to kill legendary monsters in revenge for a leman. That the White Wolf would not die until the end of that pursuit.

“Uncle Aerion would be carried back to Dragonstone – mayhaps you would join your cousin there, daughter?” Rhaena asked. “Your father did mention to take our time, I wonder why he hasn’t written…”

“Father is currently being oppressed in his solar by Uncle Alaric and Nuncle,” Maeve’s nose twitched.

“Huh,” Rhaena huffed. “I had thought your Nuncle would have returned to the Moat by now – the harvest feast should have ended. Else your father should have written…”

By some technicality of House Law as well as generational gaps, Ned Stark was technically Maeve’s half-granduncle. However it was not so in all but name; he had been raised a brother to Walton and Alaric’s pack, being close in age despite being of their father’s generation. Every Stark child called him Nuncle – the same way that everyone from the Bitebay area would dignify ‘the ser’ against all the sers of Winter’s Realm.

“It did – Nuncle remained at Winterfell to discuss the financing for expansion of the Snowroad as well as the river runners along the White Knife. Father,” Maeve stressed, “was caught by both uncles trying to shirk his duties – or so Uncle Alaric wrote.”

The hand that Rhaena had just lifted now landed on her cheek with a slap. “Let me presume… hunting? Presumably beyond the Wall?”

“Closer. Something about finding a gyrfalcon for Aelfraed…”

“Aelfraed’s name day was in the last moon,” Rhaena groaned. “Your father can be rather silly – and being an Einheri, I never know when the jape would turn literal. Where is the letter?”

“I have it, Mother – it is rather faded, written in charcoal as it is. Aelfraed’s eagle owl was sent to deliver it.”

“At least Walton got one message out afore being shut in his solar with reproducing documents.” Too familiar with her husband – the silly man did not dignify the title of ‘lord’ this night – Rhaena spared only a moment of sympathy before she had her daughter read out before getting to bed three letters of correspondence from Stark men that painted some colourful (if blandly stated and requiring much rereading to discover) portrait of home at Winterfell.

Chapter 8: Interlude: Hatchlings I

Summary:

He wondered how it was, as student to a being who had seen much of the Realm’s history with his own eyes, and had so many tales to tell, and wondered how his own queenly mother had felt so long ago, when she had taken a rare boat-ride north, and into the unknown.

Aemon

“And you’re dead. Again.”

The flat of Cousin Maeve’s fan tapped Aemon on the thigh – where he had been foolish enough to lax on tying the lobstered metal, where the big vein was.

Their Stark cousin might be female, but at the moment neither his brothers nor him could give a fig for chivalry to women. Not after Aegon was thrown bodily, training steel and all, out of the ring over the shoulder, Baelon was tripped and then tapped on the throat, and now Aemon declared dead, and the bout lost.

For the tenth time.

Alyssa’s screech foretold lots of swishing fans in his future on the training yard.

“Marked improvement.” A slow blink when one of the Northern ladies held up the small sand-glass, turned on one side to show how much sand was left on the top bulb. “You held me off – handicapped, but still –for almost a minute. If your Royal Guard is composed of men quick on their feet, more than enough time for help to arrive. Continue to improve, and you just might cut me.”

Aegon had hobbled over to haul Baelon to his feet, and his brothers leant on each other for wordless support.

“Would you take us seriously when we do?”

A frown crossed Maeve’s features. “I do not understand?”

“You’ve been using a fan,” Baelon pointed out. “One-handed.”

“Ah.” The fan was brandished, all eight ribs joined to a central spoke that fanned out with a gesture, draped where the gleam of oiled iron glimmered. “The art of the combat fan was said to be taught by the Lord Commander to successive women of the Stark line – that, alongside the polearm. It is meant to be a one-handed weapon to deflect projectiles and close-arm defence. I had thought I appropriate to show Alyssa that some forms of combat may be feminine in manner, on advice of Her Grace my aunt.”

“Magnificent. And only a small bit of an Einheri’s might.”

There was a smattering of applause, and their cousin paused to acknowledge the one who applauded – a lord, a Royce seeing as he wore a breastplate of bronze edged with runes, with a magnificent scraggy beard and his face so very wrinkled with age, Aemon marvelled at the fact that men could indeed live so long.

“Prince Aegon, my princes; Princess Maeve Stark,” the man bowed. “I, Allard Royce of Runestone, do offer my greetings this day.”

Aemon saw his older brother frown – as Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne, it was appropriate that he be addressed as first amongst equals of the royal blood; and yet, their brother cared for his younger brothers and sisters more than Court etiquette. “Lord Royce. Welcome to Harrenhal. May we presume that you came with the Arryn host?”

“Aye. Though not the Arryn you would think – Lord Arryn himself is cooped up in the Eyrie with arbitration, something of a bridge between two knightly houses. The vagaries he does as Warden of the East and Lord of the Vale,” a sigh from Lord Royce. “Ser Hubert may not approve of his cousin’s departure from Andal tradition, but there is talk that the High Road would be expanded. Oh, but we cannot forget too, Princess Maeve, that a wandering crow came along on the passage past the Mountains.”

It was but a moment, but Aemon found his eyes tracking in a blur towards his female cousin before focusing back on Lord Royce.

“The wandering crow led the whole host, I take it?” Maeve did not look surprised. “All the blood of the First Men respect the Lord Commander – and are respected in turn. Though it seems that my lord had seen an Einheri fight?”

A full smirk. “I fostered at the Moat.”

While Aemon’s neck had cracked like a whip to stare at old Lord Royce, their cousin had stifled a snort. “You have more than that, my lord – distantly we are kin, but more immediately… Lady Anya still serves at Winterfell, and she shared with your daughter Lady Alayne when you received a black eye from her.”

“I was six, as was she!” The Royce lord paused, before coughing to recover the air of the staid elder that was, unfortunately, so disturbed.

She punched you?

Aemon vaguely recalled that House Royce was the next strongest house in the Vale after the Arryns, mainly from the First Men background they sported and some history of the Andal invasion turned counter-attack – one of the rare moments when the Lord Commander had stridden south and straight into myth as the Stranger made manifest, or something.

“I am very much humbled, princess – aye, watching Lady Yolanda duel the Fist of Winter opened my eyes as much as the bruise on my face did,” Lord Royce’s self-pity did not distract Aemon’s interest in hearing the tale. “But ah, I disturb your training-”

“It is no matter, Lord Royce.” A snap of her fan shut, and the slim tapering device swung on its hoop around one callused finger. “We were about due for the midday break, and then the funeral. Mayhaps lunch?”

---

 

Alyssa

An unhappy pout graced her face as Alyssa perched at her seat at the high table, hiding her scowl before her royal father, then directing her stare towards her cousin three spaces away.

“Best not to turn to Maeve, Alyssa,” Her aunt, Her Grace Queen Rhaena of the Winterlands, lent a word in warning. “The kitchens of Winterfell have a drawer where all the leftover porridge is cooked thick, and then poured in to set. At which if the children wanted a snack, it would have solidified for cutting and eating.”

Alyssa clutched at her chest as though mummering her shock, then her head snapped to her mother.

Delicately fingering the smoked fish laid before her, her queenly mother gave a sad nod. “I wish I could refute that, dear, but I cannot. You would be eating it hot now, or eating it cold later.”

Alyssa did not want to eat the porridge, be it now or later – she did not want to eat it at all. She glanced down, prepared to devote the gaze of the dragon upon the pottage bowl –

–and blinked at the trencher set before her, with the fillet of sauced tench.

Hardly daring to breathe, Alyssa’s back straightened as she turned towards her new favourite cousin. One bright eye caught her gaze, and then dropped in a wink before Maeve turned to the pottage bowl to get started. Three spaces away on the table.

Gods above, Alyssa wanted to learn all the magic she could from Cousin Maeve.

---

 

Vaegon

“He does so love to burn,” was the words that Vaegon Targaryen heard from his brother Aemon’s direction once their great-uncle was finally burned on the pyre.

It seemed as though the Realm had descended on Harrenhal to see off their blood – the last living son of the Conqueror, finally given to the flames. And the dragon that had been his mount in life was the one who burned his body.

“Gīda,” their eldest brother breathed as the dragon cried in sorrow, or so it sounded to young Vaegon of seven name-days.

The command’s effect showed itself as the great beast of scale and claw groaned, great tongues of flame lapping to catch on those few stray stalks of grass that, whilst surviving the trampling of man, fell in the end to dragon-fire.

A sigh, and Vaegon spotted from the corner of his eyes a well-shod square-toe shoe that had minced over to put out the flame near himself with furtive quiet.

“Cousin. As a prince you should keep well away from naked flame; as a child ditto.”

Their wolfish cousin wore her hair in a crown braid, black fore-sleeves pinned onto the square-necked gown of grey velvet for mourning, and a bead of dragonglass with a curious mottled look lay upon her forehead. His royal mother would very much have Alyssa to emulate such grace, save that Vaegon last saw this cousin thrash his three elder brothers in the training yard the day afore.

Then Maeve Stark caught one shoulder in her hand, and Vaegon was frog-marched well away from his eldest brother the Crown Prince – and then Maeve was joined by Letty, who led his sisters Maegelle and Daella in what was certainly a looser grip.

“You were right,” Laetitia fidgeted, and even under the veil her eyes remained puffy in grief. “The dragon would be grieving, cousin.”

“You would need to see to your respected late father, Cousin Letty.” A nod of her head. “If you would, I may look after the children with mine ladies for the nonce. Alyssa could join us if Her Grace our aunt would release her.”

“A good idea, cousin.” A quick curtsy and Laetitia returned to the pyre, leaving Daella to squeak and flee behind Maegelle.

“Funeral biscuits, cousin Maegelle?” Whether she knew or cared what devout Maegelle or sweet, simple Daella thought, Maeve Stark had at least bent her knees and bowed her head to look Maegelle in the eye. “No matter if our grand-uncle worshipped the Seven or the Fourteen, he is with the gods now.”

“M- My thanks,” Maegelle took the proffered rich gingerbread, breaking it in half to share upon Daella’s pleading look. “You would not have Granduncle join the old gods?”

“The Old Gods are those of the world – of stone and river and forest and myriad other things that make the world. Should one believe in them, they are there – should they not, then the gods are not.” A moue was formed on their cousin’s lips even as her knees straightened and a hand was extended. “Would you join me, cousins? I have a pavilion nearby – I had anticipated that Mother would need to retire for a spell afore or after the cremation, but I may as well keep us young ones from underfoot the grown men.”

As the elder brother of them three Vaegon took the hand. It was not the soft hands of his queenly mother, nor was it the tiny ones of his sisters – slender they may be, they had hardened calluses, that Vaegon presumed came from years of swordplay or magic or brick-breaking. Or wrestling unicorns with her bare hands – the gods only knew what they intended when House Stark was blessed with such puissance, unlike what meagre dragon-rider blood Vaegon held.

“I would offer to carry you, but if my young brother Aelfraed was any indication, I doubt any boy would like to be presumed a toddler,” Maeve cheerily waved a hand as they entered a small pavilion set on the outskirts of the courtyard, where Vaegon saw Lady Mara Manderly already busy at work brewing cups of tea, and Lady Alarra Stark was unpacking a small chest about the length of her arms. “My lady cousin, did we pack the Goose Game?”

While Maegelle’s brow scrunched at the moment Lady Alarra produced a bag of dice, the racing of multicoloured pieces at the turn of a die proved to distract them all – even Vaegon, who rather shamefacedly started and dropped his roll when his older sister Alyssa barge in as they were halfway through the spiral.

Authoritative finger raised, their cousin did the impossible and silenced his elder sister. “Be quiet when the game is underway.”

Unhappily silenced, Alyssa had sidled over to where Maeve sat perpendicular to where Vaegon and two younger sisters raced, yet her whisper was about as loud as her normal voice: “Why?”

Her lips parted, and then Vaegon saw their cousin turn her head to regard Alyssa critically.

“Tobi – the Lord Commander to you – says that there was this one Stark who, whilst hunting in the mountains, met a pair of players in the midst of a round of the encirclement game.” Of all the reasons that could be provided, Vaegon had not expected that.

“As both players were dressed in plain clothings, he had thought them smallfolk and demanded their obeisance in the midst of their game. So they did to him kneel and plied him with sweetbreads, and in this hospitality he put to one side his strong hunting-bow and sat and watched as he chewed and then fell into a trance.”

“And then?” Alyssa’s eyes widened. “Was it poisoned?”

“This is the northern mountains, and guest right is as important as the ties of blood,” Maeve gravely informed her. “When the Stark awoke, the two players were no longer there, the string of his bow had long rotted and the wood warped, and his beard fell to his lap riddled in silver. When he descended the mountain Winterfell had long risen from a small keep to a great castle, and none of his family were alive.”

It was Maegelle’s turn to roll the dice, but no matter how Daella tugged on her sleeve it did not break her from the disturbed expression on her face.

“And then?” Vaegon demanded – for everyone’s sake.

At this, Maeve’s lips twitched even as she held Alyssa’s mismatched eyes with her own bright stare. “Alone and afeared as the Stranger caught up to him, he rode to the Wall… where Tobi saw him, heard his tale, and gave him a clout on the ear for interrupting the gods at their game before having Danny Flint hole him up at Long Barrow. The end.”

“……”

Maegelle was the first to recover. “T- That can’t be right…”

“Sounds rather a tale told by old Nans to the children, aye,” Maeve sighed when it looked that Maegelle could not find the words. “Mayhaps this night before being put to bed, I could tell the tale of Gilbert of the Vines, who in the first foraging for grapes had sown nightshades amongst the vines, which in his offering the Old Gods took pity, and turned them to the wolf-peach and the earth-apple…”

“It sounds… extraordinary,” Vaegon breathed.

“The way Tobi says it, swearing Danny Flint to a second round of the Black would be just another day standing Watch,” the whimsical account continued, leaving Vaegon with the uncertainty of calling it false or truly hanging on the words of a woman equally fantastic – an Einheri, a woman who could and did flatten his brothers on the training field yet charm those sisters of his with charisma that was no doubt feminine if tempered with the hardness of Winter and the north. “But Tobi did run all over the Realm afore with the Builder – from the dawn of days he was there with Durran Godsgrief’s troubles with the goodfamily; he had front benches to Argoth Stone-skin cutting a swath through Reachmen afore being cheated of his bride by the High Tower; Symeon Star-Eyes was one of the first rangers of the Night’s Watch and a pupil of his.”

Vaegon felt his heart rabbit as Maeve continued the tale, his palms sweating and his fingers clammy even as he cradled the drink proffered. He wondered how it was, as student to a being who had seen much of the Realm’s history with his own eyes, and had so many tales to tell, and wondered how his own queenly mother had felt so long ago, when she had taken a rare boat-ride north, and into the unknown.

Chapter 9: Interlude: Councils

Summary:

"I would invite my sweet sister and my niece to see the splendour of the Realmroads and King’s Landing. We would progress through the Realm to lay our Uncle’s ashes to rest at Dragonstone. Rhaena informs me that my niece had not seen much of the Realm outside of the north – I am sure it would be excitement for her.”

For the first in a long time, the Small Council met outside of the Red Keep.

Or so Aegon had gathered when he entered the small meeting room prepared for them. Yet, despite that half the small council was at the capital, his queenly mother had made a rare absence.

No doubt due to his aunt and cousin from the north. Aegon was learning that most matters would come down to them, as the increasing frequency of Aegon’s attendance to their proximity would tell.

Aegon waved Lord Rego Draz back, after the man made a perfunctory rise to his feet – he had tripped over his own feet upon his arrival, when he had shared the sight of Maeve Stark running atop the Gods’ Eye.

“and I met him once, and he was polite – very much so,” Rego Draz commented, twisting one of the ruby rings on his left hand. “As it were the Shivers then, the horror, and he was so very tired fighting the monster of sickness, I offered him my palanquin to rest – I like to think I dodged the Many-Faced that night, when the rioters came and found the White Wolf a-waiting.”

A pause, as Rego Draz wetted his throat with a sip of Arbour Red from Harrenhal’s cellar.

“Though I do not understand, my friend Barth: why did he call himself a Lord of Air too?”

Septon Barth gave a slight cough over his pocket-book of the Seven-Pointed Star. “Old friend, it is tied in a tale of vengeance and carnage, that ended with three islands sunk and the Vale being known as the Half-Kingdom.”

“That is quite the tale,” Rego Draz echoed Aegon’s own curiosity. “Pray my friend play the storyteller.”

“Mayhaps after His Grace’s words-”

“But His Grace and Ser Gyles are yet to come, my lords, receiving condolences they are yet,” Aegon prompted these two men of the Small Council. “And as my father’s heir, I would learn much more should my lords explicate. I see that my lord Draz is as keen as I to hear of all the… carnage. I have never been in the Vale – quite a failing, but neither have my forebears or Father.”

Septon Barth gave a hum, and yet he was spared from answering when his royal Father was announced in, the Guard Captain Ser Gyles Morrigen trailing in his wake. In his youth Aegon had heard that when the Kingsguard was first founded under the Conqueror, their leader was known as the Lord Commander – and yet come his father’s reign, the title had been stripped – ‘until such that the seven sentinels of Our Guard can dignify the title’, or so it was said. As a child with a training sword, Aegon had wondered what his father had meant – having met Maeve Stark, Aegon now pondered if regaining the title of Lord Commander would require winning against an Einheri.

“Half of the Small Council is gathered here – Elysar, Lord Rodrik Arryn and Lord Manfryd Redwyne would hold down the Red Keep,” his father announced. “Aegon, you will take notes. Let us begin.”

The Aegon of years past would protest at the busywork – years later as Prince of Dragonstone, the Aegon who had needed to read through the records of previous meetings of the Small Council just to know the machinery of law and the Court simply nodded and prepped his writing slate to note.

“Of the order of business, our late uncle is laid to the fires,” his Father was now the King. “His bones are with the Silent Sisters, and the… talisman that had followed him all his life would be carried by our sister Queen Rhaena to be returned to Bitebay.”

“The gods be with him,” Septon Barth murmured, to be echoed by all – even Rego Draz, whom all the Court knew worshipped some foreign idol of a voluptuous woman with a bat’s head.

“Our gods are different, but Prince Aerion had never scorned me that – he even sent gifts for my sons, though born out of wedlock they were,” the stout master of coin bore no smile for the present, solemn in true respect. “What would be done to care for his widow and daughter, Your Grace?”

“My widowed aunt may keep Harrenhal, being Lord Lucas’s heiress by birth and by marriage a princess,” the King declared. “But I would have Laetitia come to Court – Alysanne and I have felt that arranging her marriage is the least we could do for her.”

“That is a good idea,” Aegon prompted, something in his heart seizing. “But Father… as I had mounted Alkahest-”

A hand was held up. “Later, Aegon, if you would. Alongside that, my lords, I would invite my sweet sister and my niece to see the splendour of the Realmroads and King’s Landing. We would progress through the Realm to lay our Uncle’s ashes to rest at Dragonstone. Rhaena informs me that my niece had not seen much of the Realm outside of the north – I am sure it would be excitement for her.”

Given that the cousin in question had yawned in the midst of throwing Baelon over one shoulder, Aegon doubted if she would find a challenge further south. Mayhaps if Lord Boremund would – no, Lord Boremund was as unlike his sister as possible when it came to the dragoness-wolf from Winterfell. Lady Jocelyn Baratheon had at least managed a conversation or three with the northern ladies, and even joined them at the archery butts.

“You will need to look after your cousin, Aegon,” the King spoke with the same look he had sported when he wished for Aegon to marry Dany of all people. Then, when Aegon gave perfectly good reasons why Dany would be happier away from the vipers’ nest of King’s Landing, set his sights on Aly. Aegon had eyes to see whom Aly preferred, thank you very much.

“Of course, Father,” Aegon frowned. “Then what of our Aunt Vaella? I would think our cousin Lady Galatea much pleased to come see the ancestral castle. Our cousin from Highgarden is very much a creature of piety – I am sure the Lord Hand would agree that our cousins could… share in enlightenment from the Seven Above.”

The remark somehow drew a stifled titter from, of all people, Ser Gyles Morrigen. “The Starks follow the Old Gods, my prince. And from the castle Septon’s complaints, I would be certain that Queen Rhaena would follow the Snowy Sept’s teachings in personal worship.”

“Then I am certain that both would agree on the Doctrine of Exceptionalism,” Aegon commented, “as well as some… needed revisions.”

“…of course,” the King pressed a hand to his brow. “All your cousins should come. We will discuss more later, Aegon.”

They did talk a bit more – on the Riverlands and the perception of Aegon mounting Alkahest, on riverlords protesting the north, on the Faith and the Starry Sept.

“Now, Barth,” the King spoke. “The situation with the Arryn host? Lord Toby Arryn was to come, but he is not here, and the so-called cousin who leads them bears the black.”

“Lord Toby Arryn is much delayed – Ser Jonnel Arryn stated a need to arbitrate between quarrelling houses, or clans… however the mountain clans of the Vale are considered. Though I would imagine, Your Grace, that Lord Arryn still smarts from the slight paid to him in appointing young Lord Rodrik,” Septon Barth demurred. “I am sure he felt that he was not given his due – his grandsire was the King Who Flew, who would indeed have flown through the Moon Door to his death were it not for the Lord Commander. His grandmother is of Manderly blood, and through her, so it is said, of Stark blood. Whilst Lord Rodrik is of Arryn and Royce blood both, Lord Arryn has the senior claim.”

“And possible northern influence,” the King grumbled. “The Vale was already known as the Half-Kingdom afore the Conquest. It is an open secret that Queen Sharra Arryn traded her son’s crown for the safety of the Andal Vale. Now his bloodline is falling in with the northerners…”

For, after the defiance of Torrhen Stark and the Winterlands, the Vale was the only kingdom to have bent the knee and been rewarded for it. The boy king Ronnel Arryn had been Warden of the East, only to nearly fall to his death via kinslaying without royal intervention – and only then, so the mummers sang, because the foster-parent he had had dared to brave the Eyrie to save him.

And thereafter, the main line was overlooked, whereas its cousin branch at Court flourished…

“Surely a progress could be arranged,” Aegon suggested. “The lords of the Vale do not oft see a dragon. They would remember the reasons for bending the knee, were I to mount Alkahest-”

“You will not!” the King snapped. “The skies of the Vale are not safe.”

Aegon gave a slow blink. “The Mountains of the Moon I know would not be safe, but surely I would be able to fly…?”

Septon Barth had lifted one hand to his brow. “The Vale of Arryn is known as the Half-Kingdom, for they traded sovereignty of all above the ground for their safety. I suppose… the tale of vengeance and carnage would be relevant.”

Aegon poured himself a measure of wine and settled to listen.

“It always starts with Ned Stark dying.”

Septon Barth frowned as though trying to clarify to his confused listeners, before he gave up with a sigh.

“As a young Septon, I was first called to Highgarden and cared for the library there; in that time, as Lord Garth Gardener became a man grown, he returned from his fosterage north. As we spoke on history I was impressed not just by Lord Garth’s martial strength, but his erudition – and I learnt of that legendary figure that was as much a foster-father as Prince Eddard Stark then.

“It is a Ned Stark dying that starts it all off – Edmund Stark falling to a Farwynd raid led to Lonely Light’s sinking and the beginning of House Greyiron’s demise; Edwyn Stark’s fall in battle leading to the cleaving of the Vale; one of the many Eddard Starks being kidnapped and murdered by Lyseni slavers in defence of his people, led to Lys following old Valyria shortly after into doom – I see you know that tale, Lord Draz.”

Aegon could feel his eyebrows reaching up all the way to vanish into his silver-gold hairline. “And here… that Prince of the Moat died. The one who… whom the White Wolf loved,” he hastily amended, recalling how Maeve Stark had defended the man in her words.

“Yes,” the King looked as though ten years more was added to the years he bore. “The man who is loved by the White Wolf.”

Aegon paused. “They – the Andals, the Valemen… in this recount, I mean, they did not mean to kill him, yes?”

“No,” Barth admitted. “The Sistermen of old played the wolf and the falcon against each other for their independence, pirates and raiders and slavers all, and being close to the Moat and Bitebay, they lived under Ned Stark’s stare – I mean, they lived in terror of the Lord Commander. The Sistermen wished a hostage. The Moat was the great south shield of Winter, but there was another holding… it was in defending Wolf’s Den that Prince Edwyn Stark’s ship was wrecked, and he fell into the Bite. At the same time, the Lord Commander was leading the counterattack against the Andal Invasion, and it was at the Bloody Gate where the remaining Andals led by the Falcon King challenged him to a Trial by Seven.”

“That is…” Aegon felt his mouth dry, and took another sip of wine to recollect. “They could not have stood the siege?”

“Legend says that the Lord Commander took with him a squire’s club, and with one mighty blow he felled the seven Andals ahorse clad in live steel, washing the Bloody Gate as its name,” Barth recounted. “The valley floor still bears that clawing it took, from back when the Lord Commander took a swift cut right through the Vale and down Coldwater in a bid to find his prince’s body.”

Aegon swallowed, recalling how his Stark cousin had looked a goddess of flame and the sun… The Lord Commander was an Einheri; the first of them all.

“With intervention from Winterfell, in the end, Oswin offered to yield half his kingdom for peace, and the Lord Commander chose everything above the earth,” Barth recited. “And thus, when he is upset he would take a long ballista to throw at the Eyrie – as the highest of the great castles it is oft struck by many an oak-sized ballista. It is suspected that this was how the dragon Vhagar and Lady Visenya Targaryen was felled before the Conquest – they were in a reconnaissance flight and were winged by a passing caber toss.”

“I think even Meraxes would be felled by an oak-sized ballista,” Aegon gave a hoarse whisper. “Gods above. Small wonder then that no royal progress was ever held at the Vale…”

“Sharra Arryn was an intelligent woman, then, to foster her son-king to the White Wolf,” Rego Draz gave his remark. “In recent years we did not hear of trees being chucked across the Vale.”

“No,” his royal Father scowled openly. “Now, we suspect the main-line Arryns are playing on their proximity to the north to feasibly wrest away from the Iron Throne. With the Eyrie being protected by the Bloody Gate and three way-castles, the Iron Throne would have to leverage the Arryn branch lines to balance the main line. The Faith could be used as support for the throne in the Vale, but in recent years the Vale has seen a proliferation of texts inclining to the White Kirk of the north… assuming, of course, that the mountain clans do not collaborate with the First Men houses of the Vale to rebel against their overlords.”

“This Realm was passed from the Conqueror to my father and thence to me, my lords. I would not have it fracture in my reign.”

 

---

 

After the meeting, Aegon was bade to remain as the other lords were dismissed and Ser Gyles took his stand at the door.

“You would have me grant a dragon to Laetitia.” His father’s voice held no inflection on this statement.

“A dragon is not a slave,” Aegon replied. “Though if Your Grace would allow Laetitia to try…”

A shuffle of robes, and when his father spoke next it was as the King: “Did you know that Lord Tully had offered for Laetitia?”

Aegon froze, trying to recall before he recoiled: “H-He’s in his forties, Father. And he has grown children at that.”

“What?” His father recoiled. “No! Lord Tully offered his heir Ser Samson.”

The King pressed one hand to his temple. “Unlike many Great Houses, the Tullys never ruled as kings, but held Riverrun for at least a millennium as powerful vassals of the river kings. And what with the Washing of the Faith, a royal marriage with House Tully would indicate the Crown’s unwavering support to those of the Northern Marches – not to mention bind another great house to the Crown. No doubt Lord Tully would aim to take Harrenhal by inheritance as well… I will not hand them a dragon. Not after Rhaena”

Not since his aunt had married a rival king, so Aegon interpreted.

Aegon’s lip curled even as he considered. “House Tully can field smaller armies than the Blackwoods, Brackens, Freys, and Vances. They are not as wealthy as the Mootons, nor as prestigious as the Mallisters. Not to mention, as Harrenhal falls to the Crown to decide whom to award it… there is no reason to favour Riverrun as yet. And… should such a marriage occur, what then should Ser Tully claim for his dragon bride a mount? Especially since the Prince of Dragonstone had mounted the dragon that belonged to her line.”

The king hummed, and finally his royal father spoke: “Very true. If for the sake of parity…”

“Let Letty lay her father to rest first at Dragonstone, Your Grace,” Aegon persuaded. “Once it is done, by then surely whispers in the wind would have turned to how well the Crown had treated our cousins, all of them.”

And, Laetitia would have a chance to mount a dragon, hopefully.

“All of my cousins treat Dany kindly – I could not wish any more for my bride than that she would find her family amongst us,” Aegon murmured. “Surely that could be borne, that I would treat them fairly no matter if we were to marry?”

“…I will concede that,” his father gave a wry grin. “Though you know my preference, Prince Aegon.”

“Of course, sire – you wish for Maeve Stark as my bride.” Aegon bowed his head. “I will endeavour to be close to her during the progress.”

As for how the Court would take Princess Maeve Stark… a frisson of sadistic pleasure ran through Aegon’s spine, at the thought of King’s Landing finally face to face with the dragoness-wolf.

Chapter 10: Vaella III

Summary:

“Some hae meat an’ canna eat, and some wad eat that want it; but we hae meat and we can eat, sae let the gods be thankit.”

“It is very odd to be left behind.”

Vaella held back the snort that threatened before her daughter, the better not to smell the faint fishy smell of the Blackwater that bobbed underfoot. “The logistics of a royal progress involving dragons had always been so.”

How does one explain that dragons made all the difference, Vaella pondered to herself. How could she tell her daughter all of that: that when faced with her elder sisters, splendid and dragonback, that caused Vaella to lose her tongue? As the youngest and the babe who had nearly died, Vaella had always been left behind in her mother’s arms, and then behind the walls of Highgarden. Lord Garth treated her with the respect due a royal princess and his lady wife, but the look in his eyes and the strictness he held their sons to their Gardener heritage made his opinion of the Targaryen crown clear – some days, it was as though long vines of briars had bound her feet to the earth, and left her staring at the firmament above.

And yet this progress made all the difference – for at the debate on whom to leave behind, the gods spoke.

“Your Grace my uncle would need to take the captain of his guard along,” Maeve Stark had determined then. “Her Grace my aunt would take Princess Alys and Princess Laetitia – as the widow and orphan of my late grand-uncle they would need to accompany on the wing. My cousin Prince Aegon would have to take Prince Aemon on the wing – Caraxes is yet ready to ride, but ferrying an urn would be little trouble. My queenly mother could accommodate two younger children on Dreamfyre – Prince Baelon and Princess Alyssa would be fitting. That would leave my ladies aunt and cousin and the Reach host, along with my younger Targaryen cousins who would need additional guards. We of the Winterlands could accommodate them on the barge down the Blackwater.”

No doubt Jaehaerys had arranged for objections, but his own son Prince Aegon had been so relieved that another thought of his siblings, that Jaehaerys had stormed to Vaella thereafter to politely inquire if Vaella herself, or Galatea even, would be inclined to take the wing. It took Vaella everything not to show her satisfaction when she professed a fear of heights and a preference to have her maiden daughter close – the better to have Jaehaerys frustrated from Maeve Stark being separated from his heir, and for his desire to have Stark blood enjoined with the royal family.

Vaella could feel her daughter’s stare on the back of her head, that her scalp prickled under her Targaryen silver-gold hair. “And yet, it is our cousins from the north who would accompany us to wend on our way. She was nice enough to couch it as accompanying fragile ladies – fragile ladies without dragons, Mother.”

“But it is true,” Vaella observed.

A brief tap on wood, before from one small window of the barge a leg was swung through, and then another. Before Vaella’s disbelieving stare, the Stark princess had bounded aboard – from walking the waves of the river towards the Blackwater Rush, at that.

“The captain said we would be passing the bridge of the Goldroad, my lady aunt and cousin,” with an absent gesture, Maeve Stark pinched the flame at the end of her hair-plait to extinguish it. “From there, Ser Lucamore Strong elaborated that we would sail down the Blackwater Rush and land half a day’s ride from King’s Landing. If my ladies would not be overcome with the greensickness, Lady Maisie had smuggled some pasties.”

“That is very kind of you,” Vaella sighed, getting to her feet. “The bounty of the Reach follows the Lady of Highgarden everywhere – I have some small wheels of cheese. Galatea, get the wineskins – Cider Hall has some excellent cider that I am certain my lady niece would enjoy.”

“I will, my lady aunt, alongside our Targaryen cousins,” a quick bob of her head accompanied a smile of mischief. “Would my lady aunt and cousin like to join us for supper? The haybox would be ready to open by then, if you would not mind a stew of beef and earth-apples with cocket bread.”

Vaella should refuse – never mind that Maeve Stark was a princess, foreign and fey and magic, they were all on a boat and sailing for King’s Landing.

Yet such was the power of her charm, that by evenfall Vaella found herself in her lightest chemise and kirtle, being helped – or hauled, more accurately – over the gangplank to the next boat, where there awaited an effusive welcome from the combined retinues of her nieces and nephew.

A loop of thin twine was strung around Alarra Stark’s hands, where with a serious expression Princess Daella was twisting into another string figure. By the side Princess Maegelle’s spine was stiff, as though trying with all her strength not to lean over and snatch the string. Prince Vaegon had had his hands commandeered in holding the string – the lack of protest coming like as not from the green tinge around his cheeks, and the chewing motions of his jaw. The young prince and princesses had been left behind by their elders; yet, so preoccupied they were, and so entertained their company had given, that as Lady Mara Manderly swept up with wooden bowls of pottage and the cocket that sopped up the meaty juices, clearly they did not feel the same.

“The northerners are a companiable lot, my princess,” Ser Lucamore Strong inclined his head. Being outfitted in brigandine and a cloak, the only mark of his posting in the Royal Guard was the Targaryen crest on his surcoat and the white edging of his cloak. “Some of your retinues have boarded – yes, there is Lady Ambrose at the head.”

The ‘hay-box’ so mentioned was cracked open, and a heavy cast-iron lidded pot were levered out. The lid lifted with a billow of steam perfumed with savoury beef softened with earth-apple, with the edge of that dark northern sauce so salty yet delicious. The children were called to sup, a maid with a washing jug present to pour out the water and ensure that each child washed up, before the children were sat with their bowls and bread, and Ser Lucamore was persuaded to finally join the table.

For a moment Vaella’s lips parted to lead the prayer, and then she caught herself – as Lady of Highgarden and the King’s sister she had never been seated close enough to the northern retinue, and was unsure how to proceed. What did the Old Gods accept as grace over meals? “I… I defer to the northern tradition. Would there be a prayer, my niece?”

“That is an idea, my lady,” Lady Mara Manderly turned to her liege lady who sat at the table’s head as her due. “There is the Seal’s Rock Grace.”

Vaella would have started, but the princess had bowed her head then, hands lifted where her northern brogue filtered through:

 

“Some hae meat an’ canna eat, and some wad eat that want it; but we hae meat and we can eat, sae let the gods be thankit.”

 

And then up and down the trestle table, the northern chorus pealed like the northern blizzards: “We humbly receive”.

And then the poor Southrons were left in their wake as the meal began.

 

---

 

The waters of the Blackwater Rush were dyed red with the firmament above, and despite the bobbing of the boats up and down the fading hubbub of river-folk at the end of a day’s work was carried by the winds past. In the fading dimness, Vaella could see the coxswains begin to light the lanterns and cressets that burned at the head of the boat and under the eaves.

Despite the earnest profession of a simple meal the cocket was toothsome and the stew warming to her belly. The cider lent a crisp aftertaste, that was freshened with an offering of ginger fairings that circled the table. The cheese that Vaella had offered from her own stores had been held up to a nearby cresset and the melted cheese went well with the crisp cocket.

A hubbub ensued in the back, and then Vaella jumped in her seat as one of the northern servants seemed to materialise behind her, to lean forward and murmur in the princess’s ear. At the same time a scullion had run over, his message delivered with all haste to Ser Lucamore whose strict features tightened in a grimace thereafter.

“Ser Lucamore,” the princess was on her feet before the anointed knight of the Royal Guard could move. “As a knight of the Royal Guard, you are to care for my aunt and cousins. My lady cousin Alarra, I leave command to you.”

Vaella’s lips parted as she rose, about to call out as the warlike goddess strode aboard the camboose deck of their barge. In the distance, the glint of an approaching boat seemed to loom, and there were flashes of blades in sinister light-

A deep breath, and it was as though dragon-fire was unleashed from the princess’s mouth. The flames caught the waters of the Blackwater Rush in vermillion froth, amidst shrieks of panic and agonising wails of river-pirates who had chosen the wrong barge. Young Maegelle leapt to her feet to run after the eager young Prince Vaegon who had made a dash for the deck, while Princess Daella fled to shelter in her Septa’s arms. There was a blur, and two Stark guards had dived after the children.

A whisper of leather, and Vaella’s head turned to see that Ser Lucamore had sheathed the dirk in his cloak.

“They’re not going to be attacking another barge this night. Not with an Einheri aboard.” A sigh of appreciation followed.

Vaella sank back down, somehow letting go of years of etiquette under a string of Septas – never one single lady, as the rumours that circled Rhaena’s preferences of female favourites had haunted the late Queen Dowager Alyssa enough.

“You have great expectations of the Einherjar, good ser.” Vaella studied this knight: amiable and strapping, a broad-shouldered young blond bull of a man. Jaehaerys had proclaimed the Strong brothers as the blood of Hagun Stark – that he held back from calling this ser to command as Kingsguard and thus to celibacy, was no doubt in his design.

“Only what my ancestress carried in her heart with her, when she descended down the Neck as a bride,” Ser Lucamore licked his lips. “House Greystark was founded by an Einheri prince. He had wished to elevate his house beyond the Moat, and for that folly the White Wolf kicked him through Seal’s Rock – the Greystark lived, sent west to watch for Ironborn.”

Vaella felt her expression shift.

“One would be a fool to doubt either fact; whether the first Greystark could manage such a feat, or if the White Wolf could wrestle a life from the Stranger’s grasp,” the ser added.

“I know… I was there when my mother birthed Lady Jocelyn,” Vaella revealed, pensive in her thoughts. “My queenly mother lived to see Jocelyn reach her sixth name-day, because of him. Allegedly, it was on his advice that years afore, I too lived to leave the cradle, much less come to age. Yet to me… he is the Stranger come, I fear.”

“In the era of the Hundred Kingdoms, the wandering crows would approach in the wake of each spilling of blood to take their fill of the fallen. In the Old Tongue they called it wonn wælceaseg: the dark one choosing the slain.” The knight was peaceable. “Amongst the First Men they call him many things, and amongst those names is valkjosandi – the chooser of the slain.”

“…how appropriate,” Vaella could not find another sentiment to comment.

 “Legend has it that the blood of the Einherjar is so awakened at the cusp of death, even,” Ser Lucamore admitted. “If I could test myself… ah, but for the command of duty, my princess.”

Vaella’s lips twitched at the effortless charm – he was certainly very welcome at Court. Her lips parted to ask again, though her question vanished into the ether as the barge bobbed and the goddess who had just burned a pirate-boat into the Rush mounted the gunwale, a rope dragging a heavy weight that landed aboard the barge with a meaty, sodden thump. Then guards in Stark colours swarmed him like so many wolves converged, the man was clapped in irons, and then hauled away on an absent gesture.

 “One man for the City Watch,” a moue of distaste. “As for the rest, their corpses to feed the fishes. Where are my young cousins?”

“T- That was amazing!” Escorted by two glowering mountains of men and brought up at the rear by his sister Princess Maegelle, Prince Vaegon ran into the cabin then with stars in his violet eyes and the sour cast to his mouth uplifted, the quiet wariness of his mien entirely changed. “Cousin, was that magic?!”

“Aye,” the goddess descended to his level, her expression stern. “You were meant to remain where it was safe, cousin.”

“I was…”

“And your sister had to run out after you,” came the reproach when bright eyes drifted to catch Princess Maegelle in her silent retreat back to her Septa. “Vaegon. You are aware that young ladies of noble birth are sometimes held hostage, aye?”

“I… yes, cousin,” Vaegon hung his head. “I am aware.”

“And that young princes may also be held hostage?”

“…yes, cousin.”

“…” a sigh from the princess. “Charging out willing to fight river-pirates is one thing, cousin, but you had not even begun your page-hood. We will speak more on this later. My lady Manderly, may I trouble you to draft a letter? To be sent to Winterfell by way of Bitebay.”

“Yes, my lady,” the lady rose to bob a short curtsy.

“Very good. And now,” the tired princess drew herself up, a goddess of flame and fury as she rounded on a cringing Ser Lucamore Strong. “Good ser, you will please account for how a prince and princess escaped your watch on a boat now.”

Chapter 11: Rhaena III

Summary:

“There are many more people and not enough infrastructure to support the maintenance of public order, Mother... Look at this city.”

Castles has such a way of projecting onto the very land they sat, that it would seem that they had always been there – such was Winterfell, such was the Wall... Rhaena did not quite understand, but one did not remain wife to a king descended from Bran the Builder, and sister to a king equally keen to pave the Realm with roads, without appreciating that large construction projects brought its own permanence.

Such a thing was the Red Keep.

Of the Southern Realm’s great castles, the Red Keep was certainly the newest of them. The seat of the House of the Dragon at King’s Landing, the last that Rhaena had seen of the edifice was when her father’s Hand of the King, her uncle Prince Aerion, had set up its construction as one of a few public works projects in the wake of the First Shivers. By the time Jaehaerys had become a man grown, there had risen the walls of King’s Landing, the castle, the Dragonpit, and the bare bones under King’s Landing were laid – not to mention, the loyal troop of builders who had helped carve all of this had become a troop of its own.

The Prince Aerion’s Yeomen Builders was already passed from their uncle to Jaehaerys, who took it a step further with the Realmroads, but by then Rhaena had married and settled north in Winterfell, so she cared not. Yet, as a stranger looking from outside, Rhaena could honestly attest:

The Red Keep was smaller than Winterfell.

No doubt it was unfair to the castle. Rhaena had grown up in Dragonstone, home of dragon-lords and dragons, the citadel in the wet waste surrounded by storm and salt, with the shadow of the smoking Dragonmont looming over. Rhaena had then married to Winterfell, the ancient seat of House Stark that endured the Long Night, where the stones retained warmth from the hot springs underneath, where summer seemed a permanent host of the glass gardens, where the garderobes mucked themselves out, and where the three acres of godswood that formed its heart stayed some strange otherworld.

Walton had japed that it was from the pool before the heart tree, where millennia past a Stark had found a sleeping godling. Given that the Lord Commander was still around, Rhaena mistrusted if it was instead some half-forgotten recount of a Ned Stark and his White Wolf. Either way, the godswood was a place of the Old Gods and not of dragons.

The point, however, was that for all of its drum-towers, massive curtain walls connected by steps slithering up and down Aegon’s High Hill, or the castle-within-a-castle that was the main Holdfast, Rhaena still found herself awoken in the cold sweat of paranoia by Lady Sam.

“Your Grace, I…” the lady’s animated manner was unusually restrained, the reason for which was soon accounted when her fellow lady-in-waiting Lady Cerwyn brought in the glaring snowy owl hanging from one arm.

Rhaena sat up straight under the knowing gaze of the fowl thing. “…Lady Anya?”

One clawed leg jutted out, showing the scroll tied to the leg.

The owl’s glare deepened.

Rhaena hurriedly untied the scroll, after which the owl barked and took flight for the nearest window anon.

Rubbing the scum from her eyes, Rhaena unrolled the scroll to scan before her groan was heard over the bustle of her ladies prepping her ablutions.

“They know,” Rhaena told Lady Sam as she was dressed for the day – a light gown as she was not expected for Court. “Lady Anya especially wrote to notify that Maeve ran into some river-pirates by the Rush.”

As for how the Winterlands’ mistress of whispers managed to hear of such an event, when Rhaena herself at the Red Keep had barely heard of it… no doubt, magic was involved.

“Mistress Strix is always in a huff,” Lady Sam peaceably reasoned, using the common epithet that many a servant at Winterfell referred to the aforementioned mistress of whispers. “But the common river-thief should not pose a danger to men of the Winterlands, Your Grace, much less the princess.”

“They suspect some link to the mad Septas at Maidenpool, who attacked my sister in her bath so many years ago,” Rhaena’s brow furrowed in thought, even as her hair was combed and twisted into a simple updo. “They believe, and I concur, that it is no more than a lone attack, though caution is merited.”

“His Grace of Winter would disagree,” Lady Sam murmured.

“No doubt when she informs His Grace, his brother and Nuncle would have to sit on him lest he runs past the Neck down South,” Rhaena mused. “Is it not a mother’s instinct, to fear for her daughter in this world? How is it then, that my lord husband is the indulgent parent of us two?”

“Beg pardon, Your Grace, but I doubt ‘indulgent’ an apt choice,” Lady Sam huffed. “His Grace is far beyond that – no king would allow their daughters to make their own choice of groom. I would think Prince Aegon would be the ideal groom for the princess, and King Jaehaerys no doubt wished the match.”

“Jaehaerys can ask. Walton was being entirely serious when he declared that our sweet daughter would marry when she likes, whom she likes, and anyone who doesn’t like that can face Ice,” Rhaena’s lips curved, indulgent even as she checked herself in the small looking-glass that they had brought along. “Else Walton would borrow the Lightbringer – the White Wolf is strict on some matters, but he would stand behind Maeve’s choice.”

Rhaena remembered that, at her own majority, when Dreamfyre had the reign of the skies and went as far as Harrenhal and Tarth, and had dared as far as Seagard north before Dreamfyre would fly no further over Cape Kraken. Rumour full of tongues had plagued her back then, as though any manner of man would have visited her thighs and plagued her kingly father to marry her to young Egg – her younger brother, another Aegon, as soon as he could.

Rhaena’s daughter would not be made to marry.

Rhaena would wait for Jaehaerys to realise that her daughter, her sweet intoxicating Maeve, was wild and free, and had as her shield her father, with his terrifying self and the hosts of the Winterlands. Not to mention, her own startling abilities with blades and magic. No doubt she was well-defended – as much as any princess stubborn enough to step on a battlefield could be.

 

---

 

“I admit that I do miss the Winterlands custom of nuncheon,” Alysanne complained when Rhaena joined her at the queen’s apartments. Overlooking the Blackwater Bay they enjoyed rissoles of apples and figs, washed down with a camellia tisane, very strong and barely sweetened with a dollop of rich cream. “I could not last the day without at least bread and butter and a tisane now, but I always feel terrible when it comes time for contrition. The Arch-Septon would call it a case of gluttony…”

“You will pay him no heed,” Rhaena severely cautioned. “A pregnant woman will have her cravings, as the gods will they do, so how is it a sin to follow as they willed? Not to mention, you are eating for two… are you eating for two now, Alysanne?”

Alysanne’s hand slowed, and she pondered the thought. “A few moons… but there is yet to be quickening. Surely not…?”

Rhaena herself had never awaited a quickening. Maeve’s conception had been announced following Alysanne birthing young Aegon in Bitebay by the White Wolf. Aelfraed’s own presence was heralded by the same man a few years later, when he was passing by Winterfell to drop off some sticks of reindeer butter from the Wall. Midwives up and down the Realm took the White Wolf’s word as divine truth, and history showed its efficacy; Rhaena herself had seen that medical prowess save her queenly mother years afore, and Walton had spoken once on his first wife, the late Princess Barba – how she had fell pregnant against the Wolf’s advice in rashness, only for mother and child to pass in childbed, and left Walton free to marry when the two of them had first met that night in Bitebay...

“As I see it, you would either summon the Grand Maester now, and Jaehaerys would be summoned alongside to hobble your every path,” Rhaena noted. “Else, you would take a care in these final moments of freedom afore the long prison of pregnancy.”

“…the children are coming home,” Alysanne pondered, before her eyes grew stern. “And with them your daughter. My magical niece. I must go to them.”

“……”

Rhaena comforted herself that, if magic was anywhere in the Realm, it was on the side of defending her children – her sweet daughter Maeve before her, and Aelfraed tucked safe behind the walls of Winterfell and his princely uncles under the White Wolf’s gaze.

“Attacked! By river-pirates! Aegon, you must keep the children safe under watch!” Alysanne twittered over the entire retinue, and then to her firstborn the Prince of Dragonstone, and most especially her younger children – even if said children insisted that they were well and brave and good, and that Maeve had torched the miscreants before any harm was done.

“Only one?” Rhaena blinked at her daughter after the latter was done escorting Vaella and Galatea down the gangplank and onto solid ground. “Gods above, your father would be complaining about the lack of public order down South.”

“There are many more people and not enough infrastructure to support the maintenance of public order, Mother,” the princess played the demure daughter. “Look at this city.”

Despite herself, Rhaena huffed at her daughter’s jape. King’s Landing had neither the weight of Wintertown, nor the beauty of White Harbour, and certainly not the industry of Salt Quay on the shores of the Saltspear. The cobbles were caked in silty mud, the faint stench of ordure lingered, parts of the widened streets threatened to be overtaken by the shantytown of unapproved construction once the kingly gaze was away, and the City Watch of King’s Landing was heavily outnumbered. Looming over the city was the Dragonpit at the Hill of Rhaenys, the Sept of Remembrance atop Visenya’s Hill, and the Red Keep – two of which would be barred to Maeve as princess of a foreign court or worshipper of the Old Gods, and the third merely another stop before their destination to Dragonstone.

There was nothing of King’s Landing to look at.

“We extend a warm welcome to my aunt and cousins,” Prince Aegon stepped up now to extend his greetings, having handed the reins of his palfrey to a waiting guardsman before extending a hand to receive them. “My lady cousin. I trust that the Red Keep would make an impression.”

“The impression is yet to become,” Rhaena’s sweet daughter demurred to the Stark mask of stoic manner. “Although, I am certain that the entirety of King’s Landing would be an… interesting sight.”

Aegon’s eyebrow lifted. “Well, then. Would my lady cousin take the wheelhouse… or mayhaps you would stretch your legs? I only speak of this as you were in close quarters for the better part of the sojourn here. The guards at the bronze gates have been instructed should you choose the latter, cousin.”

…oh.

Rhaena exchanged a glance with her daughter.

Her nephew wanted an Einheri running around King’s Landing… interesting.

“…Aegon?” Alysanne was the first to react, and would have bodily stepped up to check her firstborn had Rhaena not discreetly slid to block her way with her own body.

“That sounds a wonderful idea,” Rhaena purred, thus extending her maternal permission.

Maeve grinned, and the grin soon took on a fiery cant as she erupted into flame and startled many a sumpter horse in outracing them for the Red Keep.

Chapter 12: Alysanne III

Summary:

Alysanne knew she was meant to respond. And yet, how could she – when she must have misheard so terribly?

Alysanne knew she was meant to respond. And yet, how could she – when she must have misheard so terribly?

“Lady Mara is of an age with Mother?” By her side, young Laetitia’s awed gasp echoed Alysanne’s own query of the Manderly lady – the same lady whose ageless features showed not at all that she was a mother of three barely-grown sons, and a widow besides.

“There is a common jape amongst those Maesters who come north on a needed educational departure,” Rhaena tutted over her own sewing – in this case she was fixing a tear in one of her linen shifts. “That beyond the Neck lies the otherworld of magic. They claim that the mysteries of Winter include the Lord Commander, the Wall that he built, and the sweetwater spring he found at Bitebay which is said to restore youth. I doubt the first two, but the last I can confirm is from a medical preparation of witch-hazel and everose applied daily. Lady Sam has the receipt, little sisters.”

“I would be glad for it, sister dear,” Alysanne sighed at the heart of the sewing circle – the circle which had somehow branched into some assembly of hosts facing each other across a battlefield, helmed with its own queen and lesser vassals.

Alysanne had the seat by the hearth-fires by courtesy, though it felt needed to drive away the uncertain chill of autumn from her. Alysanne’s ladies and Septas sat away from the pack of Northerners – even the usually ribald fool the Goodwife had caved under Princess Maeve’s flat unamused stare, to flee as though the Stranger was in pursuit; his wooden children abandoned in his wake were swept up by Lady Cerwyn and put to one side.

Yet her own children seemed not to notice the tension of the pious faithful in the presence of pagan worshippers – instead they gathered to their foreign cousin at the heart of the Northern pack, where they had brought instead a brazier which was set under a blanket-covered frame, where trestle boards were then set over them. Colourful square pieces of paper were laid out on the boards, where even her little flower Daella wielded a bone folder to crease the square pieces on instruction to make many little flowers, which Maegelle then took to thread together and sew… something, Alysanne knew not. As the eldest of the children, Alyssa wielded a small silver blade, by which the stern Lady Locke instructed Vaegon and her on how to slice dried herbs and flowers to make a melange of medicine.

“A pomander is a nice object to carry a scent, but medicine balls are quite popular up and down the White Knife,” the Princess Maeve reached over the trestle boards to help Daella with a difficult crease. “Strong-smelling herbs and lemon peels would also repel a number of insects – certainly it would help young Daella’s fears. And folding paper flowers is a related art to assembling medicine balls.”

“I… I wish you came earlier, cousin,” a flush crossed Daella’s pale cheeks, one of simple joy. “And you would be coming to Dragonstone with us, too…”

“I have never been to Dragonstone, cousin,” Maeve politely answered. “I am sure it would be an interesting experience. Vaegon tells me that it was formed by Valyrian stoneshapers.”

“It is said that the old wizards of Valyria did not cut and chisel stone, but worked it with fire and magic as one might work clay,” Vaegon solemnly confirmed. “Forsooth, cousin mine, if not for the eyes you would be the magic of old Valyria come again.”

Alysanne knew that the blood of old Valyria manifested by eyes in shades of purple, and hair of silver-gold. Maeve Stark was of cold Winter – her hair like silvery moonbeams, her eyes bright lights that twinkled with dark highlights – not purely Valyrian in look. Yet she was fire and blood personified, the lost legacy of old Valyria’s magic – Alysanne would not forget that when Maeve Stark outraced palfreys in her course to the Red Keep, scaling the castle’s bronze gates and curtain walls on the wend that not even the Royal Guard noticed her until she was atop the steps of the Great Hall; and even then, she had stopped only to be announced to Court as was polite.

Perchance, the shock of that event was what Alysanne’s firstborn had counted on. A bare sennight thereafter, the raven from Oldtown carried His High Holiness’ assent to rephrasing of the Doctrine of Exceptionalism.

“You must come again when I am to marry Baelon, cousin,” sweet Alyssa pouted towards Maeve Stark, bottom lip wobbling in some mummery of the biddable girl that Alyssa certainly was not. “I shall marry him in our ways, with fire and blood, and we will have babes of silver hair and purple eyes. As you would, cousin.”

This invited a laugh. “The blood of Hagun oft carried red eyes or white hair or some birthmark, a testament of their blessing. Although, it is curious that the trait is so blessed – Tobi mentioned that he would not wish purple eyes on us.”

“But it would happen when you marry Aegon,” Alyssa pouted. “You would be Princess of Dragonstone, and my goodsister besides. Father would be penning the letter north once Aegon finds his ba-”

“I am certain your brother is brave enough – rewriting the word set by his forebear Queen Rhaenys on the exceptionalism of dragonriders is not an act of the meek,” Maeve interrupted with a severe glance before Alysanne would intervene to correct her daughter’s vulgar speech. “But the decision to marry is mine, as my royal father swore to the Old Gods. My lord cousin the Prince of Dragonstone is a doting older brother, but he is not my choice of bridegroom.”

Alysanne heard all of this with a wry twist of her mouth and complicated feelings in her heart. She did not wish a northern bride for Aegon – Jaehaerys wanted to enjoin Stark blood into their house, but Alysanne afeared of having a Stark princess, an Einheri besides, as a gooddaughter.

Even Dany…

But Dany was sweet – sweet and far to simple to live as a Targaryen queen, so Aegon had said when Alysanne had asked of him to take care of Dany by marrying her. The daughter of a king faced different challenges from the wife of a king – the former a great prize for great lords; the latter was chatelaine of Court and mother of the king’s heirs. The rest… even the next oldest Alyssa was too young, and sweet on the wrong brother too. Aegon would not stand to be the one to come betwixt them.

Alysanne hummed as she made a cross-stitch on her embriodery hoop, the better to glimpse from the corner of her eyes the room, and the remaining candidates for her son’s hand in marriage.

Vaella’s girl Galatea was very well turned out – Gardener blood and royal blood besides, and it would shore up the conciliation that Jaehaerys wished. Though the Gardeners as Wardens of the South…

In the Conqueror’s time, Harlan Tyrell was lost in the sands of Dorne during the First Dornish War. Unrest in the Reach had then seen that the surviving Prince Gawen Gardener eluded his exile at Moat Cailin, to repossess his ancestral keep of Highgarden, and thereafter made homage for the appointment of Warden of the South.

The subsequent extirpation of House Tyrell, though, showed the Gardeners’ discontent; the ambitions burnt at the Field of Fire, and the ancient house’s history of sending sons to foster north still, were a threat. The Crown had sought to mitigate them with Vaella’s wedding of Lord Garth. Yet, there was every chance that the Gardeners would seek to influence Aegon through the bride sent, as they had with so many kings turned lords in the Reach’s long history.

Alarra Stark… besides lacking the title of princess until her marriage… The Northern ladies openly wielding weapons in the training courtyard already invited unfavourable whispers of Dornish custom amongst courtiers. Add the complication of Starry or Snowy offshoot of the Faith, or worshipping of the Old Gods…

Mayhaps this was what Aegon had foreseen, Alysanne considered, when he invited his Stark cousin to race palfreys to the Red Keep. Well, he got his wish, but his mother was now fretting over his future bride…

If the blood of the dragon needed to be kept pure… discreetly, Alysanne glanced down and to the left, where dear Laetitia had gotten up to exchange a word with the northern retinue.

Uncle Aerion had had her late in life – Alysanne remembered the first Shivers that took half of their House and, quite possibly, cursed them. Uncle Aerion had had no children with Aunt Ceryse, and the younger children of King Aenys would be overshadowed by their elders; it fell that they sought from each other a bond made all the tighter. With years of hindsight and mellowing from the pains of youth, Alysanne had to concede that Uncle Aerion had made a dutiful, good Hand of the King – even with his objection of her marrying Jaehaerys then, he had made good sense.

His widow would be cared for; his orphaned daughter Alysanne would personally exert herself to search a groom across the Realm. And if Letty would be kept at Court… she was a granddaughter of the Conqueror, blood of the dragon. And the dragon… Alkahest was already mounted, but should Laetitia marry… yes, mayhaps…

Alysanne caught her self as she turned her head, to see one of her ladies falter in her smile as silence stretched, and so Alysanne made herself speak with a well-practiced smile: “I do beg your pardon, my lady, my mind wandered for a moment, I must have missed what you said entirely...”

Chapter 13: Rhaena IV

Summary:

"The Southron game of lords and thrones should mean naught to us dragons.”

“Tobi would disagree… since they cannot find him, they would find us.”

Notes:

Sorry the chapter's late, was playing Legends Z-A 😅
Also, At Lightning Speed has been nominated for the 2025 r/AsoiafFanFiction awards on Reddit! Check out this main post for more information about the event here.
- Armaria

Rhaena was beginning to think that the number seven was a curse on her when, afore her turning in for the night a bare sennight as they were due to depart the Red Keep, a snowy owl hooted by the window like the clarions of war.

“The Evenstar of Tarth requested aid from the Night’s Watch moons past, chiefly in combating Myrmen pirates,” her daughter peaceably explicated the hasty scribble from the light of a flame dancing on the fingers of her free hand. “Given that the Wall is a distance away, I doubt the Evenstar expected a response from more than the south.”

“And then?” Rhaena hummed.

“As it turns out, the Conclave of Myr did issue a secret commission to a certain man of Saan, the current Penitent of Lys. Tobi found out.” A cock of Maeve’s head echoed the temerity of that last statement. “The Evenstar got his reinforcements – Lady Danny would be expected on his shores within the moon, so it is written.”

Rhaena snorted. “Letting Danny Flint out of Long Barrow would be treated as an oncoming war. Should I expect His Grace your uncle to break down the door with guards in tow for a word?”

“The black brothers are sworn to no war in the realms of men,” Maeve reasoned, her brow furrowed. “And the Winter Throne has no legal authority on Watch deployments, Mother.”

Rhaena sucked in a long breath, mulling over her daughter’s words before she frowned. “The Evenstar of Tarth is a subject of the Iron Throne – why is he looking north? To the Wall?”

“Given the last precedent Tobi set with Lys, I suppose Lord Tarth rolled the bones if the Myrmen would be afeared off his shores,” Maeve pondered. “Or… Mayhaps they are expecting a babe?”

Rhaena opened her mouth, before she pondered.

“…My cousin and first friend Larissa married a Tarth lordling, afore her daughter’s marriage to Greenstone… I do recall that the island is… rich in features – not resources,” Rhaena admitted slowly. “Evenfall Hall is a storied place, and its ruling family traces its line to the dawn of days – they would know how to pander to his whims. Blow out the light, dear, we can think together.”

The flame extinguished, leaving a false darkness and… not the scent of smoke, but more the burning scent that Rhaena associated with many a thunderstorm, especially the ones that would hit Dragonstone now and then in her youth astride Dreamfyre. It was not burning wood, after all.

Yet her daughter did not burn; instead, being as one with the flames in her blood.

Rhaena knew not how the higher mysteries worked. Her first exposure to the White Wolf had been terrifying enough; the second time… the White Wolf had stridden atop the waves of the Bite to arrest the ship, and tug it by the anchor-chain to Bitebay on his lonesome. As a young Targaryen princess she had heard the oldwives and Septas tell of dark things in Winter’s heart; as Queen of the Winterlands, she had seen some of those things – enough to wish for dragon-fire to burn the lot to ashes; enough to awake in cold sweat in the dark of night and scrabble in the sheets for the warmth of her husband’s strong and magical body.

Enough to reflect that mayhaps, the jape of the Conqueror taking only one look at the Lord Commander before turning Balerion around to battle Dorne at the other end of the continent in fruitless war for a decade, was more a mark of his wisdom.

“The Baratheons,” Maeve spoke in the dark. “They are… I doubt any wisdom from the Durrandons would have passed down to them, Mother. Would they see it as the Watch going beyond its remit?”

“What of Jaehaerys,” Rhaena was about as gloomy as the night. “Jaehaerys claimed the title Protector of the Realm – Lord Tarth should have sought out his liege lord or the overlord of the realm. As for Lord Baratheon… my half-brother may be a man grown, but his regent Ser Garon is well-established. Surely Storm’s End could have provided better, if not as well as the distant Watch... the Southron game of lords and thrones should mean naught to us dragons.”

“Tobi would disagree… since they cannot find him, they would find us,” Maeve concluded.

A beat, and then Rhaena started as from the dark, her daughter spoke:

“Mother, would it seem so very forward were I to invite Lord Boremund to share a wheelhouse on the morrow? Mayhaps we should waylay him after the morning prayers.”

 

---

 

Rhaena’s last memory of her half-brother Boremund Baratheon was when the latter was a babe – robust and healthy, red-faced with a fuzz of jet-black hair. Seeing Boremund again that day as he mounted the steps to the borrowed wheelhouse after young Jocelyn, Rhaena held back the tiny sneer that threatened when she beheld the ghost of the late Rogar Baratheon in the boy. Brawny and powerful of frame with a mane of thick black hair and the start of a beard, it was only how he quailed in the presence of her daughter Maeve that showed that old Rogar’s belligerence did not follow his son – or, he had more sense than to pick a fight with an Einheri in close quarters.

“It is so very long ago since I had beheld the two of you properly,” Rhaena warmly greeted her half-siblings. “Harrenhal was a sad affair for us all.”

“I understand that Princess Maeve worships the Old Gods, but we had not seen you at the terce… Your Grace Queen Rhaena,” Jocelyn’s lips pursed. “Rest assured, you missed nothing that Archsepton Warren would not repeat… not all of it polite. Are we not setting out to the Red Keep, Your Grace?”

“No doubt the Septon cursing the Snowy Sept in the meantime,” Rhaena dismissed, her eyes turning to Jocelyn. “I had seen our lady aunt Alys take Letty along to the service – no doubt they would light a candle for dear Uncle Aerion. It is a small matter for us to take along two more – and I was headed to the Dragonpit.”

“I had thought…” Lord Boremund’s lips slapped shut before he would speak further, a glance cast towards where Maeve perched opposite him, leaning back against the wheelhouse seat, with her right foot kicked up over her left leg. “…that my cousins would be much taken with Princess Maeve.”

“Aye, no doubt they wish for another round of the goose-game,” Maeve contemplated. “But they may play as many rounds as they wish at Dragonstone once we ferry the late Prince Aerion’s ashes there to lay to rest. My lord however, would be headed back to Storm’s End in a few days… and thereafter Tarth, no doubt.”

“…you have heard, princess,” the lord of the Stormlands sulked. “Lord Tarth fears that the pirates would overwhelm his forces, and I understand, truly, what with so many a privateer and slaver and Tarth being far out in Shipbreaker’s Bay… but Danny Flint? What would I tell my lords when they know that that… she has come south?”

“Once that Saan is dead, Lady Danny would be recalled to Long Barrow – until the next time,” Maeve noted. “No doubt, it helps if the Stormlanders would kill every ponce of Valyrian origin that crosses their path there.”

The Baratheon siblings stifled identical snorts, Jocelyn especially; lifting her hands, one went to cover her mouth, and the other to grab at the pendant around her throat.

Unlike most ladies who wore the seven-pointed star or some amulet of the Seven or even the sigil of their house, the copper disc was punctured in the middle with a square hole, and then a leather thong was strung through it to hang around her neck.

“I was not aware that Lady Jocelyn was born above the Neck,” Maeve’s comment drew Rhaena’s attention.

“Daughter mine, I was… I had requested Lord Hatake’s assistance then,” Rhaena admitted when Lady Jocelyn started to frown. “It was fortunate that I did – Maester Kyrie of Storm’s End had not the ability to save both mother and child. I… I thank the gods that I had, else your grandmother would not have lived through it.”

“…our mother lived to see Jocelyn’s sixth name-day, at least,” Boremund’s eyes were downcast.

Lady Jocelyn’s hand did not leave her amulet. “…I know that when the Shivers struck, my brother and I both took ill but recovered – and then… well, with Princess Daenerys, my father had offered its use. But once the amulet was taken from me I weakened, and would have expired had our mother not taken it back, and by then… now I keep it with me always, though it is not a symbol of the Faith.”

“It is not,” Maeve agreed. “It is a saining coin from Bitebay – each year at Ne’erday, mothers would bring their babes from all around the White Knife to the Godswood Park to receive the White Wolf’s blessing. Our late great-uncle Prince Aerion had one such coin, as do our cousin the Prince of Dragonstone. It is very much related to the worship of the Old Gods.”

“Small wonder then, that our late father let me keep it,” Lady Jocelyn agreed easily.

“Oh?” Rhaena asked.

“Our mother would tell us tales of the Golden Wedding, elder sister,” Lord Boremund murmured. “And Father… Father had said that in the wedding melee, the Lord Commander had done him an injury; thus he missed the Faith Militant’s invasion of the north.”

“…Lord Rogar said that?” Rhaena’s comment was arch. “I only saw that Tobi kicked Lord Rogar by the culet into the commons. Then again, Tobi kicked everyone out of the melee.”

“Aye, the Einheri – like our half-cousin here the Princess Maeve,” Lord Boremund nodded in Maeve’s direction, his eyes glazed in wonder. “I admit some curiosity of how King Walton Stark would stand measure. Especially were King Walton to wrangle a… recalcitrant vassal.”

Rhaena gave a slow blink, considering the question.

It was however Maeve who answered: “My lord of Baratheon. You speak of my kingly father, as though he is some sworn sword… to wrangle a friend of House Stark, the Lord Commander. Do you understand your words?”

“Peace, my princess,” Boremund raised both hands in a placating gesture. “I am distracted, sooth, and there is a wight to decamp in my Stormlands soon. I would rather that the Lord Commander focus his Watchmen on the Wall.”

“And to which I answer once again, my lord – once that Saan is dead, Lady Flint would be recalled to Long Barrow until the next time,” Maeve’s answer grated like the heavy layers of an iceberg on the march. “I suggest that you had best set the lords of the Stormlands to kill the Saan pirate before she makes landfall and another bloody page on history.”

Chapter 14: Interlude: Princess of Dragons

Summary:

“In peace, who would need to fight armies? It is… so very hard for the Einherjar, for us who were born in peace.”

“At least His Grace has affirmed your royal title of princess, dear,” her lady mother sniffled, draped in a veil of black in the fashion of Court. Even in the Grand Sept of Remembrance atop Visenya’s Hill, everything down to their very clothes showed the expense that only royalty could afford – the black dye seemed to throw off shades of blue light under the crystal glass windows of the Sept.

Laetitia had lit a candle at the Stranger’s altar for her dear late Kepa’s peace, and now she was nodding along with her newly widowed mother’s histrionics. “I understand. It is Alkahest’s choice, after all, and it is not as though he is hostile to me – we will see him later at the Dragonpit.”

“If you say so,” her mother daubed at puffy eyes, with a linen handkerchief dyed in Harroway colours.

It made it all the easier for the nearby Archsepton Warren to chime in: “Verily, my pious ladies, our Septas will sing hymns for the peace of the late Prince Aerion, so favoured by the gods.”

“We pray that the Smith may have called him by the forge,” her mother sniffled. “He seemed so interested in the technique of building, as to have built almost half the capital under His Grace’s minority…”

“Indeed, Princess Alys.” Then the Archsepton sucked in a breath, a troubled look crossing his face: “Though it would seem that Princess Maeve Stark would not deign to step into a Sept.”

“She awaits us outside on my request, Archsepton,” Laetitia defended. “Not only does our northern cousin worship the Old Gods of the First Men… I understand that there are… some disagreements on doctrine betwixt House Stark and the Faith, that yet remained unresolved.”

Laetitia was born late in her father’s life, long past his prime, and yet her Kepa was the Warrior reborn in her heart. On the rare occasion where she could ride pillion astride Alkahest, Kepa would take her into the skies to murmur of the firmament, he would also touch on many things – and as the dragon flies, the ruby ford by the Trident was always a topic of fascination.

“Maester Albon may lecture that the Militant crusade started with the Snowy Sept’s establishment in the Winterlands, but the Faith has always regarded that above the Neck with trepidation – as does anyone with sense,” the low basso of her dreams would lecture over the whispers of the wind. “It is no coincidence that after the Andal Counter, the Starry Sept that became the first and oldest of the Andal orders of Faith established itself in Oldtown – right on the other end of the realm from everything northern, far from their first landing point of the Vale of Arryn. And the Vale… oh, the Vale.”

“What of the Vale, Kepa?” Laetitia had asked then, safe and huddled in her thickest woollens and flying cloak as the chain that held her to Alkahest’s saddle clinked in the winds.

“Like the Winterlands, the Vale truly had no reason to bend the knee to your Kekepa,” Her father had imparted that with a low murmur, like a secret that they shared as father and daughter. “Everything above the ground in the Vale is the personal demesne of the Lord Commander – it is normally a bane to the Valemen, but against dragons it became their unwitting shield from dragon-fire. And yet the Arryn bent the knee – not Lord Ronnel who was but a boy then, but his mother regent and the Andal lords. No doubt, the Andal lords feared a resurgence of the Old Gods worship and an increase in Runestone’s influence, with Ned Stark’s gaze ever fixed onto their backs.”

How did this Ned Stark gaze upon a whole kingdom, an entire realm of mountains and stone? Laetitia had not known better then.

“Not even the Black Dread had dared to fly near without the Lord Commander’s permission,” Kepa had murmured. “And, after the Faith Militant exhausted its strength against such power… such a feat alone is a warning, Tala.”

“A warning, Kepa?”

“That your Kekepa was wise not to pick a fight with that… force of nature.”

There was a long breath, as though her Kepa had spent too long in the clouds astride Alkahest and came down with a head-cold, and she and Dany would huddle with him in their apartments in the Kingspyre Tower, by the hearth-fire with blankets and a tisane of ginger and milk.

If Laetitia closed her eyes, mayhaps the ginger scent would float from her dreams and tickle her nose once again, and she would not have to open them again and look upon the multitude of mourning masks and rainbow arms. The same mourners who professed sorrow at her Kepa’s passing and sympathy for Alkahest being mounted by her princely cousin, and in the same breath imply that she as an orphaned girl would need protection, and her mother was still young and should not be kept in dark dank Harrenhal–

No, Kepa had warned of that sort; that they would like nothing better than to reduce her to her hand in marriage, the womb by which descendants would claim the blood of the dragon from as like her cousin Vaella.

“Your Kekepa made the right decision,” was her Kepa’s sigh. “That we learn, Tala, not just from your Kekepa’s decision to preserve Balerion from the cooking-fires at the Moat… we learn, you see, that nothing good comes when a Stark goes South. Your cousin Rhaena, she married a Stark, but… forsooth, I pray to the gods I would never see another Stark descend the Neck.”

In a way, her Kepa got his wish – and yet, it was his very death that brought the she-wolf down the Neck to witness his corpse burning.

 

---

 

Queen Rhaena had ridden ahead with her Baratheon half-siblings to the Dragonpit, and seized along her Mother when she balked at riding with an Einheri. Which left Laetitia in the same wheelhouse as Princess Maeve Stark. No doubt it was for her benefit – Laetitia was under no illusion that Maeve Stark could outrace the horses pulling the wheelhouse, and jump from roof to roof to climb the Hill of Rhaenys ahead of them all.

“I would not make a good Southron queen, cousin,” the Princess Maeve informed Laetitia when their light conversation veered towards that overarching topic of all maids that seemed to carry the day: marriage.

Somehow Laetitia could not help but wonder, if Princess Maeve Stark was simply willfully blind to any and all attempts to matchmake her. From the number of times seats were moved, the many times that His Grace the King arranged for Prince Aegon to be seated next to the Winter princess… even Laetitia, long distant from the Court and caring for Dany, could divine the King’s choice for good-daughter and wife of his firstborn son.

Yet the Winter princess got along with every other dragon save the one intended as bridegroom, it seemed. Maeve Stark put Alyssa through a set of movements on wielding a fan as a weapon, beat Aemon and Baelon besides, lectured Vaegon through the Kings of Winter, even folded a crown of paper flowers for Daella – even Maegelle, who was devoted to the Faith, got along with the heathen princess better than the Prince of Dragonstone. In the training field the Prince of Dragonstone would be singled out for violence; outside it, he was all but ignored save the needed courtesies.

“I would think that such matters were not up to us, cousin,” Laetitia mused. “Surely you know what His Grace King Jaehaerys would wish, and it would be… the best match on this realm, sooth. What would King Walton Stark say?”

“Even were I compelled into such a match, those that guard his safety could not guard him into the marriage bed,” came the blunt retort. “A broken neck is possible with Einheri strength – not even our Nuncle Ned Stark who beds the Lord Commander gets away without injury on the occasion. And then the trouble that would come of that widowhood… Since the goal of marriage alliances is hardly to make enemies out of the goodfamily, mine Father informed me when I turned a maid grown, that my marriage was up to me, so long as I made an effort to marry in favour of the Throne.”

Laetitia’s lips parted, before the words on her lips died, and she gave a thought before her teeth clicked shut. “…I am uncertain if such would be a mark of… fatherly indulgence…”

Laetitia was taught that arranging a good marriage was the best that a father could make for his daughter – certainly her Kepa had done his fair share of murmuring. What King Walton Stark did was beyond her ken – it looked certainly as though the King of Winter had despaired and given up.

And yet… Maeve Stark struck Laetitia as nothing of the Southron lady: the pleated long red skirt snatched at Laetitia’s eye like the tongue of a flame, the pattens hung from socked feet, which themselves hung loosely round the princess’s bared calves. All of her wear was unlike Laetitia’s kirtle or gown with black fore-sleeves – the Septa would screech and despair if Laetitia or even poor sweet simple Dany showed an ankle. Was it simply stark perspective, Laetitia wondered, that a female Einheri marrying was not in their House’s favour?

“Would the lords not… protest?” Laetitia murmured weakly, uncertain if the madness was catching.

“Alarra is marrying my cousin Harald – set to be the next Princess Seaward as that,” Maeve mused aloud. “Then of my cousins, they made fairly decent marriages – ah, except Cousin Samson by way of House Wihtburg of Hardhome, got lost in a blizzard onto a ship bound for Essos and couldn’t find his way back even with a compass and map, so Father just bade him set up a free company in Essos to accommodate those second sons seeking their fortune. If it ever comes to, that the Black Walls of Volantis had a hole burst into it, that would be his work trying to emulate Garbo the Fist.”

“…” Laetitia made some effort to make her teeth click shut. “The Black Wall is made of dragon-stone. The same material that the castle of Dragonstone is composed. Harder than iron, steel, granite, or diamond.”

“Aye. But the thing about hardness…” a twinkle came to her eye, “…the harder it is, the more brittle. Cousin Samson was thrown off the Wall enough times for trying to prove that – Tobi even picked the elevation near Greyguard so he would have more time to think on the way down, that part’s about nine hundred feet above the sea.”

“…dare I ask, why a Stark scion would resort to that?” Laetitia gasped.

“Who knows. Mayhaps he landed on his skull once too many a time,” a shrug from the Stark princess.

“This Samson. He lived?”

“Einheri. And he definitely has Umber blood, though Tobi hasn’t told me if the first Umbers ever married literal giants, or a Prince Wihtburg of Hardhome was… so very free with his favour,” Maeve gave a pout which drove Laetitia to choke in shock. “The last I saw him was years back – he made a decent showing at the exhibition against Harald. I suppose he would be in the running for the Fist of Winter. The title given to the Prince of the Fist, the foremost of the Einherjar in their generation,” Maeve explicated for her clarity.

“Nine hundred feet… and it is not certain that he would attain that title?” Laetitia weakly questioned.

“I would like to attain that title, cousin.” Laetitia should have expected such a statement from the Stark princess; it would have saved her a lot of shock. “It is an Atheling title – the entailed seat is the Fist of the First Men, an ancient ringfort in the haunted forest by the Milkwater beyond the Wall. Since the castle is based at the marches by the Lands of Always Winter, and there is a chance of facing… cannibalistic Thenns. Amongst others. The Prince of the Fist is also known as the Fist of Winter. Much as the Evenstar takes his name from his island home in the Stormlands,” she allowed.

“But… you are a princess,” Laetitia protested. “A daughter of a king – the King of Winter at that, niece to the dragon-riding King of House Targaryen. The Fist of Winter… it is a title beyond womanly scope.”

A sigh from Maeve. “In peace, who would need to fight armies? It is… so very hard for the Einherjar, for us who were born in peace.”

Notes:

This chapter seems meandering, but as the orphan to the dead prince Laetitia is also uniquely placed to comment on the Winterlands.

See you all next chapter!
- Armaria

Chapter 15: Vaella IV

Summary:

“Sorry… where is Cousin Letty?”

As though to reply, in the distance a roar echoed down the tunnels of the Dragonpit, alongside the clink of castle-forged steel… and the ripple of dragons taking the wing.

The Dragonpit had always seemed to Vaella a gloomy sort of thing – not helped by the fact that she had witnessed the Golden Wedding and the shadow the White Wolf cast upon the celebrants that fateful hour, throwing a wight of all things into the melee.

It was thus thankful that her nephew the Prince Aegon had elected to have their retinue slowly spiral up and around towards the apex of the Hill of Rhaenys, in spite of the complaints from his younger siblings in the following wheelhouse enough to gather a crowd of smallfolk watchers. For the nonce, her sweet Galatea was preoccupied with exchanging idle conversation with the prince – as there were no others in sight and finally Maeve Stark’s brilliance no longer outshone her daughter.

“Garlan would miss this sight, being held at Highgarden,” Galatea sighed to the prince. “As would my young brother Galen. Though at least Galen would have so many words besides his gifts – why, the other day his letter reads that our cousin, Lady Florence, is currently Reader of Arithmetic at the House of Runes of Winterfell!”

“Mother had oft spoken that it is the Citadel’s loss not to admit women – now they see it,” Prince Aegon demurred. “Lady Florence… I confess, my memory fails me on Reacher genealogy.”

“The apple-counter, nephew mine,” Vaella’s outburst was curt. “Garth’s former betrothed.”

The Prince of Dragonstone fell silent in uncertainty.

Near seven-and-ten years ago, in the wake of Rhaena’s announced pregnancy and marriage to King Walton Stark, Jaehaerys sought to tie the Faith to the Crown – to do so, a royal marriage to the great house of the Reach was merited. Thus, the Fossoway bride that Lord Garth had expected as Lady of Highgarden and mother to the next Gardener heir, turned to a dragon princess.

What the Warden of the South had thought of this arrangement, Vaella did not know; the marriage, though, did as His Grace King Jaehaerys intended to strengthen the Crown’s link to that Faith of the Seven, ever so inclined to Oldtown in the Reach. A conciliation of the Iron Throne’s support of the Faith after its Washing on the banks of the Trident, against the Winter where the Old Gods held sway.

“I am however glad for Lady Florence,” Vaella revealed. “Rhaena informs me that Lady Florence had struck up a working partnership with the runaway Lady Elissa Farman to develop a system of cartography. The Citadel rues the day they did not let Florence Fossoway forge a chain there.”

An exhalation sounded – no doubt her nephew, the heir to the Iron Throne, was simply much relieved to break the silence.

“Yes…” a low hum from the prince. “I am given to understand the few opportunities given to the pursuits of noble women which, by definition, needs permitted by their heads of house – the fathers, brothers, uncles. With our late grand-uncle, my sympathies are entirely with my great-aunt and Cousin Letty. And with my sisters…”

A pause, and the prince frowned as the wheelhouse slowed. “Ah, we have arrived… as did our... aunts and cousins.”

The Dragonpit opened to gloomy tunnels leading to hollowed-out caverns for the dragons, which gave Vaella time in mincing down them to consider the other wheelhouses – Rhaena with their half-siblings the Baratheons, the young Maeve Stark a vivacious spark in pulling Laetitia along, only to be bodily tackled by three- no, five of Alysanne’s brood – Prince Aemon was much distracted only by the arrival of his betrothed Lady Jocelyn, and Prince Baelon was dragged along by Princess Alyssa, babbling in High Valyrian to the dragon-keepers who opened the gates.

“Dragons are a legacy of old Valyria, cousin,” Prince Aegon turned to the Stark princess to speak in their liquid mother tongue. “And a passing knowledge is needed to communicate with a dragon.”

The bright eyes regarded him in amusement. “Cousin, you do realise that I did look after Dreamfyre at Harrenhal?”

Prince Aegon froze as much a hind would when confronted with the hunter’s quarrel, abruptly cognisant of his error of judgement. “…forgive me. My mistake.”

“My prince,” Vaella spoke once the Princess Maeve was dragged away by the younger royals chittering over dragons. “Surely His Grace would rather that the princess never set foot here.”

“Certainly,” Prince Aegon agreed easily, his face hidden in the half-gloom of the Dragonpit’s tunnels. “I daresay all the dragon-keepers of King’s Landing have heard tell of her feats from their brethren late of Harrenhal, and would have rather locked up the gates rather than admit her entry…”

“Many a man would feel unease of the Einherjar, much less the prospect of a dragon-riding one, nephew mine.”

 

---

 

For once, Vaella did not feel alone in her awe of the Einheri princess – the dragon-keepers, seven and seventy in all, men with swords and black armour that gleamed with oil in the flickering light of brackets of torches, lost all faculty for words when they beheld her. Maeve Stark was most at ease with her mother’s mount Dreamfyre, yet she could feed Vermithor and Silverwing by hand, and recalcitrant Caraxes bared his fangs only to receive a careless smack on his snout and a quick chide.

“And I thought I was brave when I smacked the Black Dread on my first time here,” Prince Baelon told Vaella, his eyes fixed in awe at the Stark princess having finished with cooing over Meraxes. “Is it purely from our shared blood, or some alchemy formed of mixing with Winter blood?”

Vaella was saved from trying to reply by the following ejaculation of surprise, and even then she was not the only one distracted – well all of the younger royals had frozen as from the last and greatest cavern came a low, earth-shaking growl, and even the brave northern ladies understandably froze, save their princess.

First was the jaw, a great thing baring teeth were as long as swords, the mouth of the cavern barely fitting that which was large enough to swallow an aurochs whole. His scales were mottled black, and even around the gleam of his saliva-laden fangs danced little tongues of black dragon-flame, sometimes flecked with carbuncle-red sparks that barely caught the spark of its eyes, set deep within the dark.

The winter princess drew herself up with a set of her jaw, the flare of her split-skirt almost fire itself as her silver braid erupted in flame with a twist of her head, that even despite her lack of physicality compared to the Black Dread, she would bend the beast to her will.

Goddess and dragon beheld each other. The silence stretched, punctuated by the crackle of burning flame.

Without breaking gaze, the princess reached back, the unfortunate swine caught by the bristles squealing as it was hauled over with Einheri strength. The next sight had even Vaella gasp, as the great hog was bodily flung, cast through the ether as though granted wings; the wicking smoke and stench of burnt bristle mere punctuation, before the entire hog was swallowed in a burst of black and red flame and a wet pop.

A low whistle came from the princess’s curled lips, even as she stepped ever closer. “Well, you’re a big beastie, are you not?”

The shadows froze, and then the gleam like a blade came as the fangs snapped out of the dark.

“Ahh!”

Daella fled to hide her face in Princess Maegelle’s bosom and even clung to Prince Vaegon, even as the young royals pattered to hide behind their elder siblings who gave similar cries, the screams echoing in the cavern.

Until it was broken by a lazy call:

“Would you all mind some quiet? The poor big beastie got a splinter stuck in his gums here. Yes, you’re a big, spoiled thing, are you not? The splinter is rather sharp, eh, hold still…”

“…seven hells,” the curse issued from Prince Baelon’s lips.

“Language, brother,” Princess Maegelle reproached.

“Never mind me! T… That’s the Black Dread, Balerion. Not some… great cursed direwolf.” Prince Baelon’s sigh was echoed by many a witnessing dragon-keeper. “Balerion’s not fitted for mounting, right?”

The nearest dragon-keeper hastily assured: “No, my prince. The only dragon that was saddled for flight was Alkahest. Balerion’s saddle has not been utilised since the Conqueror’s passing.”

The thump of wet footsteps resounded, and Princess Maeve Stark reappeared from the cavern – being in one piece, though her boots were soaked and charred at the hems, and what looked like an entire thick bone was snapped with a splinter from a hand laced with blood – most of it presumably from the hog, though the princess quickly raised the hand to show a dot of crimson.

“Pricked myself on the incisor – bad lighting down there. My thanks.” A quick tut had a waterskin produced by the ever-efficient northerners, by which the blood and viscera was washed from her hands, and then a salve that smelled strongly was applied.

Still the centre of attention, the princess disregarded herself to regard her Targaryen relatives, almost murmuring to herself before Vaella could feel her stare, almost a physical force by itself. When she next spoke, it however took everyone aback:

“Sorry… where is Cousin Letty?”

As though to reply, in the distance a roar echoed down the tunnels of the Dragonpit, alongside the clink of castle-forged steel… and the ripple of dragons taking the wing.

Notes:

Another short chapter, but one laden with foreshadowing as I try to move the plot onwards XD.

- Armaria

Chapter 16: Alysanne IV

Summary:

Alysanne’s breath caught when atop Balerion’s head, a figure of bright flame danced, and then Maeve Stark fell like some bleeding star, upon what was certainly the wild drake known around Dragonstone as the Cannibal.

“Are you still upset about Quicksilver, dear?” Alysanne reproached her brother and king as the man in question scowled from his favourite glowering spot by the Dragonmont.

It was two sennights since Laetitia had mounted Quicksilver – a sign that Alysanne, and certainly many others, took as some presage of the gods. The royal entourage and the northerners had left under the cloud of murmurs of dragon-riders and suspicions if the northern princess would be next to claim a dragon.

No doubt Rhaena would be overjoyed if that did happen, Alysanne reflected.

A sigh drew a cock from nearby Vermithor, by which His Grace King Jaehaerys calmed with a shake of his head. “I am… of two minds, sooth. Uncle Aerion did right by us, sweet Alysanne, and Laetitia may well be as my sister… that is, amongst those not of our family.”

“I understand.” Alysanne did understand why Jaehaerys had felt to justify himself; Targaryens married brother to sister, and she was his lawful wedded wife. It still did not explain why His Grace had felt the need to brood at the Dragonmont as though he was fleeing the dread Flint from many a year past.

“Marrying Laetitia to our Aegon would consolidate our dominance over the dragons, as well as maintain what purity of blood we have,” there came the slow contemplation as though drawn by the lord confessor. “But it would not enjoin Stark blood with our blood.”

“And yet it does not stop the Winterfell Crier from inking out details of the northern princess’s visit through King’s Landing,” Alysanne reminded him. “Nor, I imagine, did for one moment the Night’s Watch reconsider this… intervention in the Stormlands… on behalf of our relations as goodfamily to the Starks.”

“The Night’s Watch is sworn to defend the realms from men from monsters – sometimes those monsters are shaped like men.” A pause, before Jaehaerys curled his upper lip. “As those words came from Lady Flint, I am inclined to believe her.”

Danny Flint was certainly a very good example of how far the Watch was prepared to take the course of justice.

“As the Night’s Watch defended the smallfolk of Tarth, I would not disavow Lord Tarth’s decision to seek Watch assistance rather than Storm’s End or even the Crown.” A scowl. “The cost would however be rather dear – black banners in Shipbreaker’s Bay, enough to grate at the conclaves of magisters across the Narrow Sea. Added with the Northern presence on Dragonstone… I honestly rue the day that Rhaena married the Stark.”

“Would Your Grace have me leave our sister to the mercy of Winter, then?” Alysanne sighed, her mind drifting to the accursed past.

Alysanne had been relieved when she finally left the Winterlands; Rhaena, less so. Below the Neck, Rhaena would always be remembered firstly as their lost brother Aegon’s sister-widow, secondly as a princess of House Targaryen – and with it the allowance she got came entirely at the Crown’s decision. Above the Neck, the Silver Bank made out by their wise late grandsire left the decision for using the funds entirely at the sisters’ discretion – Rhaena had the freedom she craved, in her relative anonymity and amongst her closest female favourites.

“The Stark had this… sheath, made of tortoiseshell – he would not have spilled his seed,” Alysanne quietly confessed. “That is, until someone took a bodkin and pricked it. And our sister, she would not hear of purging… she wanted… it, him… she would not say, and in this she kept her own counsel.”

Alysanne had met King Walton Stark. She was at a loss to describe him, less as a man and more as though a direwolf had donned the human mask; constantly hovered in that boundary between man and beast. More than once, Alysanne had lain awake at night, and honestly pondered if Rhaena had given herself to the disguised Walton Stark because she truly loved him, or it were just to fall pregnant and finally live away from the south forevermore, freed from the Iron Throne and the expectation of a crown. Whatever Rhaena had intended, fate however had different plans; once Walton Stark’s identity was exposed she did become queen of another kingdom, and rumour full of tongues had painted Rhaena as ambitious thence.

“Ten and seven years thence, the hazard of their coupling is now playing with our children at Aegon’s Garden,” Alysanne continued. “And another fruit of their labour would sit the neighbouring throne. Aegon’s vision of uniting the Seven Kingdoms might not have been realised by dragons, but our blood is joined to the Starks. Were it… were it not for Maegelle being promised to the Faith, I would imagine a Targaryen bride for Rhaena’s son would be promising.”

A scowl crossed Jaehaerys’s face. “The last raven from the Winter Court implied that Prince Aelfraed was already trothed – a bride from House Glover. But the solution does not resolve the issue with the Night’s Watch, to start. All the leeway we have with House Stark falls to nothing if they would not affect the Watch.”

Alysanne hummed in contemplation. “I did meet with Prince Alaric Stark in his capacity as Chancellor of Winter – the Chancery oft works with the Watch recruitment, and with an added donation of land…”

“And what land could we give? The Winterlands land, when the Stark’s royal writ extends on both sides of the Wall down to the Neck? Or the Riverlands, or…?” Jaehaerys trailed off as his eyes scanned the Dragonmont, following curls and wisps of steam issuing from the ground and hovering by the line where sky met sea met land. As he watched, it seemed that the Seven sent another beam of light, once that erupted in great gouts of flame in the distance towards the settlements of smallfolk upon the isle of Dragonstone itself…

“By the gods,” Alysanne murmured when she noted his silence and followed the line of his gaze out to the Blackwater. “That gout of flame – a dragon.”

 

---

 

From her gaze down as she urged Silverwing where Alysanne dared, the smoke belching from the Dragonmont was a thick cloak over the grey wet waste, almost despairing. The sulphurous stench faded with the sea-breeze, melded with another stench, one that Alysanne was rarely acquainted: blood, coppery and wet and stinking to the heavens, and the burnt scent of boiling water edged with the salt of the Narrow Sea.

The wind parted, and it was a shock to feel the heat of a great drake, a great dark beast with wide wings listing to the side, the scores rent into one wing keeping it trapped on the earth. As Vermithor scouted close down the cloudy fog lifted, and the great maw glittered with black and red before there erupted the jaw of the Black Dread – the same Dread who was supposedly at the Dragonpit in King’s Landing, across the Blackwater. Great teethy jaws snapped on the dragon’s wing and tore, the fellow black drake screaming in rage with tongues of flame licking on its own breath.

And yet behind all this, Alysanne’s breath caught when atop Balerion’s head, a figure of bright flame danced, and then Maeve Stark fell like some bleeding star, upon what was certainly the wild drake known around Dragonstone as the Cannibal.

Notes:

Yes I know the chapter is short and I'm running late, but honestly I wanted to introduce Walton and Tobi into the fic - another one of Tobirama's SFX to introduce ;P

- Armaria

Chapter 17: Rhaena V

Summary:

And Princess Maeve Stark of Winterfell joined the ranks of dragon-riders.

Notes:

The fight of Cannibal vs Maeve now has Maeve with air support! And we're getting to Tobi's next SFX soon hahaha.

- Armaria

“Mother, I am sorry to disturb, but-”

Maeve stopped when she cleared the door and found Rhaena at the raised seat, gazing over the Painted Table.

“Daughter. I was just looking at the Conqueror’s table.” Rhaena rose to kiss her daughter on the forehead, noting that her daughter wore her backless top, before throwing an arm to gesture at the great round room.

With walls of bare black stone and four tall narrow windows that looked out to the four points of the compass atop the Stone Drum of the castle Dragonstone. The chamber was dominated at the centre by the great table from which it took its name. A massive slab of carved wood, that in the days before the Southron Conquest Aegon's carpenters had shaped after the land of Westeros, sawing out each bay and peninsula until the table nowhere ran straight. Upon it was painted the land: rivers and mountains, castles and cities, lakes and forests. At its narrowest, it ran four feet wide, and at its widest the picture it held was the exact width of its length, leaving half of its surface bare.

For where the Riverlands and the Vale and the Westerlands began to peter north, the painted surface gave way to a smooth severing across the headwaters of the Green Fork – bisecting the Twins, and leaving Seagard forlorn at the lip of the Cape of Eagles and the Iron Isles just at the edge of the depicted Realm. The line ran straight across the varnished grain, disappearing along where the Narrow Sea would lie as the rest of the wood remained bare of carving or paint.

“Kepa – my late father, your grandfather – said that Aegon the Conqueror carved that line with Blackfyre.” Rhaena murmured when Maeve leant over to peer at it. “Great conqueror, unifier of five kingdoms, mayhaps six if we consider Dorne… and in the end the Stranger still came for him in three and threescore years, at this very table as he untangled old yarns of the Conquest. My late brothers Aegon and Viserys stood witness, and the pyre was set to the torch by Meraxes. I can only wonder if on that accursed day, my foolish little brothers were talking about the Conquest and how…”

“It runs in the blood,” Maeve murmured, before she addressed Rhaena. “I am sorry, Mother, but our cousin Vaegon is missing – and no, he is not at Dragonstone’s library, the maester’s chambers, or his rooms. Ser Strong has called upon the garrison to search the island.”

Rhaena felt one eyebrow lift. “You seem to get along well with the younger brood.”

“Even if we are of competing houses, they are still of my blood, Mother,” Maeve frowned back. “And if a Targaryen prince disappears right after the northern retinue arrived at Dragonstone and Prince Aerion’s bones were just interred, it would be… complicated. Lady Anya spoke on the thin veneer of peace.”

For all that House Stark had built itself up by warring and shedding blood, the relationship between north and south had stayed peaceful even through the Conquest and beyond – the Faith Militant’s failed crusade being taken as a breach of the king’s peace, made the Lord Commander’s act one of police suppression. Allegedly, the Washing of the Faith was done by the Night’s Watch against the Faith Militant, with neither of the land’s two crowns being involved.

“This is Dragonstone, the seat of House Targaryen,” was Rhaena’s terse response. “Essosi slavers kidnapping what looks to be a comely dragon-seed is more likely. And, even if tales of northerners subduing and spiriting away a prince would spread, how then do they account for the breach in guest right that such an act would require? Anyone who’s been north would know that incest is more likely than breaching guest rights.”

“We may as well assist,” Maeve reasoned, the teasing smile so much like Walton’s playing about her bow-lips. “Even the Prince of Dragonstone is well stirred by his brother’s disappearance – for that brotherly regard it is worth the respect. You must understand, Mother, being that you had cared for your siblings as such.”

“Sometimes you speak so much sense, daughter, I wonder how I birthed such a good child,” Rhaena pursed her lips, her softened heart already conceding over her initial umbrage. “No, you are-”

The rare admission would not be spoken, swallowed as it was over the bellows of dragons and screams that had Maeve’s head snapping north towards the Dragonmont.

“Maeve?” Rhaena echoed as her daughter headed for the window. “Wait, Maeve, stop-!”

The leaded glass made a rattle, but it did not stop her sweet daughter from leaping into the unknown, arousing a gasp from Rhaena’s throat even as she ran out of the Chamber with her slippers clattering.

“Guards! Guards! The princess has run to the screaming!” And then she seized a passing servant. “Where is the nearest dragon-keeper?! I will mount Dreamfyre immediately!”

 

---

 

The flight across Dragonstone might be faster than the legs of men, but to Rhaena it still seemed that time raced against her, even as a beat of Dreamfyre’s wings took her ever higher and past the Dragonmont, that past the belch of sulphurous smoke she could finally regards amongst the rocks and chips of dragonglass-

Rhaena blinked as her eyes landed on the great Black Dread, and then the Cannibal’s roar distracted her before she found the brilliant light of her Einheri daughter and a blow, the result of which was the Cannibal rearing back, and the rending strike from the Black Dread tore through scaled wing and broke bone. It was only two thumps that distracted her, and only then it was when Jaehaerys dismounted, his lips parting to demand an answer.

With the superhuman litheness that came of the Einherjar, Rhaena’s shining daughter mounted the Black Dread, booted feet planted on the scaly skull before it was as though dragon-fire was unleashed. The tongue of flame flared, almost taking the shape of a dragon itself to barrel into the Cannibal’s face, drawing a scream and a spatter that had Rhaena backing from flecks of liquid that began to eat at the ground where it landed.

“She drew blood from a dragon,” Jaehaerys breathed, the shake of his hands causing the chains that dropped from his own mount’s saddle to clink.

“Not now, Jaehaerys!” Rhaena finally snapped. “Dracarys!”

Dreamfyre obeyed, her flames scorching at the Cannibal who roared back in pain, stumbling before it took to the wing – and then slumped to the side to list leeward off of the island, clearly having decided that draconic pride could only last so long against mounted dragons.

Her brilliant daughter lightly leapt off, but all of Rhaena’s praise died when she saw the look on Maeve’s features. She was distressed, the bone-white of her hair askew where it escaped her long fishtail braid, and she did not even note when brushing the soot off of her face left streaks of blood instead where dragonglass fragments had broken into the palms of her hands.

“Have you seen Vaegon?” Maeve demanded without regard for propriety – quite rightly, as Rhaena’s siblings now reacted.

“Vaegon? What happened to my boy?!” Alysanne’s pitch rose sharply. “By the gods if he-?! Silverwing, let us-!”

“The Cannibal must be found, Alysanne,” Jaehaerys soothed the younger of them before Alysanne could make a suicidal run after the foul beast. “But so our children must be cared for too. Aegon has the only grown dragon of them. If Rhaena would- Maeve could come with.”

Once again Jaehaerys fell silent as Maeve looked at him, clicked her tongue, and nodded. “Then I will pursue – mayhaps Vaegon is with the beast. Mother, if you would guard our ladies and the remaining children.”

“Wait, Maeve, how would you-”

Call it boldness, call it madness, call it fortune or the will of the gods or the caprice of dragons. Rhaena knew not what it was, as she saw her brilliant daughter leap to mount the Black Dread under her own power. Balerion roared, lurching to his feet as his wings spread, the ground underfoot trembling… then he took to the skies in flight, the silhouette of a slender figure distantly made out against the light of the shining sun.

And Princess Maeve Stark of Winterfell joined the ranks of dragon-riders.

Notes:

The parent series At Lightning Speed has been nominated for Best Series! Here is the voting link.

Please do vote and share it around, though we would also kindly ask readers to check out the other fics and categories too, so the voting is a bit more fair.

Chapter 18: Vaella V

Summary:

Knock knooock….

Notes:

The parent series At Lightning Speed has been nominated for Best Series! Here is the voting link.

Please do vote and share it around, though we would also kindly ask readers to check out the other fics and categories too, so the voting is a bit more fair.

Somehow, it was Vaella’s fate to always be there when Winter came.

The dawn had not come with that unpleasant notion to visit, that day. Vaella had been with her ladies, discussing the trade of Dragonstone and wondering about Corwyn Velaryon’s young son Corlys, who for his coming of age had embarked on his first voyage without his father or cousins on the Dragonstone-Driftmark sailing route a year afore.

“Ser Corlys even wrote to Ser Gyles, requesting permission to read the White Book,” Lady Beesbury gossiped. “Allegedly he wanted the record of his namesake’s sojourn north with the Conquerors. That and the Queen’s book would suit his planned voyage.”

“Young Ser Corlys would need the Crone’s guidance through the heathen lands,” a murmur from a homely Septa – one of the many that dogged their ladies’ shadows, that Vaella could not recall. “Especially the Stranger’s domain.”

It was all Vaella could do not to sigh. “Septa, despite all the attempts of the Faith to equate the Lord Commander with the Stranger, he is avowedly not of the Seven who are One. He is older than Hugor of the Hill, older than the Winged Knight, older than the Valyrian Freehold. To speak otherwise is to tempt the fates.”

And then the bells of Dragonstone rung in times with the roars of dragons, and in the resultant chaos and peering there was only the great shadow of Balerion in the distance, crowned with a figure of orange flame with wings beating ever towards the Gullet and the horizon.

One of the ladies behind Vaella murmured, “Wasn’t Balerion at King’s Landing?”

“Where is he flying?”

“A dragon running wild, what would Their Graces do…? Could the King…?!”

“That flame…” Galatea’s murmur seemed to cut through the whispers. “Mother… mayhaps… Balerion was mounted.”

Vaella could feel the hysteria bubble from her throat despite a lifetime of Court etiquette. “My dear daughter, you must be more specific. Balerion was mounted by your Einheri cousin, the Stark princess. The symbol of the Conquest is now of Winterlands allegiance.”

Internally, Vaella’s heart rabbited apace with her thoughts. This being right after Laetitia mounted Quicksilver, the Crown already proved to lose some stranglehold of the dragons – the claiming of Alkahest that should have defanged the royal family’s branch was rebalanced with Quicksilver’s mounting. And then the Starks upset the whole game board when the largest dragon currently alive, the symbol of the Conqueror himself, was claimed by the Einheri princess.

Vaella did not know how the Einherjar would measure against a dragon, but presumably the Winterlands had enough of them to strike a balance against House Targaryen even afore this matter. With this development… Jaehaerys would need at least a nominal dragon-rider, one to balance the scales. All of his sons were young and all of his daughters younger, and should he not wish to roll the dice with her sons by House Gardener, inviting the possibility that the dragons would be married out…

Vaella found her eyes drifting towards her demure daughter, and hastily caught herself – though, not before entertaining the irony if her daughter managed to claim Meraxes.

 

---

 

“The rest of the northerners?”

“Lady Alarra Stark has led the ladies to set up triage and nursing, sire,” Ser Gyles Morrigen had hastily reported when Jaehaerys had returned to the castle, clearly in a black rage that the Court assembled on Dragonstone stayed by the steps and sides of the great hall.

Vaella would have rather stayed to observe their healing arts, but she was still Lady of Highgarden and a Targaryen princess. She had to remain here.

“We’ve found Prince Vaegon too – his left arm is rather sliced up and a few burns and scuffs, but Ser Lucamore took the brunt of the dragon’s bite and fire of the prince’s three guards,” Ser Gyles continued. “The other two were cooked in their armour, but Ser Lucamore is still clinging to this world – Lady Alarra said that he was lucky that what meagre blood of Hagun he had lent him strength.”

The anointed Lord of the Seven Kingdoms rubbed the bridge of his nose, seated upon the high seat of Dragonstone.

It was Prince Aegon’s time to speak next from his post next to the throne. “Of the surrounding crofts and homesteads, a hundred casualties and more injuries reported. And the port is… somewhat damaged where Balerion had tackled the Cannibal away from fishing boats and chased the beast to the Dragonmont. As for the cause… Vaegon’s claim of the wild dragons was disrupted with the Cannibal’s ambush, it was bad luck-”

“And why did Vaegon choose now of all times to claim a dragon?” Jaehaerys growled. “You clearly love all your siblings, but you are the Prince of Dragonstone and my heir now. We need facts.”

“…yes, sire.” A long drawing of breath. “Vaegon had… lost to a bout of swordplay. From Alyssa. Yes he is untrained in the sword, but in this matter, Alyssa was quite beyond the pale in daring him to claim a dragon. It is a danger even to grown men, much less a boy of seven name-days. And Baelon, how he and Aemon worked to delay myself from his pursuit after what happened, is unconscionable.

“I have assigned all three to mucking out the stables for a sennight, begging Your Grace’s pardon, and once Vaegon is recovered they will apologise for endangering their brother’s life. Before the Court,” his firstborn emphasised.

“…you are still their elder brother,” Jaehaerys grumbled. “But the punishment… a moon of embroidery for Alyssa should satisfy a different sort of swordplay – Alysanne will decree when she can return to the training yard, subject to Alyssa being able to pick out our house sigil in thread.”

Vaella watched as the Prince of Dragonstone seemed to waver here – everyone who had met him knew that he doted on his siblings, and the struggle to balance his favour and the need for an appropriate punishment seemed to play out over his handsome features.

“…yes, sire,” the prince finally conceded. “But… Balerion? Father, I have flown Alkahest as far as the entrance to the Gullet, but I have not seen Balerion…”

“Your Stark cousin may be Einheri, but Balerion is a great dread,” Jaehaerys growled from his place on the throne. “I do not know how I would break the news…”

Messengers in their house colours sidled at the sides of the Great Hall, leaning forward with murmurs for the King and his heir only. Whatever those words were that he bore, Vaella would swear that the King and his heir, her brother and her nephew, looked for the moment… nonplussed.

A pause, and then the King announced to the hall: “Balerion was spotted, towing a great galleon flying the black banner… alongside the running direwolf of House Stark, and… a third device, composed on a white field of a blue… wheel with three lines above and below? Rhaena?”

Having been granted a chair a step below the dais by virtue of her exalted position, their eldest sister’s back snapped taut. “Here?!”

Alysanne followed from her chair, actually having clambered to her feet to turn towards Jaehaerys. “The White Wolf’s personal arms.”

Even despite the solemnity of his face, Jaehaerys still gave a small sigh. “The Lord Commander is known to us, sisters.”

“No, no,” Rhaena shook her head, the braids along her temple still flecked with soot and still in her dragon-riding leathers. “You misunderstand, little brother. The legal personhood of the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch is usually assumed, but the man has been known to go on furlough from his Watch duties. And in this time he is only one of the Lords of the Moat, the Prince’s thane.”

Jaehaerys pressed his lips together. “What is the difference? Speak plainly.”

Rhaena’s smile was rather edged. “The Night’s Watch needs to play this whole game of thrones. Moat Cailin’s thane only needs care about which man Prince Eddard tells him to kill, come what may. Is that plain enough, Jaehaerys?”

Alysanne’s silver teeth ground. “The last time that one came down clad in anything not black, Lys followed old Valyria to the bottom of the seas. And Jaehaerys, as our uncle once said, this Dragonstone we all stand upon is an island.”

The queens’ words aroused a furore with the surrounding courtiers, even as the Prince of Dragonstone hummed.

“Prince Alaric would use a direwolf rampant as his arms, and his children would use that sigil,” Rhaena doubted. “In this generation it would only be the main line which would use the running direwolf, and Aelfraed would not descend past the Neck so young. It can only be Walton… and the fact that Lord Tobirama is here as a thane rather than as the Lord Commander…”

“The King of the Winterlands would personally come here?” Prince Aegon burst out. “That is… my aunt, the King in the north?”

“The King of Winter, King of the Winterlands if you must,” Rhaena sternly corrected, and her lecture would certainly have enlightened a lot more lords and men when an almighty crash echoed down and the earth trembled, knocking swooning ladies off of their feet and causing men of the Dragonstone garrison to fall one after another like bone-tiles.

“Oh gods, they’re mad!”

“That’s Dragonstone!”

Already scrambling on her feet, Vaella followed behind Jaehaerys as he strode out of the great hall and down to the source of the sound – and were it not that she too was arrested by the sight, she would have walked into Jaehaerys’ back.

Behind her, she heard the prince gasp, like as not in time to the cold that steamed from her lips and the frost that danced across whatever skin was exposed to the elements. Now exposed to the skies, overhead the clouds flowed and turned as though some god had deigned to send a storm right over the island at this time, faster and faster in time with screams in the distance, both human and seagulls and swine and oxen, in and out of the walls.

There was another thunderous boom, as though the goddess Meraxes threw a tantrum or the Doom was repeating itself, and Vaella started as from her post on the steps leading to the great hall, from peering down she could see where the vaunted curtain walls of dragon-stone crumbled. Fortunately there were no men atop, though men below the walls screamed.

As they watched the legacy of the Freehold crumble in chunks, so much stone melted by dragon-flame broken into chunks, Vaella too felt like screaming. Not Dragonstone the castle, nor Dragonstone the island, but Dragonstone the material, vaunted to be harder than diamond, and now crushed.

“Gods above,” Prince Aegon breathed, the sword in his hand trembling even as he made the effort to keep it raised in the chill that descended.

There was no snow – Vaella doubted if snow would form near large bodies of water such as the Blackwater. Her thoughts though were drowned then, in the third and final crash of thunder that grated not like rock, but more of the after-echo of Sept bells and the song of steel, and in all of this there was a low basso call:

Knock knooock….

Vaella did not know whose it was, but from behind her, she distinctly heard her eldest sister huff: “Oh gods, Walton.”

A beat or two, and the echo was punctuated with crashing rubble as four men strode from the curtain wall towards Jaehaerys and the retinue and Dragonstone’s main keep, which suddenly felt very, very small.

“I think something got in my eye,” Aegon muttered. “That man bringing up the rear looks like he’s standing before me…”

“It’s a matter of scale,” a huff from Rhaena. “The doors and gates of Winterfell have to be fifteen feet tall to accommodate the occasional giant… that one just looks like a giant, but I have spoken with him, nephew, and I assure you, he is only an Umber.”

The biggest and thus most clearly identifiable was a small mountain or a walking siege engine that dwarfed his companions as he brought up the rear. On the mountain’s right was a tall man, made rather hawkish by the set of his shoulders and the inexpert hacking of his dark hair that framed his face. The mountain’s left bore a man surprisingly small, with dark hair curled and tied behind his head and the almost-arrogance of having no visible weapon – though for an Einheri, their whole body was one.

All of the men were clad in the drab furs and woollens of northern garb, though theirs were of a quality and make close to castle-made, though their leader wore it best: though lean as whipcord and dwarfed by the veritable mountain behind him, he looked as though carved of marble, more than human. The only weapon he bore was the sheathed six-foot blade along his back and the knives at his waist, and there were neither accessories nor additional wealth on his person save for the running direwolf picked out in embroidery on his surcoat just under a wolf-fur worn as though a cape. His hair was the dark locks of the First Men, riddled with the very same bone-white that Maeve bore in the entirety and woven over his ears in a short braid to keep it out of the way, his beard trimmed despite the distance and the journey by ship. Yet in spite of the physical and financial variance and the reduced retinue, their leader seemed more than human, that his very presence surpassed even the late Lord Rogar and came to match Jaehaerys astride Vermithor – splendid and dragonback, condensed into the form of a man.

The retinue stopped walking. A beat, and all four heads swivelled to peer atop the curtain wall, and then as one they turned to the ground betwixt the kings of the Realm. A breeze stirred, but rather than the salty air of Dragonstone, what tickled Vaella’s nose was instead greeted by pure and impossible cold, tinged with the last fragrance of blossoms that lingered all the way to the end of their lives.

Princess Maeve Stark had leapt out as though from the ether in a whirl, as daughter and niece to the kings now playing as herald, but Vaella was too distracted instead by her companion – he who had appeared within stabbing distance of the Prince of Dragonstone, within touching distance of the kings of the Realm, and who now filled her with an unforgettable fear — a fear that was baseless and irrational, but rooted in her very soul.

“The Stranger,” she whispered, “he is here.”

Notes:

And finally, the big entrance XD.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 12 of For This Night, and All the Nights to Come (AU of At Lightning Speed)