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THE FIRE
The Curtain of Light closes behind them, the shimmering green and violet fading into the dark. The Heart of Winter was beating the last of its death throes, and the land shook in its final gasps. Drogon’s last groans are in rhythm. The dark crimson of his eyes were fading as they stared into her own. The heat of the blood red pain and the white cold are coursing down her arm, but they seemed so mute in comparison. In comparison to the vacuum of the wind, the shattering sound of the earth as it broke. Rhaegal was lost to the wind, Viserion to the sundering of the earth. And Drogon was fading to the ice and the wound across his belly as Daenerys watched.
Her name was cried out amongst the wind and tumble of ice and dirt. She turns and sees Jon on the hillside in his approach. Ghost is not with him. Jon’s left flank is covered in dirt and caked in blood. Longclaw is layered just as much in ice as it is in blood.
There is no more heat in the air. She turns and the fire in his eyes have faded. Drogon is still. There is a shaking in her lips, a tremor in her fingers. No she wants to say. She wanted to deny that this was happening. He had been with her at the beginning, since the first dreams. But Drogon was not breathing, and all life had left him.
Even in death, the Heart takes life.
“Daenerys,” he breathes. His sword arm in trembling beneath. I should be shaking as well. She looks down and sees that her fingers are trembling. She didn’t feel it. “He’s gone.” He was speaking just as much of Ghost as he was of Drogon. She was the Sister of Dragons, the Dragon’s Daughter, the Mother of Dragons. And in that moment, her namesake made her kin to corpses.
They rose up together. They walked past the fallen banners, the shards of broken ice, the dust of dragon glass that is blown by the wind. They hear the Curtain sheathe behind them. Corpses are caked in ice. Corpses of the men that followed them beyond the Wall. Their one-hundred thousand, men born on Westeros and from across the Narrow Sea, slain in an alien realm.
The Unsullied of Astapor were gone. The eight thousand had been consumed by the war. People said that it was Daenerys Stormborn that had freed them, but that was never true. She gave them the order to kill the Masters, but they made the choice to follow her. To Yunkai, to Mereen, to beyond Essos into Westeros and unto the vestiges of the Wall.
Dany wonders how long the journey will be. It took them months to reach this place beyond the ruins of the Wall, but that was a journey slowed by war and winter. Two can travel much more quickly than a hundred thousand, but the world had changed. The last beats of the Heart may have changed more than the Land of Always Winter. Westeros itself may have been reformed.
There may no longer even be a Westeros.
Jon led her across the snowcapped hills and the ice-filled tremors. The white would fade in time, and eventually they springs of life would slip from beneath the cracks. Flowers and berries, chirps of bird in the distance. They feed off of the earth as they can, as they walk beneath the gray shades of mountains. Massive pillars of rock and stone stood where the earth had shaken and split.
They come upon the ruins of their last encampment. The banners of the three-headed dragon are torn and filled with ice-eaten holes. But they still stand. Dany wonders how long they will remain standing, until the poles bend into the earth and fall. The wind whips at the tents and shredded banners. They search through the camp, hoping they can find something to use. Dany had her doubts – she was very firm in giving the last command.
“Take everything. Tomorrow we may all die.” She remembered the way Grey Worm had looked at her. He had accepted it the moment they marched beyond the Wall.
They don’t find much. Some salted beef that is so hard and coarse they would need to soak it in water to make it edible. “I hear hedge knights lived off of this,” Jon said as he wrapped it in a bundle. “Just soak it in water so that you can chew on it.”
“I never imagined you for a historian on hedge knights, Lord Snow.” She had a bundle of skins strapped to her arm as she laid on the river bed. She filled each of them.
“It’s just what I heard, Dany.” It’s the first time he had called her that in weeks. Not since the march on the Curtain. “We should follow that mountain in the morning.”
She would welcome the relief. Blisters had formed on the flat of her feet. “Until we come across another ravine?” So many times they had found massive gaps in the earth where there wasn’t before.
“I suppose so,” he says as he ties the bundle.
“And what will we do then?” Jon looks at her as she approaches with the skins of water. “When we go back. There is no Wall.” The way Jon looks at her, she knows that he hadn’t thought on it. He had given up everything for the Watch – and most of the Watch had died beneath the light of the Curtain. The Wall was just shards of ice. The Others were forever blocked from the realm.
Jon had died for the Watch, and he came back. Jon had led the Watch beyond the Wall. What else did he have to give? Dany could not find the answer.
“And there is no Throne,” Jon says. “The wildfire consumed it.”
What waited for her beyond the Wall? Dany hadn’t thought on it. She had fought for the Throne. She raised her dragons to take it back. She ruled in Mereen so that she could learn what it meant to rule. To set things right before she sailed across the Narrow Sea. Viserys would always talk about the day he would sit on that iron seat. The crown he would wear, the people he would punish. “I will be Jaehaerys come again,” he would always say. Even though Viserys never knew what it had meant to rule. He only knew how to keep her another day away from the Usurper’s knives.
It was always his seat. King’s Landing was always her brother’s home. “Our land”, he would call it, but the only land Dany had known were the Free Cities. Her home was the house with the red door that rested on the Braavosi coast. Her days spent under the lemon tree were the happiest of her life.
She could rule. She could unite what remained of Westeros under a single banner. It would be folly. Her armies were lost at the March. Her dragons were gone. The Kingdoms had already splintered and drifted away during the War of the Five Kings. And even if she managed to convince some Lords to follow her, there was no garauntee the crown would remain. Aegon the Dragon had united Seven Kingdoms, at the height of their prime and full of riches. There might not even be a single kingdom in the south anymore. It just might be a hundred different provinces, each Lord doing his best to keep his people alive.
Aegon made the Kingdoms with fire. Let it be said that it was destroyed by fire as well.
“We have served,” she says. Jon looks at her. “We did what we could. We put an end to the Long Night. You have fulfilled your vows. I have fulfilled my duties. Jon, it is time we lived. For once.”
Jon chewed on his lip. Then he smiled. “You’re right.”
So they had sought each other out. They spoke on what happened. On the people that died. On those that they had loved. He heard of Khal Drogo from her, of her first son that died in her womb. And she had heard of his Wildling wife from him. Ygritte, the woman who was kissed by fire. “What am I?” she had asked with a laugh. “Born from it, maybe?” he had responded with a smile.
For months it was as if they were the only humans in all the world. Their most constant companion was the sound of the wind blowing against tree leaves, or bushes of grass being tugged as they walked past.
She could not rightfully say when they had conceived Dameon. Perhaps it was that night under the covers of one of the tents. Or a week past, when she had taken Jon beneath the shade of a pine tree. It could have been the time amidst the bushels of grass that were as tall as any man. They had done it half a dozen times before Dany realized she hadn’t bled in a month.
She could definitely say when their son came into the world, red crowned and screaming. Her water broke just as they had made their way past a cave. Jon laid her there on the cavern floor, removing his clothes to act as a cushion for her. He was almost as naked as she was. Dany couldn’t say she wasn’t afraid. Their mothers had died on the birthing bed. She remembered how much Rhaego wanted to escape her womb, his fingers as hot and sharp as knives.
“You won’t die,” Jon had said. She gripped his fingers so tight they went pale.
Dany could not understand how long it took to push Dameon out. It was just Jon with her, and he was no nurse. Knowing how to stitch a wound was not the same thing as bringing a baby into the world. She remembered her screams, though. How she yelled at him, yelled at herself, yelled at her son to just get out already. She swore that she would never let another man fuck her for as long as she lived. She promised Jon she would geld him first thing. She promised so many things in the white hot of the pain.
They were all forgotten when she held Dameon in her hands, as she sucked at her. His head was crowned in the black wisps of the Stark hair. But his eyes were the deep purple of Old Valyria. After Jon cut the cord with his knife, she loaned Dameon in his arms. And as they looked at each other, they both realized just what exactly they were fighting for.
THE ICE
From the day they walked from the Curtain, to the day they made their way past the Skirling Pass, it was two years before they saw another. Dany had saw the smokes first, as Dame had tugged at her hair. Jon was behind them, tugging on Bastard’s reins. They approached the village, clusters of stone huts. The echoes of children and the chopping of lumber were what welcomed them. “I know you,” said a man with a beard as dark as Jon’s hair. “Lord Crow,” he said with a smile.
Around a campfire, and drinking of brandy, they talked. “Your sister is doing well,” Targran had explained. Jon picked at the strips of elk meat on his wooden plate. “She united the…ah, Riverlands it is called. First Queen of the Rivers, is what people say she is.”
Sansa had marched with the Vale and Harry Hardyng on Rivverun. Jon remembered how Hardyng was one of the first to answer Jon’s call for the March. He had perished halfway in, through a fever brought about by the cold. Jon had considered sending some of the Valemen back to reinforce Riverrun, to secure Sansa’s safety. That obviously was not needed.
“And of the Free Folk?” Dany asked. Dame gurgled in his bundle at her chest.
The man shrugged and he rubbed at the bush of his beard. “This was always our home. Some of us stayed in the Gift that you have us. I hear the Thenns are doing pretty nice. Nice and cozy keep they have. They send plenty of traders our way. But we only wanted to escape that Wall of yours to get away from the Others. And because it was so fucking cold.” The man laughed. “Now that it is green, what’s wrong with it? I had berries, Lord Crow. Berries so blue and plump it stains your teeth.”
They spent half a year in the village. The seasons were changed since the Heart of Winter died away. They didn’t last for years and years now, as they used to. Now they left just as quickly as they had arrived. The warm spring gave way to a fall with orange leaves. Jon often joined the hunters in their search of game, while Dany found her place amongst the wives and daughters. Dany learned to stitch. She wasn’t very good.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go South,” Jon said one day. “My sister will die if she sees your stitching.” Dany had slapped his shoulder for that, although not as hard as she could. Jon was holding Dameon against his chest as his scarred thumb got sucked.
“Where else should we go then? Essos?”
Jon smiles. “Why not? I’ve never been across the Narrow Sea.”
“I fought to come here, Jon. People died so I could be here. This is home.”
“Dany, home is where you want it to be.”
They left the village a few days after. Tagran had loaned them a pair of garrons after Bastard had died. It was a few weeks after making their way past the Fist that they found the remains of Craster’s Keep. Jon remembered how they made use of it in the early weeks of the March. He remembered that the first attack the Wights had made on them in their March. Tormund had died there at the axe of a risen Brother.
But as they approached, Jon saw a circle of wooden houses that enveloped Craster’s hall. Jon wondered if the old Wildling would be tumbling in his unmarked grave if he could see. The wind carried the aroma of meat filled with spices. It felt like a lifetime since Jon smelled something so hot and alluring. As he looked to Dany, he saw the same expression in her face.
Dameon, on the other hand, was content as he sucked at her breast.
They rode their way into the village of the Keep. They had found a young couple there. The man had hair that was red, and his beard was a wild and entangled bush. His hair was braided with feathers. The woman’s hair was like it was woven from wheat, and it was bundled into a bun behind her head.
“I recognize you, Lord Crow,” the man said in their approach. “I’ll give you a cut of my meat anyday.” Years ago the Night’s Watch had dined in Craster’s Keep. The man had made threats towards any Brother that would look at any of his daughter-wives. In the woods beyond Jon had seen an Other for the first time. He could only watch as Craster’s newborn son was taken away.
But now he felt like a guest. Algier freely shared his brandy from the South. It tasted of peaches and filled Jon’s belly with a heat. Dany easily drank from the cup, even as her left hand kept Dameon from tumbling onto the ground. She had plenty of time to practice. Jon had to admit he never felt so steady when he kept his son close.
“I remember you Lord Crow,” Eleah said. “From when you came with the rest of the Crows.”
“You’re one of Craster’s daughters,” Jon said.
She nodded. “I stayed behind when your brothers murdered my father. Pretty sure it was one of them that put my boy in me. He sure doesn’t look like my father.” Algier kept quiet as he put a soothing hand on her knee. Her sisters had left one by one. Many of them didn’t know what to do once all of the traitors had died in the woods. Some of them died from the cold. “But I found my way past the Wall, to where the rest of the Free Folk went. Most didn’t ask where I came from. If they knew I was one of Craster’s-“
“They’d have killed you,” Dany finished. Eleah nodded.
“But I found my way back, after your March. After the snows started to melt and the green started to grow. Nobody even knew it was safe to touch it. The thing called grass. Grass,” she says, emphasizing the word. “So weird a thing to say. Now I see it everywhere, during the year when it won’t snow.”
“I came here a few months later,” Algier said. “The South ain’t no home for me. Not for a Free Folk.” Jon had to hold back a laugh. He bet Algier made it no further South than the Neck. But it was like what Tormund had always told him. Anything south of the Wall is the South. “I didn’t mean to stay at Craster’s. Every Free Folk knows what happened at Craster’s. But here I am.” Jon could imagine what happened. One day would lead to another, Algier would push leaving for another day. And before either Algier or Eleah knew what happened, they had made a life in the ruins of the old world.
“You look half a Free Folk yourself, Lord Snow,” Algier noted. Jon rubbed at the bush of his beard that had grown. He hardly had the time to think about shaving as he and Dany returned from the Curtain. “You could stay here. Craster’s Hall is big enough for the four of us. Or maybe more,” he said with a grin. Eleah shot him a sour look.
Jon had to admit he was tempted. Let their son grow up with another boy. They could become neighbors with others that were in the same stage of life as he and Dany were. But he and Dany were not like them, Jon had to admit. He and Dany had given up too much, lost too much, and fought for too much, to admit that.
At times he still remembered Arya. “Not today,” she had made him promise him. “Promise me.” And he promised her, his head leaning into her dying breaths. As the years had gone by, he had forgotten what her laughter sounded like. On the quietest of days he tried to imagine what Arya would do with Dameon as he grew. Would she had taught him some trick? The best way to hit an archery target, the best way to ride a horse?
He tried to imagine what Father would have looked like, if he could have held Dameon in his arms. Lord Stark’s face had become blurred in his mind. Somedays he looked like Lord Mormont, other times like Mance. But his words always remained in Jon’s mind. Jon would still remember the warmth he’d feel when Father would smile at him.
He may not remember the man, but he could still remember what he was taught. What he was given.
THE MOTHER
It would be a year from the time they left Craster’s Keep before they sailed beneath the Titan of Braavos. Her womb had just begun to grow by then. “It’s a girl,” she had said as they sailed into port. Jon was balancing Dameon on his knees. “I know it.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t question a mother’s intuition.” Dany shook her head, her silvery-gold hair pulled by the salty air.
“You know, when I was a babe, I came here. I was running for my life. Now my children are coming here as babes.”
“And they’re free,” Jon said. “And we have each other.” Sometimes Jon would wake in the night. He would mutter a name. Sometimes it would be Ygritte, or Robb or Father, or Arya. And all she could do would be to hold him and whisper soft things into his ear. Sometimes that wouldn’t be enough and he wouldn’t find sleep.
Dany would be much the same way. She would remember Missandei, or Grey Worm, Drogo and Rhaego. Even Jorah and Ser Barristan would come to her dreams. The people who had died for her sake. The people she had failed. Jon wouldn’t know what to say. He would only know to show that he was there. Caressing her shoulder, nesting his head against the crook of her shoulder.
“Viserys and I were brought here because we had to. We’re here because we want to.” Jon could only nod in agreement.
In the days that followed, Dany made the arrangements to meet with the Iron Bank. Somehow news of their arrival had outraced them, and the Iron Bank had offered apartments for the new Targaryens. Jon had winced at being called as such. “You are not Jon Targaryen, no matter what anyone says,” Dany said to him.
He was Jon Snow. Son of Winterfell. Brother of the Night’s Watch. Her husband.
It would be almost a week before the Iron Bank opened themselves to Daenerys Stormborn. She was given a servant, to oil her hair, to perfume her skin, to dress her into a dark and crimson gown. Jon was balancing Dameon on his knees through the entire ceremony.
“You look half ready to go war, Dany.”
“I’m just negotiation a withdrawal,” she said as she moved her hair out of her face. “Should be a small task for the Queen of Mereen.”
“Is that what you are?”
“What am I, Jon Snow, if not the woman who ruled Mereen?”
“The love of my life,” Jon offered.
Tycho Nestoris is a tall and thin man. His dark beard is long and well trimmed, and he adorns himself in simple and well cut garments. “Are you sure we cannot persuade more from you, Daenerys Targaryen? A deposit of some degree? We can offer acceptable terms.”
The chamber she was escorted too is long, carved from white stone. It oversees the Braavosi coast. Dany could look down from the glass and see most of the city.
“No that will not be necessary, Master Nestoris. Just what I have asked.”
The banker nods, with all the disappointment clear on his face. “The Iron Bank is nothing If not discrete. If House Targaryen is ever in need-“
“We shall come to the Iron Bank of Braavos with all haste. Thank you. Will the funds be made available to us the week’s end?” The Banker nodded, and with that Daenerys made her leave.
TWO PARTS OF A GREATER WHOLE
Along the shores of Braavos there was a manse. Its walls were carved from gray oak, and the doors were cut from ash. The sound of the waves were ever present. Outside one of the windows rose a lemon tree, planted by the Lady of the house when the foundations were first dug. Her husband was a quiet man. His hair far darker than her own. But it was said there was wisdom when he spoke, and a few of their neighbors would come for console and quiet company.
Many of their neighbors threw parties and festivities. In honor of the gods, in honor of a new birth, in honor of a new business arrangement. In honor of a great deal many things. And the Lord and Lady of the Red Manse were often invited to these gatherings. But they rarely came, and rarely would they throw honors of their own.
It was known that theirs was the blood of Old Valyria. “They came from Lys,” it was said. It was easiest to see in their daughter, who had the silver-gold hair of the old dragonlords. But even their son, whose hair was just as dark as his father’s, had the violet eyes of the Freehold. Perhaps that made it easier for their neighbors to avoid them.
Or perhaps it would be the visitors that would stay at the manse. They were not of Essos, although their approach came with much fanfare. Kings and Queens from the many kingdoms of Westeros. Or what remained of the Westerosi. The Iron Islands were shattered, the North split apart. The Riverlands had become a series of islands ruled by Sansa Hardyng. Dorne itself was split in two, and the land between there and the Riverlands had flooded and broken away.
But it was said nothing came of those visits. Nothing of significance, at least. No great trumpets of war were ever sounded from the manse, nor any great conspiracies conducted. So after a time the visits ceased, and the Lord and Lady of the Red Manse returned to themselves. When their son grew to be a man, the visits continued. Except this time it was from across Essos. Daughters of Triarchs, relatives to the Key Holders of the Bank, daughters to Lyseni lords, and a great deal many more came for their son’s hand.
They were all refused. The son set off on a path of his own making, to create a sellsword company. Its banner was a single white dragon. “The Freeborn”, it was called, and he achieved great renown as a commander. The company of the Freeborn was famous for its discipline, and how they would never dishonor a contract. Nor honor one from a slaver’s hand. Rumors spread that the son’s father was a great commander in his own right, but nothing ever came of such talk.
It was said that the son married a princess of Yi Ti, but again, none can say for certain.
As for the daughter, she had found the love of a minor noble’s son from Lys. It had caused quite a scandal, as she was expected to marry of much higher standings. But the Lord and Lady of the Red Manse brought the son into their home. And soon the Manse was filled with the sounds of children once more.
In time such sounds grew quiet. In the decades that followed, the Red Manse would be grow wider and more extravagant. The families that occupied the House always had the look of the Old Men and Old Valyria in them. Silvery-gold were their hair, and iron were in their eyes. Some would have the deep violet of the Dragonlords, but that was rarer still.
The Red Manse grew to be almost a second capitol within Braavos. The Lords and Ladies of the Manse had greatness in their blood, it was said. Even the most minor of their kin would cause at the very least a scandal. The greatest were commanders of the Braavosi Guard, First Swords, Water Dancers, Shadow Speakers, Governors and Princes.
But always the Red Manse was a place of peace. The gentle waves of the coast was ever present, no matter where one went. One could be lulled to sleep, if they found such sounds soothing. The lemon tree became iconic in its own right, growing taller and greater than all other of its kind within the Free City. Some coins became minted with its depiction.
And the Red Manse was known to welcomed all who were without fathers and mothers. It was said in ancient Westeros, there was such a place called the Water Gardens, where the bastard born and children of nobility could play together. The Red Manse became much the same, with beautiful gardens and fields sprung up for all to enjoy.
The Lord and Lady of the Red Manse were never truly known. Discretion was their rule, and honesty their trade. That didn’t stop others from inquiring of them, however. It was said the Lady was a Queen who gave up her throne. Or she was sold into slavery, and found the love of a great man. And the Lord rose up to be a dutiful husband, a leader of men, when he was given nothing.
But those were all stories. Rumors, suggestions and ideas.
And all Songs must come to an end. The Lord and Lady did pass from the world, although their House changed Braavos forever. As it was said, their blood was the blood of heroes.