The Negotiator
"Valonqar, you have to eat," Rhaena told her brother after long minutes of him still moodily playing with his food.
"Where is Baela? We always break our fast together!" he whined.
"I told you, Baela left yesterday in the afternoon, heading west on royal progress, like the ones the Old King and his Good Queen used to make."
That was the lie she chose to explain Baela's quest to any lord or lady of the court that sought to ask after her, of which they were numerous. Already, there were rumours swirling through the keep that the king's sister had gone mad with grief and stricken out on her own, Ser Corwyn Corbray and his men following in pursuit.
Though unsettling, those rumours were to their benefit. Only Corwyn and the two Dragonkeepers that Baela travelled with had knowledge of her true mission. The fewer that did, the better. As vulnerable as they were, they needed all the advantages they could hope to find. Keeping any adversaries, of which they were many, on the back-foot, was the largest of those.
"Why?" her brother asked.
"Because the realm has been torn apart by the war, and we need to learn the grievances of its people so we can help mend it."
"If any man has issue with us, he should come and lay them before the throne. There is no need for Baela to so needlessly put herself in danger," he reasoned.
"She will not be in danger. Ser Corwyn and five hundred of his men are with her, along with two Dragonkeepers that will guard her day and night. She is as safe as one can be."
"Ser Corwyn and any real forces from the Vale only marched south once the war ended. They were Mother's kin, and still disloyal. They would slay Baela for half a groat if it gained them anything."
Rhaena was momentarily struck mute by her brother's cynicism. There was some truth to it, she supposed. In the end, the only defence she had was, "Ser Corwyn is a valued friend of mine. He guarded and cared for me while I was a ward of Lady Jeyne. He would not harm a hair on Baela's head and risk my displeasure. In fact, if he does return with Baela unharmed, you should name him as part of your Kingsguard when you're officially crowned. He is a consummate warrior, and was chosen over his lordly brother as the wielder of Lady Forlorn, his house's ancestral sword."
The only reply she got was a nod.
"You should eat," Rhaena pointed out after another several minutes of silence, this time her brother not even touching the veritable feast laid in front of him.
Along with the Dragonkeepers, Rhaena had brought along some of Dragonstone's remaining cooks - survivors of the usurper's onslaught - that knew them and their preferences in dining. To break their fast on this grey morning, she had them make Aegon's favourite morning meal, hoping it would lift his seemingly ever-dulled spirits. It did not.
Rhaena had to remind him to eat again, after long moments of silence, "Valonqar, you should eat."
With a rather put upon sigh, Aegon finally dug into his almond-milk pottage, sweetened with honey. It was then that she noticed the cuts on his forearm. Instinctively, she took his arm in her own and rolled up the sleeves of his velvet tunic, shock plain on her face.
"What happened?" Rhaena asked, concern in her voice. Aegon tried to snatch his arm away, but her grip was firm and unyielding. Slowly, the realisation of the source of his injuries dawned on her. The cuts were too orderly patterned and too numerous to have been made by accident each time. Some were healed and only left scars, others were scabbed over, while a few were red and angry.
Rhaena's eyes drifted to his brother's belt, where the dagger was still sheathed. The king's dagger, made of dragonsteel with a bejewelled dragonbone hilt, passed down from Aegon the Conqueror to every king since but Maegor.
"Hand me the dagger," she instructed.
"No!" Aegon whined, "I am your king!"
"You are," she replied, softening her voice, with her hand outstretched, "But I am your sister, your older sister."
Aegon deflated, and freed the sheath from his belt, handing it to her.
"When did it start?" she queried, trying her best to keep her voice free of any judgement.
There could not be more shame and anguish in her valonqar's voice if he tried, "After Mother's death, when the usurper kept me in the dungeons. I smuggled a knife from one of the meagre meals he gave me."
Tears were shining in her eyes now, "The pain… the pain keeps me from… from remembering…"
Suddenly he was shaking uncontrollably, and Rhaena was with him in an instant, holding him, reminding him that he was not alone, that he would never have to bear his burdens by lonesome. Not this time.
Fuck. The dreams had never mentioned this. The historians had named her brother the Dragonbane; a singularly joyless man with a debilitating fear of dragons and with a darkness that never seemed to leave him. The historians had failed to chronicle just how deep that well of darkness reached.
Not for the first time since the dreams began, she cursed herself for how much neglect she had shown not only her brothers, but their family as a whole. In those dreams, she had married a bloody Hightower and went to live in Oldtown, wanting nothing to do with King's Landing. It seemed she had become an addle-headed half-wit as she aged. The worst part was that, unlike Baela, she had no right to. Baela had fought, bled and sacrificed her dragon for their safety.
She'd instead been sheltered, protected from the harshness of war in the Eyrie, the impregnable castle atop a mountain, with maids brushing her hair and knights composing odes to her beauty. And afterwards, in the dreams, she had sought a life of obscurity and domestic bliss, ignoring the family she had been born into to sire dragon-blooded whelps for fucking Hightowers. At least she was not addle-headed enough to give those whelps dragon's eggs. Or maybe she was, and the historians had not thought that detail important enough to chronicle as dragonkind died out.
"You'll be well Aegon," she told him, "You have me and Baela, and we're not going anywhere." Not this time, not again.
It took long moments for him to finally calm. She thought of telling him the truth about Viserys, but decided against it. Better to not give him unrealised hope that might turn into ash. Enough promises had gone unfulfilled during the war.
"Will you come to court?" she chose to ask instead. After demanding to be made the Hand of the King just before she arrived, Lord Stark was trying all those suspected to have played a part in slaying the usurper, intending to execute the guilty by the stroke of his own sword.
Aegon only shook his head, "I'm sorry about your grandfather. I tried my best to have him pardoned and even restored to his position in the council. Sadly, I am only a boy, and an uncrowned king. My word has no weight in law."
"Worry not," Rhaena told him, "I will have Grandfather freed. After you are crowned, you should appoint him as your hand and regent. Save for each other, he's our greatest ally, and the only person we can truly trust. He served your mother faithfully."
"But, he betrayed her. He forewarned Addam when she called for his arrest."
"Aye. And any grandfather would do the same, especially when those calls for arrest were mistaken," she could understand Rhaenyra's reasoning, but her paranoia cost her three dragonriders and the fiercest navy on the continent, "Addam did go on to die for the queen. Were it not for him, King's Landing would have been ruled by the bastard betrayers."
Her brother looked thoughtful, "Would he agree to be on the council after all he's suffered?"
"He will. I can assure you of that. Now, please eat up, you have lessons to attend, and I have to go watch those trials."
The trials went exactly as they did in her dreams. The usurper's Grand Maester, four of his Kingsguard, twenty-two of the castle staff judged complicit, along with the Flea and the Clubfoot were marked for death. Grandfather was the last to be called to the front of the court.
"Lord Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake," the herald called out, a Stark man who spat out the word snake, "Lord of the Tides and Master of Driftmark. Charged with the crimes of murder, high treason and regicide."
Even chained, he stood ramrod straight and walked with the same poise he'd possessed for as long as Rhaena knew him. For the first time in her life, however, he looked his age, weakened and weathered by time and trial and strife. He gave her a weak smile when he saw her. The smile turned into a grimace as he was given a fierce kick to the back of his legs, forcing him to his knees. Regardless, he made no sound at the lance of pain that was no doubt coursing through him. Even before the war, Grandfather had complained much of his inflamed knees, to the point of needing a cane to aid his walking.
"Anything you wish to say in your defence?" Lord Stark, seated upon a wooden bench beneath the Iron Throne, asked him with contempt in his dark grey eyes.
Grandfather only shook his head before he made his reply, "What I did, I did for the good of the realm. I would do the same thing again. The madness had to end."
"For the crimes of murder, high treason and regicide, I sentence you to death by beheading," then turning to his men, "Take him to the dungeons, he'll die with the rest in the morn."
Grandfather flashed her another smile as he was led past the court and out of the throne room. She would not let him die. Beyond her regard of him being their grandfather, they needed him. In her dreams, the regency council had been filled with ambitious men who aimed for nothing more than to further their own standing, at her brother's expense. One of those men had even tried to kill her brother.
To avert that disaster, they needed Grandfather. He was their blood, and he'd lost as much as they had in the war. His entire family but for three grandchildren and some nephews that resented him was dead. His fleet had been reduced by a whole third during the Battle of the Gullet, yet he remained their ally. Father had trusted him enough to wed his daughter, despite them being on opposing sides of the Great Council.
They needed him, and she needed him free.
She knew just how.
The Raven Archer
Alysanne Blackwood fetched another arrow from the quiver the squire next to her was holding. Unlike the ones she used in actual battle, this one was not made of weirwood, but pine.
"Again I ask, are you certain of this, Lord Cerwyn? It is not my wish to see your house beggared," she told the Northern Lord. The rest of the yard guffawed, while Lord Ellard Cerwyn only harrumphed and took his stance, retrieving an arrow from his own quiver. His was made of weirwood, with scarlet red fletching.
Lord Cerwyn was a massive bear man, tall with broad shoulders and arms as thick as the bark of a tree. He owed his size to his mother's blood, for she had been an Umber, or so she had been told. Aly had made his acquaintance through his closest friend, the man she swore she would make hers, Cregan Stark. Ellard was as stern as her Lord Stark, she had come to learn, but to her great disappointment, was completely devoid of his good humour.
"You take your first shot," he told her gruffly, as he ran his hand up and down the shaft of his weirwood arrow.
"Very well," Aly told him. She thought of a clever retort to add, but decided against it. It would be too much to hurt both his pride and his coffers.
"Lord Cerwyn, for any shot my aunt makes that you can't match, you'll owe us a hundred golden dragons. If you match all her shots, we'll give you a thousand golden dragons," her nephew repeated the instructions.
Lord Cerwyn gave him a look that was laced with contempt.
"This one is a simple shot," Aly said, as she notched her arrow, "An arrow to the bullseye."
With a thunk, the arrow flew, and struck home, exactly on the bullseye. Her lordly nephew cheered, while the rest of the Blackwood party clapped for her. Aly removed her own arrow from the target as Lord Cerwyn notched his to his bow. Like her, his arrow struck the bullseye.
"You'll not make a beggar out of me quite yet," he said to her, his grin unrestrained.
"We shall see, that was just the beginning," Aly said with a smirk.
For the next shot, Aly had his nephew bring out an apple and hold against his face, his hand not even trembling. They had practised this half a hundred times, and never once had Aly hit Ben. He was confident enough that she would not maim her, and she was proud of that. The arrow thrummed through the air and pierced the apple dead centre just as she thought it would, leaving her nephew holding only air.
Lord Cerwyn looked stupefied, "You cannot expect me to do that!" he blustered.
Aly gave him a mischievous smile, "Remember, if you yield a shot, that is five hundred golden dragons."
The bump on his throat visibly bobbed up and down.
"I'll make it easier for you then. Put the apple atop your squires head, and I'll count my shot matched."
That is just what Lord Cerwyn did. One of his weirwood arrows was notched, the bow was drawn, and with a whoosh, the arrow was loosed…and missed the apple and the trembling squire's head entirely, going to impale itself on the wall behind him.
"Bloody boy couldn't stay put!" he began to protest, "You all saw him! I would have hit that if not for him!"
"A hundred golden dragons," his nephew declared, and the rest of the field cheered.
"Care to go on?" Aly asked, "Or will you finally concede that I am a better archer?"
"We continue," he declared.
All cheering and hooting ceased when Princess Rhaena walked into the yard accompanied by three knights suited in gleaming black armour, their helms crested with dragon scales that descended their backs. Dragonkeepers, she remembered reading about them. The princess herself was clad in a splendid black gown, with the three-headed dragon prominently wrought in tiny red rubies upon her torso. Beautiful as she and the garments were, the sleeping dragon coiled about her neck like a stole is what earned most of her attention, and no doubt the attention of the rest of the training yard. As was customary, they honoured her with bows and curtsies.
"Good morn, my lords," the princess greeted them, a bright smile on her face, before turning to her, "my lady. Please, don't let me interrupt you. I am only here to watch. This seems much more lively than the affairs of court."
Lord Cerwyn commanded in that gruff voice of his, ridding them of the awkward silence the princess' arrival had caused, "What is your next challenge, my lady?"
With a smirk on her face and a new arrow notched to her bow, she called out to his nephew, who had a new apple in hand, "Ben, throw the apple."
Once Aly had drawn the bowstring, Ben tossed the apple, a green one this time, and with the surety of thousands of shots, she loosed her arrow. A thunk and the apple was impaled into the pale red stone of the Red Keep.
Beside her, the princess was clapping in appreciation of her, in the courtly, poised way she seemed to do everything.
"Match that, and all the debt you owe me shall be rescinded, my lord," she told Lord Cerwyn, whose mouth was still agape.
The astonishment upon the lord's face faded when he saw the princess watching him intently. His own arrow notched and his bowstring drawn, he bade his squire throw a red apple. Lord Cerwyn's apple splattered on the ground, and the arrow that was meant to hit it was impaled into the wall right beside her green apple.
Aly gave Lord Cerwyn a conciliatory smile, "That is two hundred golden dragons, I believe. Would you like to continue?"
"I would stop here, if I were you, my lord," the princess spoke from where she had stood sentinel, watching them. The pink dragon on her shoulder had awoken now, and was perched on her shoulder as the ravens perched on the dead heart tree outside her home every dusk, "Lady Alysanne has ever been an exceptional archer, since she was a child."
Lord Ellard took that for the command it was, and after a nod and a bow, he and his retinue exited the yard.
"Forgive me for interrupting you, my lady," the princess said, trying for a conciliatory tone.
"I believe he was about to yield, princess," Aly replied with a smile on her face.
She gave a light laugh, "I disagree. Your contest would have continued until his house's coffers were exhausted."
"Men and their pride," Aly said.
Princess Rhaena gave another airy laugh.
"Your skill has only grown since I last saw you," she told her as Aly went to tend to all the arrows she had loosed, plucking them from the various targets and walls she had shot them into and arranging them in her quiver.
It had been eight years ago now, during the wedding of the false king to his younger sister. She let the strangeness of that notion pass. None questioned the Targaryens and their queer practices.
"Prince Aemond was not as pleased with my skill as you were, I believe," she quipped. The princess' expression only became more grave. Aly would have slapped herself then and there. Leave it to her foul mouth to land her in troubled waters
"I'm sorry," she said sincerely, pausing in packing her arrows, "that was ill-thought."
"No need to apologise. He lies at the bottom of the God's Eye, with my father's sword thrust hilt deep into his one good eye," the princess said that with quite a bit of derision.
"And the Riverlands were well-rid of the blight that was him and his dragon. Prince Daemon's sacrifice will be remembered and honoured in the lands watered by the Trident for years to come."
"I will take solace in that, at least. The war… it has taken so much from all of us. I heard about your brother. And what your nephew has seen in his young age…"
"I avenged my brother. Put an arrow into the heart of the Bracken brute that slew him. As for my nephew, he'll be well. Bloody Ben his men call him," Aly chuckled, "He still has nightmares of the slaughter by the lakeshore."
"We all know much of nightmares now," the princess said, "My grandmother used to say that war exacted a price on all those who fought it, whether they won or they lost."
"My grandfather used to say that war determined not who was right, but who was left."
The princess gave her a chuckle, "Your grandfather is a wise man. Lord Royce Caron, right?"
"Aye," Aly answered. The princess offered to carry her bow, "It's quite heavy."
"Your quiver then,"
"That's even heavier."
"Let the Dragonkeepers help you with them," she offered instead. Aly handed the longbow to one of the black-armoured sentinels alongside her. As much as she made a point of seeing to all of her belongings, she was quite tired after an entire morning of shooting.
"We would have been kin in another world, you know," the princess said as they started back in the direction of the castle.
The story was as infamous today in Raventree Hall as it was half a century ago. Daella Targaryen, the sweet, shy princess that was the apple of Queen Alysanne's eye, had been brought on tour in search of a groom. Grandfather charmed her, as he charmed everyone, and plans were set for their wedding. Only, the princess thought the Old Gods false, and feared that she would be sentenced to eternal damnation were she to marry a 'godless heathen'.
"Queen Aemma would have been your aunt. Queen Rhaenyra, my siblings and I, your cousins."
"Alas, your great-aunt thought us barbarians who worshipped trees," she blurted it out without thinking twice.
The princess, strangely, laughed, in that sweet way she always did, "My great aunt was afraid of a great many things, even her own shadow, I suspect."
The two of them met Lord Stark listening to the rantings and ravings of Lord Cerwyn just as they entered the castle. Stern as her lord of the North was, he blushed when he saw her, but that smile faded when he saw the princess beside her. As expected, he greeted them with the customary 'my princess' and 'my lady', with kisses on the back of their hands.
"The wolf has taken a great liking to you, I see," the princess pointed out.
Aly struggled not to stumble and stammer at that observation. She was not going to deny it, "The liking is mutual."
"Has he claimed your hand?" the princess asked.
"Not yet, but that is only a formality at this point."
"It may be a formality, but it is rather an important one," she told her as they entered her chambers. The Targaryen Dragonkeepers followed the princess into her chambers, the disquiet of which she tamped down. The princess was just weary of assassinations, she told herself, there had been several in the war after all.
"I have a way to hasten his claiming of you, and your hand."
"I'm listening."
The princess' demeanour turned serious, "My grandfather has just been sentenced to death by beheading, for the crimes of ridding us of the usurper. Ask him to undo his decree for the promise of whatever you can give him; he will ask for your hand in return." She then took her hands in hers, "My grandfather's death will ignite the dying embers of this war. All his efforts at making peace would be undone. Worse still, it would be war between those who were once allies.
"Make this offer, and we all benefit. The life of one of my few remaining family survives, peace is preserved, and you spur the ever-delaying Lord of the North to take you as his Lady of Winter."
Aly answered with a smile on her face, without requiring a beat of consideration, "Worry not, princess, I will." A hand for a head was quite a reasonable offer.
"Thank you, my lady," she then let go of her hands, "I promise you, I will not forget this. You will always have an ally in me, and in time, a friend."
Aly nodded in reply.
The princess smiled, bid her good day, and vacated her chambers, her knights falling in lockstep behind her. It would not be a bad thing to have a friend in the sister to a king, she decided.
Also, she knew that the princess' offer was a double-edged sword.
The dragon's orange-yellow gaze had been trained on her as the princess made her plea, and she'd had to fight the urge of squirming beneath it. And how she worded it; worse still, it would be war between those who were once allies. In another light, that could be read as a threat. Princess Baela, her short-haired twin, was on progress throughout the realm, doubtlessly courting allies, whether old or new. Better not to wake the dragon. She would make sure that Sea Snake of hers was freed, and if she were to tame a wolf for herself in the process, what harm would that do?
The Wolf
Cregan did not like this godswood.
He was born a Stark, at Winterfell far to the North, where the godswood was the home of the gods, the true gods. The three-acre old forest there had been untouched in the thousands of years after the Children of the Forest had planted it. The carved face of the weirwood tree within had watched as Brandon the Builder set the first stone on Winterfell's Great Keep, and has stood in the eons since.
The godswood here was bright and airy, a place of song, where ladies in their colourful gowns frolicked in the sunshine, where the air was spicy with the scent of flowers. No weirwood grew here, and the heart tree was a brown oak, surrounded by elm, adder and black cottonwood.
Nonetheless, it served its purpose as a place of prayer, where he could seek absolution for the executions he would do in the morn. The man who passed the sentence should swing the sword, the gods had decreed. The blood of the damned could be washed only by the man that had damned them.
Once that was done, he would only stay for the wedding, and then return to Winterfell with all haste. And good riddance to that.
Every day he spent at this cesspit of a castle, he wondered at his rather foolish ambitions of conquering the Seven Kingdoms and taking the dragon's throne for himself. Ambitions of finishing the war that others had started and sweeping through an exhausted continent with his Northmen. 'Why shouldn't a king with Stark blood sit the Iron Throne?', he'd asked his sister.
And so he had waited for the dragons to obliterate each other in their nonsensical war, before daring to bestir himself and marching his forces south.
'They were still collecting their last harvest, else the North would starve', he had told the dragon queen, 'The North is vast, and it would take time to gather their men'. All of it was a lie. They had been done collecting the harvest months before Prince Jacaerys had landed his dragon in Winterfell's courtyard, more than two years ago now.
It was shortly after the princeling had left Winterfell that the notion of ruling the Seven Kingdoms occurred to him. Before the dragons came to Westeros, the Starks had been kings for eight thousand years, before the Valyrians had tamed their dragons let alone forged their Empire. If there was any with legitimacy to rule once the Targaryens died, it was them. So he let the war unfold, anticipation swelling within him every time he heard of a dragon and their rider having fallen in battle.
At Winter's arrival, the old, the helpless and those without hearth, home and family would venture out into the snow to go 'hunting', with no intention of returning until spring came forth at last. As the Dance raged on through the rest of the realm and winter fell, he'd held back all his men. Food and hearth and home would be there aplenty for his Northmen once the entire continent bowed to a Stark.
Rodrick Dustin and his Winter Wolves disobeyed his command and marched two thousand old men south, but alas, they were dead, and were only a paltry sum of the armies he could raise.
Like he desired, the dragons died and Cregan marched. The rest of the realm was devastated. Conquering the lord's castles would be easily done. A king with Stark blood would sit the Iron Throne.
Finally arriving at court had thoroughly shattered his ambitions. Honour was foreign in the vaulted halls of the Red Keep. Here, a king could be poisoned as easily as he could breathe. Men cared not a whit for their oaths, be they knights, men-at-arms or the king's closest advisers. They were all snakes, he realised, be they of the sea or the grass. A Stark would never be safe here, their place was at Winterfell.
Once justice was served for those who had the previous king and the new one was crowned, he'd be well on his way back north. Usurper or not, pretender or not, a king should never be killed by such treachery. The Sea Snake, the Clubfoot and their cronies would pay for their crimes two days from hence.
All thoughts of conquest, treachery, regicide and murder vanished from his mind immediately he saw her. There she was, her knees bent in prayer before the heart tree. Moonlight streaked through the leaves of the wood and made her hair shine. She'd chosen to have those dark curls unbound, leaving them to cascade down past her waist. She was beautiful, not in the frivolous flowery way like the princesses and the other southron girls were, no, hers was a true beauty, bestowed on her by the old gods.
Lady Alysanne must have heard her footsteps, "My Lord. Good eve. I was saying my prayers."
"What did you ask the gods for, my lady?" he asked, curious.
"For peace, and an end to the war."
The dreams of razing Storm's End, the Hightower and Casterly Rock came back momentarily, but so did the words of the Maiden of the Vale, the pleas of the Dragon Twins and the childish commands of their princely brother, "The war has ended."
"Not until you set the Sea Snake free."
"Why would I do that?" the war would not continue because of one man's demise. And if it did, that would be a just cause for his men to die for.
"For the realm," she answered.
"It is better for the realm that traitors die." Three of the queen's children were of the Sea Snake's blood, and yet due to his ambition, he had betrayed that same queen to declare for the king, only to then bring about his death to crown little Prince Aegon.
"For the honour of our prince."
"The prince is a child. He ought not have meddled in this," the young prince had made the grave error of not only pardoning that snake, but giving him a place on the king's council, "Velaryon brought dishonour on him. It will be said until the end of his days that he came to his throne by murder."
"For all those who will die should Alyn Velaryon seek vengeance."
"There are worse ways to die. Winter has come, my lady."
Alysanne Blackwood took his hands in hers, "For me then. Grand me this boon, and I shall never ask another. Do this, and I shall know that you are as wise as you are strong, as kind as you are fierce. Give me this, and I shall give you whatever you may choose to ask of me."
Cregan frowned as the opportunity presented itself to him, "What if I ask you for your maidenhead, my lady?"
His lady laughed, "I cannot give you what I do not have, my lord. I lost my maidenhead in the saddle when I was thirteen."
Cregan thought as much. His lady was a fine rider and a horse breaker without peer, "Some would say you squandered on a horse a gift that by rights should have belonged to your future husband."
"Some are fools, and she was a good horse, better than most husbands I have seen."
He could not help but laugh. In the midst of the darkness and treachery of the capital, she was a burning light, "I shall try to remember that. Aye, I'll grant your boon."
"And in return?"
Cregan did not hesitate, "All I ask is all of you, forever. I claim your hand in marriage."
The grin on her face was rather bright, "A hand for a head. Done."
Authors Note:
If you're enjoying the story so far and would like to read up to three chapters of it, you can do so by searching up 'neyra29 linktree'.
That last conversation between Black Aly and Cregan, where she convinced Cregan to free Corlys, did happen in canon, though I never understood why Aly would advocate for the Sea Snake's release. Maybe it was because she was afraid of war continuing in general. I feel that this version of events does make things make more sense and ties motives of our characters together.
Please do tell me what you think of this chapter and the story so far in the comments below or over on the Discord, whose link you can get on the linktree.