Quentyn remembered that Daemon, in his youth, had run wild through Flea Bottom, and had been a regular at Silk Street besides.
But it was only seeing it with his own eyes that he truly understood the weight the nickname “King of Flea Bottom” carried.
No wonder, in the history he half-remembered, Daemon had managed to raise a force capable of swaying the balance of King’s Landing so quickly around the time his brother took the throne, and had gone on holding real influence over the capital for years afterward.
Hearing Quentyn’s teasing, Daemon let out a mournful little huff.
[You wouldn’t actually let me end up a cripple.]
“Let’s give our thanks to Quentyn Qoherys of Harrenhal!”
Daemon’s voice rose at once.
“Thank him for making sure you’ll all still have salt and meat in your brown broth today, tomorrow, and every day after.
Thank him for making sure those ragged knights of the Watch won’t be squeezing the last copper penny out of your pockets from now on!”
In an instant, the voices that had just been praising Daemon turned to praising Quentyn instead.
A small, thin little girl came scampering up to Quentyn and pressed a pretty black stone into his cloth bag.
A grey-haired beggar knelt trembling to kiss the ground where he’d just walked.
An old woman missing half her teeth touched herself seven times, murmuring shakily, “The Seven bless you, kind child.”
A blacksmith by the roadside raised his hammer in salute, and the young soldier who had just been shouting Daemon’s name bowed low to Quentyn once more.
“What did you do?”
Quentyn grabbed Daemon by the collar.
“There are tens of thousands of people in King’s Landing’s Flea Bottom alone.
You…”
“Nothing much.” Daemon wore the same reckless, couldn’t-care-less expression, though pride had crept into it now.
“I just told the merchants who pit children against animals for sport that if they let this white-haired boy’s own grandmother find out that someone in her husband’s capital thought so little of human life…
well, their knees went weak, and they gave me a very wide berth after that…”
“I’d guess you said all that with Red Keep guardsmen at your back and a dragon overhead.” Quentyn hooked an arm under Daemon’s shoulder, letting the crowd carry them both further down toward the end of the alley.
Daemon gave a somewhat sheepish grin.
“That’s not the point.
Point is, I made sure the people around here don’t have to put up with harassment from those ragged knights of the City Watch anymore, and don’t have to risk their necks just to earn a single loaf of bread.”
Daemon slung an arm over Quentyn’s shoulder.
“Of course, I can’t change their lives.
All I can do is make things a little less hard for them.” He let out a sudden sigh.
“These days, the thieves, gamblers, and whores of Flea Bottom are my eyes and ears.”
Freeing one hand, he tapped at his own eye.
“There’s nothing that happens in King’s Landing I don’t know about.
Only things I choose not to.”
“So, have you worked out how you tripped over that rock, then?”
Quentyn asked, lowering his voice.
“No.” Daemon ground his teeth.
“If I ever find out someone did this to me on purpose, I swear I’ll…
wait.
How do you even know about that?
Was it you who talked my father into sending me off to Dragonstone?”
The corner of Quentyn’s mouth curled up.
He didn’t deny it.
Daemon’s expression turned wonderfully complicated all at once, so much so that even the girls’ cheering around them suddenly seemed to lose its charm.
“I’d suggest you sit tight on Dragonstone like a good boy until you’re fully healed.” Quentyn shrugged, then continued, switching into High Valyrian.
[If your accident wasn’t really an accident at all, if there’s a serpent baring its fangs at true dragons somewhere in the dark, then this isn’t going to be so simple.] Follow the newest chapters on novelping dot com.
Daemon fell silent.
The alley ran long, doors set at every uneven height along both sides.
The most extreme building crammed in six or seven doors at once, ladders, staircases, and ropes all tangled together, draped with filthy blankets.
Quentyn could tell at a glance that whoever owned that particular building had gutted it entirely and stacked floor upon floor, wringing every last inch of space out of it.
At the end of the alley lay a small square, where a marble fountain, its carvings long since worn smooth, gurgled out water clouded with mud.
A few women were struggling to hoist their filled water buckets onto their shoulders, and at the sight of Daemon entering, they all lowered their heads in respect.
This was also the only spot in the whole alley where you could actually see the sun.
Suddenly, a vast shadow swept across the square overhead, and Daemon’s face went pale all at once.
“Silverwing?
Why would Grandmother’s dragon…”
Quentyn saw the dragon passing overhead too.
It was an unusually graceful beast, with a small head and a long, slender neck, its broad wings carrying its great bulk through the sky and casting a beautiful shadow below.
“That can’t be.” Daemon’s eyes went wide.
Ever since Alysanne and Jaehaerys had fallen out two years before over the matter of the succession, Alysanne had flown off to Dragonstone and hadn’t so much as spoken to Jaehaerys since, while Jaehaerys, out of sheer stubbornness, had never once made the trip to Dragonstone either.
Daemon knew something else too: ever since a certain flight the year before, Alysanne’s spirits had been low, and she hadn’t touched a dragon-saddle since.
“Nothing’s impossible…” Quentyn murmured.
The only people left who could still lift Alysanne’s spirits these days were, as far as he knew, her daughter Septa Maegelle, far off in Oldtown, her youngest daughter Gael, and his own mother, Valera.
The queen, in all likelihood, had come for him.
“I’d suggest you get back to the Red Keep quickly…”
Before Quentyn even finished speaking, Daemon was already hopping frantically toward the alley mouth between the two buildings.
Quentyn had expected exactly this.
The boy wasn’t stupid; he knew perfectly well when to act and when not to.
Under ordinary circumstances, sneaking Quentyn out for a stroll during the Day of Prayer wouldn’t have been any great trouble, and Baelon would likely have forgiven him, given that he was still recovering.
But if Alysanne found out, the consequences were more than Daemon could have foreseen.
Quentyn had only just helped Daemon reach the mouth of the alley when several figures stepped out to block their path.
“Daemon.
I think you owe me an explanation.”
Baelon said this calmly, though Viserys and Ser Robin Shaw of the Kingsguard, standing beside him, both couldn’t help taking a step back.
“Father, I…” Daemon stammered, unsure what to say, and could only shoot pleading looks first at Viserys, then at Quentyn.
“Baelon, a dragon is still a dragon, even as a hatchling.” Quentyn sighed.
“Even a young dragon has its own pride, doesn’t it?”
Baelon shot Daemon a sharp look, but the anger in his eyes drained away just as quickly, and he reached out to ruffle Quentyn’s hair gently.
“A young dragon’s pride shouldn’t come at the cost of dismissing another young dragon’s own efforts.
Daemon deserves a lesson for this, but not right now.”
Behind Ser Robin Shaw, a carriage stood ready, along with a silver-coated horse, its coat gleaming, fully saddled and bridled.
The knight in white stepped forward, took Daemon from Quentyn’s hands, and helped the sulking boy up into the carriage.
“Wait, I can ride!”
“Your Grace, this is by the Prince of Dragonstone’s own order.” Ser Robin shut the carriage door without expression, then mounted his own warhorse.
“My mother’s come for you.”
Baelon, already mounted on his own black steed, said this as he watched Quentyn climb up into his own saddle.
“A raven from Dragonstone brought word.
The moment she heard you’d saved Daemon, she was overjoyed, and decided at once to fly back to King’s Landing.” Baelon seemed to be thinking of something unpleasant.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen my mother that happy.”
Quentyn gave a light nudge with his heels, and the well-trained horse beneath him started forward, moving steadily toward the Dragonpit.
“Isn’t Her Grace going to see His Grace the King first?”
Baelon fell silent. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
“My mother still can’t let go of it…”
Quentyn fell silent too, and looked up at the sky.
The high sun had shifted directly over the Red Keep, bathing the towering castle in a deep red glow, as though someone had spilled blood across its walls.
In the end, it was Baelon who broke the silence.
“I heard my father and mother once stayed at Harrenhal for a time?”
“That was fifty years ago now.” Even though he’d heard the story countless times from his grandmother and his mother, Quentyn still felt a genuine curiosity about it.
It was, after all, apart from House Qoherys’s own survival, the single largest departure from the history he’d once known.
“Dowager Queen Visenya had only just died.
Dowager Queen Alyssa saw her chance to break free of King Maegor’s grip, and decided at once to flee Dragonstone with the young king, his sister, and my mother.
But there were precious few castles anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms large enough to hide a dragon in.
The great lords’ castles were all watched closely by the tyrant, and Maegor’s own witch knew Pentos inside and out…”
Daemon, at some point, had propped himself up against the carriage window, listening with open curiosity to Quentyn’s account, and even Viserys had drawn considerably closer.
Baelon knew the story too, of course, though not in such detail.
“Dowager Queen Alyssa stopped first at Driftmark, but House Velaryon was under the tyrant’s watch as well, and had no way to hide a dragon there either.
The Dowager Queen had to look elsewhere.”
Flea Bottom lay close to the Dragonpit.
Only a short ride from the alley mouth brought them beneath its walls.
Seen from below, the wonder Maegor had built for Balerion, the Black Dread, was magnificent indeed.
Its towering spires reached toward the sky in imitation of old Valyrian style, and beneath the great domed roof, Maegor “the Cruel” had hollowed out half of Rhaenys’s Hill to build a labyrinthine nest fit for the dragons within.
“So my mother chose Harrenhal, because it was large enough, and because your grandfather, Lord Aenys Qoherys, was willing to offer a widow and her orphaned children bread, salt, and a hearth fire, rather than a cold cell.
Quenny, I still remember, to this day, the taste of the bread your grandmother, Lady Agatha, used to bake.”
The gentle voice came from somewhere overhead.
Quentyn looked up, swung down from his horse.
“Good day, Aunt Alysanne.”
The boy avoided the words “Your Grace.” He knew that what Alysanne needed just then was family, not politics.
“Good day, Your Grace.” Baelon, bound by his own position, had no choice but to say it that way, and Viserys followed his father’s lead.
Only Daemon, looking rather sheepish, ducked his head and greeted the woman standing atop the hill with “Good day, Grandmother.”
Queen Alysanne was nearing sixty now.
The years had left their mark on a face that had once been beautiful, fine lines gathered at the corners of her eyes, though gentle laugh lines had gathered around her mouth as well.
Dust from the dragon’s flight left her looking a little disheveled, but nothing could hide the warm, welcoming bearing that had always been hers.
She wore a dragonrider’s silver leather armor, her hair pinned up in a coiled bun.
What had once been honey-colored curls had turned silver-white with age, though her deep blue eyes remained as calm and clear as still water.
“Quenny, come here, come to your aunt.” Alysanne could barely hide the smile crinkling at the corners of her eyes.
She held out her arms, as though wanting to embrace him.
Quentyn hurried forward, letting Alysanne’s hand come to rest against his cheek.
“You’ve grown so much.
The last time I saw you, you were still a bare-bottomed little thing, putting on airs as you sat reading in your mother’s lap, like some grown man.
Aemon tried to get a rise out of you, and you didn’t even lift your head, which left the poor boy so frustrated his eyes went red.”
Alysanne’s fingers brushed gently across Quentyn’s cheek, a shimmer of tears rising in her blue eyes.
For one moment, Quentyn nearly mistook her for his own mother, the same tenderness, the same way it made his face flush faintly warm.
“Your eyes.
They’re exactly like your mother’s.”