“Your Grace…”
Baelon opened his mouth in evident surprise, but caught himself almost at once and fell silent.
Quentyn, too, felt a jolt of shock.
His face gave nothing away, but inside, his thoughts were already churning like a storm at sea.
He had several contingency plans in mind for the question of a dragon, but every one of them assumed events would follow the history he remembered, all the way up to the Great Council rejecting inheritance through the female line.
For Alysanne to suddenly bring up the matter of a dragon egg now made it hard for him not to read into it.
But judging by how quickly Baelon had shut his own mouth, there was clearly more to this than met the eye.
Some theories he’d come across in his past life held that House Targaryen had lost, or perhaps had never truly possessed, any reliable method for hatching dragon eggs or training dragons properly.
Otherwise, why build something like the Dragonpit, which seemed to actually stunt a dragon’s growth, or gamble on hatching eggs by simply setting them in a child’s cradle, or, later on, resort to all manner of strange and improvised hatching methods.
Quentyn had once believed those theories without question.
But now that he’d actually come to live in this world, some of what he’d once been so certain of had begun to waver, while other parts had only been further confirmed.
A case in point: right in front of him now, House Targaryen apparently did possess some method for judging whether a dragon egg was still viable.
Whether that method was actually accurate was an entirely different question.
“My mother never mentioned to me that she once had a dragon egg…”
After a moment’s thought, Quentyn decided to laugh the matter off lightly, to see if he could draw out any more information.
“Because she was still too young to remember any of it.” Alysanne cupped the egg in her hands.
Though the dragonkeepers had banked the bronze pot full of hot coals, the egg still felt cold to the touch, as unyielding as a common stone.
“We hid in the cellars beneath the Wailing Tower, with nothing but your grandmother’s stories and Harren’s ghosts for company.
Jaehaerys used to pretend the fat old rats stealing our bread were Maegor himself, and he’d wage war on them all day long.
Every time he came back triumphant, he’d strut about as proud as any true knight.”
A smile actually crossed Alysanne’s face at the memory.
“Though it was always Vermithor and Silverwing who ended up cleaning up his battlefield afterward.
Lord Aenys sheltered us for three years.
Your mother grew up at Harrenhal, old enough by then to remember it all.
Eventually, Maegor grew consumed with fathering a son of his own, and little by little we were able to leave the cellars behind and move about the lands around Harrenhal.
Some lords began paying secret visits, swearing their loyalty to Jaehaerys.
The rest, you already know.”
Quentyn glanced at Baelon, and found Baelon looking back at him with what felt like an unspoken understanding between them.
Baelon, Quentyn guessed, saw this as a possible opening toward reconciling his parents.
Quentyn caught the shape of Baelon’s likely thinking at once.
Ever since Alysanne and Jaehaerys’s falling-out, Baelon had been trying, again and again, to mediate between them.
But Baelon knew perfectly well that, in his mother’s eyes, he was the crow who had snatched the crown from his brother’s corpse, a crown that ought to have gone to his niece instead.
As a mediator, he would always be missing something essential.
“Lord Rogar Baratheon pledged to His Grace that he would support his rightful claim.
The great lords soon rallied, their armies following behind, and King Maegor’s brutal reign crumbled to nothing.”
Quentyn caught Baelon’s look and picked up the thread of the queen’s story, though his eyes never quite left the dragon egg.
It was simply too beautiful.
Whether it was the transmigrator’s own longing for dragons, or something carved into the very depths of his blood, Quentyn couldn’t find so much as a single flaw in it.
No, perhaps it was more that, even its flaws, to his eyes, looked perfect.
“Yes, and everything after that, you already know.
What a shame, though, that your mother never lived to see her own dragon hatch.” Alysanne let out a long sigh and held the egg out to Quentyn.
Quentyn hesitated for a moment, then reached out and took the egg from her hands.
It felt cold to the touch, its surface uneven, covered in what looked like a layer of scales.
Yet in the firelight, it seemed to catch and bend the light like a prism, so that the egg looked smooth and exquisite, almost like blown glass.
Behind them, Daemon looked back and forth between Quentyn and Alysanne and Baelon, utterly bewildered, and leaned in to whisper to Viserys.
“What’s all this supposed to mean?”
Viserys’s brow furrowed.
He let out a sigh and murmured a single word: “Rhaenys.”
Daemon looked more baffled than ever.
“Because Rhaenys was the first dragonrider of the royal house to marry outside the family…” Viserys explained quietly.
“Among our parents’ generation, only Mother ever claimed a dragon.
Do you remember our eldest aunt?”
Something seemed to come back to Daemon.
“Aunt Daenerys?”
Viserys nodded.
“The shivers took Aunt Daenerys’s life thirty-four years ago.
At the very end, with no other option left, Grandfather finally ordered the Dragonguard to bring a young dragon to her, hoping it might save her the way Quicksilver once saved King Aenys’s life.
But it was already too late by then.”
“What’s the connection there?” Daemon looked even more confused.
“It shows that Grandfather never actually objected to our aunts claiming dragons of their own.” Viserys said with a sigh.
“It’s just that Aunt Aerea’s tragedy years ago frightened him badly, and Lady Elissa Farman’s theft of a dragon egg only made him more anxious still.
He never actually forbade our aunts from claiming dragons.
It’s just that once the egg in our eldest uncle’s cradle failed to hatch, he stopped putting eggs in the children’s cradles at all.
There wasn’t one in Father’s cradle either.”
Viserys caught his breath and went on.
“The only trouble is, Aunt Maegelle has no interest in dragons whatsoever.
Aunt Daella’s afraid of cats, let alone dragons.
And as for Aunt Viserra and Aunt Saera…
seven hells, if either of them had actually claimed a dragon, that would have been a disaster all its own.”
Viserys clenched his left hand into a fist.
“Rhaenys is a dragonrider, but now she’s Lord Corlys Velaryon’s wife.
In time, she’ll give the Sea Snake an heir to Driftmark.
Just like Quenny’s own case, so tell me, will that child have any right to claim a dragon at all?”
Daemon fell silent.
He had never once considered this.
“If Rhaenys’s child has that right, if he or she someday claims Meleys, then would that child be a Targaryen dragonrider, or a Velaryon one?
And what does Quenny make of it?
His mother’s a Targaryen too, and so is Gael.
Their own children will run into this exact same question someday.”
Viserys clenched his right hand as well.
“When you put weight on one end of a scale, and there isn’t enough counterweight on the other side, the whole thing tips out of control, all on its own.
Especially…” His voice trailed off smaller and smaller.
“Grandfather and Grandmother are quarreling right now, over Rhaenys’s own claim to the succession.
So the moment Grandmother heard Quenny had come to King’s Landing, and that he’d saved you, she flew here at once.
She means to use this dragon egg to ask Grandfather whether he’s willing to pay some kind of price for what her daughter, and her sister, both lost.”
Daemon’s head was spinning.
“So what do we do?
What can we even do about any of this?”
Viserys shook his head.
“I don’t know…”
Meanwhile, Quentyn, egg still cupped in his hands, had already worked out this same layer of the problem for himself.
In his past life, he’d once argued with a friend over this very question, whether Jaehaerys had deliberately controlled the outflow of dragonriders from the family or not.
To settle the argument, Quentyn had gone so far as to reopen Fire & Blood, a book he’d only skimmed a handful of times, but in the end he’d never reached a firm conclusion.
Jaehaerys seemed to be fighting himself on the question of his daughters claiming dragons, and most of his daughters, in any case, hadn’t lived long enough to reach the age where it mattered.
In the end, the only explanation left was to chalk it up to the hand of fate itself.
Just then, a Red Keep guardsman came jogging hurriedly toward the group.
“My prince, His Grace the King wishes to receive my lord Quentyn Qoherys as soon as possible.”
Baelon looked at once to Alysanne.
Alysanne’s expression frosted over.
She said nothing, and turned to walk back into the depths of the Dragonpit.
She wants the king to bend first, Quentyn thought, his hands tightening around the egg without his quite meaning to.
But whatever the case, Alysanne’s move worked entirely in his favor, and that alone was enough.
“Take your brother back to Maegor’s Holdfast and lock the door.
I don’t want to hear another word about his little bird ending up on some whore’s belly down Silk Street, and I don’t want to find him lying black and blue in some Flea Bottom gutter either.” Baelon drew a deep breath, walked over to his eldest son Viserys, and clapped him on the shoulder.
Daemon protested at once.
“I promise I won’t…”
“Your promises aren’t worth much.” Baelon glared at him.
“Once this business here is settled, you’re going straight back to Dragonstone.
You don’t come back until Maester Gladwin tells me your leg’s fully healed.”
Daemon shut his mouth.
Quentyn gave his friend a sympathetic look, then fell into step beside Baelon.
“My prince, my lord Quentyn, the carriage is ready.” The Red Keep guardsman said, lowering his voice.
“Mm.” Leaving the Dragonpit behind, they came to the carriage already waiting by the road.
Baelon nodded politely to the guardsman, then swept his eyes over Quentyn from head to toe, with a hint of nervous scrutiny.
Quentyn’s silver hair was tied back into a tail, bound with a black-and-gold ribbon.
He wore a fitted black velvet robe that looked, at first glance, plain and unadorned, but as the light shifted, House Qoherys’s flaming saltire skull and House Targaryen’s three-headed dragon both emerged quietly from the fabric’s weave.
A cloak of the same material was fastened with an obsidian brooch, carved with Quentyn’s own personal sigil.
A pale dragon, clutching flame and skull together in its talons, spread its wings in flight across the obsidian’s dark surface.
“No need to change.
This will do just fine.” Baelon nodded approvingly, opened the carriage door, and gestured for Quentyn to climb in first.
Quentyn, still cradling the egg, gave a wry smile and held it forward.
Baelon blinked, and only then noticed the two dragonkeepers trailing behind them, awkwardly hauling the bronze pot along, unsure what to do with themselves.
“Take the carriage on ahead.
I’ll bring them along into the keep myself.” Baelon decided at once, staying behind on horseback to escort the two dragonkeepers, while Quentyn set the egg back in the bronze pot and went on ahead with the Red Keep guardsman.
King’s Landing’s streets slid past the carriage window.
Quentyn drew a deep breath and began working through the situation at hand.
Alysanne had just dropped a burning-hot treasure straight into his lap, but the potential gain from it was enormous.
The real question now was: where did Jaehaerys actually stand on all this?
Was he really, as people in his past life had so often theorized, deeply sensitive about dragons slipping outside the family’s control after Lady Elissa Farman’s theft?
Or was he, as Quentyn was now discovering firsthand, simply a weary old man, worn down by the loss of child after child, genuinely torn on the matter, and with no real idea how to handle the situation in front of him?
Still turning it over in his mind, the carriage soon brought him to the Red Keep.
This had once been nothing more than a simple fortification, raised at Aegon’s landing, atop what became known as Aegon’s High Hill.
Aegon I had later ordered it expanded into a proper royal seat, and Maegor “the Cruel” had gone on to build it up even further.
Today, the Red Keep stood protected by massive walls, countless battlements and crenellations offering archers ideal firing positions, and a few skulls still lingered impaled on the iron spikes crowning its parapets.
The gate guards, seeing the carriage approach, threw open the heavy iron portcullis at once.
The carriage came to a stop in the cobblestone courtyard, and Baelon, only a short while behind, soon arrived on horseback with the dragonkeepers in tow.
After straightening their clothes, the two of them walked into the Red Keep together.
“The Prince of Dragonstone, heir to the Iron Throne, Prince Baelon Targaryen ‘the Brave,’ presenting!”
“Heir to Harrenhal, son of Lord Daeron Qoherys and Princess Valera, Quentyn Qoherys, presenting!”
The doors to the throne room swung slowly open as the herald’s sharp voice rang out.
Quentyn’s eyes went at once to the fearsome throne, forged from countless swords.
The Lockjaw Throne…
Every time he laid eyes on the Iron Throne, Quentyn couldn’t help making that same joke to himself.
And then, he saw the aging king.