The princes and Lord Baratheon’s children had hands to dress them and kitchens to fill them.
None of it tasted like a bird they had taken themselves.
The cheat had opened.
Rhaegar had become a man with a blood-bar, and he spent it.
He dove.
He climbed.
He went over walls.
He took the four of them through everything around Harrenhal that would move.
For a stretch the animals vanished.
Weeds took the ground.
The mosquitoes came in clouds.
Time went.
Out of the south, after half a year, the word was victory.
The Dornish had come at the stormlands by land.
The mountains would not let them haul a scorpion.
At the end of 61 after Aegon’s Conquest the main strengths met in the Red Mountains.
The lines had formed.
They were about to close when Jaehaerys came over the field on Vermithor.
Archers loosed in despair.
The shafts hit bronze scale and left no mark.
Dragonfire found the Dornish as they broke.
It took the camps on three peaks and every tree that would burn.
The fire lived a day.
The Vulture King and Ser Borys Baratheon were taken on the run.
A lord condemned to die could take the black and keep the Wall, or he could ask, by the Faith, for trial by combat.
Live through that and the Seven had called him clean.
Lord Rogar Baratheon had the Vulture King’s chains struck, put a shield in one hand and a spear in the other, and promised him the road if he killed Rogar in the yard.
The man who styled himself the Second Vulture King was nothing.
Rogar put him down in a single cut.
Rogar and the traitor Borys were brothers.
To keep the curse of kin-slaying off the lord of Storm’s End, Jaehaerys stepped into the dust himself.
Two strokes.
Blackfyre took Borys through and took the head after.
On the gatehouse of Harrenhal Lord Grover Tully held the letter and looked at Rhaegar.
“He had fewer than a thousand thieves.
Why does the king name a mopping-up the Third Dornish War?”
“What?” Rhaegar’s face did the work of a child who had been asked to keep the realm.
He did not want the talk.
He watched the servants in the yard and gave Grover the cheapest line he had.
“The king has his reasons.”
Grover was still in his teens.
He had no language that reached a woman past thirty.
Right answer or wrong, he praised it.
He only wanted a door.
The war had been loud and small.
No Dornish lord had ridden in it.
Jaehaerys needed a victory that would sit on the crown and stay there.
Once he had sent the Third Dornish War through the realm, the houses that had stood with Maegor against him lined up at the Red Keep with gifts.
Rhaegar already had coin moving between him and Grover.
He did not want politics in the same pot.
“You’re clever.
I bought a vase yesterday.
Take it to Rhaena for me later?” Grover pushed the red hair back and smiled with all his teeth.
The green vase sat at his foot.
Rhaegar shrugged.
“The Baratheons leave for King’s Landing today.
I have to see them off.
No time.”
A silver coin appeared in Grover’s fingers.
“A stag.”
Rhaegar left it there.
He made a regretful mouth.
“Aemon and Baelon leave today as well.”
Grover’s face folded in on itself.
He thought.
The stag went away.
Another coin came out, Jaehaerys in profile, three dragon heads on the tail.
“A moon.
You will say good things about me where she can hear them.
And she will thank me where men can see it.”
Rhaegar took the moon off his palm and put it in his coat.
“I take the coin, I do the work.
If I fail, you get it back.”
A man on his knees for a woman lost height behind the eyes.
Rhaegar could hold him there.
A silver moon was seven stags.
It would buy an iron sword that was not a joke.
He grinned.
“When do you go home to Riverrun, red beauty?”
“When we take the wheat this year.” The warmer name pleased him.
Rhaena was no girl waiting on a father’s word.
Her parents were long dead.
A widow chose or did not choose.
Grover had spent more than half a year on her and moved nothing.
Lately the coin he paid for errands had grown thin.
They came down off the gate.
Rhaegar took the vase inside.
Grover found the princes and talked at them with his eyes on the door.
Rhaena came out with Rhaegar behind her.
Grover put his clothes in order and planted himself in the middle of the yard.
Every soul there knew what he wanted.
Rhaena looked as if she meant to speak to him.
Faces turned.
“I thank Lord Grover for his help.” Her voice did not hurry.
The look in it was a little hard.
She gave that look to everyone but Rhaegar and the children.
Grover went red and lost his tongue.
He liked the look better the longer he stood in it.
“You return to Riverrun tonight.
A safe road.”
She walked to the princes and left him in the open.
If he had not been Lord of the Trident there would have been noise.
Wind moved the hair on his brow.
The thank-you had happened where men could hear it.
The rest of it would not sit still.
Why was he leaving tonight?
The princes’ things went on the wagons.
The column would take the road to King’s Landing.
The Lord of Riverrun gathered his men with a hole still in his face and went.
Hundreds filled the yard.
Harrenhal had not held that much voice in decades.
Aemon and the others walked out onto the grass with Rhaena to wait for Queen Alysanne’s dragon.
Jaehaerys was still in the south.
He had the command.
Unless the world caught fire he would come home with the host.
Fetching children was work for the two women who had dragons.
Rhaegar sat the four of them in the grass.
“Boremund.
Jocelyn.
Aemon.
Baelon.
Harrenhal’s old lands went to lords in the north a long time back.
What you can see—two miles around—is what the castle still holds.
Five hundred yards off the walls stay grass.
The rest I mean to put in pears.
Both lords here have said yes.
The Gods Eye will water them.
In seven years you will eat a pear that grew at Harrenhal.”
“Good.
Send wagons to the Red Keep.”
“If they’re sweeter than the Reach’s.”
They knew a pear was worth eating.
Seven years had no weight in their hands.
“The seed has to come from the Reach.
We hire men from other seats who know fruit.
That costs.” He opened his palms.
“If Rhaena pays, she will sell what comes off the trees.
If we put up the most of the coin, most of the pears are ours.”
“We have to pay?” Aemon had never spent a piece in his life.
“Pears from the Arbor come large and sweet.
Once she buys the seed, the chance is gone.”
“We don’t have money.” Boremund told it straight.
Children did not keep a purse.
The gold sat with stewards and belonged to a house.
“That’s easy.”
Rhaegar had the badges off their breasts, the buttons off their coats, Jocelyn’s necklace out of her collar.
All of it was gold.
Boremund, already climbing Dreamfyre, shouted down, “I will beat you!” He had not won a bout.
Aemon stood by his mother.
“When Baelon and I can ride, we’ll come find you.”
“Remember our pears,” Baelon said.
He did not trust the sum.
Two dragons left the grass with three rumpled boys and Jocelyn.
“I didn’t cheat children.” The trees were for Rhaena.
The gold sat heavy in his coat.
He walked back to the gate alone.
Riverrun’s men went.
The royal servants went.
Harrenhal had its silence back.