Rhaena had watched the children empty their gold into Rhaegar’s hands.
She liked pears.
The four of them would not miss a necklace and a handful of buttons.
So long as he did not turn thief, she let him run.
Lord Towers could barely move.
He had no coin and no strength for work.
He was glad to see the boy put something living around the walls.
He did not live to see a blossom.
The hired men put Arbor seed in the dirt.
When the saplings stood waist-high, Maegor Towers died in the chair in his chamber.
He was seventeen.
The line of a house that had once stood high ended in that room.
They had backed Maegor the First in the last war.
After the riverlands finished tearing themselves, that king had given them Harrenhal.
The boy-lord’s name had been a bow to the man.
The moment Towers was cold, Jaehaerys put the castle in Rhaena’s hands alone.
She took the three old soldiers and the cook he left behind.
The saplings reached a man’s height.
Rhaegar’s gold was gone.
Rhaena hired a fresh string of hands out of Riverrun to live with the trees.
That same year Lord Rogar Baratheon died in his bed.
Boremund, ten years old, left King’s Landing and took Storm’s End.
To pull the realm’s fields and ledgers out of the pit the plague had left, Jaehaerys ordered a kingsroad.
The first cut ran from the south gate of King’s Landing, down through the kingswood, and on through the stormlands to Storm’s End.
The pears stood six and seven feet.
Rhaegar had walked every blind turn in Harrenhal and the grass a few hundred yards beyond the walls.
The trees went out from the castle in rings.
It had begun to look like an orchard.
Aemon was named Prince of Dragonstone and written down as heir.
At the feast for it Rhaegar watched him and Jocelyn make eyes across a room.
The king and queen loved a road.
They took their court through the realm to put children back into the years the Shivers had emptied, and they did the work themselves.
Four more were born before the tours grew old.
There were not enough people left for great trouble.
The fights that happened never reached a proper hall.
The realm ate and slept.
In 66 after Aegon’s Conquest the pears were taller still, thick with leaf.
Work began on the northern kingsroad, King’s Landing toward Winterfell.
The crownlands stretch of it passed the far edge of Harrenhal’s ground.
The wooden door of the small hall came off its peace with a bang.
The two old men at it had steel half out before they saw who had kicked it.
They put the steel away.
Food-smell filled the room.
Two long tables held bread, fruit, honey-water, and a little meat.
The noise died.
Dozens of heads turned.
Rhaegar came up the aisle with his temper showing.
He was ten.
Black leather fitted close, black breeches, a white shirt worked with thread, a longsword at his hip: what a lord’s son wore at that age.
The straight black hair to his shoulders and the foreign cut of his face did not belong to the rest of it.
Travelers.
Merchants.
He stopped at a sellsword table and kicked the thin man’s chair.
The thin man was up before he could fall.
“Black-haired brat.
You—”
The usual threat started.
A companion caught his sleeve and killed it.
Rhaegar roared back.
“Out of Harrenhal.
Now.”
A lame one found his voice.
“We’ve eaten her salt and bread, every man.
What’s this, the bastard putting us in the road?”
“Guest right.” Rhaegar made sure the hall had it.
“You take the host’s salt and bread and the host owes you his roof.
You are not guests.”
His finger found a merchant.
“You.
Yesterday you called her a whore.”
An unknown young man.
“You.
Yesterday you told a table you had her in a bed.”
“And you.” The thin sellsword stood half a head over him.
“You named her a witch.”
He gave the room the rest of it.
“Which of you hasn’t done it at my back?
You eat what she puts down.
You sleep in the rooms she opens.
You bow in her face and empty your mouths when she leaves.
Guest right is not for that.”
A few who still had skin on them looked at their plates.
“Brat.
I’ll know your face.”
“Rhaegar.
Offend anyone you like.
Not us.”
Five sellswords took their packs and went for the door, still talking.
They lived by steel.
Lords hired them for war and for work that did not want a banner on it.
The work could be filthy.
The mouth could not be.
A name in that trade had to stand.
Men forgot.
Or the old ones had died in the Shivers and taken the memory with them.
A few fat years and they no longer knew what Rhaena had been.
They no longer knew that if she had not stepped aside, the Iron Throne would have been hers.
The young who passed now saw a widow off the board, no title in her hand, a dozen old servants and a bastard grandson, safe to use for sport.
Years had made her kinder.
She could not watch travelers sleep in the ditch along the new road.
She brought them in and fed them and took no coin.
What she got for it was a laugh behind a door.
It had started in drink, a slip, and she had not risen.
After that the talk grew teeth.
Every man who came through Harrenhal used her to season his supper.
A soft name invited a hard hand.
In Westeros a name was a kind of steel.
She could swallow it.
Today the road would take an example with it.
An iron table-knife rang on the stone behind the five.
They turned.
He had one in his own fist.
“The brat wants a duel.” The laugh went around them.
They made their living on the edge of a blade.
A half-grown boy did not frighten them.
“Have you forgotten her name is Targaryen?
The law takes the tongue off a man who insults the royal blood.”
He aimed it at the thin one, loud enough for every witness.
“You all heard it.
I, Rhaegar Therys, call you to a duel.
These knives.
For fairness we each put one in until a man dies.”
Harrenhal’s strength was three white-headed soldiers.
They would not hold five young sellswords.
A lawful duel was the only hook that would keep the man in the room.
“I’ve taken a dozen heads, boy.
Don’t play.”
He had run his mouth against a Targaryen and been named for it.
He kicked the knife on the floor and made for the door.
Rhaegar moved the knife to his left hand and drove it into his own right shoulder.
The haft stood out of the shirt and nothing else.
He drew it, slow, into his right.
Blood took the white linen.
“It’s begun.
I put mine in.
Your turn.”
The watchers lost their talk.
Mouths hung.
A boy had no business standing with a grown sellsword.
He had put the first hole in himself.
What they were measuring now was not a sword-arm.
It was which of them would open himself to death first.
The shoulder burned.
It would not kill him.
The dead hang of the right arm was a lie.
The numbers came.
[System]
-2
-2
-1
-0
He was not afraid of them.
The cheat had given him a blood-bar and a stamina-bar.
The dragonclaw brand on the left shoulder had shown a use.
He had spent the years on those three things.
A cut that should have taken a wrist still opened meat.
After the first well of blood it did not keep running.
Until the bar went empty, bone did not give.
A blood-bar fighter lived or he died.
There was no maiming in the middle.