That was the question he had dreaded.
The question he had hoped would wait another month.
Perhaps another year.
What could he say to his lord?
What could he tell his Lord except that Dragonstone had been robbed while he was too inexperienced and Young to stop it?
He set his wine down.
“The number has reduced because ships have been taken from Dragonstone,” Cressen said at last.
Alric’s eyes narrowed.
“Sent where?”
“That,” Cressen said carefully, “is where the matter becomes difficult.”
Cressen set his cup down slowly, as if buying himself another moment before the words had to leave his mouth.
“As you know When your father sailed to put down the Greyjoy Rebellion, the royal fleet at Dragonstone was still, in name, a fleet of the Crown. Built with royal coin, under Lord Stannis’s command as Master of Ships, but belonging to the Iron Throne all the same.”
“I already know of this ,” Alric said.
“They already took command of those ships when I went to King’s Landing giving the command to new Master of Ships.”
“Yes,After your father’s death, Lord Hand Jon Arryn determined that those ships—vessels built and crewed under royal warrant—should return to Crown service rather than remain here, given that Dragonstone had no lord of age to command them.”
Silence.
Cressen sighs and continued ” When you were gone this time they also took another portion of ships as well.
Lord Jon Arryn, Hand of the King sent a letter stating that Ships will put under a better Command and some days after the Ships were taken along with some of the men.”
Alric didn’t move.
He sat perfectly still but anger filled in him, and Cressen found himself wishing, not for the first time, that the boy had inherited even a fraction of his father’s stillness in temperament rather than only in the moment before a storm.
“They took my ships then,” Alric said quietly.
“My lord—”
“They took my ships.” Louder now.
He stood, the chair scraping back hard enough to nearly topple.
His voice filled the small solar, echoing off stone that had heard Targaryen kings raise their voices for three hundred years.
“Do I look so weak, Cressen? So easily robbed, that the moment I am not attending Dragonstone, every lord in the realm feels free to help himself to what’s left of him?”
“It was not theft, my lord. It was Crown property, returned to Crown use.”
“That’s a strech Cressen and you know it.It was my father’s fleet.” Alric’s hands curled into fists at his sides.
“Built by him.
Commanded by him.
Paid for—” he stopped, jaw working, “—paid for partly by the Crown, aye, I’ll grant that much.
But not entirely.
Whose timber?
Whose men crewed them long before Jon Arryn ever thought to lay claim?
The first time It was thier right but this time it is nothing but Robbery.
They are trying to fuck us over because they think us weak.
”
Cressen said nothing, because he knew precisely where this was going, and he knew Alric was not entirely wrong.
“Dragonstone’s own treasury paid for a large portion of that fleet.
Dragonstone’s own vassals provided crews, coin, and shipwrights.
And beneath all of that—” Alric leaned both hands on the desk, closing the distance between them, “—beneath all of that sits gold the Targaryens left behind when they lost this island.
Gold Lord of Dragonstone Stannis Baratheon , My father inherited as his right.
Which means I inherited it.
Not Uncle Robert.
Not Jon Arryn.
ME.”
“My lord, I understand your anger, truly I do, but souring relations with the Crown over a handful of ships—”
“A handful?” Alric’s laugh had no humor in it at all.
“How many, Cressen? Tell me the number.”
The old maester hesitated.
“Tell me.”
“Near thirty vessels, by my last count. Some of the finest galleys your father ever commissioned for Dragonstone.”
Alric went very still again.
“Thirty ships,” he repeated.
“And you call that a matter not worth souring a relationship over.”
“I call it a matter better handled with patience than fury, my lord. The Crown is not some petty lord you can threaten into returning stolen goods. It is the King himself, and the Hand who serves him. It’s not worth souring relationship with the Crown”
“Souring? I am telling you it has been already soured. That ship sailed the moment nobody stopped this in the first place.” Alric straightened, pacing now, restless energy pouring off him the way it always did when a fight had no immediate target.
“And it isn’t only the ships, is it? Tell me if it’s only the ships, Cressen. Didn’t they take men as well.”
Cressen’s silence was answer enough.
“Skilled crews, Shipwrights. A number of knights who had sworn thier loyalty and what they reassigned to King’s Landing garrisons.” Alric continues
“Men. Skilled men, the very thing this island can least afford to lose. We don’t have surplus knights rotting in our barracks, Cressen. Every capable sword we lose is one Dragonstone goes without replacing for years. And they’ve been taking from us the way a man skims coin from a purse he thinks no one’s counting.”
“I understand your frustration—”
“Do you?” Alric turned on him.
“Because from where I stand, it feels like everyone understands my frustration and does absolutely nothing about it. We look like weaklings right now, Cressen. Not just to the Crown—to every lord watching. A dead lion’s cubs left to be picked over by jackals, and nobody in the den bothered to growl.”
“My lord, I know you’ve been away, but recognize that this is not a new grievance you’re only now discovering—”
“No,” Alric cut in, “it isn’t. And that’s precisely my point. This has been going on for years, hasn’t it? This is second time now somebody tries to rob Dragonstone blind. I told you the first time —I told you four years ago, the first time I noticed ships missing from the harbor, that we should act. You talked me out of it.”
“You were twelve, my lord.” Cressen’s voice softened, though his spine remained straight.
“Twelve years old, proposing to sail to Lords and demand a head after accusing them of theft. I did not stop you out of cowardice. I stopped you because a boy making wild accusations which would have accomplished nothing beyond making you a laughingstock the realm would never let you forget.”
Alric roared in anger and rage ” Good for us then,I am not twelve anymore.”
“No,” Cressen agreed quietly sighing.
“You are not, My Lord.”
“And I am done being patient.” Alric’s eyes had that particular stillness to them now, the calm that settled over him right before he did something no one in the room could talk him out of.
” I am done waiting for someone else to decide when Dragonstone’s patience has run out.”
Cressen studied him for a long moment, searching for some trace of the boy he’d once calmed with old stories and cups of watered wine.
He found only the man that boy had become—harder, colder, and far more harder than Stannis had ever been, precisely because Stannis’s anger had come wrapped in duty, and this anger came wrapped in nothing at all instead Alric rage wraps blood all over.
“What is it you intend to do, my lord?”
“I intend to know exactly what’s been taken from me,” Alric said.
“Every ship. Every man. Every coin. Every vassal who’s grown fat skimming from Dragonstone’s treasury while pretending to serve it. I want it all, Cressen—names, numbers, dates, ledgers, every scrap of parchment that proves what’s happened here while I was too young or too far away to stop it.”
“That is no small undertaking, my lord. Gathering such records thoroughly could take—”
“A week Cressen.”
Cressen blinked.
“My lord, records of this nature, spanning years of Dragonstone’s accounts alongside Crown correspondence—”
“A week, Cressen.” Alric’s voice left no room for negotiation.
“I don’t care if you sleep at that desk until it’s done. I want every document, every name, every fraud and scam, every debt owed to this house laid out before me within seven days.”
The old maester opened his mouth to argue further, then closed it again, seeing something in Alric’s expression that told him further protest would accomplish nothing except to delay the inevitable.
“As you command, my lord,” he said instead, quietly.
Alric nodded once, sharp and final, and turned toward the door.
“Oh, and Cressen.” He paused, hand on the frame, not quite looking back.
“When you’re gathering those names—pay special attention to our Former Reagent. It’s time I returned the favour of taking care of Dragonstone in my stead when I was absent. You stopped me the first time but not this time. I need to be grateful after all ” Alric said coldly.
Something in the old maester’s chest went cold.
“My lord, I—”
“A week,” Alric said again, and left him alone in the solar with the fire that never burned warm enough, and the growing certainty that whatever was coming, it would not be contained to ledgers and quiet accusations for long.