King Jaehaerys rarely slept through the night anymore.
The last time he had been woken for an emergency meeting of the small council.
No.
He could not remember.
He pulled on his golden-brown robe and tied back his hair, dismissing the maids before they could fuss over him.
He had never liked their forceful attentiveness.
Old.
That was the first word that came to him when he caught his reflection in the mirror.
Wrinkles where there had been none a year ago.
He studied his own face for a moment, then turned away.
He walked through the dark, torch-lit hallways of the Red Keep with his hands clasped behind his back, two Kingsguard falling into step behind him.
Just what was so important?
The guards pushed open the double doors ahead of him.
His lords rose as he entered.
Lord Lyman Beesbury, Master of Coin.
Grand Maester Elysar.
And to his left, his Hand, Septon Barth, long-faced and steady as ever, though something in his appearance tonight seemed off.
Ser Ryam Redwyne, who had escorted him, took his place as well.
“Why was I woken?” Jaehaerys asked, settling at the head of the table.
Silence.
Only the howling wind pressing against the walls of the keep.
Then Septon Barth cleared his throat.
“Two ravens arrived tonight, Your Grace.”
“One from Dragonstone.
One from Driftmark.”
“Read them,” he said, preferring to hear the words himself rather than receive a summary.
Barth lowered his head and lifted the first unsealed parchment.
“The one from Driftmark bears Prince Daemon’s seal.”
Your Grace.
Prince Baelon is on Driftmark.
He has been poisoned.
The Maester of House Velaryon has confirmed this, and I have seen it with my own eyes.
Jaeherys nearly shot from his seat, his eyes wide with shock.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then he motioned for Barth to continue, yet he remained standing.
He simply could not bring himself to sit after hearing that.
We brought him to Driftmark because Dragonstone could no longer be trusted.
Its Maester is dead.
The servants who aided him are in custody.
Jaehaerys’ gaze immediately shifted to Grand Maester Elysar, who was coughing quietly.
“Your Grace…” he began, shaking his head.
Jaehaerys cut him off with a raised finger before turning back to the Septon.
The Citadel is behind this.
I do not write those words lightly.
My brother intercepted a raven before any of this came to a head, and what it contains will interest you considerably.
Come to Driftmark, Your Grace.
Come soon, and come with men whose appointments were not recommended to you by a Maester.
Daemon Targaryen
Hah.”
Jaehaerys lowered his head.
Slowly.
Then he looked up.
“What is this?” His voice was quiet.
“What exactly is this?”
No one answered.
“Grand Maester.” His eyes found Elysar across the table.
“You have something to say, I imagine.”
The Grand Maester rose, his chains catching the candlelight.
“Your Grace.
If what Prince Daemon writes regarding the Maester of Dragonstone is true, then I grieve for it.
But I must be plain.
The Citadel is not behind this.
We have remained a neutral institution since its founding, sworn to knowledge and to service, nothing more.”
Jaehaerys looked at him for a long moment.
He did not know if he believed him.
That was the part that troubled him most.
But before making any decision he had to have all the information.
“The second one,” he murmured.
Septon Barth lifted the second parchment.
He hesitated for just a moment before beginning.
“This one is from Prince Viserys.”
Jaehaerys nodded.
He knew his grandson had been travelling to Dragonstone.
Barth read:
Your Grace, King Jaehaerys.
I am writing this letter to inform you and the council of the recent events on Dragonstone.
I will recount what I witnessed as plainly as I can.
Upon arriving at Dragonstone I was detained immediately at the docks by soldiers loyal to the Master at Arms, Ser Oswin.
He had assumed temporary authority over the castle in the absence of my father and brothers and used it to move against us.
I was taken captive before I had set foot inside the gates.
Jaehaerys noticed or perhaps imagined that the Hand’s index finger trembled slightly against the parchment.
Through the combined effort of Ser Clement Crabb and his loyal men, as well as my own retinue, we managed to free ourselves from his custody.
That’s when Ser Oswin arrived with significantly more men.
At this Ser Ryam Redwyne’s knuckles tightened against the edge of the table.
Barth continued.
In that moment Prince Maekar arrived.
Not by foot.
Not by ship.
By dragon.
The dragon in question is the one the realm has long called The Cannibal.
I will not pretend I can explain what I witnessed.
I can only tell you that I saw it, and that my brother is its rider.
Jaehaerys lowered himself back into his chair.
The Cannibal killed Ser Oswin before he could be properly questioned.
Prince Maekar believes him to have been a Faith extremist, and the evidence gathered since supports this.
A servant in custody has attested that Ser Oswin provided something to be mixed into Prince Baelon’s food over an extended period, making him a second poisoner alongside Maester Gerardys.
Regarding Gerardys he is dead as well.
The circumstances of his death remain hidden…
It was addressed to the Archmaesters of the Citadel, although its contents leave room for interpretation.
Prince Baelon is alive.
He is being cared for on Driftmark.
We await you, Your Grace.
Viserys Targaryen
Jaehaerys’s hand came down on the table.
The sound silenced the room.
“Septon Barth.” His voice was loud.
“Tell me.
Does the Faith still harbour such resentment toward our House?!
After everything I have done?!”
Barth met his eyes without flinching.
“Ser Oswin has no connection to the Faith, Your Grace.
He was an extremist of the highest order, one we ourselves would have condemned.”
Jaehaerys pressed his fingers against his forehead.
He believed him.
Barth had stood at his side for decades and had never given him reason not to.
A single fanatic finding his way into a position of trust was a failure, a serious one, and it would need to be examined thoroughly.
But it was not the same as institutional conspiracy.
The Citadel was another matter entirely.
He let his eyes move to Grand Maester Elysar, who had not spoken since his earlier assurance.
The man sat very still.
“So neither of you assumes responsibility,” Jaehaerys said.
Septon Barth leaned forward slightly.
“Your Grace, if I may.
Your reign has been the most peaceful and prosperous this realm has known.
The unity we have built together, the stability…these are not things to be cast aside in haste.
I counsel patience before any action is taken.”
Jaehaerys looked at him for a long moment.
Then he nodded once.
“We will hear the other side before any decision is made,” he said.
“Ravens to Oldtown.
Tonight.
I want answers.”
Grand Maester Elysar and Septon Barth both lowered their heads.
Jaehaerys rose from his chair once more.
“And let it be known, I am going to Driftmark to see my son.
If the Citadel has nothing to hide, they will welcome the inquiry.
If they do not welcome it, that will tell me everything I need to know.”
He left without waiting for a response.
By morning, ravens were in the air toward Oldtown.
By midday, King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne were on the water, bound for Driftmark.
The news spread across the realm quickly, and rumour spread faster still, twisting and multiplying with every telling.
The Citadel’s response came within a fortnight.
They renounced all connection to Maester Gerardys, named him a solitary actor, and announced a formal investigation into their own ranks.
Their letter to the Crown included an apology to the House of the Dragon, carefully worded.
The Faith said much the same of Ser Oswin.
Two institutions.
Two lone extremists.
Two letters that explained everything and admitted nothing.
Jaehaerys read them both and set them down without comment.
He had expected exactly this.
He had written back.
Not with warmth.
He had made clear that Crown overseers would be installed in both the Citadel and the Faith’s senior chapters, with full authority to examine correspondence, appointments, and records without prior notice.
He had made equally clear that this was not a request.
Neither institution had objected.
Jaehaerys had also sent letters to both Vaegon and Maegelle, hoping they would lend him their assistance.
Whether it was enough, he did not yet know.
Now he sat beside his son.
Baelon had been sleeping when Jaehaerys arrived on Driftmark, and he was sleeping still.
Days had passed.
The Maester came and went and offered careful words that amounted to the same uncertain answer each time.
Jaehaerys had stopped asking.
He looked at his son’s face.
Pale and still.
His brilliant son.
The Spring Prince, they had called him.
The realm had loved him for his laughter and his strength, and neither of those things were visible right now.
In his wrath Jaehaerys had sentenced every conspirator and servant who had aided the plot to death.
They had been beheaded on Dragonstone the morning before.
He had heard it reported without ceremony, the way such things should be reported.
He did not regret it.
But the Maester and the Septons played in a different world entirely.
He could not behead an institution.
He could not put the Citadel on trial without tearing apart every castle in the realm that depended on a Maester to function.
And he could not move against the Faith without undoing forty years of careful peace between the Crown and the devout.
He had asked himself throughout his reign whether fewer compromises would have prevented this.
The answer was no.
Without compromise there would have been no stability, no prosperity, no long peace.
Chaos would rule.
In the end, as always, it came down to the same question every king was forced to answer eventually.
The realm, or his family?
He had chosen the realm too often, perhaps.
He had buried children for it.
He was sitting beside another one now.
A shadow fell across the window.
Jaehaerys turned his head.
Outside, vast and dark against the grey sky, the Cannibal passed low over Driftmark.
His grandson’s dragon.
The beast that had saved his son’s life and executed a man in the same night.
His family was not content.
He knew that without needing to ask.
And for the first time in a very long time, he was not certain they were wrong for it.
Maekar had argued.
He had placed the letter before his grandfather with his own hands and laid out everything, piece by piece, with more patience than he thought himself capable of.
It had amounted to barely anything.
Only an investigation.
The Citadel and the Faith were simply too old, too vast, too deeply woven into the fabric of everything.
He sat on the new dark dragon saddle that the Lord of Driftmark had gifted him.
“The Dance of the Dragons,” he murmured.
He had seen it.
Balerion had shown him.
The kingdom burning itself alive from the inside.
Targaryens against Targaryens.
Dragons against dragons.
A war so consuming that the House of the Dragon had never truly recovered from it.
He was certain now of what had always been a suspicion.
It had been guided.
By them.
He would not let it happen again.
Not like that.
If fire was coming, he would be the one to unleash it, if necessary, on Targaryens as well.
Beneath him the Cannibal exhaled, a deep rolling heat that Maekar felt through the scales beneath his hands.
Their bond had grown in recent weeks.
He understood the dragon better now.
He also understood that the name was wrong.
The Cannibal.
A name born from fear, given by frightened men who had never come close enough to see clearly.
It was no Valyrian name.
It was a rumour that had hardened.
The lowest kind of naming there was.
He would find something better.
When the time was right.
Maekar looked toward the horizon for a moment longer, then turned the dragon downward toward Driftmark.
Someone was already waiting for him outside.
His grandmother stood at the edge of the courtyard, her grey hair catching the wind, her hands folded before her.
She looked at the Cannibal for a long moment and then walked past the dragon entirely and came to receive him.
“Maekar.” She pulled him into a tight embrace.
He returned it.
When she pulled back she studied his face the way she always had.
“You are cold,” she said.
“I was flying.”
She nodded and fell into step beside him, moving away from the dragon and toward the courtyard wall where the wind was less.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
“How is he today?” Maekar asked.
“The same.” She said it plainly.
“The Maester believes the worst has passed.
Whether that is true or simply something he says to an old woman, I cannot tell.”
Maekar said nothing.
Alysanne looked out toward the sea.
“Your grandfather told me about your conversation,” she said.
“About what you asked of him.”
“And what he chose instead.”
“Yes.” She did not defend it.
“He is not entirely wrong, Maekar.
But he is not right either.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“When I was young,” Alysanne said, “I believed that being Targaryen meant being untouchable.”
She sighed.
“Then I lost Aemon.
Then Daenerys.
Then the others, one by one.”
We are not untouchable at all, she had been about to say.
Maekar thought otherwise.
Not untouchable by birth, no.
That much was true.
But there existed a height from which no hand could reach you, a pinnacle of power so complete that no one would dare dream of lifting a finger against you.
Not the Faith.
Not the Citadel.
Not anyone.
In his past life he had seen it within reach and lunged for it too early, too greedily, and lost everything in the grasping.
He would not make that mistake again.
Jaehaerys had spent sixty years doing the opposite.
He had lowered the throne, brought it level with the lords and the septons and the archmaesters, built his peace by making himself reachable.
And they had called it wisdom.
They had called it the Conciliation.
What it had actually done was put him within their reach.
He followed Alysanne’s gaze towards the sea.
Targaryens were not men who happened to have dragons.
They were the blood of Valyria, the last of it.
To rule like a man, to negotiate and compromise and make yourself palatable to lords and septons and archmaesters, was to forget what you were.
Your origin.
Suddenly Alysanne’s hand touched his arm.
“You were always the bright one,” she said quietly.
“Smarter than the rest.
I noticed it when you were even smaller.”
“Yes,” Maekar said.
She studied him for a long moment.
“You are not like your brothers,” she said.
“No.”
When she turned to face him she took both his hands in hers, and her grip was firmer than he expected.
“Then be there for them.
Support Viserys.” She held his gaze.
“If my son dies, gods forbid it, gods forbid it, Jaehaerys or the Lords will name Viserys heir.
I am certain of it.”
Maekar was certain of it too.
“Promise me,” she said.
He looked at her for a moment.
At the lines around her eyes, at a woman who was nearing her end.
He nodded slowly.
He promised.
He promised he would try.
Whether he would succeed would not rest on him alone.
That part would fall to his brothers…
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