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Chapter Text

Dragonstone

On trembling legs, Queen Rhaella found her feet, tripping and falling five feet to the ground. She screamed in pain, both from the impact and the ache in her empty womb even as the rain lashed and froze against her. She screamed her throat raw, dragging herself away from the site of a hundred Targaryen funeral pyres, the fires snuffed before they could catch her. The ship rocked in the wind, and disappeared over the horizon.

"Daenerys! Viserys!" she wailed, beating her hands bloody on the jagged volcanic rock. She screamed her throat raw for her stolen babies, her voice dashed to nothing as the wind threatened to push Dragonstone back into the sea. She thought she spied a white cloak on the deck, and wondered which of the seven men had betrayed her. Rhaella knew from first hand experience that the seven white knights had long since betrayed their vows to protect the innocent, so she should not have been surprised they betrayed her as well.

Minutes, hours, or perhaps days later, Rhaella found the will to stand. As much to do something, anything, other than what she had done every time before, she stumbled and limped back towards the castle. She dropped to her knees on the walk back, grunting and groaning as, with a final push, the afterbirth slipped out of her. Blood ran in down the walkway before her, like the red veins of some pulsing black beast.

No. Not a beast.

A dragon.

***

Somehow finding herself through a bath and a meal, Rhaella found herself entirely on her own. Her chambers were untouched, and she dressed in comfortable fibres, with extra wool skirts and thick-heeled boots besides. Dressing was a feat in and of itself, her joints at the knees, hips, and shoulders moving in ways Rhaella had not moved since she was a girl.

She nibbled on stale fig biscuits and a cask of watered mead as she wandered to the Chamber of the Painted Table, the drink waking her in ways rich Dornish reds never did. Examining the Seven Kingdoms and what remained of the troop movements, Rhaella's mind was blank. Her eldest child had left King's Landing in a rage – or the nearest thing to anger Rhaegar could ever muster – taking most of the Kingsguard, soldiers, and gold cloaks with him, while her husband festered in his...

Rhaella recalled that last night six moons ago, when he had tried dragging Princess Elia up to the Iron Throne "so he might take her where she deserved." Rhaella had done nothing while Elia woke, her last moment of defiance as she shoved Aerys. He had caught himself, opening more scabs to do so. He had screamed "You have woken the dragon!" and pushed her. Rhaella still remembered her good-daughter's orange dress, the only thing about her not mangled by the thousand swords of Aegon's conquered foes.

Unable to recall the kingsguard that saved her, the time since her departure from King's Landing and when she awoke on the funeral pyre was a blur. She tried to remember more, but it was... Rhaella's mind had been shattered and pummelled to an irreparable dust by decades of torment at the hands of her brother-husband. She wanted nothing more than to kill him herself, silently cursing him, their weak father, and the conqueror himself just so the gods knew she was serious.

There were so many figurines on the painted table, wolves and falcons, lions and roses, and more. Stags were everywhere in the west and north, spreading like a blight across the Seven Kingdoms. Roses and lions were all mixed together, with towers at their heart, while vipers, stars, iron gates, and sea horses fought in a pitched conflict for Dorne, spilling over into the islands between Westeros and Essos.

For all the excitement, her eyes settled on the three seven-pointed stars. One was in Oldtown amongst the towers and roses, one in King's Landing next to a dragon and a sun-and-spear, and a third in the Riverlands. "Har-ren-Hall. Harrenhal." It felt odd to read, and she kicked herself again for her foolish stupidity. Nothing but a stupid breeder, Aerys had always said. It was true. It had been decades since Rhaella had read more than invitations to weddings and name-day celebrations.

Tears welled up and suddenly it was as if she was on that cliff overlooking the Narrow Sea again, her children dragged to an uncertain fate. Again she wept and wailed, her cries echoing along the black stone of her house's ancestral seat, and again, no one came. No maesters with ointments and milk of the poppy, no maids with kind words and some decadent meal to distract her. Not even one of her treacherous kingsguard. Not even Ser Jaime to wrap his white cloak around her when the other six studied their boots out of shame.

Somehow, she stood, remembering her children. Tears and sobs still dashed out of her, but she had the mind to study the damp and rotting messages and raven scrolls for something, anything, that could tell her about her children. There were many from Sunspear and the Eyrie, and a few from White Harbour and Oldtown besides.

No, not just her babies. All four of them.

She gasped in sudden pain, a phantom from her daughter's birth. The pain worsened and it seemed to shoot from her womb to her toes, where it bounced into her eyes. Rhaella hissed and groaned and tried for once to not cry, but still the tears came. She held her hair and... Her hair!

Rhaella felt around her head searching, rushing from the Painted Table back to her chambers and pulling the tapestry from the mirror. She had not looked at herself since Rhaegar was still swaddled, the bruises, scratches, and worse from her husband making her a grisly sight to look at every day. Rhaella had thus relied on maids for the better part of twenty-five years, and to her benefit.

The rain and wind had washed away the thick powder makeup and whatever was left of her hair. Even her eyebrows and eyelashes were gone, while her skin that she always thought fair and unblemished, was scarred. Not her face or hands, but her neck and elsewhere. She unfastened her collar and found more scars, pulling at her robe and slip and tearing off her small clothes to see it all.

They were barely visible. There were some, faded but hard to see past her pale Valyrian features. Rhaella felt at her hips, where his claws always dug, or her back, where he had kicked and punched her, then her breasts, where his rotting teeth always ended up.

It wasn't fair. She deserved the scars, every one a badge of victory and endurance. That she did not have them was an insult. She wanted to kill them, her mother for putting her in this world, her father for putting Rhaella in her mother, and Aegon the Conqueror and every god of Old Valyria for letting House Targaryen survive the Doom. She hated them all.

She drove her fist into the mirror, cutting her hand as the mirror cracked. One of her reflections fell away, shattering on the black stone floor, but seven looked back at her. Seven weak, pitiful...

Rhaella pushed away, sitting on the bed and musing on everything, from her life and marriage to the nothing else. A son raised by knights and books, another son who would be just like his father or worse if allowed, and a daughter and grandchildren who would know her only as the battered, mewling thing she had always been.

No, not always. There was a Princess Rhaella, somewhere inside of her. That girl had not been lost, but she was hidden, squirrelled away within days of her wedding night. She was someone driven. Driven and kind and quick with her tongue that cut with words as well as any sword. Rhaella would find her, but first she needed rest.

***

Dragonstone's branching tunnels soon gave way to a covered dock, a few small boats still at anchor. The sea beyond was scattered with hulks and shattered sails from the night of the storm, bloated and drowned bodies making for hard travel away from the island fortress of House Targaryen. Rhaella had found the dock as soon as she remembered it, relying on feeling and memory to practice pulling the lines of a sail on a small fishing vessel.

She dressed plainly in men's clothes and what armour she could scrape together. She could barely pull a bow and swing a sword, but she had one each of them, and a shield and plenty of arrows as well. There was still plenty of food as well, dry goods and smoked meat which, combined with a few sacks of wealth as ballast, should help keep the ship steady in her journey. With any luck, she could reach King's Landing in a week, buy her way into the Red Keep, and take vengeance on her poor excuse for a-

Her head turned towards a green flash in the distance, and-

KA-THOOM!!

A wave of sound tossed the sea and Rhaella's ship with it, pushing the remains of the Targaryen fleet out to sea. Rhaella's ears rang and her eyes stung, an awful fume crawling up her nose. Something felt wrong so she let the tears come while she erected a broadcloth shelter, cursing as another wave of sound tossed a wave over the ship, soaking the shelter but in doing so saving Rhaella from the worst of the fumes.

Unfurling the sail she turned the ship south and then west, making her way through the Gullet and along the north side of Massey's Hook. Rhaella discerned the jumping blue swordfish of House Bar Emmon high overhead, hundreds choking its tall, round towers to look west. She followed their gaze but saw only a dark column of smoke above a hazy green corona, like a candle with the wick burning just out of sight.

The ship plied on, past the Wendwater and then along the coast by the Kingswood. The Tower of the Hand and the Red Keep below it should have come into sight by that point, but still it did not. Rhaella recalled how large the Kingswood was, however, certain that she was simply not as far into the Blackwater Rush as she believed.

Night began to fall, and Rhaella risked another look only to be smacked in the face by the stench. Blackened meat and burning stone, with ammonia and alchemists' reagents as well. The city though...

Only a burning green crater remained, a charnel pit of fire and death where King's Landing used to be. Screams echoed across the water to her, moving in a wave as the Red Keep slid into the sea, dragging Aegon's Hill and everything not burning into the depths of Blackwater Bay.

The docks were beyond saving, half the ships burning green with more wildfire and still launching off with full loads, all their passengers roasting alive. One came so close that Rhaella could see their eyes popping as they roasted. At that she lost her stomach, getting most of it overboard. The scent was abating but the acrid fumes were not, so she pulled herself inside and turned her ship north.

There were other vessels sailing away, half-full holds aiming for Duskendale or Gulltown or wherever they needed to go to escape the fire. In Bastard Valyrian, she called out to a Braavosi vessel, who quickly dropped a line she tied to her ship. "You make for home?" she said, certain her children were in the Free Cities.

"We've many goods and time besides, miss," said the captain as she found herself aboard, trying to seem threatening even as the captain insisted on a bank-insured writ for her goods. He thought she was a merchant. "We make for Gulltown."

He took her on for some of her goods, gold and silver while one of his nearly lost a finger for trying to steal a Valyrian steel ring. Rhaella took it and gave him a gold and diamond ring as recompense, realising what she had. The officers gave her keen looks, while the captain ushered her below deck.

"You steal from your mistress as it happened?" Rhaella jawed and shook her head. The Braavosi raised his hand for peace. "The writ is signed anyway." He looked out the window behind him at the burning gash in Westeros. "Not as if she lives."

She looked at King's Landing. "I never... He was mad, but..."

"Aye," said the Braavosi. He shrugged. "Oh well. Such is business. To the Vale!"

***

The Braavosi captain – Rhaella learned his name was Agostino – was a rotund man, taller than average with a long brown beard, his skin and clothing weathered and stained by salt. As a result, he appeared older than his one-and-thirty years, which softened the blow to Rhaella as he helped her sell off most of her wealth and become all what Rhaella wanted to be – a merchant. He even handed her custody of his nephew Bartolomeo, five-and-ten and already a sailor.

"You have done too much, my lord," Rhaella began.

She opened her mouth to continue, though Agostino simply raised his hand for silence. "I am no lord, madam. Simply another bastard raised in the Titan's shadow." He bowed deeply, flicking his purple shoulder cape as he stood upright. "And you had best call strangers sir."

Rhaella was no mummer, and she realized her highborn manners with their Valyrian eccentricities would make her a target. "I will, sir. Thank you, Captain."

He watched them go, trundling along the smooth stone streets of Gulltown on their cart, a few extra hedge knights paid with her new coin. With the aid of a Gulltown trading house, she purchased five writs worth one hundred gold dragons apiece to be deposited in the Bank of Oldtown once she arrived, handed to two hedge knights and three sellswords for her protection. They would only be paid out if Rhaella – Mistress Caterina, Agostino called her, after his sister – arrived safely, with Agostino composing a detailed description he sealed with an iron coin he had handed her.

The words did not mean much to her, beyond their literal translation in High Valyrian, but Agostino, Bartolomeo, and her new bodyguards treated them ominously. "Valar Morghulis. All men must die?" she questioned, curious. Bartolomeo nodded, leaning back with his eyes up, crossbow in his lap.

"Valar Dohaeris," answered one of the sellswords, a Braavosi himself with the bright clothing and matching rapier and dagger of a bravo. "They are powerful words, Mistress."

"Indeed." She slipped the iron coin up her sleeve. "But I am no man."

***

*Braavos*
"I am no sellsword," slurred Ser Willem Darry.

Prince Doran Martell looked down his nose at the knight, not even landed, his only claim to power a brother in the kingsguard. Now he was supping with a great lord of Westeros and his family in a great Braavosi manse, weathering the attentions of maidens from far beyond his lowly station. Oberyn's eyes had never left Ser Willem, lustful to those who knew only the Red Viper's reputation. Doran knew the man himself; Oberyn was almost ready.

"You don't need to be a sellsword to *be* a sellsword," Oberyn said, sighing into his goblet of wine as Ser Willem laughed. Doran had already made his appeal, but third daughters and bastard maidens were all he could offer Ser Willem, or risk the tentative peace he had won with the few lords who answered his ravens. He came to Braavos, was that still not enough? But then he had seen the children, and everything changed.

Though the damp and the ache in his joints almost made him regret coming.

"Just give them a meeting!" Oberyn clapped Ser Willem on the back, filling his cup some more. "The Second Sons are a fair and venerable company, Ser Darry."

Doran tore his eyes from the Fleabottom house fire that was Oberyn's attempts at politics to focus on the boy to his right at the head of the table, at Viserys Targaryen picking at his food. In his sister's letters, Elia had described Viserys as a robust youth, but quiet and expectant, as if he needed permission for the most insignificant action. He was devoted to his infant sister, Doran observed, and had wept when Oberyn tore Rhaenys from his arms. They needed friends to survive the war, and he had to trust that those north of the Red Mountains would protect a little girl just as they would in Dorne.

"How are you feeling, your grace?" Doran asked. "Your grace?"

Viserys shivered as if he had been drowsing, looking around frantically before calming under Doran's steely gaze. He had prodded the boy a bit, trying to read his future in how he trained with a sword with Ser Willem  – poorly – or read with Oberyn – slowly – but so far had seen nothing of use. He did not want to be so ruthless, but he had plans. "Your grace?"

"I'm... I am terribly sorry, Prince Martell." He was polite, Doran had to give the boy that. "I have been feeling unwell since the storm." Viserys cleared his throat, drinking from his goblet.

"Drink up, your grace," Doran insisted. "The maesters say clean water improves the constitution." Viserys nodded, waving for the servants to pour more water. Doran felt something in his gut, like a ball of hot metal pressing on his spine, testing to see if he would break. He could use a daughter of a king, but a second son halfway to manhood?

Oberyn nodded politely at the servants Viserys drank, before meeting his elder brother's gaze. Viserys drank and drank, and like a man in his cups he was soon dozing in his chair. "Ser Willem, won't you and your men stay the night?"

Ser Willem nodded groggily, two of his fellow loyalists passed out at the other end of the table. The others had gone stumbling off with a trio of coquettish servants. Ser Willem had not noticed the maids return without the men. "I must check on the princess first, my lord." Pulling himself upright, Ser Willem was falling before he could stand. "What... I must beg your apologies, my lords. It seems I've gone too deep in my-"

Doran wondered where Oberyn had kept his blade, a flick of his wrist pushing the hilt from his sleeve. In another, he opened Ser Willem's throat as easily as if it were a cotton thread. Doran stood and staggered backwards, avoiding the crimson spray that painted the sleeping Viserys. "Oberyn!"

Oberyn rolled his eyes, cleaning the stiletto on Ser Willem's Targaryen surcoat. "For our sister, big brother. You have her?" Doran picked up the platinum haired princess from the bassinet, cooing as he had to Arianne to quiet her fussing. "Now that he's dealt with, will you tell me what the letter said?"

"An exchange after his fifth name day, and another when he is ten and fifteen. We don't marry him to anyone in Dorne, they won't marry him to..."

"By Mother Rhoyne, *that* is what you waited to tell me?" Oberyn groaned, slipping his dagger into the other loyalists as casually as one could. "Ellaria could figure that out."

"We'll hide him in plain sight, then declare for him after we've rebuilt. This 'king who rides' will be nothing." Doran looked at Viserys, breathing deeply. The draught would make it painless.

He made to hand Princess Daenerys to one of the soldiers posing as maids, but Oberyn stopped him. "I will do it, brother. If you're not certain..."

"No, I am. Anything else, any*where* else, would lead to only torment. Send him to his mother."

Oberyn nodded, paternally parting Viserys's hair off his face. He was missing his daughters again; of that, Doran had no doubt. With a bit of pressure, Oberyn slipped the stiletto between Viserys's ribs. The boy twitched, but the poison was too strong. He pulled it out, and the boy was still. "There. Painless."

Chapter Text

Viserys woke with a gasping pain, as if his heart had been tickled with the tip of a knife. His head was foggy and his vision blurry, though there was enough sunlight and sound to tell him he had been unconscious for well over a day. He reached for his goblet but frowned at the contents, dried into a grey mess. He found his feet, only to stumble at the sight of Ser Willem, dead alongside two of the other warriors from Dragonstone.

It had been barely an hour after he had lit his mother's pyre when Ser Willem had bundled Prince Viserys and his sister, niece, and nephew into his arms and ran to a modest Braavosi merchant vessel where Prince Lewyn and Ser Jaime were already waiting. They had reached Braavos within the fortnight, killing the merchant and stealing his home for themselves – Ser Willem had assured Viserys it was necessary – until Prince Oberyn had arrived with a letter in his mother's hand, and then Prince Doran after him, the kingsguard leaving with Rhaenys and Aegon.

Viserys was elated by those days of planning and dealmaking, his future marriage and the stratagem that would return House Targaryen to the Iron Throne. He was only eight, but he would be a warrior yet – Ser Willem had assured him the Martells were forthright, and how could they not be. Houses Targaryen and Martell had been entwined for centuries, and Oberyn and Doran's sister and Viserys's brother had been married. They were family.

All that and more ran through Viserys's mind at the sight of Ser Willem dead in the dining room, sun streaming through the windows to bake the bodies and produce a stink so foul that Viserys retched. He stumbled to the kitchens, finding water to drink and food to eat to satisfy his baser instincts. *A dragon must eat as well as any beast,* Rhaegar had said. At the time, he hoped he would have that same eye twinkle and smile as his brother when he was a man grown.

Then, a thought crept into his mind, and Viserys ran from the kitchen, charging up the stairs and bursting into his sister's room. "Dany? Dany!" Panicking, he tore through the bedclothes and even his own traveling chest, futilely searching for his infant sibling. He reached under the crib's mattress, withdrawing their mother's crown where he had hidden it. A more feminine version of his father's gaudy golden crown, it was black Valyrian steel studded with rubies and onyx, with three small dragon heads at the front.

Viserys sniffled and shook, struggling to hold back the urge to cry. He was Viserys of House Targaryen, the third of his name, rightful king of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men. He was... he was only eight name-days old.

"Daenerys!" he screamed, running down the stairs and out the red door, staggering into the street and tripping over the cobblestones. "Ser Jaime! Prince Willem!" They must hear him! He was supposed to be king! Father had said so.

Too young to care about the cringes and looks of embarrassment from locals, none would give him the day or any aid as he clawed at skirts and hems for help and answers. "Please, my sister has been stolen! They killed Ser Willem!"

A Braavosi with a chiseled jaw and a dark moustache turned to face him, pulling him from the flow of foot traffic nearer an alleyway. He may have been helping him, but all of a sudden Viserys felt very small and unsafe. The man was tall, with one of the thin swords of that part of the world on his hip. A bravo! His boots were stained with mud and other grime, but he crouched down to Viserys, pushing his hair from his face. "What's this then, young man? Who's taken your sister?"

"I don't know. I was with Prince Doran and... And..."

"Prince Doran! Oh my!" Viserys nodded. Finally, someone who understood. "We can't have that. Come with me. I can help you find them."

Viserys took the stranger's offered hand. This was a strange city, so Viserys reckoned the stranger *must* be a bravo. They were like knights of the Free Cities, and only a knight would carry a sword and be so helpful. His clothing looked rougher than the drawings and mummers he had seen, no long scarves and sashes of coloured silk, not recognised by others as famed as he walked the streets. Viserys however reckoned this bravo was like him, only at the start of his life.

He strolled them down an alleyway away from the houses near the center of town and towards the ships at port. "Tell me of your sister. Why were you not with your parents?"

"Dany. Daenerys. My father the king sent us away to be safe. Mother died on the birthing bed. Ser Willem said so."

"And Ser Willem is dead as well? What a pity. Did he teach you to swing a sword?"

"He said I might squire for him when I'm older," Viserys said. "Only... Ser, what is your name?"

"Ah, well my name is... Syrio! What a day this is! First a prince and now the First Sword. What an honour!" The stranger released Viserys's hand, looking up at a smaller, thinner man while speaking in some bastard dialect of High Valyrian. Viserys had thrived in his language lessons, and they had been the only times he was alone with his mother.

Syrio's clothes were more well kept, his boots buffed and shined, a small cape of dark teal threaded with silver over one shoulder. *He* looked like a bravo, his shaved head and hooked nose making him look both playful and deadly. The bravo began, "This is none of the concern of the First Sword. Just my cousin and I on the way to-"

"We're not cousins," said Viserys in High Valyrian. Who was this bravo? Who was Syrio?

The bravo's face reddened and he snatched at Viserys, but he jumped away. "Behind me, boy," said Syrio, hand wrapping around his sword. "We'll find your real family once I am done."

Syrio turned to the bravo. "The movements of murderers are always my concern, Leandros. Now I can add kidnapping to your cornucopia of crime. Release the boy and-" Leandros drew his blade and charged, but Syrio was already finished, dashing forward, drawing his blade, and thrusting through the bravo's chest. Leandros fell dead. "Wait! Boy!"

Viserys took off in a run, ignoring the killer and running back the way they had come. Down the alley and up the street towards the house with the red door, he slowed to catch his breath at the steps, marching up to... a blue door? He shook his head. Viserys knew where he had made a wrong turn, turning back to face the canal. Was there more than one?

Viserys wandered Braavos for hours searching for the red door, moving between and along the waterways, falling in with a crowd of boys his age who worked along the docks. When his stomach rumbled, he made his way to a stall that smelled of butter and roasting fish. "One, please," he said.

The peddler who ran the stall loomed over at him, his eyes going to the crown. "Got any coin?" Viserys patted his pockets, coming up with nothing. "Who'd you steal that from, boy?"

"I didn't steal it! It was my mother the queen's!" The peddler snorted and lunged towards the crown.

"Get back here! Rat!" Viserys had snuck into Dragonstone's kitchens before, ducking the peddler, snatching two skewers, and sprinting away to the chuckles of a group of locals.

***

"Fast one, eh?" said Marq.

"Ah, the cunning of youth," said Lysono. "A sword can be *so* boring." He watched the boy outpace the peddler. He had hair like the Lyseni but his face was darkened by the sun and his clothing ratty. No doubt a petty thief. "Jon? How'd we fare?"

Jon Lothston shook his head, red beard bouncing like fire in the midday sun. "All Bravos ask about is fucking gold. We have a system!"

"We're the Company, not some two-bit horde of hedge knights," said Lysono. "Let the bravos have their scarves and duelling and First Swords. We have knights."

"Braavosi and their freedom," Marq chuckled, tugging on his facial scars. "Don't you want to stick it to some slavers!" he called out, the bravos rolling their eyes at another boisterous Westerosi. "They're always so serious."

Before Lysono could devise some retort, Jon said, "Come. Ser Myles awaits us." Marq nodded, taking up his portion of the provisions and gifts they were given by the Iron Bank. Five years in the Norvoshi lowlands was an appealing contract to much of the Company, but still Lysono had played the contrarian, believing now was the time to strike at Tyrosh. But the Myrish had failed to pay on time, so the contract had lapsed and they had finally departed the Disputed Lands after a long nine years.

Most of the company waited for them in the hinterland around Pentos, always a faithful partner, but the letters would be reaching them soon. Marq would be along to Norvos in a few weeks with some recruits. "You go, Ser Mandrake," said Lysono to Marq. "I have a meeting." The Westerosi shrugged, giving Lysono leave to disappear into the crowds. In the same direction of the boy thief, Marq noted.

***

Viserys lost his footing and nearly his prize before coming to a stop in an alleyway, eating the skewers with one hand while the other fidgeted with his mother's crown. Gods he was hungry, the groan in his stomach giving way to that same pain in his chest. He looked down and gasped, a thin stream of blood staining his shirt. He touched the wound and winced, which tapped a fresh fount of tears.

His father half a world away, his mother dead, his sister and entire family taken from... but he was alone and...

They left him.

He swallowed his food and the pain, reaching towards the second skewer before stopping and pushing it inside his doublet. The peddler had grabbed him in his failed tackle, tearing the garment down Viserys's back. The Braavosi climate was not kind to his bared skin, and Viserys pushed his back into the alleyway wall to protect from the wind, and sun was setting.

He grew hungry again, crouched there in the alley, waiting. Waiting for what, he did not know, just that he was the rightful king, and Ser Willem had promised to protect him. He had never lied before, as far as Viserys was aware, but Ser Willem was dead and his sister gone, as were the Martells. Of those things, Viserys was sure. He did not need to find the red door to know that.

The wind and rain rose as the sun set, a dark cloud covering Braavos. When the rain started Viserys knew in his heart he had to do something if he was going to live, even if he was alone. With some old crates and sails, he built a shelter in the alley to keep the wind off. He was successful, but the wet still found a way in, gushing along the cobblestones to soak through the rags he lay atop. At least his feet were dry, but that might soon change as, in his shifting, the soles of one of his boots came loose. They were made for carpets and villas, not the streets of the Free Cities.

Viserys cried again, a loud, shuddering sob hat turned the prince into a mess of tears and snot, what little warmth he gained from his shaking stolen by the rain. "Mother! Daenerys! Rhaegar!" he screamed, hitting the shelter and the alley wall, collapsing on top of him and soaking him to the bone with sludge-like grime.

Viserys dug himself out of the collapsed shelter, staggering into the street, his broken boot sliding off his foot in the process. "Mother! Please, I'm sorry! I don't know- I can't... Please! Mother! What did I do!"

He clutched the crown close to his body, looking for a sun pierced by a spear or a three-headed dragon. Even a lion or a rose might have been enough, but Viserys saw only the stripes and diamonds and foreign symbols of Braavos. The strangeness of Essos, foreign and unfamiliar, overtook him as well as his solitude, and he stomped his foot and screamed again, cursing Rhaegar and Ser Willem and his mother and father and the Martells and even his baby sister. "I am the king! I am the dragon!"

Thunder crashed and lightning burst in a sheet of white across the sky, turning Viserys's momentary anger to fear once again. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! I didn't! Please, Mother! Please!" He raced back to the alley, covering his ears as the thunder rumbled and the storm settled in, a tempest far worse than that which had hailed his sister.

The Titan was all Viserys could see as he huddled in the street, sobbing with every crash of thunder and burst of lightning. Beneath his great helm his eyes burned with crimson fire, his great green form embedded in the mountainous islands that shielded Braavos from the worst of the waves. It rumbled at him, blowing as waves tore at him to reach the city beyond, but still it stood, unwavering, every flash of lightning casting its equally titanic shadow over the city.

Like some spectre of death, it advanced on Viserys, the thunder its footsteps, finally with a chance to punish Valyria for its crimes against the Titan's children. "No! No no no no no. I... I'm king. The rightful king. Mother said... Mother... She said..."

Viserys grappled with sleep like a rabid dog, pushing against it and screaming at himself, the Titan, and all the people he had ever known, so long as it meant staying awake. Death would not take him even as pain and cold and drowning rain promised death. But Viserys was too weak, too sluggish and slow, to do more than scoot himself a little farther into the alley and up enough of a slope to escape the flooding canals. With every gale and squall, the flooding reached a little closer to his ankles, pulling carts and passersby into the bay.

The vagrants' screams, drowning and pushed out to see by the violent wind, convinced Viserys he was already dead, suffering in an unending nightmare. The Titan's shadow was no common spectre, but the Stranger come to drag Viserys through all Seven Hells. "I am the dragon. I am..." His teeth chattered as he muttered, shutting his eyes and gripping the crown so tight his hands bled. "I am the dragon. I am the dragon."

Chapter Text

"What's this?" Viserys scrambled to his feat, cursing the cramps in his legs as another brigand, not a bravo, stole his mother's crown. Viserys lunged but another grabbed him, scooping him off the ground. "Who did you steal this from?"

It was a bright and dry morning, Braavos bearing no signs of the previous night's storm. Viserys found himself between five men of varying ages, from eleven all the way up to five-and-twenty. Another picked up his legs, leaving Viserys with no leverage to move, let alone fight back. Still, he struggled, trying and failing to reach one hand towards the bravo with his mother's crown. "That's my mother's! Give it back!"

"Oh, he's a fancy one!" the bravo taunted, his fellows cackling with him. He grabbed Viserys by the throat. "Can't speak *real* Braavosi, eh?" They tossed him to the ground in the middle of them. "Tell us who you stole it from." He drew a dagger, holding the tip under Viserys's neck. "Now."

Viserys shook his head. "I didn't! I swear on the Seven!"

The bravo raised an eyebrow. "Seven?" One of the other bravos whispered in his ear. "Ah, Westerosi. They do say they're feral across the Narrow Sea. Sister-fuckers and child-killers, the lot of them. Wonder which of their kings will do a better job." He tied the crown to a loop in his belt as the others laughed at his insults. "Kill him and toss his body in a canal."

They moved to block any possible escape, but escape was the last thing on the exiled prince's mind. He lunged towards the brigand, held up by one of them but close enough to reach the crown. He didn't reach the main ring, but he did catch one of the dragon heads, keeping hold as the bravo hopped backwards and the others lifted him back. The man's belt broke before Viserys's grip did, who, in his struggling, smashed the Valyrian steel's dragon heads into another man's neck.

Red spurted out at him, but Viserys took off in another mad dash to safety. The four men who remained gave chase, keeping up with Viserys but slowing to navigate some obstacle Viserys could easily slip under or through. Past some scaffolding and over a bridge clogged with merchants, Viserys ducked past a fence and into a shipyard, sneaking into one of the hulks ruined by the previous night's storm.

"Thought you could run from me?" The lead brigand appeared from nowhere, taking Viserys by the hair and driving his fist into his face. "Thought you could embarrass me, eh? You fucking worm." He drew his dagger and Viserys screamed and flinched, unready for death, when the brigand dropped him.

He swung the crown wildly, imagining he was Ser Barristan but unable to open his eyes as he fought off the attacker. "Away! I am the-"

Another man hauled him up by the scruff of his destroyed clothing. He swung the crown and pierced the man's mail and boiled leather shirt with one of the small horns. He cursed and dropped Viserys, who scrambled towards the crashing surf.

"Whoa, there!" The man was barrel-chested and tall, with a grey beard and ear-length brown hair, and armoured in plate and mail with a series of golden rings around his arms. He held up his hands in a sign of peace, kicking the brigand in the face to silence his moans.

With the sea behind Viserys and the shipyard beyond the man, Viserys had little option for escape. He could swim, but not across the bay. "Take a breath, boy."

Viserys turned his focus back to the man in gold and armour. He had a pox-scarred face and an angry gash of a scar on his right cheek amongst the remnants of a tattoo. He did as the man bid, forcing air in through his nose and out through his mouth. Getting the lay of the land, his childish mind could still take note of the man's danger, two large daggers and a hand axe on his hip, a larger axe and sword stowed on his back. His mother's crown was still on the bravo's waist, now stained to look like it was all copper and rubies by the bravo's ichor. Last, Viserys noticed his feet and their lack of covering. He had climbed Dragonstone's battlements often, and the hulk looked sturdy enough for someone of his size.

"What's your name, boy?" He met Viserys's gaze, soft brown eyes surrounded by crow's feet and weathered skin. His scar pulled on his right eye, making it look large and beady, as if it could be plucked out like a witch and used to gaze into his soul. He stood upright, walking to the bravo and inspecting the body. He took his purse and sword for himself, then untied the crown. Viserys took a step forward and the stranger turned to face him. "This what you're after? Another street thief, eh?"

His accent wasn't unfamiliar to Viserys, but muddled by a lifetime of exile. Like something in between Ser Barristan and Ser Jaime. "I am not a thief."

"Then what are you?" He crossed his gauntleted arms, kicking the brigand between the legs as he tried and failed to escape. "Well?"

Viserys's father had said there were enemies everywhere, and the rebels were from the Stormlands, just like Ser Barristan. But Ser Barristan had been one of the kingsguard, loyal to his father and fighting with his brother. But his brother was dead. He was king. But this man might be an enemy. Viserys fought a shiver, holding the crown back as if it were the prince and he the dragon guarding it. "Just... just let me by, Ser. Please."

The man narrowed his gaze. "That real?" The surf crashed and tore the crown from his grasp, Viserys dashing into the water and snatching back the crown, even as the violent waters tore at his clothing, ruined and leaving Viserys in just his breeches and broken boots.

He tried to cover himself, both modest and against the wind coming off the sea, curling down into himself. He wanted to just die and wake up from the waking nightmare that was his new existence, as the man tossed his heavy wool cloak around him. It was damp but warm , and large enough to go around him three times as the man pulled Viserys's crying and exhausted form into his arms.

***

Marq didn't know what he was supposed to do now. He'd done more than he had to, tracking the boy across the city for Lysono Maar and saving him from one of Braavos's many vicious brigand, more commonly referred to as 'canal pirates.' The canal pirates came from the lower  classes of Braavosi society, trained marines who never served long enough in the last war with Lorath to win plunder and fame to raise them to a greater social station.

They took great pleasure in tormenting the many children who roamed the city's streets, whom they were very much like when they were young, the offspring of whores, deck hands, and penniless freedmen. In packs they were dangerous, but alone as this grime-soaked boy they were beyond harmless, which was why Marq saw no issue with picking the boy up and taking him somewhere safe.

Marq was not blind, of course, that Braavos was not the perfect bastion of liberty many hope when they first arrive. The boy was small for his age, for he spoke so well he must be at least one-and-ten, but with smooth skin and all his fingers and toes. His longish hair would make him girlish enough to all but the most apprising of merchants, and his eyes... the most startling shade of violet, like a Lyseni. The payday would be worth the risk for the reward for such a creature if sold to pleasure house or Volantene noble, if what Lysono had said of the boy's hair was true. It was so dirty though, Marq could not tell the colour.

He pulled himself to his full height, looking down his thrice-broken nose at the boy as he stirred in his arms. Marq held him tight as he had held his sons, as if to let the boy know that he was free to leave, but welcome to stay. "I'm returning to my lodging. They make braised lamb shanks with dumplings and spicy cabbage, and I'm starving. Anything to get out of this weather, eh?" The boy wiped his nose on Marq's cloak, a dark shade of sea grey now with a smear of mucus. "What's your name, boy?"

He wondered where he found the Valyrian Steel – he seemed pretty insistent that it wasn't stolen – and knew that just a few of those rubies would be enough to purchase him a good pair of boots, some warm clothes, and a good meal. The whole crown could make him a lord overnight. He slipped out of his arms but kept the cape, staying at Marq's hip on the journey. He moved with none of the confidence of the other free and enslaved street youths, unsure of both the city and his place in it.

Marq was reminded of himself and his own misspent youth, his life, his flesh, exchanged to make up for his lord father's bad investments. A third son with a head for numbers, Marq had been sent away as a hostage, but sold in Pentos anyway. Those years between his purchase at age seven and when he had been sold to a Qohorik smith were buried deep in mind, but seeing a boy smaller than him bound for a similar fate...

He felt his cheek absently, at the scar where there was once a tattoo that marked him as a dancing boy.

Their destination, the Blue Lantern, lay near the Purple Harbour in a capricious neighbourhood of carpenters and fine metalworkers, artisans who turned Westerosi wood, Myrish lenses, and Pentoshi brass into the instruments of Braavos's naval supremacy, scattered with houses of pleasure and games like the Blue Lantern. Its windows and eaves hung with all manner of cerulean and azure cloth, what was most enticing about the Blue Lantern was what lay beyond the hanging awnings, flashes of curves and supple flesh, and of fine music and wine.

It enticed equal crowds of sellswords and traveling pleasure-seekers, plenty of coin flowing through it as well through bets on a fighting pit in its inner courtyard. Marq knew from first hand experience that blades and sharpened implements were strictly prohibited, but he'd lost a fight to a Dothraki with sharp teeth, so there was still plenty of competition.

"Ser Marq! Are you well?" Marq groaned at the familiar voice, Strickland's squire, the cadaverous Gorys Edoryen, cornering him in the Blue Lantern's doorway. Marq had hoped the Blue Lantern was far enough from the barracks to avoid the paymaster's boy.

"I am fine, Gorys. Move." He looked back for the boy and spotted him hiding behind a stall. Marq went back to him and Gorys followed.

"I was hoping we could discuss some training at swordplay? Ser Harry's duties have busied him of late, so I had hoped-"

"Then go bother Harry." Marq pushed past the Volantene, guiding the boy with his hand on his back, hating the young Gorys enough for his scheming enough to make Marq momentarily forget his hatred for all Volantenes. "Three bowls, mead with apple for me." He slapped down a pair of Myrish coppers and shrugged at the barman's sneer. He was lucky to be getting any coin after all the drinking and overpaying the men of the Golden Company had done for the past week. Viserys struggled up onto the stool beside him.

The door to the Blue Lantern was always opening and closing, so it was hard for the boy to calm down and stop looking for enemies, while Ser Marq's scarred glare dissuaded any marines or enterprising sellswords from trying to steal the boy. The meal was served and it was steaming hot, with the boy clutching at the bowl then cursing at the heat. "Some language. Valyrian?"

The boy nodded, prodding at hot food with the spoon. The barman put down some heels of crusty bread with butter and soft cheese, and Marq started eating, inviting the boy to join him. He did, but unlike the other boys Marq had met, and half the captains in his company, the boy held his spoon like the magisters and nobility that hired them. He ate slowly and purposefully, no arm surrounding the bowl protectively, now dribbling of broth or slurping of any kind.

"Who's this?" Mistress Caterina said, the Blue Lantern's proprietor hanging herself from Marq's shoulder. Though he wore his mail and a heavy leather gambeson, he could still feel her pressing her chest into his side, like she did when he had more hair and fewer scars. But it was comforting in a way, to feel more than the fraternal affection of his comrades-in-arms.

"Found him in the city. Lysono had interest." She narrowed her gaze but he pacified her. "His look. Valyrian, he said."

Caterina took the seat on the other side of Viserys, still eating but struggling with the bowl turning, his other hand still clinging to the crown. Removing one of the blue scarves from her neck, she offered it to the boy. "String that through the circlet, and I'll tie it at your shoulder so it doesn't fall off." The boy looked from Caterina to the scarf to Marq. Marq nodded.

Awkwardly, the boy lifted his arms and the crown, Caterina weaving the scarf around him and through the crown and tying a firm knot over his shoulder. His hands free, he dove into the meal as a boy would, eating that bowl and three others, plus two flagons full of water, three apples spread with ground peanuts, and a slice of blueberry pie.

"What's happened to him?" Carefully, Caterina reached for his head, pulling a comb from the chatelaine at her waist to pull away some of the thicker pieces of grime. "What's your name, little one?"

The boy looked from Caterina to Marq and back. Marq said, "If we were going to hurt you, boy, we'd have done so." He looked down a his second slice of pie as shame darkened his face and tears welled in his eyes.

Caterina gasped and pulled him to her bosom, muffling but barely calming the sobs that wracked his body. "He's no street orphan, Marq," she scolded, cooing and caressing his hair enough to reveal silver tresses. Knowing better than to touch, Marq looked closer at the crown. He stood. "Where's Lysono?"

Caterina looked from Marq to the boy. "You can't. You?"

"I don't know what he has planned."

"Do not act dumb, you brute." She picked up the boy, waving for a mummer and marine in her service who guarded them from the afternoon crowds, Caterina leading them to a quiet cabin on the other side of the Blue Lantern's sprawling grounds. Marq followed, watching dutifully as Caterina ordered a bath prepared, washing and putting the boy to bed. "What did Lysono say?"

"He heard a rumour, is all."

She stood, cornering him against the door with two fearless fingers jabbing him in the chest. "A rumour of what?" she hissed, making Marq realize where he was. The Golden Company was only tolerated in Braavos, that their dealings with the slave cities of Essos would never be forgiven by any true Braavosi. "A rumour of what!"

"The Targaryens." Caterina huffed and stepped back, fixing the grey and silver streaks of her hair that had come loose from her bun.

Bastards she may have had, both of them his, but Marq had to admit how very pleasing she still- "And did Lysono give you his plan? Is five years in Norvos going to be too quiet for you as well? Hm?"

He had heard this before. "I live what life I can, Mistress."

She slapped him, hard, loosening a fresh golden crown. "You're a coward, Marq Mandrake. A knight? Hah! No better than the man who forced your own thighs apart when you were his age."

Marq turned from Caterina, striding to the window. "They want to go back and the Targaryens are one way. I have a contract. Duties. And I'm on the wrong side of forty and not yet a captain."

"The same excuses." She sucked her teeth and opened the door. "Your rooms are paid up for the end of the week, but your coin is no longer good here. Please return to your room or leave. Aegor?" One of Marq's bastards, a marine, came to his mother's side, his own nose broken and poorly set when he was still a cadet, making him look even more like Marq twenty years ago

"Good evening, Father."

"Aegor." Marq looked from his boy to *the* boy, crying even in his sleep. "Cate, I-"

"Please go, Ser." Her tone told him everything he needed to know. He moved through the door. "He wants that crown, and he knows what he is. Who he is. What exactly is your plan? Deliver him to the Sealord or the Iron Bank? The Triarchy? What of all the refugees from Westeros? As soon as someone hears, he will be dead or worse within a fortnight."

"He's a Targaryen. That means something."

"He's a boy. Gods forbid he makes a decision for himself."

Marq growled, pushing past his son, the crowds, and out of the Blue Lantern. He needed a drink.

Chapter Text

Edmure was tight to his mother's hip as she glided across the sept of Riverrun, his sisters too distracted comforting one another to be of any help. He *hated* weddings and decided he would never marry just like Uncle Brynden, that men should remain in the company of one another.

He was fourteen after all. A man grown!

His mother, Lady Minisa Whent, wore mostly Tully blue, but her inner skirts were Whent yellow and black. Her hands were strong and fast, fixing arrangements or weaving a quick fix on a cup bearer or kitchen maid's clothes. "If it is to be a memory my girls have to share, let it be an extravagant memory."

Indeed, Edmure always remembered his name-day and the festivals, because his mother always made them so wondrous. She brought life into his dour father, and with Uncle Brynden's aid had helped him do to the Riverlands what no Tully or Riverking had before – unite them.

"No, not argent, grey! The Starks have no women left, but Lady Karstark knows their history as well as her own. She says the grey should be a rich grey, strong with broadcloth or wool. Sturdy and of unextravagant make. Catelyn, Darling? Do you not agree?"

Edmure looked to his eldest sister sighing at the rain. Her tears were genuine, though he imagined they were for the life she expected, not the life she had lost out on. Lysa on the other hand was a wailing mess, locked away in the tallest tower like some ancient Targaryen princess. That argument, however, his father had won. "I will not allow my daughter put a vital alliance at risk because she doesn't want to marry a perfectly eligible lord!"

Edmure thought on what he knew of both men. He had been by his father's side as he and his uncle met them, sharing drink and stories to build the bonds of brotherhood. Edmure had poured the wine.

He liked Lord Stark's brother, Benjen, a broody pup of a lord with unkempt dark hair and a long face used to smiling but devoid of happiness. He wore a dark fox pelt over his shoulders in a mirror of the wolf of his elder brother, and carried a longsword too big for him. Edmure had the same problem and offered to spar with him, but he had refused. Lord Stark – Ned, Ser Denys called him – had questioned his decision, but Benjen stood firm.

Of course, Edmure already knew the Darling of the Vale. Ser Denys Arryn was a renowned jouster and tourney knight, who had developed a following of hedge knights and small folk infantry in the Crownlands in the aftermath of the destruction of King's Landing. The process had, however, left him scarred. Lysa had screamed about Petyr's beauty and run off to drown herself in the Red Fork when she saw him unmasked for the first time.

Ser Denys did not look the same, that was true. While most of his face was intact, he had lost his ear, cheekbone, and part of his lips and eyelid on the right side of his face, melted by the wildfire fumes that washed over eastern Westeros almost three moons past. The clouds still dropped burning rain, and it was only that the spring was false and the planting delayed that a famine in two years was avoided. Ser Denys wore a mask of white ceramic to cover his face, cracks from battle repaired with molten silver.

The songs wrote themselves.

"Mother, may I... Please." Edmure looked up at his mother pleadingly. With his sisters soon married and his father and uncle riding off to war, he would be lord of Riverrun, while all his friends and their brothers, some younger than him, went off to fight the dragon prince. "I had hoped to spar with Benjen Stark."

Minisa whent softened. "Of course, my little fish."

"Ugh, Mother." She snatched him in a hug and nuzzled a kiss to his cheek, making him giggle like a toddler until he freed himself, his father's guards laughing while the handmaidens of his sisters noticed how close he was with his mother. No closer than any other Riverlands boy. War tore their kingdom apart once every generation or two – Riverlanders loved their family fiercely and for as long as they could.

He stole up to his room, donning his utilitarian, but still castle-crafted, armour. A heavy hauberk and gambeson, with a ring mail doublet. He brought the plate with him, his helmet and protection for his shoulders, lower legs, and forearms. He brought his sword and bow as well, wanting to practice his archery. If war did reach Riverrun, he may be expected to lead the defense of the castle in a siege. He should be on the battlements with his men.

The training yard was empty save some guardsmen practicing loading their crossbows. He started with some archery, mentally comparing their speeds of loading, drawing, aiming, and shooting compared to his. He was faster, their grouping was more consistent, and they could take more time to aim. Those skills were transferable as well, if the rumours of Stormlander siege engines are true. The alliance with the Baratheons just needed to hold.

"Nephew!"

"Uncle Brynden!" Edmure ran to his uncle, who drew his sword in an exaggerated show. Edmure drew his blade, a little heavy for his lanky and adolescent limbs, but he rolled his shoulders and kept the blade up anyway. Brynden cut, Edmure guarded, Brynden reversed a little faster, and Edmure pressed the attack. They traded blows for a few minutes that way, Brynden urging Edmure to increase their pace.

Brynden made a thrust toward Edmure's chest, and Edmure parried, though Brynden followed up by pulling Edmure in close and drawing a dagger he held to his neck. "That's cheating!"

"Winning isn't cheating, it's not bleeding out in your first battle." He released his nephew, clapping him on the shoulders. They sheathed their weapons and embraced properly, Brynden lightly-armoured for faster travel. "You've returned from Storm's End?"

"Indeed, nephew, You're four-and-ten and should hear this. Follow." Brynden became the famed Blackfish as he marched up to Lord Tully's solar. "What you need to know in advance is that the defense of Stoney Sept was a total rout in our favour. Connington never arrived and the loyalist Rivermen-"

"I thought the loyalists were those serving Aegon in the Reach, Uncle?"

Brynden paused. "Oh, yes... Rhaegar's. The Reds, for those cloaks and the stones from what of the red keep they fished out of the Blackwater Bay. Aegon's will be the Golds. Gold flowers, gold lions, gold trees." Brynden continued. "Anyway, the Reds took heavy losses and turned tail west, right into the Lannisters. They hold the border, and will sign an alliance, for marriage of children or of... well..."

They swung into the solar, Edmure's father slumped in his chair, eyes flicking erratically over his chosen desk, a massive cyvasse table. He was joined by lords Mallister, Blackwood, Bracken, Whent, and both Lords Vance, and a dim grandson of Walder Frey. "My lords, I bring news from the west and south."

Brynden settled to his brother's right, while Edmure went to his left. Hoster leaned in to Edmure's ear, his own whitening red hair matching his son's auburn mop. "You got some training in?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good lad. Now, train your mind. Which Vance will young Frey here approach for a marriage contract?"

Edmure thought of what he knew of the Freys, and the Vances of Atranta and Wayfarer's rest. "Wayfarer's Rest. Atranta and Acorn Hall are too close to Tully lands, they're some of our dearest bannermen. The Wayfarer's Rest Vances are ferrymen and canal barge builders. They want more canals, the Freys want work only as toll marshals. It's work they know and think they're good at."

Hoster wobbled his head and they listened in. "...expect the Lannister boy to be released from his vows? They're's no one left for him."

"The Stark girl, if she lives. Better a lion of gold than a bloodthirsty stag," Lord Bracken spat.

Lord Blackwood leaned across the table as if to strike him. "Do not speak ill of those you avoid, Lord Bracken. There are second houses that would happily give all of themselves to Tywin Lannister. The Redwynes or Rowans, all the Shield Islands to the various cousins and Lannisport Lannisters, even the eldest daughter of House Hightower's lord."

Bracken was silenced by the widespread agreement. "And his daughter? He has another son besides, I hear."

"A deformation, if the maesters speak truly. No matter. He has three brothers, two married with sons, two of whom are proven commanders." Lord Whent was an old, wrinkled matchmaker of a lord, a father himself but with greater preference for the company of his perfumers and tailors. The Lord of Harrenhal was worthy of such riches. "And a daughter but two years older than your heir, Lord Tully."

All eyes turned to Edmure, who looked behind him at first before settling on his father. "You know of this girl?"

"I recall her from my lord grandfather's... The tourney." There were sobered nods and mutters. The Riverlords were not responsible, but they felt the blame anyway for having supported Lord Whent in his great tourney at Harrenhal almost two years ago. Edmure was two-and-ten then, so Cersei would now be...

"Seven-and-ten. A beauty, fair as her mother," said Vance Wayfarer's Rest.

"With a mind as quick as a whip," said Vance of Atranta. "Lord Hoster? The decision is yours."

"We must move quick. We won't delay the wedding, but we will exchange condolences for the state of affairs, and I will lead the forces of Riverrun to treat at the Golden Tooth..." Hoster stood to move a piece across the table; a dragon towards stags guarding trouts. "The Reds, as Brynden said, need Harrenhal. Its the only thing large enough for a hundred leagues to house their roaming kingdom. Blackfish, Bracken, Blackwood, and Frey will lead the defense of the southern and eastern Riverlands, until our east can be reinforced by our allies from the Vale and North."

"Is there word yet from Jon?" asked Brynden.

Hoster opened his mouth to answer but the Frey interrupted. "My father is old and our levies spread out, my lords, Lord Tully. House Frey cannot be expected to move so far away from home to guard the kingdom from its lawful sovereign, Rhaegar Targaryen, the first of his name. The way I see it, you are all in open rebe-"

Brynden took the man by the scruff, speaking directly into his ear. "I would remind you, ser, you are speaking to your liege lord. House Targaryen ceased to be the custodians of the fealty of House Tully and all its banners, House Frey included, when it violated that fealty by killing Lord Stark, Lord Brandon, and relatives of men at this very table." Lord Mallister nodded appreciatively.

The Frey crumpled. "Our four thousand spears and two-hundred knights are spread out. We can help preserve the west and send more Tully levies east."

"No," Edmure insisted. West brought them too close to Riverrun, and no Tully ever got far by trusting the Freys. "Go east. Support our border with the Crownlands. Most of the Crownlands was the Riverlands centuries ago."

"My son!" Hoster stood, his mane hair red hair waving in the damp air of the solar. "A fine plan. Send word that I would discuss a betrothal to his daughter, Cersei, for my son, Edmure."

Lord Whent nodded. "The other item?"

"Of course, that their eldest child that is not their first son shall inherit Harrenhal. Rebuilding efforts will begin as soon as they are betrothed. House Whent shall survive as the custodians of Harren's Town, a new city to house the refugees."

Edmure knew that to be a grand gift to a second child, a child Tywin Lannister would no doubt ensure adopted the heraldry and name of Casterly Rock soon as possible. "A fine idea, Lord Tully."

"Indeed, Lord Bracken. It will need investment from within the Riverlands and abroad. Casterly Rock shall make a fine partner."

***

The wedding festivities were in full swing when Edmure was forced to avert his eyes, the bedding for Cat and Ned beginning in earnest while Lysa and Ser Denys quietly shuffled off. Lysa had insisted some handmaiden of hers sit in as comfort, but all the better for proving – Edmure would later learn against his will – that Lysa was indeed a maiden.

He thanked the gods again for his mother, who kept Petyr Baelish away from his sisters. They had been vulnerable to his charms, but Edmure saw through his slithering and sweet words. Challenging Brandon and nearly getting himself killed had been most foolish, though Minisa dissuaded him off Lysa and saw him married to a House Grafton cousin in his native Vale.

He recalled his mother speaking with Lysa, about comfort and love and the marriage bed. Ser Denys had been married once in his youth, before he was the Darling of the Vale and the heir to the Eyrie, and fathered a child, though both had died of a fever in the winter before the false spring.

With that previous experience, Ser Denys had few expectations, and in Edmure's view his devotion to knightly virtue made him the perfect match for the fragile, soft-hearted Lysa. She had taken the time to make him promise to practice his penmanship and not stop writing her, and he could visit the Eyrie with Cersei once both Tullys had children.

When the bedding was done, it was just the Tully men left, though soon they too escaped to their wives or, in Brynden's case, a quiet drink in the library. Edmure made to return to his room, before he spied a figure hitting a dummy in the training yard.

It was dark, the torches flickering in the spring rain, though Edmure recognised the figure. "Is it not late, Benjen?"

"I thought you wanted to train." He beat the dummy twice than retreated. He then took it in two fists, striking with the flat of the blade like a club. "They just... Ned wouldn't listen, and father and Brandon before him. Lya didn't..." Benjen cursed to himself. "You'll be married soon as well, I imagine."

"I am heir to a great house. It will be my honour, as it is my duty, to marry for the betterment of my family." Edmure sat at the edge of the training yard, under an awning where he could stoke a brazier. The stools beside it soon dried, and he sat with Benjen as the rain picked up. "You are heir to Winterfell. For nine moons at least if your brother and my sister..."

They both cringed and shivered in disgust. Benjen said, "I know, but I wanted adventure. Knights and tourneys and hunting for dragons in the Doom. But now... The Wall. The men of House Stark have manned the wall for thousands of years. It is a time-honoured calling."

Edmure inclined his chin. "Hm... What book did you read that in?"

"It's not from some book! It's the truth!"

Edmure shrugged. "Sure sounds like something written in a book. I suppose a wall needs sentries, but should it not be the honourable duty of all, not just House Stark? You have banners and half the land of all the realm."

Benjen seemed to consider his words. "Maybe. But for now I just want to return to Winterfell and wait for my sister to come back. You would like her. She loves swordplay."

Chapter Text

Witch Isle

Aegor indicated the pennant over the castle at the middle of the island. Half of the meagre farms below were trapped in its shadow. Viserys said, "House Upcliff, right?"

"How should I know?" Aegor chuckled to to himself, pulling the ropes and annoying Viserys again.

Over the many moons between his unofficial adoption by Ser Marq and Ma Cate, Viserys's memories of his family had faded or been displaced by what he had learned – Aegor or the other men of the Blue Lantern were far better brothers. Marines, dockworkers, and sellswords who always had a word of advice for the 'Lyseni pillow slave' Viserys posed as, taken in by the ever-benevolent Mistress Caterina. Viserys found it odd that his new 'elder brother' had the name of Daemon Blackfyre's favorite brother, though no one else did.

Aegor had, after all, taught him everything an older brother should, from how to scrape a keel, pull a line, and carve and string a bow, to the importance of trusting his instincts and finding people he could trust with his life. Viserys took that one step further,  working to stay busy whenever he woke after a particularly bad dream, or when he just had a foul mood that never seemed to end.

Truly, the thoughts made him sick, images of his tortured mother burning on the pyre, a dragon made feeble by the greatest villain of Viserys's nightmares, his father. The Mad King. The King who burned. The Last King.

"Viserys!" Aegor warned him too late as a loose line scourged Viserys like a whip.

He cursed, winding and securing the line. Ever since his first day loading crates on the docks, Viserys had learned how effective cursing could be at working out his aggression. "Apologies."

"Don't apologize, just don't do it again." That was most of Aegor's lessons, teaching the ephemeral like attentiveness as much as the technical. He tossed a headscarf at Viserys. "Your hair."

He the garment into a makeshift hood as they slid into the line of ships awaiting inspection. "Do we have enough for the tariffs?"

"We're not here for trade, boy."

"I know, it's just... You know. Eyes. Ears. Not enough and we'll look suspicious."

Aegor shook his head. "Braavosi vessels are the only ones still welcome at every port in Westeros. A fellow I served with in Lorath even made port in the Iron Islands." Aegor took the tiller off its lock.

Managing the vessel with just Viserys had been no easy feat at first, easy for him and his brother with their uncles in the past, but they had been on ships or swimming in the canals before they could walk. Viserys was often reminded of how difficult he had been in those first months, his petulance and greed when he was no longer the abandoned prince, but another of the Titan's orphans. In Braavos, a child with no prospects and less family needed to work if they wanted more than the hard tack and sea broth the Sealord saw fit to grants the vagrants of his city.

And work he did, first learning to mend sails and recycle rope, turning his hands rough, then, by moving crates and barrels, and outrunning brigands and slavers, he also aded mass to his willowy limbs. No, no endless mounds of cake and soft cheese anymore, learning to subsist on pickled fish, cabbage, and bulgur porridge just like everyone else. Delicacies in Braavos were fresh fruit and beef, and Aegor had promised him a juicy loin with apple glaze once they returned.

He had been on ships for six months, first along the coast fishing, then trips to Witch Isle and Gulltown. Those trips had been illuminating, learning about the state of his father's- the Seven Kingdoms, and all his numerous relations' claims to power. On that small vessel, however, Viserys had been entrusted with charting a course from Braavos to somewhere across the sea and back – a rite of passage for most young Braavosi.

It had taken him no more or less time than was normal to chart course and reach Witch Isle, but all the other children, for it was not limited to boys, had their parents, aunts and uncles, or older siblings to guide them. For Viserys, it was not so much that he did not have a blood relation with him, it was that there would be no ship waiting for him when he returned home. In Braavos, ships were passed as inheritance more often than land or coin, with histories as riveting as the tales of any Westerosi castle or Valyrian steel sword.

Indeed, Viserys had little to his name; a stack of armour and weapons waiting for him to grow into, claims of fealty and empty vows by those in Ser Myles's inner circle, but none of it was *his*. Not really. Not in any way that mattered.

"What about Gilberto?" asked Viserys

"What about him?"

Viserys sat on the railing beside Aegor at the tiller, enjoying the feeling of the sun on his back drying the frigid spray of the northern Narrow Sea. "Ma Cate said you *and* Gilberto did this trip. But he joined the Company."

Aegor offered him a raised eyebrow.  "I suppose there's no harm in telling you. He left because of a woman, obviously." Viserys's interest was peaked. Perhaps it was because he spent every night in the proximity of whores and their clients, but he had grown to love rumours and gossip. "He did this trip and a few others, right up until he was fourteen with our Uncle Agostino. If your father's a merchant or landed banker though, you only do the first one." Aegor's adjustments to the tiller were masterful, keeping them straight as the tide pulled them towards Witch Isle. "Gilberto was in a trio of friends, but both the other two were the children of bankers. He bought a sword and became a Braavo, she a manager of a hospice and clinic for the freedmen."

The freedmen were a growing force in Essos, Viserys had heard. They were not as much a problem in Braavos where they were encouraged to settle and join up as marines and hinterland settlers, but in nearby Pentos and Lorath, they were sowing the seeds of rebellion and freedom. The refugees from Westeros had not helped, spreading the Faith of the Seven and its anti-slavery sentiments.

"So while Gilberto would go fighting, they..."

"Not in any way that mattered, but Silvio, the boy, his father had the Sealord's ear, which convinced Henrietta's father. Father tried to come back to make for a better match, but it was too late." Aegor offered Viserys the tiller, who took it eagerly. "I tried to bring him back, convince him to join the marines, but his mind was made up. He was running, still is, but he made his choice."

Viserys guided them to port, ordering the anchor dropped and the lines cast. He checked the sails, raised the tiller, and, after tying up his hair and covering it, opened the hold for the inspectors. They were Gulltown inspectors, really the only ones a Braavosi merchant or smuggler would have to worry about, but after the destruction of King's landing, what remained of the city's watch had spilled north. Half joined up with Rhaegar Targaryen, the other half emigrating to the Vale.

"What's your cargo?" The inspector stepped aboard, a Grafton tabard over his light armour. He didn't even look up from his clipboard. "This is the *Caterina Viola*?"

Aegor busied himself with the inspector as the irregulars of the dock militia wandered amongst the cargo – ten casks of whale oil, one hundred yards of whale skin, twenty bolts of flax broadcloth, and six casks of Norvoshi spirits.

Aegor said, "You counted six casks? There should only be five." Aegor had blossomed as well since Viserys had grown to know him, closed off with all but those he was closest to. His father was not in that number.

The inspector nodded thoughtfully. "I will investigate this error in great detail. Thank you, sir."

"Thank you for your service." Aegor offered his hand to the inspector, who took it and the gold ring on his finger. "Be well."

The inspector nodded to Aegor and then Viserys, ushering the guards off the ship, sixth cask in hand. "Now what?"

"Now, you watch the ship. I need a drink."
***
Viserys might have complained before, but he took curious pleasure in the work of manning the ship. It was his way of gaining some sort of victory over his brother and father and the other great lords of Westeros. He doubted if they had ever torn their hands pulling rope, or nearly lost a foot to a splinter. He chose not to think on one of Mistress Caterina's more high-minded lessons on humility, as Viserys had long questioned what it was he had to feel humble about.

He supposed that he did have a crown, but Seven Hells, it wasn't even his.

After stowing the lines, checking the anchor and mooring, sweeping the deck, cleaning out the hold, and collecting empty crates and barrels for insurance purposes, Viserys climbed the mainmast. He sat on the uppermost yardarm, swaying in the wind and eating some hard tack out of boredom.

The ship was hardly a royal galleon of King's Landing, but it was fast and elegant, designed for two crew and plenty of cargo or marines. It was technically a landing vessel, "amphibious" was the word Aegor used, repurposed after the end of the last war against the Lorathi into his own ship.

From his vantage point, Viserys spied a massive ship rolling into port, a procession of men, and one woman, in furs and dark cloaks. Each looked more long-faced than the last, but the man in the lead was the most long-faced of all, with dark brown hair and a well-kept beard. His ship was large, with a merman on the prow and merlings on the hull.

"House Manderly." Viserys looked down the dock then back up. He noted the heading of the Northern procession and slid down the mast.

Removing the tiller and locking it below deck, Viserys donned his boots, tunic and shoulder cape, tightening his headscarf and hopping to the dock. Using the Manderly ship and Upcliff Castle to orient himself, Viserys walked briskly inland, up a steep embankment and through a dock market. He spied the woman in the group, and she looked much less northern and far more beautiful, with fair skin and long auburn hair expertly secured at the back of her head. She was with child as well, the swell in her middle not easily covered.

The other man was older, as old as Ser Marq at least, with tousled auburn hair going grey and a craggy, wind-burnt face. The guards had mermen or wolves – direwolves – on their armour, but this man had a fish on his tabard. A black fish.

Viserys may well have been watching the Warrior himself, Brynden 'Blackfish' Tully absent the same ire Viserys had for Aemon the Dragonknight and the other great warriors of his house. Not for the first time, Viserys tried to remember those days before he left King's Landing, the truth in his father's raving and Rossart's chittering, the logic in the Kingsguard's cowardice, even a coherent word in the repeated crying spells of Princess Elia's handmaidens. He had an even fuzzier recollection of the man himself, tilting at the lists at Harrenhal.

The Blackfish had a brother, Viserys recalled, the Lord of the Riverlands, and he had children. They both had red hair, but he was almost fraternal with the man in the lead, Lord Stark. He knew it wasn't Brandon or his father. He saw what happened to them.

"Are you gonna buy something?" a merchant chirped. Viserys began to shake his head before he saw what she was selling – embroidered patches of a white three headed dragon with red eyes on a black field. "For King Aemon. You saw the Starks, eh? Rumour is they're meeting with Lord Arryn right here on Upcliff! Can you believe it!"

Viserys nodded. "Sorry, I'm... not from here. Who's King Aemon?"

The merchant nodded, pitying Viserys's ignorance. "The Silver Prince had a bastard with Lord Stark's sister. Him and the Riverlords rose for his nephew, Aemon. In a secret dragon ritual. The King in the Tower says otherwise, but I say bastardy's got nothing to do with it. North's peaceful, and we deserve some of that peace too." Viserys looked around. Witch Isle had always seemed very peaceful, though the smallfolk were a fair bit more superstitious and deferential to House Upcliff than Viserys recalled as normal. Then again, what did his family know about treating their vassals fairly?

"Thank you." He overpaid with a Braavosi coin, taking a thicker tunic for his large payment as well, the seaward winds a little less punishing in the sheep's wool. He kept a few hundred paces behind the Stark train, though he stopped and let them fall out of sight before they reached the walls of Upcliff.

What was he thinking? What would he do? Say his name and think that mattered. "Take me to our mutual nephew!"

No, at best he would be tossed down the hill back to the docks and have to explain himself to Aegor, who would tell Ma Cate, who would tell Ser Marq... It would all just be very embarrassing.

He made his way back down the hill, at least enjoying the market and using some of his pittance wages to buy a new sea knife, then returning to the *Caterina Viola*. Aegor returned soon after him. "Visit a market?"

"I was bored. Did you sell everything?"

"I did." Aegor looked over his shoulder at the castle. "Your father had one of those? I've seen landless freedmen with larger houses."

"It wasn't just any castle. The Red Keep."

"Ah. Right." Viserys had told Aegor the same he did not know how many times, but every time he was nonchalant. It made Viserys feel peaceful. Like his father was just a man with a job, and he died doing that job. Better than the reality. "Shall we wait a day, or go now?"

Viserys looked west. Somewhere beyond Witch Isle lay the Vale and the rest of Westeros. He hoped his sister and brother's children were well. He had to.

"Be patient," Mistress Caterina had always said.

"Think twice, act once," Ser Myles had advised him.

So, as a king should, he thought about Aegor's offer. He fit the tiller back in place. "We have the light and the wind."

They were off within the hour, Aegor making a quick trip to shore to purchase a few bottles of Arbor gold items. Viserys guided them back out to sea and, instead of looking west at a land ripe for conquer, he looked east, at a land in need of something else.

Chapter Text

The Titan's roar signalled Viserys's return, and for a moment he felt like a king, as all Braavosi did when the Titan spoke. Aegor gave him a clap on the shoulder as Viserys guided them to port, signalling the end of the rite and his passage out of childhood and into his adolescence. There was no such custom in any of the cultures of Westeros or Valyria's daughters, but he considered that Braavos, as the sworn mortal enemy of Valyria and everything it stood for, was right to have something contrarian of its own.

Now was a time for him to leave in the mornings and stay out late, taking whatever lessons he can from whomever may offer it. Were he of the lower classes, he would seek an apprenticeship or a spot as a deck boy on a merchant vessel – most marines started as deck boys, after all. Were he the child of a member of the Great College, Keyholder of the Iron Bank, a landed merchant, or a specialized artisan like a lens crafter, he would be taking lessons in the quadrivium arts to mould him into a professional. Viserys knew what was planned for him, however, even if he did not know what exactly he should expect.

They were docked and walking into the Blue Lantern within the hour. Away for less than a month, it was not even the longest journey Viserys had ever been a part of, but this time there was a finality to his return. He saw Ser Marq in the courtyard, sharing a chaise with Ma Cate and a bottle of Dornish Red, so he made for his room before either of them saw, his goodbyes to Aegor already said.

At peace in his room, he gathered and packed the few possessions he had – his mother's crown, a stiletto from the house with the red door, and the blue scarf from Ma Cate. It was all secured using Ser Willem Darry's sword belt. After he had explained to Lysono Maar what he remembered of the house with the red door. The men of the Golden Company had found it within the hour, along with stinking bodies but no sign of the Dornish, friends in the Second Sons sharing that Prince Oberyn Martell had tried offering them lands in kingdoms not his own as payment for service to his house.

Viserys grimaced, holding his chest. The scar was barely visible and he had no lingering defects according to the Company's doctors, yet still he felt the dagger. From Oberyn Martell, he assumed, after Ser Marq had cornered those same Second Sons. He had learned of Oberyn's reputation – the Red Viper, they called him – and that Viserys was lucky to be alive.

Securing the belt across his body in recognition of Ser Willem's fidelity, he bundled the crown up separate from the scarf and returned it to its hiding place behind a floorboard under his bed. The scarf he would take, the blue reminding him of Mistress Caterina, Aegor, and Braavos overall. Though it had been a messy adoption, he felt he was one of the Titan's children, and would happily return in the future.

***

Ser Marq had hired a ship, having long planned to recruit a horde of the Blue Lantern's child residents to join the Golden Company with Viserys, but that did not seem to be the plan any longer. As he waited by the docks, Viserys spotted Ser Marq making his way to the ferries in the Purple Harbour, not to the foreign ships of Ragman's Harbour. "Coming?" he called, waving Viserys over.

"Ser Marq what is-" Two men charged from the ether, pushing a gag into his mouth, binding his wrists, and throwing a bag over his head. Viserys struggled and strained against the bonds, though someone beat his head with a club, sending him sprawling into the bottom of a rowboat.

His mind was a haze of light and shadow, figures moving somewhere behind the burlap that blinded him. Salty water splashed on him, and then the rowboat made landfall on a pebble beach. They moved him to shore and tied a rope around his wrist bindings, securing him to others in front of and behind him. Like Viserys, they did not struggle except when pushed, spitting out their gags to insult the men or try kicking and biting them.

They started them west, first on the beach with the surf on their left to the noth, turning south as the sun rose higher. The land rose as well, pebbles solidifying into a dirt path that ascended a series of rolling hills, eventually delivering them to the windswept highlands south of Braavos. Viserys's boots were comfortable and well padded for the walk, while his wool tunic and small clothes held back the worst of the cold. And the Witch Isle jumper.

They walked them well past nightfall, depositing them free of their sacks and gags inside a box tent. There were nine other boys with Viserys, all but two of whom were a variety of Essosi. One was a Summer Islander, dark skinned with black braids and studs in his ears, while the other appeared Westerosi, with honey-coloured hair, freckled skin, and green eyes. A Company man – a squire from his mixture of silver and copper arm rings – tossed in some waterskins and a bucket of bread heels, a stern look ensuring they were properly shared.

As they ate in silence, Viserys risked a look below the tent wall, counting eleven other tents in addition to a few hundred infantry and fifty or so knights, squires, and light cavalry. Viserys stood, deciding he had enough, when one of the other boys pulled him back. "Don't resist. It'll only get worse later if you do."

Viserys crept forward to inspect the guard outside their tent, but he was unfamiliar. The boy who held his arm looked a little older than Viserys from the dusting of hair on his upper lip and chin, taller as well with knobby knees and spindly fingers. He had the common Essosi look of olive skin and dark brown hair, though his was sheared short.

"How do you know?" Viserys sat again, taking a sip from the waterskin once it reached him. "Done this before?"

He shook his head. "No, but I've seen what happened to those who do. Beaten to a bloody pulp." He nodded eagerly. "Real bad. Teeth, noses, fingers chopped off."

Viserys raised an eyebrow. "You *saw* this?"

"Saw, heard, what's the difference?" He gnawed on a heel of bread, handing Viserys another. There was plenty to go around but a bigger boy, the biggest, was hoarding the bucket, doling out the bread at random. He was tall and wide, with a round belly and arms as thick as Viserys's thighs. His hair was a matted mop, but if Viserys squinted and titled his head just right, he could see that it once resembled Black Balaq's tidy locs. The archer from the Summer Isles had been a kinder man to Viserys than Lysono Maar or Gorys Edoreon, though he looked between Summer Islander and something else.

"Hey. Hey!" Viserys got the bigger boy's attention. "What's your name?"

He snorted at Viserys. Viserys repeated the question in the bastard Valyrian of Braavos, then High Valyrian. "He's simple," said the smallest boy. His head had been unevenly shaved. For good reason, given the flea welts and his incessant scratching. "Big Barak, they call him."

The other eight boys nodded. "Killed three boys his size and ate a fourth. I saw it," said the tall boy. Viserys gestured to the bucket of bread, ignoring the others. Big Barak pulled the bucket closer, eating and spitting out the stale bits. "What's your name?"

"Viserys."

"Talal." Viserys looked from Talal to the others.

They all avoided his gaze, save Big Barak, who kept his eyes on him, and the flea-bitten boy gesturing to himself. "Joho," he said.

There was little conversation after that, though plenty of complaints of hunger and asking to make water. They let Big Barak go, who snarled at the guard to be released. Talal said his teeth had been sharpened by a shadow binder from Asshai. They all quickly learned to distrust Talal's tall tales, but Viserys started seeing bits of truth in the tall boy's knowledge. The guard may not have been the dispossessed son of a Volantene Triarch, but he was on the run from the Tigers. Just the same, he opened his ears wide whenever he heard the name 'Baqarro,' because the first time he heard it 'Big Barak' perked up.

"Ser Laswell wants the big ones," said an unfamiliar voice. "Way I see it, those three, maybe the the Westerosi, and-"

"One," a familiar voice said. Viserys praised the Warrior for keeping Ser Marq nearby. "We have one with Baqarro, but this is my unit, squire." Viserys had done his counting, and it seemed that Ser Marq had five squires; uncommon in Westeros, common in the Golden Company, with squires often feuding for their knights' attentions like lords seeking a king's favour. Viserys supposed that in their minds, Ser Marq was the closest thing to a king.

"But the tall one-"

"Is going to be an archer. Who has a reach like that at thirteen?" Ser Marq made a dismissive sound. "Enough talk. You all rest, I'll watch."

***

They journeyed south and west like that for weeks, their meals of stale bread scattered with treats of pickled cabbage and dried fish, though they relished the even rarer bone broth far more, hot where the Hills of Norvos were frigid and windy. It was just over two moons later when the squash of damp highland grass give way to windswept plains.

The air was dry and warm, and a river babbled nearby. Their bonds were cut and the sacks removed, Viserys's unit just one of many in a crowd penned in by mounted squires. "The Upper Rhoyne," muttered Cosimo, a portly Rhoynish boy who knew western Essos like the back of his hand. He had been first to introduce himself unprompted. Taken as a slave, he was freed by the Company and joined them soon after. "The Upper Rhoyne is wide and deep, with perilous rapids upriver and downriver. This is a rare calm stretch."

"Good morning, recruits!" Ser Marq cantered to the front of the hundred-odd recruits, arm rings glistening in the morning sun.

The recruits muttered replies.

"I am Captain Marq Mandrake, you may call me Captain Mandrake or Ser Marq, and I hate repeating myself. Good morning, recruits!"

"Good morning, Ser Marq!"

Ser Marq nodded. "Wonderful." He slid off his horse with catlike grace, tossing his weapons and gear at the closest squire. "For the next six moons, you are mine. Your parents might have sold you to us to make up a debt, given you to us in the hopes that you might learn a trade, or you're the son of one of our own." Two of every ten cadets whooped and whistled. They were all older, bigger, and stronger, with a swagger that reminded Viserys of Ser Jaime. None of his unit were nearly so old, but there were two strong boys, and three were tall. And not one of them had anything resembling 'swagger.'

"Let me be clear, you are all equal in the eyes of the Golden Company. There will be no favours from knightly fathers or Volantene concubine mothers. No better weapons, no extra rations, and no special treatment." Ser Marq's eyes settled on Viserys, while his lecture settled into the recruits. "If you make it all six moons, you will become cadets, and then infantry or squires, and more after that if you have the steel beneath the gold."

The squire beside him roared, "Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!" replied the Company men and sons.

There were mutters about knighthoods and glory, of freeing enslaved mothers and avenging murdered fathers. Viserys had tried mining Gilberto, Ser Marq and Ma Cate's second son, for information on what he could expect, but he had been tight-lipped and unpleasant to deal with at the best of times. All he had said was "act quickly," but Viserys didn't know what that meant.

"For now, you have orders." Ser Marq pointed across the river at Harry Strickland, who finished placing ten bundles on the far shore. It looked like a soldier's kit, pots and spears hanging off each pack. Viserys looked to his unit. Baqarro nodded.

For the first time in too long, Viserys broke into a mad dash, the first in the water and pumping his arms to swim across the river. Others who had reached the water after him were soon passing him, longer limbs and stronger lungs delivering greater speed. Except no one accounted for the river's current, pulled half a league downstream as they swam.

Treading water, Viserys risked a look back to assess the situation. Everyone in his unit was *in* the water, which couldn't be said for everyone, but four of his unit were struggling to move and keep their heads above water. He swam to the nearest one, Vaok, a slave from Volantis with a spider tattoo over one eye. "Kick with me!" he had to shout to be heart over all the splashing, pulling Vaok along as he threatened to drown. "Kick! Kick!" he roared in High Valyrian.

With four legs on one ungainly beast, they swam, reaching the far shore with the first wave of cadets. Viserys worked to catch his breath as he turned back to the river. "Get... get our gear." He indicated the bags and Vaok nodded, taking off in a graceful, leaping run that carried him to the farthest pack. A group of all Company sons had claimed the first three packs for themselves and, as soon as Baqarro was out of the water with Talal in his arms, his unit claimed a second.

The others trickled ashore slowly, though they were at least not the last unit to cross, half of the last still on the far side of the river. Viserys helped the last three of his group ashore, the blond boy, the only one of them still nameless, pulling two under his own strength. They met Baqarro carrying all their packs, though Talal and Joho were digging around inside it as he hiked up the embankment. "We've the light," said Talal. "We should start walking."

"Where?" the others asked.

Each of the boys shrugged as Talal studied the scroll, turning it this way and that to decipher its secrets. "Wait, I just remembered!" The boys looked to Talal hopefully. "I can't read."

Most save Kasté, the Summer Islander, and the Westerosi, shrugged. "I can" Viserys said, taking the scroll to study a rough map of western Essos. Their location was not marked, unless they were really most of the way to the Summer Sea. There was a red 'X' drawn inland from Myr to its north-east. "That's the Golden Fields," said Cosimo. "Hugor's Hill, the locals call that spot."

Viserys was certain Andalos was north of Pentos, not far to its south east, but Cosimo seemed sure. "Then, to Hugor's Hill."

The Westerosi boy seemed almost excited, though he hid it behind his hand, drifting to the middle of the unit. The oldest of them, a Dothraki boy named Drogo whose father, some sort of great chief, had given the Company his son as a sign of good faith with the Golden Company, said, "Andals. South Norvos."

Viserys looked south with him and Cosimo, handing Cosimo the map and sending him forward to lead the way with Baqarro. "Watch our tail," Viserys said in the common tongue, the only language they all knew. Drogo nodded, claiming one of the spears and puffing his chest at the other units in a silent dare.

There were many other units – ten to be precise – but only five others were moving south with them. Two had turned west and three east, but whether they had misread their maps or were given different destinations, none of the recruits had any clue. Viserys did his best to get the lay of his unit, trying to learn more than just their names and which language they preferred. Common, High Valyrian, Dothraki, Ghiscari, the tongue of the Summer Isles, Rhoynish, and three varieties of Bastard Valyrian. In short, a typical gang of Essosi sellswords.

As comfortable morning drifted into muggy afternoon, the sun beating down on them, they marched in companionable silence, passing at midday to inspect and dole out their supplies. Baqarro handed over the heavy packs reluctantly, but Viserys noted his sigh of relief.

"There's barely enough food for three days!" cried Kasté.

Viserys believed Talal's claims that Kasté was a deposed prince more and more, so similar to him after leaving Dragonstone. "Hunt!" Drogo proclaimed.

Their supplies were not many, but there was enough. Viserys claimed the camp knife, while the rest squabbled over the bill hook and short bow. Talal took the latter while the Westerosi the former, holding it in a firm grip, as if it were a sword. When they resumed their journey, Viserys walked next to Talal to ask him what he knew of their nameless companion. "I asked his name, but no answer. I heard he was the son of a daughter of a great magister, fled into the arms of the Golden Company with the aim of taking vengeance on his step-father for slights against his father."

That made actual sense, though Viserys was not about to admit as such. "Have Joho keep an eye out? We don't need some Company's son helping another unit undermine us."

Chapter Text

Through the day and past dusk they walked, complaining about their aching feet even as the other units made camp on the riverbank. "Planning to explain why we're still walking, Rhoynish?" Zadjet groaned. He reminded Viserys the most of himself, the third son of a wealthy master who had spent the last two years as a farmhand in the hinterland surrounding Slavers Bay.

Cosimo offered no answer. Kasté said, "This is ridiculous! A prince does not walk until his feet bleed!" and sat on the first rock he saw, perched in silence.

Zadjet and most of the others sat with him, but Cosimo and Baqarro kept walking. Viserys caught up to them. "But what *are* you looking for?"

"That." Cosimo indicated a stretch of brown rocky mountains to the south, some ruins poking over their peaks. He stopped soon after, sitting and removing his sandals. "It's bad luck to sleep within sight of the Rhoyne if one does not sail upon it." Viserys didn't put much stock in such superstitions – magic and prophecy had been his brother's downfall, after all – but he fetched the other seven boys anyway. They built a fire from scrub brush to keep off the wind, and ate some hard tack and cured meat to fill their bellies, but sleep was more tempting.

To their collective surprise, Drogo organized a watch order, his usual bluster giving way to focus, the fire behind him as he watched the plains between their camp and the river. Baqarro and Joho stayed awake with him, muttering in Dothraki while combing out their hair, though Joho merely scratched at his, with Drogo even carving a comb to work the tangles from Baqarro's hair.

As the rest found their way to sleep, Viserys lay awake, studying the stars as if he were still on the deck of the *Caterina Viola*. He wondered if Daenerys was looking up at those same stars, if she could even see the stars. Perhaps his nephews and niece had been taught to look up, Aegon with the Maesters of the Citadel in Oldtown, Aemon with the Children of the Forest in Winterfell, and Rhaenys with the water mages of Dorne.

When sleep claimed Viserys, he dreamed of flying between those castles, scooping up his sister and the children of his brother to ferry them to safety in the Blue Lantern.

He woke with a start, dawn burning away the evening chill. Vaok, Talal, and Cosimo were awake as well, all muttering in a creole of the Orange Shore. They kept talking as Viserys stepped behind a rock to relieve himself "Shall we... cook breakfast?" Cosimo asked.

Viserys looked at him queerly. He went through the gear, in a pile in the middle of the camp. He found a pan, a pot, and a kettle, along with ten spoons and three more knives – one for skinning, one for scaling, and one for splitting wood. "Where are those fish you caught?"

Viserys had them skinned and frying in minutes, feeding the fire and making a soup of what herbs and tack they had. Vaok found salt, sugar, and flour for some quick flatbread, while Talal shot two grouse while Cosimo stole their eggs. It was a hearty meal, everyone else finding something to do as they packed camp, checked snares, or, in the case of Drogo and Joho, journeyed back to the river for water.

It was almost an hour later when Viserys realized neither had returned. "Leave them. Onward, Rhoynish!" Kasté smacked Cosimo in the back of the head, and Baqarro swiftly knocked him down. "I'm right! We can't very well keep waiting for them,"

"Drogo wouldn't leave us," countered Zadjet. "He's our rearguard."

"I'm with the Summer Islander," retorted Talal. "I like Joho, and Drogo, but we are running out of time."

"The tall man speaks out of his ass, as always," Vaok spat in High Valyrian. Only half the unit understood him, threatening to tear itself apart as they squabbled over the best course of action. Viserys tried his best to get their attention, though their blood was rising and hands started moving to their few weapons.

"QUIET!" bellowed Baqarro, drawing the eyes of the unit. It was the first word he spoke in the common tongue, at least in their presence. He shoved Viserys to the middle of the unit.

"We don't know what will happen if we aren't all there. Something could have happened, and they... Drogo and Joho are our brothers-in-arms, and we are of the Golden Company. Company men never go back on their word, do they?"

There was a resounding "No!" and they took off towards the river, cobbling together clubs and slings for those of them that didn't yet have a weapon.

Viserys caught the Westerosi eyeing the spear in Baqarro's hands, pointing it out and having the largest of their number hand it over. He offered his knife in exchange, but Baqarro shook his head, breaking a branch off a dead tree and hefting it like a club.

When they reached the river again they came upon a grisly scene, three units, and Drogo and Joho, tangled in a free-for-all melee that was had stained the Rhoyne red. None were dead, all thanking their gods, but many groaned with terrible bruises and swollen eyes, while Drogo and a Company's son grappled in the middle of the crowd. Viserys pulled the unit into a huddle. "Five minutes. You find them and get over this rise and back out of sight." He looked to Cosimo and Kasté. Neither of them had a weapon, or looked ready for a fight. Kasté even had a puddle between his feet. "Don't lose our supplies."

Baqarro and Zadjet carved them a path while the rest fanned out, Viserys making his way towards Drogo. Vaok and Talal just started hitting people, drawing focus from the riverbank and thinning out the crowd. He lost sight of the Westerosi but trusted him to not put their unit at risk, keeping his eyes open for Joho's welts as he went. They instead found him trying to free Talal, eight boys trying to pull him apart by his limbs, another two sitting on top of him.

Flashing his knife and letting Baqarro toss two of the boys into the river gave the rest enough pause for Talal to find his footing and go running to safety. The rest of them were pushing through to Drogo, with Zadjet and Viserys finding themselves back to back with the Dothraki, and surrounded by boys who were giants by comparison.

Well fed in the manses and villas of the Company's knighthood and leadership, they were generations removed from Westeros but with an undeniable ur-Westerosi accent. All were trained, clubs and stones wielded like swords and maces, a few were even men grown like Drogo, and all were baying for blood.

"Craven Andals!" snarled Drogo, lunging at a boy twice his width. Like some sort of monkey he scrambled up to the boy's head, his arms unable to find purchase but his teeth finding his ear. Viserys winced as the boy's skin tore and snapped.

Many of the younger boys fled but the Company's sons closed ranks. One of them, with sandy blond hair and long arms, pulled Joho from the crowd by the scruff. "What's this? One of yours, Lyseni?" Viserys drew himself down like a bow under tension as eyes settled on him. In the moment of calm, more dashed forward, two grappling Zadjet and the rest piling on Drogo. "Let's see how this slave likes a real welt, eh?"

He drove his fist into Joho's gut, then his nose twice. It was like watching one of the Company's famous mammoths stomp on a rat already suffering from disease. He stood and stomped on his gut for good measure, then drew a skinning knife. "Now for something that won't heal."

The other boys froze, even the Company's sons looking to their leader. This was not what they expected. To Viserys, the knife felt like ice in his hands, slick and cold. Even Drogo was still, though he had turned a furious shade of red, and not from the pile of boys on top of him, as the Company man ran the tip of his knife down Joho's chest, opening a shallow, stinging cut.

Out of nowhere, the Westerosi burst from the river, thrusting the spear towards the Company's son. It took him in the face, opening a grisly wound from his ear to his mouth and giving Joho opening to replace his shirt and take off towards their unit.

Zadjet found his spine first, kicking one recruit between the legs and putting his thumbs in the eyes of another. Baqarro pulled Drogo free and grabbed the Westerosi and Viserys both, throwing them over his shoulders while Drogo kicked, punched, elbowed, and bit his way through the Company's sons. Ten again, the unit fled towards the mountains, bruised, bloodied, and more than a little shaken.

Viserys recalled that Ma Cate used to speak with one of her girls or boys whenever a customer at the Blue Lantern was too rough, but Drogo and Talal, the most talkative of their unit, had been spurned already. A slave a Company knight had won playing cyvasse, Joho seemed to be the youngest of them, still – but perhaps no longer – very idealistic about the world. Viserys went to one of the packs for some gauze, which he offered to his fellow recruit. "For your wound, brother."

Joho looked from Viserys to the gauze. "It... it was not the first time someone... someone tried to..."

"I understand," Viserys interjected. He offered the gauze again. "The woman who took care of me taught me some healing arts. Once we make camp, yes?"

Joho thought for a moment then nodded. "My papa used to gather tansy moss under the long bridge for cleaning the ladies wombs. Bitter work, but his hands..." Joho tittered, "He used to dance coins across his knuckles like a mummer. Or old seashells, when he didn't have coin. It was seashells most of the time."

"My father would *never* cut his nails. They would scrape across the ground and gather all sorts of rubbish."

"Eww!"

They laughed and shared a few other stories, soon the others joining in and forgetting the day's trials. They reached the northern tip of the mountains, the Velvet Hills, just as the sun was setting, and they built a large fire at Drogo's insistence. "No fear. Let them see!" He climbed up a rock and whooped into his trophy, the ear with some hairy scalp still attached. "Do you hear me, Torman! Ah-ho! Ah-ho!"

There were confused looks around the fire. Talal cleared his throat. "Torman Peake is the leader of the Company's Sons, the unit we grappled with. His father is a mad lord, the deposed sovereign of three great castles in the Sunset Lands." Drogo sat as if Talal were a khal holding court, nodding in agreement. "Now he leads the great charges of the Golden Company, astride a great horse of stone and trees."

Joho, Dothraki on his mother's side, stood up. "I shall steal this horse of stone and trees!" There were cries of assent. "I shall take his arm rings for myself! That is the price I will take!"

"Need any help?" The ten recruits spun on ten figures farther up the mountain. They carried torches and the same smattering of weapons, but they were more the size of Viserys than Torman Peake.

Viserys looked to his unit, and all were silent. "Speak your names."

Ten boys their age came into the light, appearing just as bruised and dirty, and a little more tired. Two Westerosi led them; a plain, short boy with mousey hair and a dusting of freckles, and a stocky boy with sandy hair and a large, once-broken nose. "Robar Osgrey," said the plain one.

"Oscar Peake," said the stocky one. There were mutters around the units as the other eight came into the light; the unit looked split between slave and debt boys, and younger Company's sons. "Torman is my brother."

***

Viserys learned over a few hours before rest and over their journey the following morning that there were simply not enough Company's sons to sustain a second unit, younger sons and little brothers grouped with half-trained and uncut Unsullied and a few fosterlings from the Seven Kingdoms.

Robar Osgrey was the nephew and adopted son of a cavalry captain, small for his age but whip smart and ruthless with an uncle that ruled his family castle of Standfast in the Reach. Oscar Peake balanced him, large like his older brother but kind and well-meaning, heaping apologies on Joho and Drogo both for Torman's needless violence.

They followed the Velvet Hills for three days, moving at a steady pace to avoid both the Company's sons' as well as the many brigands and outlaws that lived in and around Ghoyan Drohe. Throughout that journey, Robar, Oscar, and their fellow Company's sons taught Viserys's unit about all sorts of things, from the best wood for weapons and how to set consistent watches, to some basic sword and spear work they started drilling everyone on in the mornings. They made real recruits out of them all, while also teaching the former slaves to take pleasure in their newfound freedom, though still warning them about the risks of deserting. More than one recruit had ended up enslaved again.

Viserys's unit, however, were far more successful in foraging, trapping, and the mending of equipment. Viserys alone worked his fingertips to dried-up nubs with all the patches he was sewing, shoe soles he was mending, and cuts and scrapes he was treating.

On the morning of their fourth day, about the set off across the Little Rhoyne, Viserys eyed the Westerosi in his unit, pointing him out to Robar. "He say anything to you?" Robar shook his head. "Odd. Are all Company officers, your fathers, Westerosi?"

Robar wobbled his head back and forth. "Many are. Knighthood is often the only path to being anything higher than a captain, and many Essosi do not pursue it. That is odd though."

Whether he wanted an answer or was just thinking to himself, Viserys did not know. "Some of us are the sons of Company men, or former slaves, or given as debts. Which one is he?"

"And you?"

"Ser Marq saved me. I suppose I'm repaying a debt to him, in a way." They studied the Westerosi from afar, still with the spear and watching the river, a growing pile of fish next to him. "He's still here, if that means anything."

"Hm. Odd."

Chapter Text

Tall green fields gave way to stubbly brown grass as they moved south, lands no longer as rich with game sowing hunger and discontent in the the units. Viserys and Oscar played peacemakers, discouraging the factions that began to emerge – there would be plenty of that when they were Company men.

They had not come across another soul in a moon either, and the recruits bickered like old men as a result, boredom as well as hunger adding to their malcontent. They were supposed to have found Hugor's Hill already, supposedly within spitting distance of Myr but with no sign of any roads, Valyrian or otherwise. Viserys at times worked to remember his histories, seeking truth in his mother's stories. There must have been some logic, because he got them to the banks of the Lhorulu and some ruins as well, where there were wilded groves of fruits and nuts to eat, and game to hunt.

They bathed in the river and walked its banks for days, taking in their reflections in still pools for the first time. Drogo taught them how to braid hair, while Robar showed them how to give a knife a razor finish so they might cut their hair, though Drogo disapproved. Viserys supposed that day by day, they would not look so different to one another, but for him It was like looking at... him. For the first time in his reflection, Viserys saw neither his brother nor his father. His hair, gold or silver depending on the light, had been lightened to snow, ends split and dried, his hair so thick and long that Drogo bound it in a braid without asking. His face was thinner and darker as well, with a smattering of freckles on his face and chest. He did see some of his mother, however, the purple of his eyes growing richer with time.

They turned west before they strayed to close to Chroyane and The Sorrows, despite Cosimo and the others Rhoynish desiring to see the great marvels of their culture. Viserys hurried them along and stayed in the rear to be certain, as between spying the mists of The Sorrows and turning west, he began to feel something, a tickle, up the back of his neck.

He thought at first it might be a stray thread or a tick, but Joho had assured him none of them had any bugs, and he should know. Hoping to know more, he sought the peace of night, staying up later and taking more watches than the others. Only Baqarro noticed, as usual, perceptive and quiet and making himself available, though Viserys brushed him off. Simply, Viserys felt they were being watched.

It was small, Drogo claiming he could feel horses nearby, Oscar thinking he smelt perfume, and Kasté, having hardened and made himself the unit book keeper and lookout, claiming he saw some stars near the horizon flickering. Stars didn't flicker. Viserys wanted to investigate but Robar warned him off, that it was too far south and out of the way and they had drifted east for too long already. For all Viserys knew, the Company's sons in their number were planning to betray them, but there had been no signs of anything of the sort, and they were in the minority besides.

Though Viserys might not know who or even why, he was certain that they were being watched. Watched and followed.
***
Soon the dried plains of trampled grass gave way to green hills growing out of rich earth and white stone – as white as Dragonstone was black, Viserys thought. They were in the country of Hugor's Hill, east of Myrish hegemony and north of the Disputed Lands, Robar reckoned, and if they came to any water larger than a shallow stream, they had gone too far. For the first day all they did was climb hills and search the horizon, until Oscar and Drogo ordered them back into three neat lines and they instead stopped every hour for five minutes.

It was Vaok who saw something another week later, having zig-zagged the Golden Fields and the so-called New Andalos, to point out what at first appeared to be a spear protruding from a hill. Not a spear, but a piece of white stone thrice as tall and ten times as wide as the Tower of the Hand. Viserys had read stories of the Hightower of Oldtown and wondered if the first men who built it took inspiration from the marvel of nature before him.

The boys, as that is what they still were, took off in a gleeful race towards Hugor's Hill. Large quarries and tiered farms surrounded the city for miles and miles, drowned paddies of rice and great orchards of pears and apricots dotted with lazy buffalo and herds of sheep. The folk were plain but beautiful, those at work wearing raw linen and wool, those in the city or at leisure in white and bright cotton scarves and sashes. Viserys saw that these new Andals were not only pastoral, small workshops forging arrowheads and carving spear hafts, while much larger foundries to the north and south produced swords, shields, and all the armour they might ned. Viserys was unable to tell why they were producing so much equipment, and so far away from the main city, but he hardly had the time to determine why.

Two squires took the lead of the units, reordering themselves as they entered the bounds of the city. "The Sword of Hugor." Oscar leaned over to Viserys, nodding up to the massive white stone monument. "At midday, the shadow is small, barely the size of a dinner plate." He pointed up to the top, dotted with hundreds of cenotaphs and eternal flames. "The interior is carved so, as the light passes through it over each day, it casts shadows in the shape of scripture. One for each of the Seven." Oscar made the sign of the Seven just to be sure.

At that moment, they crossed the city bounds into Crone's Alley, the smallest of the city's neighbourhoods. Entering was like passing through a wall of sound, barkers selling and auctioneers shouting. Even a regiment of Golden Company infantry marching by and forcing everyone out of the streets did not soften the din. Drogo looked like he might burst as his precious grass fell out of view, but all the rest, even Baqarro, relished in the many new and familiar sights and sounds.

Viserys looked for everything and nothing, from the unfamiliar languages of southern and central Essos, to the faces of people that looked both Westerosi and Essosi, with a few Valyrians smattered amongst them. "Blackfyres?"

"You know your history. Just some Lyseni, though there are... rumours, one might say. Keep an eye out for black dragons." Robar winked and nudged Viserys, who laughed to join in on the joke.

In truth, Viserys was afraid, his mind rushing past the many people in his family who had killed one another. Even worse, his brother had laid the seeds for a war worse than the Dance or any of the Blackfyre Rebellions, and now Blackheart wanted to use him, and likely all these people, to pour more wildfire on the blaze.

Blackheart. Ser Myles was how he had known him when he met him twice before, with big ears and a big nose, with Viserys thinking him funny and silly looking. But the other recruits told a different story, of a merciless knight who fled justice for kinslaying and oathbreaking, his house left in ruins by his greed. Talal was not the only one with such stories, even the Westerosi saying they heard that, "Blackheart Toyne was too mad for the Mad King."

Soon Viserys had other things to worry about if he was to free himself from Blackheart one day and ever see his family again. The squires led them into a grand pavilion that surrounded the Sword of Hugor, seven white megalithic caryatids of the Seven holding up seven equally titanic hemispherical pediments.

Each was hung with a different coloured awning that segmented the city into its wards. Crone's Alley was a general market ward, with commerce and usury generally discouraged by the faith that ruled the city, but inevitable with their sellsword clientele. Stranger's Walk was all morticians and insurance lenders, sellswords buying their coffins or preparing packets for their families in case of their deaths. There, Viserys saw, was under the diligent watch of the Knights of the Order of the Grand Sept, white and silver-garbed warriors with enamelled rainbow stars on their breastplate.

Mother's Lane and Father's Way sat as mirrors of one another, the former for boarding houses, barracks, and healing halls run by Septas, the latter for the city's grandest of its seventy Septs and its government of twenty-one various clerics, scholars, and landowners.

The Street of Smiths was thick with various metalworkers, specialised smiths forging a higher class of weapon and armour – the steel of superior quality, the decoration more extravagant, and personalisation more readily available. Maiden's Row offered all manner of pleasure, from those of the flesh and tongue, to fine tailors, perfumers, and vintners that served New Andalos's fledgling nobility.

Last was Warrior's Way, their destination. A flattened parade and training ground, it held three units already beneath statues of the the Father – older slaves and some Dothraki Drogo recognised – the Warrior – the Company's sons, a scar-faced Torman Peake included – and the Maiden, with ten girls arrayed beneath her. Viserys could study neither the statues or the septons and gold-armoured knights encamped in the middle of Warrior's Way, because there were girls!

He had seen girls his age before, obviously, the daughters of Braavos and Ma Cate's girls, but never in such a way, bruised and dust-covered but just as gleeful to be in Hugor's Hill as the rest of them. The Golden Company was not blind to the risk, of course, four Company infantry, two of them women, assigned to watch over the girls.

A squire led Viserys and his unit to the statue of the Crone next to the Maiden, she and each of the statues armed and armoured in addition to their normal trapping. The Crone wore but a single pauldron, with a studded staff she used as a walking stick.

"Took you long enough!" shouted the lead girl, getting Viserys's attention. "Get lost in the grass?"

"I've only ever been lost in your eyes, my lady." Talal went through an exaggerated bow, though he earned a sling bullet in the knee for doing so.

"She was aiming for his head." The lead girl was stout and boyish, with a tangle of dark hair and blemished olive skin. She looked about Viserys's age, and the oldest girl looked to be only thirteen – a smaller range than any of the other units. "Melara. You are?"

"Viserys. Robar!" Viserys, Melara, Robar, and the head of the Father's unit, a tall Summer Islander named Nikozi, met in the shadow of the Stranger, their weapon a noose of braided iron.

"You didn't start with us." Robar crossed his arms and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Viserys, looking down his nose at the unofficial leaders of the other units. "Where?"

Melara's brow furrowed but Nikozi spoke matter-of-factly. "We had to sail from Lys and cross the Disputed Lands."

"Nearer than us, but a hard journey." Viserys elbowed Robar. "And you, my la- Melara."

Melara nodded appreciatively. "We began on the streets of Selhorys. A few of us lost our maidenheads, but it was to saddles and not rapers, so all in all a fine journey."

The three boys sputtered, but Viserys was first to recover. "That- that's good to hear. One of my number was threatened death and skinning by those under the Warrior. And our Westerosi gave their leader that wound." As if he had been waiting for an introduction, Torman Peake stormed over with half his unit behind him. Viserys saw the squires moving to step between the feuding units, but one of the septons held them back. "Get some help from your papa, Torman?"

Viserys had no idea where the jest came from, even as he touched his own cheek in mock pain. Torman shoved him and Viserys cocked his fist.

"What's all this then!" Not a Company man but a local guardsman shoved them apart, a steely man with salt and pepper hair and the light armour of a cavalryman, with a seven-pointed star hanging from his neck. "Lothston! Control your spendings!"

Ser Jon Lothston did as he was told. "Aye, Meribald. Don't get your collar in a twist. Torman, Viserys, come off it. You're supposed to be brothers."

"His unit-mate mutilated me!" cried Torman. "I demand he recieve equal punishment!"

"He tried to... to..." Oscar shook his head. "He had it coming." Torman snarled and lunged at his brother, the wound angry and weeping pus. It looked as if he had packed it with grass to stem the bleeding, giving the scar a grisly depth.

"Besides, it's an improvement," snapped Melara.

Lothston ordered his unit mates take Torman back, sending the others away to their statues. "Unlike Ser Marq, I will repeat myself, so long as you listen when I am speaking. Sit." The fifty recruits sat. Lothston was a brutish man, likely to be as comfortable with a plow as he was with a sword. "You are here to wait. Work will be given to you within the hour, and you are to be back here each day at dusk, and not to leave until you are dismissed the following morning."

As he strode up and down the street, his boots crunching the dried gravel, Warrior's Way calmed to an island of quiet in a sea of noise. "When you are not in our custody, you are to follow every order by your custodian, be they whore or smith. Within reason. No fucking." There were a few snickers and he spun towards them. "If you need supplies, go to our quartermaster. Smiths and Crones, to the baths with you."

***

In a flurry of activity that was the furthest thing from monotonous, the Crones and the Smiths joined in with the various tasks assigned to them. Most were simple, sweeping the streets and washing windows or hauling heavy loads, and never were these duties based on anything other than availability, residents of Hugor's Hill arriving in a line each morning to take recruits out in twos and threes.

Viserys preferred those duties that kept him in the city, most comfortable when surrounded by people. Though he had not suffered in the journey from the Upper Rhoyne, he was out of his element. But on the streets of Hugor's Hill, lief made more sense to him.

Three days from their arrival, the two remaining units trickled in – assigned to the Mother were all Essosi slave boys, small and meek but quick and resourceful. Viserys and Nikozi brought them into their fold with Robar and Melara, while those under the Stranger, all Westerosi exiles or refugees, joined up with the Company's sons under Torman.

Though Viserys and his had the clear numbers advantage, the Company's sons had the ears of the squires and knights assigned to them, almost entirely Westerosi and Company sons themselves. The results were that more than once, they were woken in the night by a surprise beating or a mystery kick in the side. Thankfully the infantry were more sympathetic, but there were never more than ten of them, and amongst the crowds of the city it was not easy to keep track of seventy young people.

Viserys had hoped to keep his head down, but more often than not he took a watch at night, surveying Warrior's Way with his back against the plinth beneath the Crone. His tangled white hair blowing in the wind, he almost resembled the elderly woman that was now his patron. Wisdom and guidance. That was what the Crone represented, and Viserys wondered if he embodied her more or another member of the Seven.

He saw movement in the corner of his eye, spotting the nameless Westerosi watching him. He quickly rolled over and forced his breathing to steady, but he was too slow for Viserys. Viserys sat on a bucket beside him. "Real Westerosi, eh? Hoping to join your fellows?"

Viserys nudged him. "Fuck off," he said.

"We're most likely going to be together for a while, you know." Viserys nudged him again. He muttered curses. "I don't know what you think you're doing, but we don't get through this unless we all do. Time to join in, brother."

"You are not my brother!" He spun on Viserys, shoving him off the bucket. He had bleary eyes and a red nose. "And who made you the leader anyway?"

He sounded to Viserys like he just enjoyed being contrarian. "Idiot. No one, I just happen to not carry grudges. Grudges got my father killed." That did not persuade him. "You're not... I'm thankful for everyone, even you, for helping save Joho. And catching all those fish."

He sniffled again, wiping his nose on his sleeve. He seemed familiar in a way as he stoked his fire, smaller and away from the rest, eyes focused and mouth set in a line. "My mother's brother taught me to fish. Said I needed skills as much as a trade. Mother wanted me apprenticed, but her husband..."

"Your name?"

"I don't have to..." He sighed, resigned to his fate. "Tytus. Tytus Hill. I didn't think that... I thought it was a mistake I was here. Still could be. I figure now that, if I'm a knight, if I *become* a knight, my father, my father will... He would have to..." He snorted and wiped at his eyes again, turning away from Viserys. "Sorry. At least he's still out there somewhere. Yours?"

"Dead, if fate is kind."

"Your mother?"

"Lit her pyre myself." Viserys took his turn to be pensive, recalling how his mother's hair burned, and the smell of her blood roasting in the fire. "Almost two years ago, I think." He looked sidelong at Tytus, who met his gaze. "Your mother?"

"In Myr. Magister's daughter, just like Talal said. Her and my father... It was nice for a time, splitting time between her and her brothers, but then she was married and things were expected of me. I tried to make it work, but her husband... And then when my sister and brothers came I was just... set down. Like a book halfway read."

"So you can read!" Tytus chortled at that, which made Viserys happy. "My brother's children were like that. And I went from the darling boy to expected to end up like my father."

"Was he so terrible? He is still your father, no?"

"No. He was worse."

Chapter Text

***
Myles Toyne looked down on the newest batch of recruits. They were a good seventy, and he had high hopes for the first ever all-female unit. And the Targaryen princeling. Blackheart'd done his best to keep his distance, but he could only fight his paternal instincts for so long. He fell back on the oldest laws of the Golden Company, to one day seat the rightful heir to the dragon on the Iron Throne.

Though the Iron Throne was no more, he could still use the boy, just another recruit that he was. The officers in his inner circle had seen to that despite Ser Marq's protests. Something about teaching him what it is to struggle. To suffer.

Myles just found it cruel.

His perch at the top of the Sword of Hugor was an airy white limestone chamber, bare except for a floor-height desk and tapestries of holy scenes on the walls. "Your recruits go unsaved, Captain General." The accented common of Grand Septon Ferdinand shook him from his daydreaming. The Andals of New Andalos sounded like Valemen to the extreme, the tongue they spoke a creole of Westerosi tongues and Essosi Heel pastoral languages. "You made promises. I thought the Golden Company's word was good as gold."

"Beneath the gold, the bitter steel, your holiness." Myles strode across the room to loom over the priest, gold and black-armoured chest puffed and broad. "The letter of our deal was they could choose to convert. It is not my fault your street preachers have been lax in their duties."

The Grand Septon's lip curled. He was a gaunt man made older by constant fasting and the weight of the white brocade and cloth-of-gold robes of his office. Ferdinand was only the third of his kind, and like his predecessors the direct descendant of a debauched septon in the retinue of Aegor Bittersteel.

Ferdinand had the pale skin and sharp features of a Valeman, made sharper by the shadows of his chamber's warped-smooth windows. "Captain General, my Lord Toyne, our deal lasts only so long as I do, and there are threats facing my office. Reformers from Westeros, and eyes from Oldtown and the Eyrie that your spies were supposed to keep out."

Myles reddened at the cleric. "I could not have been expected to foresee such violence! The destruction of King's Landing by wildfire and the deadliest war in living memory! Deadliest since the Century of Blood if it goes on much longer!"

"Irrelevant." Ferdinand dipped his pen and resumed writing. "Our deal stands through the next six moons. After that, we will be accepting proposals and bids for new protectors."

"The Golden Company will sack Hugor's Hill."

"Half of the defenders of Hugor's Hill are the sons and brothers of Company men." He rang a bell, summoning two Knights of the Sept. "Please escort Lord Myles. He has outstayed his welcome."

***

Myles cursed all the way down the stairs, calming himself at the base of the Sword of Hugor before returning to his companions. Lysono Maar and Black Balaq shared his fears as he explained what Ferdinand said as they rode north out of the city. The contract had been good, but they still had Norvos and Pentos.

Myles took the lead of the train of recruits moving north out of Hugor's Hill, organizing them with knights at the flanks and tail, squires appointed to the recruits directly. The Grand Septon's unsubtle threats still had him swinging his head over the white stone and green grass of the so-called New Andalos – he spied the flash of metal on the horizon, and knew they were being followed. "Forced march."

Jon Lothston nodded. "Triple time!" he roared. Those mounted of their group brought their horses up to a trot, forcing the recruits to jog, all while laden with their heavy packs of gear.

They travelled north that way for weeks, making camp with other units of recruits and their minders, until they were two hundred various knights and infantry escorting close to a thousand recruits.

As Captain General, Myles had overseen a period of rebuilding in the Golden Company, his predecessor having let it shrink to build ties of friendship with other sellsword companies, and concentrate the wealth and political influence of the company. It was up to Myles to bring them up to number.

When they made camp on the banks of the River of Myrth, some of the Company's sons allowed out to their nearby mothers and younger siblings scattered across the Golden Fields, Myles summoned Viserys to his tent. Up close, the boy was the chubby princeling no more, closely resembling his companions with a few scars, wind-tossed and sun-bleached hair, and a cynical look in his eye of a much older sellsword. "Good evening, recruit."

Viserys snapped to attention with a crack, driving his heels together. "Good evening, Captain General."

Myles nodded and softened his look, though Viserys did not relax. "Making friends?"

"Yes, Captain General."

"You may still call me Ser Myles in private." Viserys did not respond. He was disciplined, at least. "Your nephews and sister recently celebrated name-days. And there is an attempt at armistice in the works."

Viserys trembled for a moment then relaxed. "That is... good to hear, Captain General."

Myles tried to study the boy deeper, but his face was stone. "Two years ago you could not wait to try getting back. How often did Cate tell us you were asking about your sister?"

"I missed her."

"You don't miss her anymore?"

Viserys opened his mouth to speak, then quieted into thoughtful silence. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and boyish. "I miss... Everything is faded, Ser Myles. I'm starting to..." Viserys squeezed his eyes shut, though a few tears slipped past.

Myles knew what Viserys was going through, and he wanted nothing more than to bundle him in his arms and fight his way through all the lords and kings of Westeros to bring him to his sister. But they both had responsibilities. "You have started to forget not just their faces, but the love you had for them."

Viserys nodded. “I don’t see them when I close my eyes anymore. There’s a… a feeling, but it’s like… The Crones, Drogo and Tytus especially, they haven’t forgotten their fathers.” Viserys scoffed in an attempt to break the tension. He failed. “Though I suppose their fathers are worth remembering.”

“Humour is good, Viserys. But take heart in your fellow… Crones?”

“The statue on Warrior’s Way.”

“Ah. I see.” Myles crossed to a table at the end of his desk, pouring a cup of wine. “When I was a fresh recruit, just a hedge knight at the time, the Company was in shambles. The Monstrous had given our best cavalry away to the Triarchy, and we young men found ourselves in charge of ten-thousand sellswords with renewed hatred for the Seven Kingdoms.” He took a drink, wincing at an old injury through his throat that always burned with that first sip. “Until I met a man named Aerion.”

“The Brightflame?” Viserys counted on his fingers. “My great grand-uncle?”

“His grandson, courtesy of Maelys’s last daughter and one of the Brightflame’s Lyseni bastards. I had nothing but my sword and a love of women, but Aerion the Brightfyre, as he called himself, taught me to fight for something larger than myself.”

“Like Westeros?”

Myles chuckled. The recruit was still a boy. “Like Westeros. But I could look to him not just as a leader, but as my brother-in-arms. A comrade. Just as he learned how to shoe a horse from me, Aerion taught me to look beyond myself.”

Myles watched his words wash over Viserys, hoping he was getting through to him. “You will soon be in a place where there will be no turning back." Myles wondered how much Marq had told the boy, of what he may face as a cadet. "The Brightfyre sought to make us a political force as well as a military. We dwindled to just six-thousand men, feuding with the Second Sons and the Ragged Standard as they ate up the small contracts we preferred to train recruits and cadets. But the Captain General was successful, leasing land from Pentos in exchange for... Well, you will learn about that in a few years."

"And the Company recovered?" Viserys asked.

"That it did. Fourteen-thousand and growing. Not counting your cohort." Myles drained his cup then offered a pouch to viserys. "You and your unit are not rich with family. Get them a good meal, and maybe an... evening companion for your older comrades, eh?"

Viserys inspected the coins, a collection of gold from across the Free Cities. "Thank you, Ser! A few of my unit are... despondent by their lack of ties. Some of us miss our families as well."

"Then I hope this softens the blow. You are dismissed." Viserys went to attention again then went for the tent flap, though he turned back. "Yes?"

"What happened to Aerion?"

Myles felt his heart tremble. "He lost his mettle, I'm afraid. It was another Daughters' War, and he wanted to do something that would put too many of us at risk. We swept him from power for his own good, though he has... remained. As something of an advisor. He's not touched a blade in damn near fifteen years."

"Will I... May I meet him?"

"I can see to that."

***

As their train wove north, swerving away from Myrish hegemony and into far friendlier Pentoshi territory, Myles thought the arid, windswept plains surprisingly similar to his birthplace in the Dornish Marches. He quietly cursed the greed of his uncle who, presented with the opportunity to rebuild House Toyne as landed knights when stripped of lordship, chose instead to join the Kingswood Brotherhood. Myles recalled when Ser Barristan Selmy, his old boyhood playmate, had come to install the new lord of Heart Castle and attaint his family name.

Abiding his family's words still, Myles had flown high and far, thinking the Golden Company resurgent a fine legacy to be proud of. "This land is good." Black Balaq came up beside him, his cloak of green and orange feathers snapping in the wind.

"Truly. I had once hoped to..." He spotted a homestead, with a healthy pasture and a large herd of cattle. "How many want out now?"

Balaq looked back on the recruits, disassembling camp. They had already been lectured on the importance of order at camp, and both officers took pride in the speed with which the boys and girls broke down the tents. "Fifteen. All but two of the Slaver's Bay recruits, and three debt boys who want to go home."

"And your grandson?"

"Kasté is soft. Like his father. But Lysono sees something in him, and he has learned to take his licks." Balaq shrugged. "We always need bookkeepers."

"Because we need another Strickland?" They shared a hearty laugh, but in truth they were thankful for the bookish breeder of pachyderms. Myles clicked his tongue and tapped his heels to the flanks of his mare, climbing up to a nearby Pentoshi road. "You have mellowed with age, old friend. I thought he had to be a cavalry man and archer at a minimum to meet your family standard."

"Aye, but I would like Kasté to at least write to me as his mother and uncles do not." Myles recalled that Black Balaq's sons and daughter had paid out their contracts with the Golden Company as soon as they had the necessary sum. The Golden Company invested much in the training, feeding, and equipping of recruits and cadets, and they needed a way to make up for lost profits. "If he is assessed, and Lysono says he should, I shall let him move on."

Myles had Jon Lothston send a rider to the homestead and the others they passed, managing to find a place in the first for both debt boys. The farmer had lost three sons to Volantene slavers, and his daughters were married, so he happily took them in with the promise that next season, he would move his pastures to Company-held lands farther west.

"The Ghiscaris will be a problem," Jon said that evening, sitting by the officers' fire on the banks of a nameless stream.

"They are the sons of masters. You are surprised?" Malo Jayn was a squat infantryman and a former slave himself, so he should know. "The deal was made, but with them, so it must change if we are to avoid making a powerful enemy."

Jon scoffed. "They knew who they were signing with, even if it was Lysono's honeyed words." He tidied the fire and prepared their meal. Of course, a Riverlander could make a feast by any river, even if he had never seen the homeland of his mother's mother. "We should send them to Norvos, make them squires, and show them the real meaning of bitter steel."

Balaq and some of the other officers stomped their feet in approval. Myles said, "'Tis true, our dealings with Slaver's Bay are unfortunate, but we need those boys." There were muttered remembrances, the fervour rushing out of them. "We can give them a better life, that un-enslaved and uncut, a man is more than just a weapon. And they can teach this lot how to fight in formation. Putting aside Caspor's claims of the superiority of Westerlands shield walls." There were scattered chuckles, and the mood brightened as they ate. "And letting debt boys out of a life their parents' greed did not prepare them for is far different than Masters' sons wanting knighthoods just so they can marry Westerosi maidens."

"The war cannot be going so poorly, can it, Sir?" Lorimas Mudd asked, the clean-shaven and dark-haired product of a Company knight and a Lhazareen lover who claimed she was a witch. Just like Jenny from House Mudd's lost lands, Myles recalled. "I heard King Rhaegar has taken a Lyseni magister's daughter to wife."

"His only port is Duskendale," admonished Jon. "I doubt any Lyseni, pillow girl or otherwise, could withstand the fumes."

There were nods of assent all around as the conversation shifted to Westeros. The next generation of Lothston and Lorimas – and Strickland, Marq and Lysono as well, somewhere else with more recruits – looked on the War of the Five Kings as an opportunity. Both to swell the Golden Company's numbers, and perhaps surpass the record set by the Bright Banners of fifteen-thousand fighting men. But Myles, and Balaq even if he never admitted it, were fearful.

"Already, men of flowers and golden lions assault the Summer Isles, their lands attainted and stolen." Balaq drew shafts, feathers, and broad-heads, with some catgut and glue to build a stack of arrows. "Pentos, Braavos, Myr, and Tyrosh have swelled as well. With wealth, exiles, and slaves as they raid the unguarded coasts and isles."

"My aunt says the same," said Jon. "They seek to make Essos like Westeros rather than accepting life as it is. I heard a tale about some Vale lord with money but no friends who tried to strike a freedman in Lys. He lost his hand for it."

"But the knights and the soldiers? What about them?" asked Lorimas.

"Westerosi without a cause are dangerous," said Myles. "The Company itself is proof of that. And Ferdinand has already sent septons to preach. They are lost to us."

Myles saw them all as a threat, even the refugee smallfolk trained at arms, or lords with money to spend who had moved their households across the Narrow Sea. He gave it five years before Myr or Pentos – or even Lys with all their new Westermen and Reachmen – could start another Daughters' War without the aid of sellswords.

And now their old base of support in New Andalos was about to declare itself the center of the only true faith in the world, making itself a target for the Myrish and their supporters in Volantis. Myles needed to prepare.

Fording the River of Myrth, the pastures of the Golden Fields gave way to the forested highlands of the officially unnamed peninsula south of the Pentoshi Flatlands. So far to the west though, Aegor Bittersteel had named them the Dusklands. 

Trees as tall as towers with the rare game trail and farming hamlet gave way to roads that wound deeper up and into shaded valleys and montane estates. It had been Balaq's idea, turning the southern Flatlands into their own domain. Their enemies knew where to find them, said to train on villa estates on simple flatlands, not the cavernous ravines, deadly forest, and urbanized valley floors of the Dusklands. Striking so deep into uncharted territory made it a difficult target for even the most ferocious of sellswords with old enmities, and none of the Free Cities would ever risk the Golden Company's ire by attacking themselves.

As always, travel through the muggy forest – more like a Sothoryosi jungle – was punishing, while the flora and fauna amounted to berries to poison them, snakes that could eat a horse whole, and spiders the size of cats that would attack from trapdoors. The gauntlet did however give the recruits their first taste of blood. Indeed, Myles knew from first hand experience that training at arms was nothing if a soldier was not able to participate in a campaign, not just the fighting.

In the interior of the forests, impassable but for the lore of some native-born Company men, Myles saw to it the recruits got that taste of campaigning. In one cycle of the sun and moon, he had them march ten miles, strike camp, dig trenches for a new fort, fell the trees for the fort and shave them all, place spikes, fall in line for two hours of drilling, then do it all again ten miles away with only a few hours of rest.

A bestial scream echoed up the train to him, galloping back to find three of the recruits – a huge half-Dothraki, a slip of a boy with a spider tattoo over his eye, and Viserys – cleaning their short swords after killing one such titanic serpent. The half-dothraki started skinning it almost immediately, while the former weaver's slave chopped off its head and Viserys mercifully slaughtered the mule. It's neck and shoulder had been irreparably mangled by the serpent's teeth, but it was slow to die.

Myles nodded approvingly, but Viserys only watched him. Watched him with the same sharp look his father had. Myles served under men who faced the Mad King in battle when he was still Prince Aerys, and they had all described how calm he was under pressure. In the turmoil of the Fifth Blackfyre Rebellion, Prince Aerys had killed men, sent them to die, and waded into the fray to save them. Myles supposed that his later madness was just some inner turmoil that kept him balanced finally breaking through.

As they turned back to the line, Lorimas said, "That Lyseni gives me gooseflesh. He stares at us all. The. Time." He shivered like a green squire.

Jon said, "The other Dothraki bit off my cousin's ear. Who assembled that fucking unit?"

"Mandrake." Myles scoffed at Marq, his old squire still the recruit-whisperer. "No matter. We'll tidy them of their units soon enough." Myles's hopes had been rising ever since the first reports out of Hugor's Hill, Balaq informing him that Viserys was a natural leader, if a bit slow to act.

Balaq had said, "Men have two ears and one mouth so they might listen twice as much as they talk. Viserys may well be hiding more ears."

***

"Final count?" asked Myles.

Harry Strickland ran his finger along a ledger, Myrish lenses at the end of his nose. "Eight-hundred and sixty-seven recruits admitted to the Domain of Dusk. Seventy-one desertions, forty-four fewer than last season, and twenty-eight more-" Myles cleared his throat. Strickland summarized. "Some exchanges, no attempts to buy back, three attempts to steal."

"Tyroshi again?"

"And Volantene." Strickland indicated the weaver's boy behind Viserys. Myles and the other leaders of the Company looked down on the recruits in neat lines on a field beneath their fortress. Myles chortled at their awe.

"His mother belonged to someone important," said Lysono Maar. "Who, we do not yet know."

Myles considered the information as the last of the recruits fell in line. "Send a full regiment to Selhorys and seek out a contract. Three-hundred horse and a thousand infantry should draw them out."

"At once, Captain General."

The units assembled into lines. They were named for gods, monsters, extinct houses, and even Targaryen dragons, and the scribes needed to mark down everyone who made it. They all appeared overjoyed just to be there, and Myles allowed them a lax few minutes as their property was returned to them and the Company's sons were greeted by their friends and family.

He saw a flash of blue and found Viserys again, who slyly passed the crown from his old satchel to his new Company pack. A copper skull marked him as a cadet. Myles had been tempted to take it the crown and ride to Qohor himself, but there was hardly enough metal for a weapon save a spear or short sword. Besides, he needed the boy not to hate him, of that much he was sure.

He nodded to a squire who raised a horn and blew for assembly, sending the recruits into a flurry of activity. "Recruits!"

The stood at attention.

He pointed at the second-year cadets saluting at the front of every other unit. Mirroring them, the recruits all straightened up, raised their right hand, palm out, to their forehead in a show of deference that they bore no weapons. Squires roamed the lines, nudging them to shape, and Myles left them there as his horse lumbered to the front.

Viserys was still at the front of his line, and to him and all the others he made eye contact and nodded. "I am Captain General Toyne. To you, I am sir or Lord Toyne, is that understood?"

"Yes, sir!"

Myles smiled hungrily. "Good. Let's begin."

Chapter Text

The Dusklands were a kingdom all its own.

Through forests dotted with elephant farms, past tiered farms crowded with cattle, horses, and flooded fields of rice, the Crones and their fellow recruits marched down into a montane valley. There were farms and people like those of Westeros, Essos, or both, but unlike New Andalos it was not locked in pastoralism. There were counting houses and merchants, and exclaves of each of the Free Cities from Braavos to Volantis clustered in one of three great... they were not large enough to be cities, but they each had the tall towers and minarets of urban temples many-floored stone manses of a great city.

To the south-east lay the first, where tradesmen and merchants made their home, like barnacles on two great ships of faith; one rendered in red granite with three domes of differing sizes, and one in Andalosi white marble, seven-sided with sweeping columns and brutalist standing at the heart of the city.

"The City of Faith. The Temple to R'hllor and the Exiled Sept." The Smiths came alongside the Crones, and Oscar indicated both places of worship. "Built by a Septon loyal to Daemon Blackfyre, the other by the Bittersteel as compensation for the many Essosi of the Company."

Rather than the City of Faith, or the City of Craft where metalworkers and horsemen burned out knights, they travelled to the City of Gold, the grandest of the three.

Dominating the base and growing halfway up the mountain, the City of Gold was less gold than it was red and black, the same red granite as the Temple of R'hllor and black as the fused black stone of a dragonroad. Or dragonstone. It was decorated with gold banners and gold-brushed steel fortifications, with clusters of buildings on the cliffs and outcroppings connected by rope bridges and cranes.

Before the Crones however lay the curtain wall, thirty feet thick and twice as tall, with six towers each as large as any keep. "When the Bittersteel fled, he must have taken half the gold in the King's Landing treasury." Viserys inspected the various murder holes beyond the gate, light beyond revealing an outer bailey as large as any parade ground, and the titan of a castle beyond.

Viserys ignored the three concentric walls, each with three spiralling towers, and the various yards and outbuildings swarming with officers and knights of the Golden Company. His eye was drawn to the keep at the heart of the castle, a black and tyrannical reflection of the Sword of Hugor, a megalithic square tower four-hundred feet tall, with a squat tower at each corner and three leaning rookeries. Viserys noted that the foundations of the keep and the walls were the same fused black stone.

"Forgemount," said Oscar. "Most just call it the Forge."

Viserys opened his mouth to respond when Blackheart interrupted him. "I am Captain General Toyne. To you, I am sir or Lord Toyne, is that understood?"

"Yes, sir!"

Myles smiled hungrily. "Good. Let's begin."

One at a time, the units were marched through the middle wall to the inner bailey down a long, dark tunnel. Screams and gasps echoed to the waiting cadets – Viserys and the Crones were twentieth or so in the line – marching behind a squire down the tunnel. At first, a few of them were simply nudged or tugged out of line.

Vaok, Talal, and Baqarro.

Viserys was in the second group, with Kasté, Tytus, Zadjet, and Cosimo. They struggled a bit, not as docile as the first three but not likely to fight either. A squire took Viserys harshly by the arm, dragging him to a chair in a long, winding hallway that smelled of damp. A burly man walked up behind Viserys, took a handful of his sun-bleached hair, and lopped it off with a razor.

It was slow going at first, Viserys in the minority of his cohort in letting his hair grow well past his ears. The barber was tall without even a whisper of hair himself, making Viserys curse in surprise when the razor nicked his scalp. Blood ran in his eyes and he lost his sight, though he cleared them at the sound of screaming.

Not screams but wails, afraid and vicious and primal.

It was Joho and Drogo.

They only needed one burly squire for Joho, under his arm like a hyperactive goat, arms bound at his sides and legs kicking like a madman. His hair was not long, nor was it very clean, but it was his, and he wept as they held him down. The squires were not heartless, a few awkwardly averting their gaze as the barber, a younger man himself, resigned himself to cutting Joho's hair.

He did so too slowly for the liking of Viserys's barber, who handed the razor to a squire to finish as he shoved his younger comrade aside. He smacked Joho hard, hard enough to silence him, then swiped a long cut on his temple. "Enough!"

Viserys was just finished and Joho only half done when the wails grew louder. Bruised, bloody, and with a limp arm, Drogo was carried in by four knights as three more beat him with batons. They had him by the braid as well, and Viserys did not need to speak Dothraki to understand what was happening. For Drogo, it was a fate worse than death. It was living death, for he had been defeated, but he would not ride in the Nightlands.

It was as if the razor feared his hair, unable to get more than a few strands before Drogo erupted like Valyria in the Doom. Fed up or just sadistic, the squires held him down long enough for the grizzled barber to draw a cleaver.

The sound of the blade was a whisper compared to Drogo's roar, a mad bloodlust taking him as he drove his knee up and through the face of the barber, biting and punching but thrown back into the room alone.

"Drogo! Drogo!" Viserys cried, rushing his comrade before he too was tackled by a knight, held down under three-hundred pounds of muscle and metal.

The Dothraki fell to his knees, cradling his limp braid. The barber and a squire tried dragging Viserys back, but Drogo had taught him to wrestle, pulverizing the knight's ear with his fist then grappling and choking the squire. "Let him out! Let me go to him!"

Viserys struggled to fight off the squire, a boy at least six years his senior, getting enough breath with his flailing to dodge unconsciousness. "Viserys! Enough, boy." Ser Marq pushed through the squires. "What is the meaning of this! We had a deal with Khal Bharbo! Who..."

"Enough, Ser Marq." Blackheart strode in, one hand on his sword, the other in the arm of a tall, red-haired woman in black mail and black and yellow brocade. It pained Ser Myles to do so, even as he let two of his larger men tear Drogo from his braid, handing off the rope to the red-haired lady. She had a long chin and wide lips, with a delicate, crooked nose, and her red hair poured like scarlet silk around her head. "Are we done, Lady Lothston?"

"Hm? Oh. Oh yes." Lady Lothston – from her hair, she must be a relative of Ser Jon – admired Drogo's braid, plucking out the bells and rings, and a few flowers from Cosimo, before slipping the braid into a pouch on her narrow waist. "He is a strong one." She smiled lecherously. "My my, aren't you a specimen? Ser Myles, what say you send this one to my-"

Drogo spat a gob of blood at Lady Lothston, already starting on his new braid. "Shear his head," Myles ordered.

Drogo sat with a murderous glare, Lady Lothston stepping out with Ser Myles and the other officers, save Ser Marq, who said, "Give me a chance to explain, boy. Don't go doing anything drastic." He gave Viserys a firm look and they shared a nod, Viserys stepping back from the squires, holding up his hands in a universal sign of peace.

"Drogo!" Viserys switched to the scattered creole of their unit. "May our ride through the Nightlands be glorious, brother."

He snarled, "We shall be reborn, blood of my blood."

They reached a dim chamber next with a few more bruises from squires with wounded pride. Stripped as naked as the day they were born, they were hosed with scalding water, scrubbed with brushes as coarse as boar spines, then tossed with mysterious white powder. As soon as the pain of the hot water began to fade, the white powder mixed with the water, fizzing and burning their skin, eyes, and nether regions.

Viserys had not been using oils and soaps, but he kept himself clean enough on the march and in Hugor's Hill and after. He checked his teeth and picked his gums, he kept himself washed if there was a stream or a few spare buckets of water, and he combed out his hair of various detritus and dust. Viserys had also seen how many of the boys lived, even some knights uncaring if they had fleas or nits, so the caustic powder was certainly necessary.

Next came their gear, wear they were to test the fit of and assembled three sets of small clothes, two sets of work clothes – one for winter, one for summer – along with boots, an arming doublet, gambeson, hauberk, half-helm, a spear and shield, a camp knife, and the various other campaign accoutrement they would need.

The period of 'no special treatment' had ended as well, the Company's sons expected or on their way to squiring, given more arms and armour and better kit, or free to stay with their families in the surrounding Dusklands. In exchange for the most fortifiable lands for secret settling after a deal with Pentos in a war against Norvos, the Bittersteel had spent the decades between the first four Blackfyre Rebellions and after pacifying what became the Dusklands. At least, according to the older cadets assigned to give the Crones the welcome tour.

Forgemount was where they would eat, sleep, and take lessons, the outer bailey for drilling in shifts, while one of every four moons would be spent in the surrounding wilderness. On these expeditions, tending elephants, learning the basics of a number of trades and vocations valuable to the Company, cadets were expected to use what they had learned in the Forge. Viserys wondered if that was why it was named for a forge – just as the Citadel in Oldtown trained knights of the mind, The Forge produced scholars of war.

It was after midday when they were done the spiel, the Crones and the dregs of four other units – thirty cadets in total – handed their barrack assignments and informed they were free until the evening meal. Every seventh day was to be a day of rest or prayer, cadet's choice, while every sixth day they worked only until midday.

The Crones gasped at their barracks. Most of them had never had more than a reed mat to sleep on, now they had cots of bamboo with a mattress of dry wool, and a full set of sheets with a blanket and feather pillow. Vaok laid down and looked like he might cry. "It's like a cloud!"

Most of the other boys had similar reactions, though Tytus, Zadjet, and Kasté were like Viserys, having known some creature comforts in their lives. Baqarro looked at everything with suspicion, but he seemed pleasantly surprised when the cot did not collapse under his weight. He truly was a giant for his age.

Only Drogo was silent, his scalp far bloodier and his body bruised and stiff. One of his shoulders had swollen so large, he almost resembled Maelys the Monstrous. Joho and Baqarro sat with him, speaking in Dothraki, each of them ringing a small bell and offering them to Drogo. He took the bells and thanked his comrades, though it did little more than to get him to lie down and cry himself to sleep.

The other twenty recruits were from across the known world, from a Yi-Tish with worse common than Vaok – though he did speak Dothraki, and Ghiscari – to the bastard son of a Westerosi lord. For a moment, Viserys thought he might be related to him, with silver-gold stubble and purple eyes, though he was taller and leaner than Viserys, with a cleft chin and an entitled bearing.

All they had in common with the Crones was that they did not have immediate relations in the Golden Company. The rest were the third and fourth sons of slaves and freedmen living in Pentos, their parents' freedom bought by the Company in exchange for lands to settle so long as they intermarried with more established families.

Viserys donned the summer kit and tested the armour. The clothes fit, the armour was too large, and the spear and shield were sized for a man. "At least we've something of our own." Tytus claimed the bunk next to Viserys, who himself was next to Baqarro and across from Talal, whose legs hung off the end of the bed. "How many moons, and I finally have this back." Tytus drew a book from his kit. *Lomas Longstrider's Wonders Made by Man.* "A gift from my cousin, by way of father. His favourite uncle."

"I've just this." Viserys drew the stiletto and Mistress Caterina's scarf, the blue out of place among the gold, red, and white of the barracks. "And some... some jewellery of my mother's."

"Be careful then, I hear there's plenty of thieves. With any luck though, in a few moons we'll have riches of our own the old fashioned way."

***

With a grunt, Viserys sank his shovel into the pile, groaning at the cloud of black flies that swarmed him. Though cleaning up after the elephants was a small price to pay for earning time with the beasts. They were beautiful creatures, cultured and well-mannered in their own way, their playfulness never quite wearing through Viserys's patience.

"You missed one!" Viserys cursed Torman Peake, who took perverse pleasure in encouraging the beast he rode to eat a diet of leaves that produced particularly soft piles. "Oi! I'm talking to you, cadet!" He hauled the elephant to a stop, belaying down the beast's front leg and advancing on Viserys.

Viserys was exhausted, sore, and stinking, and bruised from the last time he tangled with Torman. Officially, fighting between cadets was discouraged, but the son of the chief siege engineer was given allowances, a squire in all but name.

Torman shoved him but Viserys caught himself with the shovel. He took five lashes for raising the shovel last time, so instead he took a handful of dung and shoved it at Torman's face. The larger boy was expecting a fist and not a mouthful, turning green and vomiting up his breakfast. Viserys followed up with two quick jabs to the ribs and a kick to the knee, though Torman kept his footing and lashed out with a tackle. Using his manure-slick body to his advantage, Viserys slipped Torman's grapple and dove into the elephant's lake, swimming to the far side and slipping into an empty enclosure.

He broke line of sight with Torman and doubled back, needing to return the shovel to the shed if he wanted his midday meal. He spied Torman at the far side, cursing and forgetting to unsaddle the elephant, leaving it for a few other cadets. Viserys kept his distance until he was well out of sight, then went for his shovel. It was buried in green dung, and Viserys sighed, moving to the water pump to clean it.

He was just getting the water flowing when he was lifted up in the air, the elephant chuffing as she raised him up in her trunk. She was laughing at him! Naerys was the herd matriarch, keeping him in a firm but gentle grip. She was no war beast, instead raised for cadets to get comfortable with elephants, and educate her descendants in proper manners.

Walking him through the pens and pastures and dumping him in another watering hole, Naerys first sprayed him with water until he was clean, then herded him to the dust patch. Viserys stood there and kicked up the red, clay-like dust, finally clean, though the elephant, ever maternal, was unsatisfied, trumpeting and stomping her feet until he dropped and rolled around, painting himself orange and red.

Trumpeting victoriously, Naerys finally left him alone. Ducking the gaze of some Company's sons, he hurried back to the barracks from that outer pasture between the Forge and the City of Craft. The roads and hamlets between were always a flurry of activity so, after a quick visit to the bathhouse and a few passing traders, Viserys returned to his cot for some much needed rest and relaxation.

He tossed his feet up and put a kettle on the small stove, drawing some nippers he purchased with his pay – a copper piece a week. Thankfully he only had to pay a copper for a whole bag of pins, since he had found the nippers blunt and abandoned. He already had a whetstone, so it was short work. Soon his nails were much less claw like, and he could use them for leather working as well.

"What are the chances of finding a bakery?" Talal made a disgusted sound at his bowl of mushy rice. "It's like what comes out of my nose. What's wrong with bread!"

"Air's too wet. We're up in the clouds!" Cosimo, like Talal, was from a dry, perpetually sunny part of the world. "There is good land to the east."

"Pfft. Land." Zadjet made a masturbatory gesture. "Coin over land. You can be pushed off your land."

"And I can steal your coin." Joho looked at Zadjet like he was stupid, snatching his purse and hiding behind Baqarro. "That's why gemstones are best. Just wear them on rings and chains and such."

As the other eight blathered on, Baqarro even offering the rare sage jest, Vaok sat on the cot beside Viserys. "*May we speak frankly, Viserys?*" he asked in High Valyrian.

Vaok struggled with new languages, easy enough for him to understand but struggling to gain confidence outside his native High Valyrian. "*Always, but if it's to speak to an officer again..*."

"*No, no. Nothing at all like that.*" Vaok unconsciously reached up to the spider tattoo over his eye. "*What do you know about castles in the Sunset Lands?*"

"Westeros."

"*Aye.* Wies-tor-ross. *A castle of bats and burned black towers.*"

Something itched Viserys's eye. He could not change his accent, his Westerosi heritage clear, and his easy easy friendship with Tytus proved as much, having brought the Westerman's bastard out of his shell. "A castle... *Harrenhal. A great fortress of black stone, a... What Ser Harry said, about expensive albino pachyderms?*"

"*I see... Thank you.*" Vaok stood to leave but Viserys stopped him.

"*What is this about, comrade? Did something happen in your private lessons?*"

"*Yes, but nothing untoward. It was... I can't explain. Sorry. I will later, on my honour.*" Viserys surrendered the point, though he promised to remind himself to follow up with Ser Marq.

The rest of the Crones started filtering out as well and back to their next lesson, Viserys, Tytus, and Kasté checking their small parchment booklets. "A free hour?" Tytus looked up. "It will be practically supper."

"Where is... the Second Rookery?"

Viserys looked around confused as well. "Do we bring our equipment, or...?"

"Of course not," Kasté affirmed. "It's lesson times. Those without our privileges still need to master the basics."

Tytus snorted. "Six moons ago, you'd have said it was because you're smarter than the rest."

"Oh, well, I am smarter than the rest of you, but two things can be true." Tytus punched him in the arm for that, though they soon joined Viserys in donning their uniform armour – their arming doublet, yellow livery, short sword, and copper skull cadet's badge.

"There!" Viserys indicated a swirling mass of ravens high overhead, at the top of the Forge, and then a smaller, sparser mist of ravens below it on the opposite side of the keep. They used most of the free hour before the appointed time just traversing the castle, through the middle bailey, the inner walls, and the inner bailey, past squires asking too many questions and knights with nothing to do other than order them around.

The Forge beyond loomed overhead, up close more like an obelisk worthy of a forgotten god of Asshai or Valyria. Or Daemon Blackfyre. A twenty-foot likeness of the would-be usurper stood before the Forge, rendered in polished steel with gold finishings, the sword of his house held aloft. From the tip of Blackfyre spilled a fountain spray, the light of sunset catching the water and turning it to gold and red flame.

They travelled past the familiar sights of the portraits of past captains general and the gold skull standard of the Golden Company, in a place of honour as the wider Company was not on campaign. Aegor Bittersteel, Daemon Blackfyre the Younger, and Maelys the Monstrous and his little brother. As he lived, Viserys mused, his cousin Aerion Brightfyre's skull was not one of them.

They found their way to the stairs, climbing up the tiered black keep and, sweatier than they had hoped, reached the door to the second rookery. They had passed halls, classrooms, and the chambers of officers and their families in their ascent, asking directions and not questions when they saw Jon Lothston with his pants down behind Young John Mudd's mother, or Lady Lothston, and Melara and the Maidens, with curlers in their hair. The boys were certain she would curse them with some dark spell, so they moved on quickly from her wing of the keep.

The second rookery sat in a newer portion of the Forge, past a few doors to an inner chamber door flanked by two Company knights, hands ever on their sword hilts. "What's your unit?" asked the man on the right, a stout Norvoshi.

"Crones," said Viserys. "You?"

"Heh. The Forlorn, after the sword."

"That's like something out of a song..." muttered Tytus, utterly enchanted. "You, lady?"

The warrior on the left was a tall, thin Summer Islander. "I'm a captain, yellow hair. Not a lady. And I was a Meraxes."

"The first all infantry maiden's unit? Wow!" Kasté looked up at her like she hung the moon, and the she-captain started to sweat, not used to the praise.

"You're here to see the old man?"

Viserys meant to answer when the door burst open, revealing a man with a white mane, purple eyes, and the robes and chain of a maester. "Crones! In. You two! Go! Go!" He had the strength and vigour of a young man, shoving the guards by his door and escaping back into the rookery. "You're the readers then, eh?"

"Readers, sir?" asked Kasté.

"Sir? Hah!" Viserys and the others followed him in, the door shutting behind them under the strength of some contraption of springs and gears. "Start on the bird crust, work your way away. Wayaway!" The maester – or half-maester, as his chain was not attached to itself and dragged on the ground behind him – broke into a mad dash around the room then up some stairs and out of sight.

"He's mad!" cried Tytus. "I can read, but... Ugh." Tytus used an old gardening tool to poke at a plate of caked on raven leavings, twenty of the beasts squawking to be released from their cages. "I heard a rumour about the Brightfyre. That he did not just lose his mettle."

"We should look on the bright side." Kasté started with a broom and ladder, Viserys and Tytus standing out of the way as he scrubbed the top of a bookshelf. "Better this then the horses. At least there's a draft and it's dry."

Viserys agreed. "And the smell is more stale than sickening." He looked at the stairs farther up the tower where Aerion had gone. "Let's finish before supper."

They moved apace, chipping, sweeping, and scrubbing until there were only a few white stains on the cages and floor, the ravens at least keeping their pens clean and tidy.

"You move quickly." The three boys staggered away from Aerion, who had appeared on the other side of the main door. "You, Balaq's boy, and the lion cub. Go. The... *Lyseni* will stay."

"What for?" Kasté put himself in front of Viserys. "None of us are slaves anymore, Lord Aerion."

"Hehehe. A dragon is not a slave, one-day-maester." Aerion's eye twitched as the other two boys looked at Viserys in stunned shock.

Viserys put his hands up. "I'll explain later. I swear on our year together."

It was good enough for Kasté, though he still glared at Aerion, while Tytus watched only the floor as he walked out. The door slammed shut and the Valyrians were alone. "You won't be the first to try and bugger me."

"Buggery?" Aerion frowned, straightening to his full height, perhaps six-and-a-half feet tall, with a treasonous streak of black hair running from his forehead and down his mane like a river of shadow. "Who do you think I am, cadet?" His voice was different as well, the same, but without all its madness. He still had his mettle, Viserys was sure, but he didn't have all his pieces.

Aerion glided to the desk, opening a drawer to withdraw a ring of keys, which he clipped to his belt. His maester's robes were a deep shade of red, while hints of black plate and mail peeked out from behind the crimson fabric. "You're Lord Marshal Aerion Brightfyre."

He grunted, scrawling a message and selecting a raven he tossed from a window. "'Lord Marshal.' A pointless emeritus title." He sat at the desk and looked across it to Viserys. "Why have you not told your unit-mates who you are?"

"Who I am, my lord?"

He narrowed his gaze and somehow looked mad again. "You're the spitting image of my grandfather, you know."

Such a thought terrified Viserys. He felt an angered tirade bubble up in response, that part of him that was dragon wanting to rip out the armoured maester's throat for such an insult. He put a lid on the emotion. "I am nothing like the Brightflame. I will not be. Not like a single one of the mad ones."

Aerion tittered quite madly before regaining his disposition. Viserys noted a crescent scar on his left temple among the long white hair, with large stitch marks and misshapen skin, as if the scalp had healed slightly out of rotation. "I mean my real grandfather, Maekar."

Viserys frowned. He recalled a conversation between Princess Elia and her uncle, of Viserys's living family beyond the royal family. "Maegor?"

'Aerion' offered a toothy grin, powerfully perfect and pristine like all members of the house of the dragon. "Greetings, Viserys."

"You are... my cousin? Aerion's.... But how?"

Maegor shrugged. "I was at the Citadel when the last Blackfyre rebellion broke out. Was bored with my lot, didn't like your grandfather. It was very easy to convince them I was who I said I was. Took me far longer to root out the Monstrous's and House Blackfyre's loyalists. Had to dress it up as 'trimming the fat' so the Company could put down roots."

"You were alive! With a better claim! And you let our family-"

"I did not *let* anyone do anything. The council decided who they wanted, and I and my mother fled into the arms of her mother's house as our line lost all holdings with the reversal of the Unlikely's reforms." Maegor strode from the room, Viserys jogging to keep up with his massive legs. "Your grandfather was a weak-willed man. Even as children, he was too easy to convince and manipulate. But your father's advisors... Oh, they were much worse. They killed my aunt and cousins, and forced the Arryns to push me out."

"You could have said something! Before he was mad, my father-"

Maegor spun on Viserys, all his fifty-odd years in his purple eyes pinning Viserys in place. "Before he was a mad king, your father was a lustful and sadistic knight well-suited to Tywin Lannister. I happily strengthened Essos until such a time-" Maegor stopped himself, hunching over and nodding like some tortured old man at some passersby, hobbling forward and using Viserys's shoulder as a cane. "I have given up my ambitions, boy, but that does not mean I will cover my opinion. Least not from you, whomever your sire."

"And now he is dead, and Westeros weakened. Will Ser Myles invade?"

"With fewer than twenty-thousand men? Hah!" His laughter seemed more genuine, and his harsh grip softened. He reminded Viserys less of Pycelle than he did Ser Gerold, not so much paternal but certainly protective and talkative. Like an uncle. Given Maegor's age, he was much more that than a cousin. "No, we will build. Plans a decade in the works will begin to bear results in the coming years, and you will be free to your own choices. After you are done as a cadet." In acknowledgement of Viserys's low status, Maegor rubbed his head, hair still short, but allowed to grow a few inches on top. It was still snowy white.

Viserys took something from the physical contact with his blood. Real blood, not a half-Blackfyre bastard. Though, not as inbred as himself. "So I am just a cadet? Lysono and Ser Myles won't... won't force me to..."

"Force? Hah! Lysono's made too many friends in Norvos and Myles in Pentos for us to change plans just for your sake. We have three plans, boy, and when we're done with them, and you, you will be a man. Force yourself to do something then, but not before."

They passed a room of desks and scratching pens, Lady Lothston watching her Maidens and the scattered daughters of officers write some examination. She nodded politely to Maegor, who nodded back before wobbling onwards. "Lady Lothston frightens me."

"Then you are as blind as most knights." As the hallway emptied, Maegor dragged Viserys into a darkened alcove behind a bust of Aegor Rivers. "What do you want from this life, boy? Power? Coin? Women?"

"I want to see my sister again. And maybe my niece and nephews."

"Not try and speak sense to the Royalists?" Viserys shook his head, confused. "Your brother's faction. The Anti-royalists are scattered after the Stark-Baratheon schism, and the Unionists claim to fight for peace."

"I last saw Rhaegar... perhaps half a year before I left King's Landing for Dragonstone." He rarely thought about Rhaegar, thinking more about his mother and father, and his disparate other relations.

Maegor tapped his lips. "Hm. No doubt your mother was tired of your father's raping."

Viserys staggered in place. "My father's-" Viserys vomitted, painting the Bittersteel's head and shoulder with his midday meal.

"Ah. Of course. You would not have known." Maegor patted his shoulder awkwardly. "Best not to think on it too much."

Viserys ate his evening meal in contemplative silence, stealing looks at both his cousin and the other officers. Did all the officers know? Was he a product of... His mother had been so weak on Dragonstone, barely able to stand with the weight of her gravid belly. Not like Naerys the elephant, who whelped with nary a grunt.

They must have known, but they did not know who he was. Why would they care about some king across the Narrow Sea?

***

As he lay awake that night, Viserys recalled what he had heard in the Red Keep, how the maids and guardsmen would mutter whenever the queen wore a high collar, or Pycelle needed to clean a wound they said came from nails. Viserys knew now that his father's floor-length fingernails must have been the cause, which made him bury his face and sob into his pillow.

His sobbing quieted when the barrack door opened, his fellow Crones too tired from another day to notice.  Lady Lothston glided in escorted by two knights, one holding a hooded lantern. Her black dress and mail clung to the shadows, while her red hair shone like rubies in the lantern light. She pointed at Drogo, Vaok, and three more boys in their room who were not Crones.

One knight drew a piece of charcoal, marking the ends of their cots, while the other swept the lantern light over the room. Viserys evened out his breathing and shut his eyes, keeping them closed even as he heard the charcoal against his cot, and then hot breath on his face.

"So much blood..." He thought he heard her lick her lips.

Viserys opened his eyes when the door closed, waiting a few more moments before rising and quietly striking a pine pitch match and lighting a candle. He inspected the charcoal marks; two sharp lines that met below, with another V-shaped mark. It reminded Viserys of paintings of distant birds, but birds did not have ears. "It's a bat."

Viserys nearly jumped out of his skin as Talal snuck up behind him. "She sucks blood just like a bat."

"You're too easy," Viserys admonished, dampening a cloth and wiping away the charcoal marks. "Go back to sleep."

"But-"

"Sleep. We'll discuss in the morning."

Chapter Text

Viserys, Talal, and Drogo met with Robar, Melara, and the various other 'leaders' in their cohort, those with more pull among the officers or influence over their fellow cadets. There were fifty of them in total, meeting a week after Viserys had first discovered the bat symbols on their cots. Most had seen them, smearing them with their hands or taking sketches to preserve them, while those whose cots had been marked had started being subconsciously excluded or victimised.

A half-Tyroshi Company's son with Valyrian silver-gold hair, fading to blue at the tips, said, "All are former slaves! No man with a collar could bear the golden skulls." The symbol of a Company man. A pin of three golden skulls was what most of them had grown to desire.

"I am no slave!" cried Oscar. "Me and my brother, and another Peake cousin besides, were marked."

"Torman probably deserved it," muttered Robar to Talal.

"What did you say of him! Torman's taken his licks, but Lady Lothston... She..."

Drogo and another Dothraki, Rakharo, the son of his father's sister, stepped forward. "We must sit!" he shouted, all certain they would not be heard in the ruined house, deep within the forests to the south of the Forge. It was the early hours of the morning, before breakfast. Their half day of work was ahead of them before a half and a full day of rest. "We must sit, golden sons."

Drogo sat first in a show of good faith, with Viserys and the Crones following, which started a wave. Viserys had not been the only one to see Lady Lothston or one of her agents, all in black with black bats across their attire.

"Where is Melara?" Viserys asked.

"She is one of her agents. All the Maidens of this cohort are," said the half-Tyroshi. He claimed to be of Blackfyre descent through the female line, while his father was a Northman from the Company of the Rose. His name was Aegon, though everyone called him Young Bear, for his father. "She was not invited."

Oscar said, "We don't know if we can trust her. You know her best, Viserys. What has she planned?"

"We have spoken but a handful of times. But... I suppose she respects Lady Lothston."

Talal said, "We must speak carefully. Let... Melara's teacher be... The Witch. Her agents, the Bats."

"Only with those you trust," another insisted.

Drogo cut through the semantics. "Think tomorrow. Must we ride for Mother of Mountains? To escape?"

"We must stay together," Viserys said. "We should speak with one voice and demand answers. We can spread the word to the first and second year cadets, and any siblings and friends amongst the Dusklands. We go to Ser Myles or Ser Harry directly."

"Or any serjeant. These are not distant fathers, but our teachers." Robar came to the defense of the Company. "Few of you grew up here. The Lothstons have long been allies, but separate, like guests just passing through. Always with enough influence or coin to leave a dark mark. Rapes, thievery, general discontent, all rise. Since mother was a girl."

"Drogo smell darkness. Dark wings, dark words." The Dothraki's mind had been honed by the pain of spiritual death and the desolation of his honour. Over the moons his hair had slowly but steadily regrown, darker and thicker than before. Many of those with Essosi blood, and the freedmen and former slaves who knew not their heritage, had begun to follow Drogo's suit, feeling that they too had been reborn as cadets.

"She has sown discontent with whatever she has done," said Talal. "Let us close ranks. Attend lessons, but offer no negativity."

"Cover the whites of our eyes," said Viserys. "We are the men of the Golden Company, and they will not shake us. Beneath the gold?"

His fellow cadets grinned, as much to celebrate as bare their teeth. "The bitter steel."

***

Viserys and the Crones went to their training, a platoon of eighty cadets assembled for what occupied half of all their training; formation drills. With helmet, spear, and shield, and a massive weighted vest, they would march in place, lock shields, thrust, retreat, drilling in the tens of forms and hundreds of permutable formations.

Serjeant Caspor Hill assembled them in lines. "At side!" Their spears stamped the dusty ground in their right hands, holding their shield on their left arm at their side. "Today, a game of colours. The winners get to lead the losers on our expedition west next moon."

The lines threatened to break out into excited chatter, Caspor Hill raising his truncheon and stilling the lot. He was a stout Westerman exile, bald with a long brown and grey beard. Not a knight, Caspor did lead the heavy infantry, though he wore very little plate, just layers upon layers of mail and boiled leather. He bore a greatsword across his back and a battle axe on one hip, and a short sword and truncheon on the other.

"Cadets Torman, Melara, and Viserys." The three cadets, educated and trusted over others with various other responsibilities and privileges – far more the former than the latter, with all the extra sentry shifts. "Colours!" A squire dropped sacks of coloured powders.

Torman snatched all the orange and a few black, leaving Melara cursing him before she took the white, yellow, and red. Viserys went to the opposite, with some purple, blue, and green. Like Braavos and Norvos together. "Typical," snorted Torman.

Viserys could not even offer retort. "Leave it," scolded Caspor. "Time for that later. I expect you to select based on skill *only*."

Caspor said that, but they all knew it was a lie. He offered sticks, and Viserys took his. His was the length of a pen. Caspor's was twice that length, Melara's a toothpick, and Torman's barely long enough to hold. "Hm. I exempt the use of blades."

Though they would never use live steel in any game, not even allowing blunted training was a clear sign that he expected a clean game. More like cyvasse with three players. Viserys had first pick. He needed someone who was either very good at following orders, or doling them out. "Drogo."

He clasped his comrade's arm. Melara was strategic, expecting none of her Maidens to be selected. "Baqarro." The big half-Dothraki shrugged, taking a stand by her side.

"No trust for Melara," said Drogo into Viserys's ear.

Torman grimaced at his pick again, though he seemed to have resigned himself to his fate. "Young Bear."

Viserys looked over the crowd. He needed bodies right now, and he still had twenty-eight picks to go. "Oscar."

Melara summoned a big Stormlander, the son of Westerosi refugees. Torman picked another Company's son, then it came to Viserys again. He wanted to make Melara sweat. He pointed out a blonde girl at the front of the nine Maidens. "Tyna."

"A- Mel?" Tyna walked behind Viserys, a gentle-postured girl with soft brown eyes but, if Tytus was to be believed, a talent with knives. "What are you playing at?"

The picks went on. "Strategy. Zadjet."

The picks went on, Viserys snagging Vaok before he had to pivot to stronger fighters, picking a big Myrish girl, some burly Westerosi and tall Summer Islanders, Rakharo for Drogo's sake, and some wash-outs from the cohort ahead of them. They were not smart, but they were big and they followed orders well. "Better off behind a plough."

He had saved Kasté from Torman, but had lost Tytus, Talal, and Joho to him, along with Vaok and Cosimo to Melara. He had a few of theirs as well, and one full unit of slave boys. Melara had left them to Viserys, hoping he would prefer a defensive strategy to keep them safe. Torman and Young Bear looked down on them, but Zadjet had told him what they really were; former Unsullied, purchased before their cutting.

Viserys put them in the second rank, with his biggest in the front and wings, with the rest locked in two stout wedges on his side of a six-sided marching ground. Squires ran about placing posts in random slots, building permutations of imaginary terrain. Grasslands would allow them to move twice in one turn, forests only once, while mountains would hold them for two turns. They had to march around seas, unless they first crossed a forest, and if they spent a third turn in the mountains they could claim it and begin trying to win.

Caspor hill climbed to the top of some scaffolding and rope bridges overhead in some flattened field beyond Forgemount, so he and the squires and third-year cadets could properly keep score. "Generals! Your names?"

Viserys observed his land. A mountain surrounded by forest surrounded by sea. An island on the edge of the map. "The Marines!"

Torman said, "The Towers!"

Melara said, "The Vipers!"

"You shall have five moves to maneuver, and then you may only move when your flag is raised." Caspor indicated the squire at Viserys's side, who had a gold signal flag in hand. "Begin."

Viserys set one unit to the mountains, one crossing the mountains and forests, and another crossing the mountains, forests, and taking one turn out to sea. His people had touched up their weapons and armour with the coloured powders, with their shields and helmets, but staves in place of spears. The ends had been padded to make a strike even less painful, but despite the rules little would keep them from swinging them like bats.

Despite the accessibility of the shore and river beyond his island, Viserys held his army back, letting Melara and Torman pick each other apart. A unit of both of theirs found themselves without orders for three turns, roughly a quarter of an hour later. Viserys gathered his whole army and challenged Torman's abandoned unit.

They were burly and tall, a deadly combination, as Viserys set his army to the task of swarming them. He lost an Unsullied and two Company's sons, the battle resolved by who had more marks of enemy coloured powder. He gained more than he lost, adding seven to his number, then confirming their claim over one quarter of the field.

Melara and Torman had both dwindled to two units, and the rest were assembled under a 'rebel' banner who attacked any that came close. Viserys gathered his army to steadily move through some fields towards the battleground, though not putting himself between the attack and counterattack of the other two armies.

A sling bullet struck Viserys's shield, looking towards its source in the Vipers. Melara waved to him and indicated Torman, entrenched in the mountains. There was a narrow pass into the range, but with enough soldiers, they could hold the pass and storm the mountains.

"One of each of our units, then you go west." Melara jogged across the field to Viserys as, turn by turn, their armies advanced. "Torman may try a sally to claim the rebels."

"He doesn't have the men."

"He doesn't need the men, just to force us south right into their spears." Viserys looked back at the rebel army, Caspor Hill speaking to their captain, Tytus. They struck a new colour, claiming yellow, red, and black – Golden Company colours. "There!" Viserys spied one of Torman's units sneaking towards the Rebels; if they reached them and 'paid' them with half their unit, the rebels would become theirs.

The Marines and the Vipers were five turns away though, and the Towers just two turns away. "We take the mountains." Viserys moved forward to the front of his army just as they engaged Torman and his remaining unit and a half. They were large and they fought hard, but with Viserys holding the front, Melara and the Vipers came around to bite them in the rear.

The turn went by, then it was Viserys again, retreating with his now fourteen men while Melara and her seven remained in the mountains. Viserys could decide if he let the Vipers out, allowing the Marines to be caught in the middle of the Towers, now with the Golden Company behind Tytus, as Torman had fallen in the fighting. "Back to the island."

Tyna had survived as well. "With the Vipers, we can take them."

"To what end? They are turns into the mountains."

"But we don't know that!" Tyna indicated the mountains; past the first marker, no army could claim to know where another was if they were behind the mountains. It would be breaking the rules. "It's against the rules."

Viserys looked around. He would make his own rules. "Stake along that grassland, then wait. Tyna, get the Vipers." Viserys set their lines along an empty valley that bordered the sea. If Melara could make it in time, the Vipers would reinforce the Marines.

The turns ticked by, flags snapping as Tytus and the Company advanced. They engaged the Marines, getting their strikes in. Viserys did the same, and three cadets, two enemy and one of his, were ordered out. Another turn went by, and he lost four of his own. His nine to Tytus's fifteen was a steep match-up.

A turn came, and with a longer movement turn over the grassland, Melara and the Vipers struck the Company in their flank, piercing deep into their lines.

Viserys attacked for one turn, however pulled back his remaining seven as Torman's remnants, the Company, and Vipers tore themselves apart. The Company went below five cadets and were deemed lost, ordered off the field, followed by the Towers. Then it was just Melara and the Vipers. Five in total.

"Tyna, you're with us!" Before the Vipers could attack, Tyna was forced back to her proper team, and on a technicality, the Marines were declared the victor.

"On a technicality." Melara shoved Viserys bodily, the stout girl throwing him off balance. "Cheater!"

Viserys said, "All's fair. How was I to see you coming past the mountains?" Melara turned on Tyna darkly, and Viserys made himself scarce as the game ended.

Caspor ascended and offered critiques, but overall, "A war well fought. To the baths with you."

Freed for the next day and a half, Viserys returned to his barracks still caked in coloured dust, waiting patiently as his unit filed back in, those not in his army doing so with wounded pride. "We fought well. All of us," said Tytus, nodding to Viserys.

"Everyone rest up. Tonight, we get answers."

Chapter Text

The Smiths, Maidens and Crones met in the shadow of the Forge in the hour of the wolf, sneaking through a side door left unlocked by a Rhoynish cook friendly to Melara. Or so she claimed.

"Let's say we have family in common."

"Rhoynar?" Cosimo said something fast and eager in his mother tongue.

Melara seemed to understand at first, though shook her head. "Nothing like that. I stole him some spices from a stall in the City of Faith." The units assembled in the kitchen, cleared out courtesy of the kitchen maids Oscar paid off with coin from the House Peake treasury. "We have to move fast."

"We will." Through the kitchen and down hallways or up the stairs, the cadets spilled into Forgemount's keep, breaking into groups of two or three to go about digging through the officers' letters and correspondance.

Once it was just Viserys and Melara climbing the stairs, he held her back. "What's she teaching you? Really?"

"You brought the Maidens and I into your little cabal when they said we couldn't be trusted. Why can't *you* just trust that my intentions are pure?" She jerked her arm out of his grasp, her large, dark eyes glaring at him from above pudgy, pimply cheeks. "Answer me?"

"It's because I trust *your* intentions. But I still want to know. Everyone says she's not to be trusted."

Melara scoffed. "She's teaching us what we need to know. How the world will treat us. Poisons. And the dangers of men, especially those who ask questions."

"And is it magic? Why did she mark our cots?" Viserys felt his hand twitch towards his short sword, though he controlled himself. "We don't eve know her name."

"It's Danelle, and she's... strange, I will admit. I want to know as well, but I doubt it is something so terrible."

The steps they climbed ran along Forgemount's outer wall, arrow-slitted windows letting in the dank summer wind, making them sweat as they climbed and climbed. "And Drogo's braid?"

"Even I don't know that." They moved through the library and up a spiralling iron staircase to the Forge's uppermost levels, starting with the familiar laboratory of Maegor – Lord Aerion to all but Viserys – and the solar of Lady Danelle Lothston.

The former Captain General's workspace was disorderly but logical, books rarely drifting far from his bookshelves and medicinal herbs isolated to a sterile corner. Trophies littered the space as well, from a series of standards for the greatest and oldest of free sellsword companies assembled in a great wooden book, to the head of a monstrous tiger-man preserved in a jar of mirky fluid.

"And they call Lady Lothston a witch." Melara covered the jar in an old apron, wading through a river of parchment and back out the door. "You would earn a Maester's link just cleaning his space."

"Lord Aerion likes his things where he likes them," Viserys said, coming to his cousin's defense. "At least he doesn't perform experiments on us."

Melara led them up and then down, into a series of windowless rooms that, if Viserys's sense of direction was correct, had them suspended in the ceiling over the Serjeants' meeting chamber. It was warm but painfully dry within, the still air leaving dust hanging like wraiths among the rows of bookshelves and specimen jars. Far more well preserved than Maegor's, the glass boxes contained all manner of creature or part, from wolf ears to lion paws and plenty of bats, birds, and spiders.

"Be careful to touch nothing. I heard rumour of traps." Melara made a bee-line for one of the bookshelves. "Not the time for meandering, either."

Viserys went to the desk, looking over it without using his hands. He saw reports of the movements of troops and supply lines for noble houses and sellsword companies in the Dusklands and Westeros, and mention of merchant companies flooding Myr's market with pottery, rice, and linen. His eyes settled on the open ledger, rows with numbers, columns with words in High Valyrian. "What's this?"

Melara examined the ledger. "It's... it's us."

"Us? What does that-"

Lady Lothston walked in. Melara tore them down under the desk. "As I explained before, your lord master may send the contract and first half of payment. He must do that *first*." Viserys recognised Lady Lothston's voice and the sharp sounds of her heeled boots with their steel toe caps.

Her companion had a heavier gait, with the brush of mail on leather accompanying the sounds of his much larger feet. "My lady, you said that if he signed the contract-"

"And by affixing his seal to it, Ser Denys has begun the contract. The Golden Company does not enter the contract until payment is *received*. From his request, one-hundred-thousand Westerosi gold dragons was the agreed upon cost for services."

"And he signed with the understanding that your bonds with New Andalos would-"

"Ser Vardis, it is late, and I am tired." Melara hung on Lady Lothston's words as if she were Daenys the Dreamer. "In the morning when you are in a better mood, perhaps-"

With the crack of a slap, Lady Lothston flew backwards, catching herself on her desk in a clatter. "You would do well, knowing how to speak to your betters."

"Please leave, Ser. Before I send for the guard."

Ser Vardis charged Lady Lothston, her loss of breath and her fists beating his armour all Viserys and Melara could hear. "As you never failed to remind us, my lady, your den is quite private. And with you out of the way, the Andals my rise again."

Melara charged, drawing her knife and dashing out from under the desk. Viserys revealed himself ser after as Melara drove her knife into Ser Vardis's ribs, sinking halfway to the hilt but hardly a nuisance to the square-bodied knight. "Bah! Essosi savage!" He back-handed Melara, giving Lady Lothston opening to come up with a stone dip pen in her hand. She brought it down on Ser Vardis's face, scraping down his brow and sinking into his eye.

He bellowed in pain, coiling his fist and driving it into Lady Lothston. She reached towards Melara, who lay unmoving on the ground. "A- Ari-"

Somehow, Viserys moved his feet, drawing his shortsword and thrusting just as Caspor Hill trained him. The blade sank up to the hilt into the soft flesh below the armour over Ser Vardis's stomach, pulling it back with a twist and disembowelling him, dragging Lady Lothston from his grapple as he fell bleeding to his knees.

She gasped for air as Ser Vardis failed to push his insides back where they belonged, drawing a sword and slashing wildly towards Viserys. He dove underneath it, taking a large tome from the desk and destroying it to save his left side, while his right thrust the short sword again. It missed his gut but easily pierced the leather and wool on his arm, forcing him to drop his sword as Viserys's sliced vital tendons.

Vardis bellowed in pain brutally charging his assailant, who sidestepped and stabbed again, this time in the armpit. The knight's momentum carried him into the desk and face first into the chair, unmoving with his feet in the air.

Lady Lothston cradled Melara, speaking to her earnestly as her eyes fluttered open. "What are you doing here? What were you thinking?"

"Was trying to... to make them like you."

"Foolish girl." Lothston held Melara to her chest as she drifted in and out of consciousness, a large welt on the side of her head. "And you?"

Viserys was still looking at his weapon and the dead knight. He picked up the ruined ledger, reading it brazenly. "Officer stream. Serjeant potential. Better a smith's hammer than a war hammer?" He tossed the book aside. "You- You're spying on us!"

"I was marking your cots for replacement. Everyone on them is quite large."

"While we were sleeping in them?"

She rolled her eyes. "Help me with her." Still suspicious though he was, Viserys sheathed his weapon and helped Lady Lothston maneuver Melara into an armchair. "None of you like me, nor did the cadets like my mother, cousin, grandfather, or anyone else with the Lothston name out of plebeian superstition."

"Plebeian?"

"Simple. Peasant. *Smallfolk*. Idiots." She strode past Viserys, wincing as she touched her swollen cheek then shoving the Vale knight off her workstation. "I had everything in just the right place... and you stupid...." She shut her eyes. "Mother, give me strength. Had I been born a man, you would not be so suspicious." She drew a diagram of bamboo rods and leather straps. "We needed to see how you slept. I have found an important connection between mental performance and the quality of bedding."

"The bats! The... the bad things that happen when you come to the Dusklands! No one ever sees more than one of you! Are you the same Danelle Lothston who ruled Harrenhal a hundred years ago?"

"My grandmother lived nearer fifty years ago. And no. Danelle, the third of my name." She stood a little straighter, the blood spilling from her nose and brow looking like some shadowbinder's spell. "And I *study* bats. They are fascinating creatures. And I know things. There is not *less* crime when I am here, simply more punishment. The ladies of the Dusklands will tell their midwives and septas things no one else will ever hear, but their midwives and septas talk to Maiden Mothers and one very influential apothecary, and they speak to me."

"Jon?"

"My cousin. Our mothers are sisters."

"They're alive?"

"In Braavos. It's quite quiet on our lands. Jon is distant from the family though, and I-" It dawned on her that he was far beneath her in the pecking order. "Did you think me some sort of... cruel creature?"

"Torman... Oscar said you... you..."

"The Peake boy saw things at too young of an age, when the Myrish turned on the Golden Company's garrison. I only ever helped him, it has just never been Oscar's business."

"How did you know Oscar told me! How!"

"You are exhausting for a Targaryen, you know that?"

***

Things were a flurry in the hours that followed, Viserys and Melara shut away with Lysono Maar asking them what they heard and what they knew. Ser Vardis was Ser Vardis of House Egen, a retainer to House Arryn and thus an agent of the current heir and ascendent lord of the Vale, Ser Denys Arryn. Viserys recalled the Darling of the Vale and his performance at the Tourney at Harrenhal. His own brother was the one to unhorse him. He found it easy to hate Ser Denys for what his defeat led to.

It was early the following morning when Viserys gave up on getting sleep, standing to see Melara gently breathing on another cot across the room, a tall privacy partition at the foot of the cot. By the door in an armchair dragged across the floor slept not Lysono Maar, but Marq Mandrake. He had his feet on his rucksack like a footstool, and his sheathed swords across his lap, snoring with every fifth or sixth breath through his walrus-thick moustache and beard. Viserys wondered how Mistress Caterina could stand kissing him.

Viserys rose towards the window, warily to look down over the bannister. There was sign of a small battle, the party of ten Vale knights and their retainers not going down easily. He ducked into the privy, relieving himself and refreshing himself from a bowl of lemon-scented water.

"Viserys? You're alright?" Ser Marq was rubbing his eyes and checking behind the privy and above the window.

"When did you arrive?"

Satisfied it was safe, he sheathed his sword and drew a handkerchief. The scar on his cheek often bled an inky blue fluid, no doubt remnants of his old slave tattoo. "Just this eve during the battle. Four of them got away, so the guard was doubled."

He gave Viserys a firm shake by the shoulder, though it quickly transitioned into a warm hug. Marq was soft and warm and so very familiar, and Viserys found he might have slept better had he known Marq was watching him. "You killed a man."

"I feel... Not different, but... changed? Which I don't like."

Marq nodded firmly, guiding them to sit by the hearth. Though it was still summer, the Dusklands's mountains were blustery and humid. "You must never let it overwhelm you, and change is good. It is a terrible thing, to kill a man. And though you may one day kill hordes of them, by your hand alone or that of your army, you must never forget it."

Viserys stoked the fire, moving it around with the iron poker. His hand was shaking. "What possesses a man like that to just... attack a lady? Attack anyone!" Melara groaned and stirred in her bed. In a hushed tone, Viserys added, "Or to be so presumptive about the Golden Company?"

"Ser Vardis's squire confessed that he and his knights thought they could seize the Forge."

"Ten knights and their squires?" Viserys scoffed. "Fools."

"Or the rookery. Long enough to summon a muster and make the Stormlands and Dorne go up in arms in response to a rumour. Never underestimate the power-"

"Underestimate the power of rumour and few misplaced truths." Viserys turned on Marq. "Who told you that?"

"Blackheart. Who told *you* that?"

"Lord Aerion."

Marq narrowed his gaze, bushy eyebrows flecked with a little more grey than when last time they met. "I would add that you must exhaust all options of diplomacy. As I have aged... I have found that war must not always be waged on the battlefield. Hearts and minds, purses, and bellies. All are as important as steel and a stout heart."

"You're still on your feet, though. And a serjeant! Congratulations!"

Marq smiled appreciatively, slapping his chest and sitting back in his chair. "Boy, I've been in a Company man for three-and-thirty years. I tire of it all and desire rest. All the better an officer, so I might spend campaigns treating with strange and foreign folk seeking the Golden Company's aid." Viserys tried not to look dissapointed, though he still found himself inspecting the tassels of the armchair while sniffling back a few tears. "But I've my remaining half-contract, and I want to raise a few more boys into knights."

That would be five more years, which could see Viserys through. "I'll squire for you? Really?"

"I look forward to the day. Keep your training up, in all arts, and when the time comes you will be my squire, on and off the field." Marq stood as the sun rose into his eyes. There was a low knock at the door and he stood, the Forge and surrounding Dusklands rising with the sun. "But for now, you've a barracks to return to."

A trio of Melara's unit entered followed by an older maiden of the castle. She had the look of someone foreign to even western Essos, with a dark, widow's peaked hair bound in a rope braid, and curved lips red as wine. She was striking, and Marq had to drag Viserys away to keep him from staring, bowing courteously as Melara woke.

Halfway out the door, she said, "Viserys?"

Marq smirked pridefully as Viserys turned back, Melara pulling herself from her pillow and her pile of dark curls. "Is... is Lady Loth- Lotso- Losthostoston okay?" She was slurring her words from milk of the poppy, which made Viserys smile and her unit-mates titter.

"She is, Melara."

"Hm? She said she's happy we're friends. *I'm* happy we're friends."

"I'm happy we're-" She forced a clumsy kiss to his mouth, though she ended up with more of his nose than his lips.

Viserys sought a way out as he pulled himself back. "Ari? Is that was she called you?"

"Hm? Arian-"

"I think she needs her rest." The older girl shoved Viserys out and shut the door behind him.

Marq led him back down the stairs, returning to him the dark hood he wore the previous night, along with his short sword. "Girls are... confusing," Viserys said.

"Boy, you don't know the half of it." They descended the long stairwell, a great shaft of cool air with internal balconies for the innermost chambers and apartments of the Forge. "One day they're raising your sons and trying to convince you to homestead in Norvos, the next she's threatening to geld you for missing your son's name-day celebration."

"Ma Cate threatened to geld you?"

"Not talking about her."

Viserys didn't have time for a follow up question as Marq gave him a pat on the back and a gold dragon for his trouble, deposited with his unit just as they were barrelling into the mess hall. Like Peake siege weapons they bombarded him with questions, and he was sure to embellish for the sake of cohort unity and not his own reputation. Mostly.

"A plot by the Valemen?" Oscar murmured. "You killed a knight of the Vale!"

"These dragon's teeth are sharp!" Drogo slapped Viserys on the back and offered him a bell from his steadily regrowing braid.

Viserys quieted his comrades, finishing his mouthful of porridge and spiced sausage, then washing it down with a tall glass of milk. He much preferred the food in the Dusklands to the salted and fermented preserves of Braavos. "Lysono says we will be on high alert, and the cohort will be split in two. Half will go west to train with the elephants and help the surrounding homesteads in the Golden Fields, and after a season, we will march on a campaign."

A hush went over the units, word quickly passing among the cohort. Their first campaign came no sooner or later than usual for a cadet's first taste of action, but the promise – or fear – of battle would define them all for years to come, possibly the rest of their lives.

"We will certainly get our first skulls before the campaign," said Tytus. "They will want to inspire us."

"It would be after, obviously," said Aegon the Young Bear. "What, you want a reward for being trained? Stupid bastard."

"The fuck did you say!" Viserys jumped across the table, punching his fellow Valyrian. He took the first on the chin, but Viserys crushed his nose with the second.

Torman shoved him off and swung a swift kick into his gut, winding Viserys but in turn tackled by Drogo. Viserys swung on Young Bear, who caught his arm, sending two quick jabs into his ribs. Viserys kicked out his leg, punched him in the kidney, then elbowed him in the chest, sending him sprawling.

Some other Company's son took Viserys, while Oscar failed to separate Drogo and his brother and Tytus worked on choking-out Young Bear. Viserys spotted Baqarro cornered by some tall Summer Islanders, rushing them when a mailed boot took him in the gut.

That time he vomitted, looking through the tears as armoured squires and a handful of knights broke up the brawl. Rather than waste time measuring blame, they simply set them all to the task of stripping, cleaning the mess hall with their clothes, the dressing again and marching twenty miles. They spent the night in the bush.

Viserys cursed as he crushed his finger on a stone, looking around at his cohort.. Punching Aegon felt exhilarating, but it wasn't worth such a punishment. They were halfway through digging a new latrine by hand, the moon climbing higher with each handful of dirt. Viserys grabbed the stone before the cadet beside him could. Torman. He sneered but turned back to his task of uprooting a tree.

He hauled the rock up the ridge then swung it onto his shoulder, carrying it to the relevant pile based on its size. He dropped it, shook out his limbs, drank his earned half-ladle of water, and returned to the ditch.

"This is ridiculous," Zadjet spat. "I did nothing."

"Master musn't suffer," Torman retorted in a mocking whine. "Take your whinging back to the Harpy."

"Leave it." Baqarro squared up to Torman, not just for his unit-mate but the lot of them dragged into the personal feuds of a handful of cadets. "You cut Joho, Tytus cut you. You punch Viserys, Viserys punch you. Aegon insult Tytus, Viserys attack for Tytus." He looked between them and the others, even glaring up at the squires and Ser Marq, looking down on them derisively, but silently. "Enough!"

Viserys looked Torman up and down. What had he seen as a boy? Why did he and Oscar both resemble their father, but not one another? His scar held a bit of sweat and dirt, less of a snarling grimace than a perpetual frown, like a mummer's mask. "Enough," he said.

Viserys looked back to Joho, who nodded. "Enough," Viserys said.

Marq stepped to the edge of the ridge. "Back to work!"

Chapter Text

With a grunt, Domeric pulled the buckle taut. A steel direwolf stared him in the face. "Enough, Domeric." He bowed and retreated, head down and eyes averted. His master sighed. "We've spoken about such things." A callused hand tilted his chin upright, steely eyes watching him from behind a mane of dark hair.

"Apologies, Lord Stark." He sought escape from Eddard Stark's gaze, but the Warden of the North was having none of it. "I will do better."

"Better is not what I want." Guiding Domeric to the chest in his tent, he withdrew a black leather and mail brigandine, with a black arming doublet and pink surcoat with the flayed man of House Bolton. "Your mother asked I see these to you. She will be waiting for us in Winterfell." Eddard helped him into the armour, with the matching vestments of a sword belt and full helm in the shape of a skinned skull, though Domeric's head rattled around inside of it. "Perhaps once you're of age?"

Domeric flattened down the surcoat, beaming up at Lord Stark. In the six moons he had served the Warden of the North as a squire, Domeric had felt more warmth than all the time with his father. He had mourned his father for a moon as was proper after the news of his drowning in a river. Domeric had not cared for details, only that his mother's cousin would be lord regent of House Bolton until he came of age.

As one of only a handful of Northmen in the Vale when the war began, the recently-made Lord of Winterfell took Domeric into his service, first as a page serving his new wife and infant son and nephew at Riverrun, then a squire since their short return to Winterfell. They raced back south barely half a year later, and had not even seen the neck in over a year. Lord Stark was already a father again, when last Domeric heard.

He picked up the Stark standard and followed Eddard out to the Harrentown docks. Though he had apartments in Harrenhal – his children were in line for it, after all – Eddard chose to sleep among his men, no doubt feeling away from the pack with his family back at Winterfell.

The Smalljon carried his father's own standard, the giant of House Umber third after House Stark, behind the longaxes of House Dustin and the merman of House Manderly. Domeric's mother had taught him the order of a procession was one way a lord might show favour and disfavour to his vassals.

His father had said it was the best way to sow infighting and preserve your power.

Lord Stark gave them favour based on their deeds, so it was no wonder the Manderlys and Dustins were first. The knights of the Mander and Barrows had delivered victory at both Antlers and Ashemark, and they covered the retreat at Hayford, while House Umber fought in the vanguard at all three. Uncle Adam met them there, carrying the Bolton banner as well as the Ryswell banner.

As they climbed onto the barges, Viserys could not help but notice how few houses the other kingdoms bore by comparison. The lords of the Vale and Riverlands embarked on adjacent barges, teams of rowers taking them across the water to the Isle of Faces. The Valemen bristled but the Northmen, and more than a few Rivermen, swelled with confidence at the sight of the weirwood trees, and the lords, ladies, and kings of the south who cowered beneath the boughs of the Old Gods.

Eddard led the most powerful of the war's alliances, his flanks soon filled by legends of wars past like Brynden Tully and the Darling of the Vale, Ser Denys Arryn. Both were proxies, as were most of the others on the Isle of Faces, but there were two notable exceptions beyond Lord Stark.

Rhaegar Targaryen huffed just like a dragon would, chest puffed in his ruby-encrusted black armour. "Where is my son!"

"Safe, as agreed upon." Eddard looked from the King on Dragonstone to his Hand and peer, Monford Velaryon. "You said he agreed."

The young lord of Driftmark first looked confused, then angry, then very afraid, tugging on his king's shoulder like an intrusive child. They muttered, Rhaegar hissed, "You said-!"

Monford said something else, and Rhaegar cooled. "Very well. Then you, Lord Stark, will also take Monterys to be his companion, with twenty guards."

"My son!" cried Monford. "You cannot mean-"

"Enough of these trivialities!" Domeric knew that booming voice, from having heard it calling for his master's death on the battlefield. Though a lord, he had many names. Domeric and all Westerosi children knew him as the King of Thorns. "The Reach cares not for another spawn of the dragon."

"We are here to make an agreement, my lords." Prince Oberyn Martell took the middle of the bloodthirsty nobility. "It is humid here in the Riverlands, and I would like to return to Dorne."

"Shut yourselves away again," growled Rhaegar. "Steal my family, betray your king. You should pray to every god, new or old, that I, Rhaegar Targaryen, the prince that was prom-"

"Silence!" Mace Tyrell stood up to his former liege, broad and stout as a gorilla with twice the fury. "We are here because of you! Martell, Baratheon, Targaryen, Tully, Lannister!" He snapped his fingers, four knights pushing through carrying a table, a fifth with a bundle of scrolls, inkwells, pens, and wax. Domeric noticed how all of the knights, and the Thorn Lord himself, bore a handful of chain links each, like a maester. "My borders, closed. Generous trade for Dorne and the Riverlands, and the North and the Vale if they can ever get there. The rest of you best pray I not turn your maesters and smallfolk against you. The Most Devout are most grateful."

Oberyn Martell, Renly Baratheon, Rhaegar Targaryen, Brynden Tully, and Kevan Lannister were eager to sign. Some lesser Stormlands and Crownlands lords attempted to bypass their counterparts for Lord Tyrell, needing his grain and meat for lack of their own, but he would hear none of it. The Lannisters, as always, had their banners under their thumb. Besides, they had Lannisport. Anything they couldn't trade for overland, they could purchase from Lys or the Summer Isles.

"Robert will not break under his smallfolk's complaints," muttered Ser Denys. Though he was scarred, his left arm held feebly at his side and that side of his face covered by a polished moonstone mask, he was still a paragon of knightly virtue, brushed steel plate with sky blue tabard and cloak. Domeric wondered, were it a time of peace, if he would have a chance to squire for the Darling of the Vale. "The same cannot be said for his brothers."

As Mace stormed off, back to his barge and his waiting five-thousand heavy cavalry on the far shore, the diplomats were left with just the small tables and few casks of wine from House Whent. Old Lady Whent hardly had the funds to keep her head dry, even with the loans from her niece.

Domeric stayed close by Eddard's side as the middle Baratheon brother made an appearance, the terror of the Stepstones garbed all in black with a black beard and a polished-bald head. He ignored his younger brother and made a beeline for Monford Velaryon, while Eddard spoke in hushed tones with Prince Oberyn. "She awaits you. No one need know."

"Things are different now. There is... I have an account at the Iron Bank. To her, it will not be much, but-"

"It will be done, Lord Stark." Eddard passed the Red Viper a slip of parchment, and soon Domeric was forgetting what was said for more hushed tones between Eddard and Renly, then Eddard and Stannis, then Eddard with both of them, then Lannister, Farman, Dustin, and Mallister.

"Too bad we won't fight the Ironborn." Smalljon sat on a pine stump beside Domeric.

"We were going to fight the Ironborn?" Domeric tried not to sound too fearful. Boltons and water did not mix, he had learned. "What of the new peace?"

"See any squids, leviathans, or pirates?" The Umber shrugged, taking a nip from a stolen bottle of Arbour gold. "The kraken is a thorn in the side of both the lion and the wolf. That's what the Crowfood says."

Domeric scoffed. "Even *I* know the Crowfood's mad as Aerys." He saw Eddard moving towards the few Reach lords and ladies that remained – Malora Hightower, Paxter Redwyne, and Matthis Rowan were the last of the much-reduced faction of peacemakers in the Reach. Even their preference for peace was nominal, as, of their peers in the Reach, they would simply benefit most from detente rather than open war.

"-my hope that we might discuss the training of shipwrights."

Paxter Redwyne looked up at Eddard, far broader and taller than himself. Whether he was spiteful because of it, or simply a demon barely five feet tall in boots, Domeric could not tell. "The honourable Ned Stark, come to sell me a deal like a common merchant? Not sending one of your pet lions, eh? A trout, perhaps?"

"The rumours of my influence beyond Winterfell are greatly exaggerated."

"Hm. Indeed..." Paxter closed one eye, as if doing so helped him look at Eddard closer, then he frowned. "I'll not speak to you through the Farmans. The Arbour is owed recompense from the Iron Islands, and I have sailors who thirst for the blood of the kraken."

"A war hunting pirates in the Stepstones is not what I need. I have warriors. I need ships."

"Can your blundering Northmen climb a line or swim for a day?" He rapped his knuckles on Eddard's breastplate. "One gust of wind on the Gods Eye, and you would have drowned before you could look up at the snow." Then, more like a merchant, Paxter put his hand on Eddard's back and guided him towards the water. "What do you know of privateers?"

Two Arbour knights stepped in Domeric's way, and he doubted he could intimidate them with his arming sword. Content with waiting, he watched all the other lords and ladies, some widows and widowers making more than friendships, knights who fought on opposite sides comparing war stories, and some other squires realising they might never see the war they spent all their childhoods watching from the sidelines.

Domeric was young to be a squire, but there was less of a culture of pages in the North and Vale, boys expected to be serving on the battlefield from a young age. Domeric was strictly neither, but a fosterling, and the closest he had gone to the fighting was a ridge over Stoney Sept watching with the Blackfish holding him back. He simply called himself a squire since he was surrounded by them.

"And this..." Eddard led Paxter back to the main meeting. "Is Domeric Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort."

Paxter scoffed. "I hear you're a fair rider. And not a slouch with the lance." Paxter leaned towards him, though not too far, as Domeric was almost taller than him. "Was that a lie?"

"No, Lord Redwyne. It is simply Lord Redfort's instruction. He has three sons and many nephews and cousins, and each is a fairer horsemen and jouster than the last." He knew better now than to look at Eddard for approval, though he caught his smile in the corner of his eye. "Do you ride, Lord Redwyne?"

Paxter and Domeric both looked down at the shorter, far thinner legs of the Lord of the Arbour. "Your father had a sharp tongue too."

Striding from Paxter, Eddard led them back towards the barges. "Our deals are signed. We're going home."

"And then what?"

"Peace, for all the good it will do us. We've spent too much time fighting when we should have been farming, and winter is coming."

***

His mother was not in the party that greeted them in Winterfell. Lord Stark's younger brother, a boy when Domeric saw him last, now a strapping young man, was the sole person of note beyond the family. The new maester had beaten the Stark party to Winterfell, a small, brown man slowly turning grey. Like all maesters, no doubt he was far younger than he appeared. What else would happen to one who used his eyes only for books and breathed only a library's dusty air?

"Winterfell is yours, my lord." Benjen and Eddard embraced warmly, while the maids came next with Eddard's son of three name-days, his infant daughter and, to his joy, a newborn daughter as well. He was sure to include the other boy of three name-days, who had the Stark look even though his name was not. Domeric watched him get his turn with Eddard, then Lady Stark taking his and his auburn-haired cousins hands, guiding them on some learning adventure. It concerned Domeric how much time the future Lord of Winterfell, and the son of one Targaryen king and the brother of another, spent being watched by septons and septas.

"You're back."

Domeric looked down at Benjen, snorting and deftly sliding off his horse. They were both taller, and Benjen knew it, puffing up his chest. If the Boltons were pale like death, grey and stiff, the Starks were pale like ice, hard and frigid. Benjen looked down his nose at Domeric, before as one they broke into mad grins, embracing tightly, Benjen even spinning him around off his feet. "You've finally lost that awful rat tail on your lip!" Domeric said, smacking Benjen's face. "Did the Maester give you a lesson on shaving?"

Benjen drove his knee into Domeric's groin. "Walys did, actually. He insisted on it. Croaked the next afternoon." He was a scheming gossip of a man, but Walys was fiercely loyal to House Stark and the North. He would never tell, his name given up in his vows, but many of those who called Winterfell home wondered if Maester Walys might have been a Northman, or even a Stark, in a past life.

"This new one seems fair enough." Luwin strode up to them on sturdy feet. He knew how to deal with summer snow, at least. "Good day, Lord Domeric."

"Good day, Maester Luwin," Domeric groaned, ignoring the ache in his stones. "Domeric is fine. I have to be a man to be a lord."

"Well, then. Domeric, you can be my practice for the next few years, as it's been some time since I educated children older than six."

"Oh my. How tragic, Maester." Domeric's surprise was genuine, though he was not truly surprised. "The war has claimed many lives, too large a number of them children. The King of Thorns deserves his title, but such vengeance... I must look to my house's history, I suppose."

"Very self-aware. But be keen to not be so presumptive." Luwin shooed Benjen away, who winked at Domeric before jogging off towards some project. Though not castellan by any means, Benjen was the Stark in Winterfell for most of the last four years, and he seemed intent on forcing his brother to rest by taking over plenty of his duties as lord.

Domeric's lesson was on ravenry and the locations of various castles throughout the kingdoms, though he was an hour in when he recalled something far more important. "Perhaps you should wait and-" Luwin failed to hold him back, hurrying to the Great Keep and the guest apartments within.

He found not his mother, but the backs of Lord and Lady Stark, stood over Bethany Ryswell atop a mound of pillows. She was a true Northerner, the summer wind filling the room with a crisp, dry breeze. "Domeric?" Her voice was cheery, but soft and scratchy. For as long as Domeric could remember, his mother had been delicate. Her fellow Ryswells were all hale and hearty, if pale, yet Bethany was tender, like a spring never quite sprung. "Come to me. Come."

She waved him closer, her hands still strong and dexterous as they clutched at him. "I missed you, mother." She smiled broadly, a little bit of colour filling her cheeks. Her hair was flaxen and faded, not the rich copper and gold he recalled. "They tried to keep you from me." He shot a frigid glare at the Starks.

"Oh, hush. Nothing of the sort." She nodded and the lord and lady of the house departed, pulling Domeric up onto the bed with her, where she swiftly began combing her fingers through his hair, much as she had before he left the Dreadfort for Barrow Hall. "Tell me about the Isle of Faces. Was the King of Thorns as prickly as cousin Adam said?"

"Pricklier. He would not even hear the Crownlanders or Baratheons, and were it not for our accidental alliance at Hayford, Reach grain would not reach the North for a century. As it is, the tariffs will bankrupt the Freys."

"The Freys?"

"Edmure Tully told me," Domeric continued. "With the tariffs, it will be easier to trade up the Kingsroad than in the Westerlands for Valemen and Stormlanders."

"Then I say good for the North, and that the late lord Frey deserves it. I've never heard a good thing about him." She twisted over to the bedside. "I made you something." She drew a dark pink shoulder cape, more like a rich blush or wine than the fleshy pink of his ancestors, and it bore the flaying crux with no flayed man in a rich brown and black thread. "It's a touch dark, and the fabrics in the winter town aren't as soft, and I know the flayed man is-"

"It's perfect." Domeric hugged his mother fiercely, though he cringed when she winced. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright. It's the good sort of pain." She squeezed him back for a few moments, and for a second he imagined she was always strong, and just abed with a fever. "Domeric." He tried to avert his gaze, but he broke even faster than when Lord Stark made him look, tears coming easily as she buried his head in neck. "Domeric, there is something I must tell you."

"No, mother. Please."

"I'm so sorry, my love. I am."

Domeric snuffled and snorted. "Uncle Adam said you wish to return to Barrow Hall one last time."

She held him at arm's length, studying him firmly. "And you don't like that."

"No. I think you... I think you deserve to be... to be laid... to rest." He sobbed openly and into his mother's chest, with her cooing softly. "Can I come with you?"

"Of course you can! Maester Luwin says the wasting cannot spread to another. You must warn your daughters, he says, but we can spend as much time together as you like." He nodded eagerly, and she nodded with him, unable to hold back her own tears and holding him tightly again. "You'll make a fine lord and father one day, and a good ally to the Starks. Everyone of House Bolton, your father, and I and all House Ryswell, will always be with you."

***

Domeric returned to the Dreadfort alone, his mother at rest beside her mother and among the Kings of the Rills. It was a far kinder ceremony than what he had to perform for his father, a deep, dank crypt a half-day's hike up the Weeping Water, and he still had his Ryswell cousins and those in the household loyal to his father to deal with. He thought there might be some conniving cousin or distant aunt come to usurp him, but there was not even that.

He was the last Bolton.

Lady Stark promised his mother to remedy that, and no doubt it would begin once he returned to Winterfell after a season under Adam. He spent his days walking the ramparts, aiding in general repairs to learn the basics of masonry, carpentry, and metalworking, and then, for three days every week, they went hunting.

For three months the game only got bigger, from hare and deer, to caribou and a grizzly bear they tracked with some Hornwoods. Even a bounty on a raper who made it to Castle Black before they caught him.

Most of all, he learned how to skin, from every huntsman and game warden across his vast lands. He endeavoured to brighten it up, the Lonely Hills misty and moorish with only two things in abundance – grass and stone. At least the land was good, for all the good it did him, the smallfolk too widespread to be effective. "Could we not move them all together? To the Dreadfort? There are brigands up the Last River. Ironborn?"

"More like deserters," said Adam, the pair of them riding between two half-deserted burgs, five of the six hamlets between them abandoned for a decade or more. "They fled after your father's passing. Hornwoods, Manderlys, Starks. Even Umbers took them in. Sorry, boy."

"My father was not a good man, Uncle. I am not blind, deaf, or dumb." Domeric spurred his horse up to a canter. She was a pale filly set to grow into a strong beast. Perhaps he could raise horses, and not just to flay them like one strange great-aunt. "But realities must be faced. Traditionally, we can muster... eight thousand men? A tenth that in horsemen?"

"Five thousand and a half a tenth, I'm afraid."

"Mother's dowry included three herds of breeding horses!"

Adam shrugged dejectedly. "The records account difficult winters. Your parents were married for nearly twenty years before your birth, Domeric. There were many lean summers between."

Consciously, Domeric knew he was supposed to respect the memory of his father, but from the rumours he heard across the Bolton lands, they were not good years for the smallfolk either. He tracked two bastards already, the first a horse-kicked simpleton that died of exposure last winter after chasing a mouse, the second dead after he was gelded by the husband of a woman he attacked. Any love Domeric had for Roose Bolton was quickly dispelled.

They returned to the Dreadfort just after nightfall, eating a quiet feast with some of the household, chiefly the Locke castellan and his daughter – she was not much older than Domeric at four-and-ten. He was polite but not welcoming, he learned, though he thought it a fair approximation of how Lord Stark acted with Lady Stark.

"Aye, but there's warmth between them behind closed doors," said Maester Tybald the following morning, needing his seal for some letter to the Bolton bannermen. *His* bannermen. "One should not need a knife to get under your skin."

Domeric grumbled. Tybald was correct, though he would not admit it. "I will not just have them thrown at me. I'm still not yet a man." Tybald opened his mouth to go on a tangent, though Domeric held up his hand for quiet. "We have brigands on the Weeping Water as well?"

"Nothing like the Umbers or Hornwoods must address, my lord, but some. While you were away, I sent Walton out to gather some men. He received compliments from House Waterman and House Lightfoot."

"But this speaks of crab heraldry on a green field?" Domeric held up a raven's scroll.

Tybald nodded sombrely. "Raiders from the Crownlands. House Celtigar. Rhaegar Targaryen is a poor liege."

Domeric shook his head. He recalled the Celtigar crab. "It says a *white* crab on a *green* field. And there are other reports of white spiders. House Borrell's sigil is a white spider crab on a green field. A Sistermen house. Write to House Sunderland at once to address these crimes. I will go myself to assess the damages."

"My lord." With a short bow, the maester departed the lord's solar.

Domeric looked down on the yard and the Weeping Water beyond, a few more hamlets a little bit busier than before. He would see fighting, in all likelihood. He would not let some bored freaks with webbed hands that are more pirate than Valeman raid his land. His smallfolk.

Within the moon, he was right, donning a mixture of mail and leather with what plate he could fit. He would squire for Adam if necessary, but still wore his sword, even if he planned on staying on horseback with his best bow.

They rode down the river over a long week, gathering five or ten fighters from every village. It was summer and the men were needed for ploughing and planting, so Domeric selected only greybeards. The smallfolk always arranged themselves so neatly, and he was sure to dismount and offer a few knowing words to whomever he could.

He was at the confluence of the river's two main tributaries when his host reached some three hundred members. Not large, but not small, and sure to wake their peers in Houses Hornwood and Umber for taking simple raiders so seriously. Especially when every fighter was a veteran of the war.

Unable to ignore the fear with which the smallfolk watched him however, Domeric had to go the extra league, which he learned was just leaving the smallfolk alone. It was easy enough to summon them when they learned of the attacks near the coast, but they otherwise wanted nothing to do with him. He had word of a few weddings and sent only a pouch of silver and one of his horses. He had a steady stream of both from his Aunt Barbrey and Grandfather Rodrik.

More importantly, the fishing and whaling villages on the Shivering Sea produced most of the meat eaten by the smallfolk in his lands – the supply was delicate enough that even famine was possible.

As with all things in Bolton lands, the farther they went from the Dreadfort, the more abandoned hamlets and burgs they found. It made shelter accessible, and only told Domeric more of what he knew. Wisely, the Boltons never tormented their nearest smallfolk, but those far flung, who would only have House Bolton's far weaker bannermen to turn to, were the best prey, according to another demented ancestor.

So many hunting motifs, it thus infuriated Domeric that he spent a month chasing a ship of raiders up and down the coast. He sent ravens to the Karstarks and Hornwoods for additional aid, even the Widow's Watch Flints, but they had their own post-war problems. "Busier angling for lands in the Gift," said Steelshanks.

Domeric cursed as he tossed the message from the Umbers in the fire. "Smalljon was supposed to be a friend! Others take that drunken fool."

"The Greatjon only knows the Ned," said Lord Waterman. Ennobled by Cregan Stark, the Watermans were still more mountain clansmen than lords, but they were loyal. Adam had brought them into the fold after he became regent, and Domeric was thankful for the men in blue and brown tartan skirts. "We should pull the smallfolk in where it's safe. Just keep adding to the host."

Adam said, "I shall take thirty riders north to sound the alarm. There are Umbers near the Last River who might help spread word."

Domeric felt he had too many options. "You sent word to Lord Stark and Lord Sunderland?"

Tybald nodded. Domeric had sent for the maester with the last group of riders. They had swelled to just over a thousand men by the middle of the second month, and it helped that Domeric opened his house's substantial coffers. It helped as well that his mother had started trying to sell off the rooms and rooms of leather goods to some Essosi collectors. They never *denied* that they might be human skin, and that helped inflate the price.

"The Manderlys and Sunderlands are the same. They don't have the men, and the Three Sisters have always been defiant." Nage was another captain in his father's employ, though he began as a sellsword in the service of a past Lord Ryswell. Domeric hoped he was loyal because of that, and not out of a taste for blood like some of the other men his mother and uncle purged from the Dreadfort. "We have the men to hold the mouth of the river. We should wait a week for those stubborn enough to not come when they can, then summon the banners."

"How many live along the shore?" Domeric asked.

"Seven, eight thousand," said Steelshanks, frowning over a map of House Bolton's stretch of coast. "Barely three have come up. The boats are too big for the Water's rocks, and they're all soft from summer."

"Winter and war ended together. Can you blame them for being hopeful?" Domeric indicated some burgs at the ends of rocky promontories. There were three, each built on the ruins of First Men forts that helped rebuff the Andals. "Too bad they lie empty."

"Not in winter," murmured Tybald.

A heavy silence fell over Domeric and his advisors, their meeting place a headman's house in another abandoned burg. That was eleven abandoned burgs total in just a sixth of his lands. There were supposedly over one hundred of them just on his lands, and another eight hundred spread across the North on his side of the King's road. If he suddenly started using them again, it would signal war. But against whom? Who was he fighting? "The sailing here is easier?"

"Aye. The winds are calmed by the cliffs, and the waves themselves are flatter, even in autumn." Lord Waterman indicated the three fortified settlements. "Their reach is limited. They can guard one another, but not beyond."

Adam said, "But there is not such a place for ships to land otherwise. All the raiding parties must be landing there. But why raid so far?"

"Fear. Weaken the edges, the center collapses." Domeric divided their forces. "Lord Waterman, take your canoes back upriver to hold the Water. Uncle, ride north and open the burgs. Captain Walton, the same to the south. Tybald, send word ahead. I will ride to the Hornwood."

***

When Domeric returned to Winterfell, he did so as a lord in need. He had delayed resuming his fostering, then ended it entirely with his last letter. He had Adam and Steelshanks at his sides, and the lands between the Dreadfort and Winterfell were ever some of the safest in the North, if not all of Westeros, but still, Domeric felt uneasy. What he asked and what he could now prove were dangerous things, even if they promised to end the greatest summer peace in a decade.

He dismounted smoothly from his pale mare, still in the wine pink and black crux. Domeric had chosen to change his house's heraldry, insisting upon it even if their armour still bore the flayed man. Lord and Lady Stark greeted him, with another baby and another swell in Lady Stark's middle.

"My lord," Domeric said, bowing firmly. He certainly had more pomp than his peers, the less gracious Lord Umber snorting at his ceremony. "My lady, I am thankful for your hospitality. We rode hard."

"Your ravens arrived just this morning, Lord Bolton." When he left, he was Eddard's squire. Now, he was bannerman to Lord Stark. His ally, he said in their last letter. "Dark wings, dark words."

With no lack of haste, Eddard led his lords and household into the Great Hall, even as Domeric lost his uncle to the interests of House Ryswell, and Steelshanks to the drinking games of the household guards. Domeric felt very small and barely his thirteen years, and the next lord nearest in age, Halys Hornwood, was hardly in the mood for alliances.

"No Karstark, no Flint. Not even a Skagosi. Your like minds are fewer and farther than your sire's." Lord Cerwyn was astute but annoying. "Can't even hold a fucking river."

"We cannot all be makers of... axes? How fare your guests from the Arbour?" Domeric chewed his lamb thoughtfully, fork and knife in hand as his peers slobbered about like his father's hounds. He gave them to the shepherds and turned the kennels into more stables. "Or do they fell the trees as well as cut and shape them?"

"Better guests than Ironmen." Ser Helman Tallhart put himself between Domeric and Lord Cerwyn. "Come." Ser Helman hauled Domeric out of his seat and out of the Great Hall. "Your father's sharp tongue won him few friends."

"I do not need friends. Only allies." Domeric drew a package from his side satchel. "Those ships can be built in our port."

"My maester's done the research. There's barely enough space for a wharf."

"The Sistermen can berth their ships easily enough. To say nothing of the Tyroshi slavers."

Helman turned on him wide-eyed. Domeric drew a purple and green braid connected to a skinned square of scalp. "He claimed to serve the archonate."

"How did you learn that?"

Domeric did not answer.

Helman knocked on the solar door. Big Walder opened it, a levy turned horseman. He was armed, though not armoured. "I shall leave you, Lord Stark, my Lords."

Domeric was left with Lords Stark, Manderly, Ryswell, and Dustin, with Maester Luwin at one end of the table. "Lord Stark. Grandfather."

Eddard nodded warmly. Rodrik Ryswell snorted like the stallion on his doublet. Almost a year since his mother's death, and he still sat in the fog of grief. "You've brought what you promised, I pray?" Lord Manderly waddled over to greet Domeric. He was a swollen seal of a man, sweating despite the pleasant summer wind and the snow beyond the windows. "It will be my new fleet that does any fighting. What of Lord Arryn?"

Eddard shook his head. "He is with the king, teaching him his future duties in the Gift." The lords nodded confidently, though Domeric was crestfallen. He needed Jon Arryn on his side. "Come, Domeric."

Laying out the captured banners, he unfurled the maps he had requested from Luwin while the other high lords of the North preened and cursed. The crab of House Borrell, but also the red half-sun of House Donniger, and the three navy waves of House Torrent. "You asked for proof. We are being invaded. I suspect Lords Karstark and Flint would show other such trophies."

Eddard shook his head in disbelief, though Wyman Manderly stood unphased while Lords Ryswell and Dustin bristled. It would not be their men sent off to war, busy enough holding off Ironborn and training their men into marines for the Sunset Sea. "Then we must ride for the Eyrie," said Lord Dustin, his uncle taking him firmly by the shoulder. "You'll have the longaxes of Barrowtown. Lord Stark?"

The Lord of Winterfell's eyes went from the map of the Bite to the Valeman banners. "We've not had to repel attack from our eastern coast in centuries..." He shut his eyes for a few long moments. Throughout the war, Eddard Stark rarely went against his friends and allies. Naming the Vale as the aggressor after his own youth under Jon Arryn would have steep consequences, but none could question Eddard, not with his famed honour. "Can you hold your land, Lord Bolton?"

"Yes, but the sea is as much under threat, and my people need that meat."

"You will have sheep and cattle. I need to send ravens but in the meanwhile, when you leave, I will send one thousand of my own men with you." The lords of the Barrowlands, Rills, and White Harbour were quick to promise five hundred riders apiece as well. Each of their houses had grown strong from trade and marriages with the south, but Domeric was still rebuilding House Bolton.

It was late in the evening when the other lords were dismissed, and it was just Lords Stark and Bolton, Luwin slipping out as they poured cups of wine, though Domeric's was half water. "Your summer has not been as rich as your neighbours," said Eddard.

"The Lonely Hills and Weeping Water are a... much flattened land." Domeric tried not to drink too much wine, recalling that lesson from his father at least, but he found it helped ease the fire of fear in his belly. "I though Ser Denys a better Regent and Lord. His son will be heir, yet he allows his domain to be picked apart."

"I will have answer. Ravens to Runestone, Ironoaks, and the Vale."

"My lord, I have tried. House Redfort and the half-a-hundred landed knights and lesser houses I know. All there is, is word of wandering septons and an arisen faith."

"The Three Sisters have long been a source of trouble, and the Kings of Winter and Kings of Mountain and Vale fought many wars over them. This is still the fault of the Arryns for not controlling their bannermen. I must hope for that, even if I plan for the worst."

"But they would never attempt an attack at White Harbour, they would simply starve it. They are attacking. We had to clear a captured burg that lies closer to the Broken Branch than the Shivering Sea." Domeric indicated the lands that would be lost, from Ramsgate and Widow's Watch, to Karhold and the Bay of Seals. "Even the Skagosi have seen signs of raiding along the Bay of Seals."

"The Skagosi claim to see the Lands of Always Winter from the top of their mountains." Eddard swirled his wine. Domeric had to trust him, he knew, even if he disagreed with him. He was Lord Stark, and for all the feuding between their houses, Domeric was intent on changing that, and he had never been given a reason to mistrust his lord's oaths. "We will ride to the Shivering Sea, and we will see. I pray I can catch Jon as well, so he might join us."

"Will that be enough?"

"Enough? Domeric, the Three Sisters are four small houses who are misliked by all their neighbours. But war with the Vale is the last thing we need, and winter is coming."

Chapter Text

Viserys much preferred pushing a mill to digging through elephant dung, he and three other boys lashed to a wooden trunk in a position usually reserved for a mule. It was a dry, sunny day in the Golden Fields, the sun darkening their necks as they toiled to grind the wheat slowly but interminably spilling over the millstone.

Viserys thought at least his other work was study, not so exhausted by work like the smallest of the unit filling sacks with flour. Joho, Cosimo, and Kasté were made to bind up the sacks with grass that rubbed their fingers raw.

The grain came to an end and they kept grinding, but as the last of the flour poured out he, Tytus, Zadjet, and Vaok had a moment's reprieve. Drogo, Baqarro, and Talal formed a line and started the process of tossing sack after sack to the waiting farmer, who insisted on watching the flour himself. Viserys hung his arms and wanted to collapse, every muscle in his body screaming from the exertion. He felt it working, at the very least, the softness gone from all of them but Cosimo and Baqarro, though they had come out of those seasons of work broader and stronger than the rest save Drogo, while Viserys sat somewhere in the middle

Hence, pushing the mill. "Back to it!" grunted Tytus, Vaok doing so silently and Zadjet dragging his feet. Viserys just pushed and forgot about the ache. More than that, he relished in it. It felt good to not be thinking about politics and the Vale and his long-lost cousin's lectures. Those were more obsessive chattering than mad raving, but the unthinking smallfolk might have been onto something. Do your work, rest for one day each week, quiet in the winter, and a peaceful death.

Soon, the afternoon bell was rung. The Crones had toiled since sunrise with only some honey-soaked hardtack to eat and well water to drink. The afternoon was at least recognizable as a meal, each of them getting a large ration of beef, two eggs, an apple, and a token for a half cup of rice. Barter and trade obviously went on, Robar the nexus of it as Viserys handed over his token for two small apricots, while Joho had four tokens for a vial of green-gold liquid.

"From Dagger Lake?" Talal cried, he and Cosimo relishing as Joho poured them each a small daub.

"Olive oil. Volantenes thought they might make the secret theirs, but it always goes sour within the year." Joho stoppered the bottle and tucked it into his sleeve. "My Baba told me. When I'm a knight, I'll buy him a grove of olive trees in Ny Sar. Better a bearded priest than a red one."

Joho examined the bottle more closely as they all ate and traded, with just an hour to eat and socialize before their next chore. "I'm sure your father misses you as well," said Viserys.

"I know." Joho wiped at his eyes. "I still miss him. The master just gave me away. Never even got to go back to our hut." He wiped his face and nose, pocketing the bottle near his heart. "And then Ser Edmund took a Qohorik arrow in the neck, and no one knew who he won me from."

"But your lessons?" Viserys and Zadjet had been leading the education of their unit, insisting they all write letters to whomever they could, even if they were just back to other cadets in the Dusklands. "Did you write?"

"Baba can't read. It's wasted." Joho pushed his rice around his plate. He had filled out, but he was still small. "And I'm too stupid to do anything about it."

Viserys had not a clue what to say to that. "I wrote one for my sister."

"The stolen one?" Viserys nodded. "You know where she is?"

"No, but I can hope, right?" Viserys shrugged. "I used to write letters to my brother before he..."

"He died too?" asked Joho.

"No, he just... I guess he changed? I don't know." Viserys tried to imagine his brother. He was still a titan in his mind, but the armour was no longer black steel and resplendent ruby, it was black like ash and red like blood. "But there's his children who I want to write to as well, even if they're only babies. And if your father could write to you, wouldn't he? Isn't there a collared scribe who could read it to him?"

Joho brightened. "Will you... my letters are messy. Will you write it?"

Viserys nodded and they eagerly scampered back to camp, flattening out some spare parchment and ink on one of the armourer's worktables. "Dear Baba- No. Dearest father. No! Um..."

"You have to say something for me to write it."

Joho waved him off. His welts healed and his urchin-frail shape gone over the past year, he more closely resembled Talal in miniature, though still with quick hands always finding some string or button to fidget with. "Dear Baba. I miss you. My friend Viserys taught me to read. Read and write! Did you get that?"

Viserys did, writing out the message and ignoring the pit that opened up in his stomach as he wrote, taking a thankful hug from Joho before he ran off to give it to a knight. Viserys had made Lady Danelle promise that if they wrote them, she would have to see the letters to their destination.

The warning bell rang and Viserys returned to the barracks, washing his face, stowing the apricots, and changing his shirt. He hurried from camp to a large Pentoshi villa at the top of a rocky hill that overlooked the camp in a train of fifty other cadets. A few of them had primped themselves up, especially the older boys and Company's children, since there were more than just sons in these classes.

He nodded respectfully at Melara and Tyna, and their older companion whom they only ever called 'Nim.' Viserys thought it an plain name for one of her elegant and regal look, but he had learned not to ask such questions.

He filed into a library, a stack of parchment with an inkwell and quill at each of twenty desks. Ser Harry Strickland stood at a desk of his own as they all filed in. "Please take a seat. Any seat."

Viserys sat to Strickland's middle left, in the third of six rows. He had heard Blackheart say Strickland's swordsmanship had suffered in his tenure as master of numbers. "It was Gerold Lannister who believed height and quick wit were all one needed to win on the field of battle, be it with a sword or the pen." He strode up to the similarly short Melara's desk, and gestured to himself. "Though as you can see, the Golden Company demands only a quick wit."

Some low titters spread throughout the cadets. "Your assignment is simple. Within the next half-hour, devise a topic and thesis of your choice, then deliver ten sides of parchment *with* citations and Company line widths." There were a few groans from the messier writers. "You may speak in small groups, and use the books, but your work is your work. Do not waste time helping... others..." Strickland looked up at the chandelier, at the flickering of the burning wicks. "It is the second hour of the afternoon. You have five hours until supper. Begin."

All of them watched Strickland go, closing the library door behind him. Immediately the cadets were on their feet at the windows, gasping or cursing at what appeared to be siege engines. They rolled out of the barns of the hamlets of the Company's tracts on the Golden Fields to bombard hundreds of cavalry charging from the south.

"The Windblown! I can see the Tattered Prince from here!"

"It's obviously the Company of the Cat. They fight with everyone."

"No, it's the Ragged Standard. Look at all those banners!"

That made Viserys look, expecting the sigils of the many deposed, attainted, and assumed-extinct houses of the Seven Kingdoms. Instead he saw a red lion on a silver field, a white hand on a green field, and the flaming saltire and skulls on black. They were charging with the Golden Company guarding the catapults, knights and squires of Westeros but left only with their ragged standards.

"No. It's the Stormcrows." Torman looked like he might break through the glass out of violent anguish, cursing at Young Bear as he tried and failed to calm them. "I'm not just going to sit here!"

He tore some display axe off the wall and stormed towards the door, only to be met with Caspor Hill and Strickland, with the remaining cadets at their lessons. "Form up!"

Almost a year of training kicked in, a platoon's worth of cadets – ninety cadets spread across three squadrons – falling into tight lines. "We're making for camp! It's out of the sight of battle and behind our lines, but we're kitting up and headed back west. Am I understood?"

"Yes, sir!"

Caspor fell into a fast march out of the house and down the hill, leading them along the road parallel to the advancing enemy. They joined with the Golden Company from the Golden Fields, Viserys finding himself one of nearly two thousand various recruits, cadests, and squires. Viserys saw a few Company's sons nearly split off, catching sight of father's, older brothers, and even a few mothers moving to face the enemy.

Viserys saw lightning bolts and... ravens? No. Crows. "Stormcrows," he muttered. Torman shot him a look and nodded.

The whispers began as they marched, Caspor letting them flourish so long as they were quiet. Better fear speeding them to safety than curiosity luring them into danger.

Caspor wove them around the hill to their camp, with a wide, rushing tributary of the Lhorulu to one side and a perilous spread of rocky hills to the other. Besides the hamlet, the camp was the safest place to wait out a battle.

"Attention!" Their march ended as suddenly as it started, all slowing and deepening their breaths to quicken their recovery, along with the other nine platoons of cadets. "I want camp broken and the lot of you armed for battle in an hour. At once, cadets!"

Viserys broke into a run towards his camp, attending his jobs first – the Golden Company's famous order and speed with which they could strike camp came not from speed, but efficiency. For as much time they spent drilling with spear and shield, they spent studying the creases of a tent's folds to efficiently pack and unpack it from a waiting mule.

Each squadron had a mule, but it was not Viserys's job to wrangle it that week. That week, it was to tend the cots and bedding within. He folded sheets and dusted out the sleeping mats, rolling everything into ten neat bundles before gathering the bamboo. They had planted it across the Golden Fields, passing it in vast forests easily accessed by the Company for building their camps.

They built their cots and could build their tents with it if need be, but when they struck camp rods were shaved and staked beyond trenches and in deadfalls set by second and third year cadets. Attending the smaller pieces of bamboo from the cots, Viserys hauled three massive loads they started sticking among the battlefield beyond. The Company would know better, while enemies would be tripped up or their horses' legs broken.

Viserys returned to the tent as it was packed and squared away, while the Crones were all helping each other into their armour. Each cadet bore a gambeson, arming double, mail coif and half helm, spear, shield, and shortsword. Some had used their pittance pay to purchase improvements, from cheap wool and leather batting to mail shirts and some pieces of plate.

Viserys had some heavy boots with knee pads he buckled on, and a braided leather and brass-scale skirt. He had a cloak and some good gloves, but little else, every piece of plate he wore more weight than an infantryman would ever need.

"Viserys!" Drogo called him over, needing aid with the various knots on his scale shirt that hung to mid-thigh. "This amour is good."

"*Armour*. Your earlier complaints aside?" Viserys tied him in then offered the helmet, which Drogo rejected.

"It cover braid."

"It's regulation. You want a scourging again?" Viserys pushed it to Drogo's chest, who donned it begrudgingly despite the raw wounds on his back from the last time. "You never learn."

"Father no scourge. Just toss and move." The very concept of punishment had been lost on Drogo, everything up to violation of sacred tenets not worth more than a muttered curse. After that, it was death. "Caspor Hill and Harry Strickland not care about helms and *armour*. Shaking at Stormcrows."

They brought their mule to the baggage train then moved into formation, Drogo indicating how Caspor and Ser Harry were far ahead, on horseback and leaving the cadet squadrons to the orders of their captains. They walked them along the tributary, the ground growing rougher the farther they went. "This is good land," muttered Tytus.

"Too far from anywhere," said Zadjet. "There's spots of life greater than this in the Red Waste and Bone Mountains, but it's too far from the nearest city to be worth more than just a way-station."

"Costs too much to start something," Vaok translated. He had taken to common easily once books and letters were put in front of him. "The Company could. Farms here and there, dams downriver."

Such moments of conversation helped time move quicker, and soon the first five miles were done, and they took a quarter-hour rest. "Don't get comfortable," Caspor ordered, he and his horse gasping as he dismounted.

Caspor massaged his thighs and the horse walked to the narrowed river, and the cadets broke to get what relief they could. Viserys joined the horde of boys rushing the bushes. He was thankful he only had to make water, draining his cask with a sigh then digging into his hip pack for some biscuits and nuts to chew on.

He spied a few rabbits and one distant dear, but just as he began musing on tracking down a bow and a party of hunters, he was ordered back into formation.

They marched for two more stretches of shortening length – four miles to a half-hour rest, and then another three miles to a waiting camp. They marched in pitch black for the last hour, with only the lanterns hanging from the saddles of Ser Harry and Caspor to guide them.

A well-established camp sprawled before them, high on a natural plateau and clustered around a stout stone fort. It had a fused black stone foundation like Dragonstone and Forgemount, with a series of ladders and scaffolding supporting archers and a pair of ballistae higher up. Squires dug a deep trench, with plenty of hidden holes perilous to any cavalry charge. The cadets were ushered to the heart of the camp, the Company guarding them not unlike a herd of elephants.

Viserys gratefully built camp and collapsed, forcing himself to eat despite his exhaustion. Caspor finished speaking with Ser Harry and Ser Lorimas then strode into the middle of the nine-hundred cadets. "Everyone stay seated, rest while you can." He panned his eyes over the crowd, inspecting them. "We may be setting off in as little as three hours. Hopefully we get the night, but we won't know for a while." He looked back on his fellow officers. "Cadets, I won't lie to you. It is very likely we, you, will see combat before this time tomorrow. I must insist you all reckon with that." Nodding sternly, Caspor left the cadets to their rest.

Viserys ate and ate, three bowls of stew and probably half a packet of hardtack, and both his apricots to keep him regular. He loosened his boots but otherwise slept in his armour, too exhausted to care about aches or cramps the next morning.

Chapter Text

"We're moving west." Cosimo shoved Viserys off his cot. His knees screamed at him for more rest. "Serjeant Lothston says we're to support the force defending Pentos."

They were packed and marching within the hour, moving through the dawn light rested and fed in a line behind Jon Lothston and his squire, both mounted on horses. It was ten days since departing the Lhorulu, the Crones marching in the third rank with the usual suspects of their cohort.

"I knew there would be work, but this?" Zadjet groaned as his foot sank into a muddy hole up to his knee. "When does the fighting start?"

"Quit your moaning, Masters' son," Tytus barked.

There were snickers, but the taunt quieted Zadjet. They all had their weak spots, and Zadjet speaking High Valyrian to a Mereenese squire had earned him few friends amongst the former slaves of the Company. Viserys thought it unfair, as Zadjet could not control where he was born, nor to whom.

"You're one to moan, bastard," Viserys retorted.

"Say something, pillow boy?" Tytus answered.

"At least my father gave me his name, *Hill*."

There were gasps that Viserys would go so far. "Cadets! Enough of that." Lothston raised his hand and brought them to a full stop. He turned to his squire, a lanky Rhoynish boy with a mop of dark curls. "Take ten third-years and scout ahead. Minimal kit." The squire nodded, choosing ten cadets and scurrying west over the next hill.

Lothston summoned the captains next, and soon Viserys was marching towards a picket line. "You have a name?" Tytus came up beside him. "Your father's name?"

VIserys cursed internally. "I do, but... Your father is Westerosi, yes? From the Westerlands?" Tytus nodded. "My family name is Targaryen."

"Like the Mad King!"

Viserys shushed him as they reached the top of the hill, a few Westerosi, the sons of exiled knights or just smallfolk refugees, turning towards the exhortation. "Shh! He was... He was my father."

"You're Aegon? I thought he was the King in Oldtown."

"No, but- He's in Oldtown? No. Aegon is my nephew. Rhaegar and Daenerys are my siblings."

"The Red King and his sister-daughter-wife had a brother?" Tytus looked taken aback. "Are you sure? I think I would know that. My mother's husband has dealings with the Stormlanders."

Viserys looked down confused, drawing his shovel to stark digging, following behind Tytus with a pick he used to soften the hard grassland. "They... they forgot about me?"

"I'm sure it's not like that," Tytus reassured. "I thought my father forgot about me, but it was just the war. It's out of the Westerlands now, and he's even married. His wife's father was a spice merchant from the Free Cities. He says I have a brother and sister, and another on the way."

"Your father is alive though. Your mother as well. Both of my parents are dead. One burned on a pyre, the other burned when he blew up King's Landing."

"King's Crater," Tytus corrected. "Sorry. But you... We... we're in the Golden Company! True, this is a bore now, but a year ago we were nowhere close to this. In a few more, we will be squires and then men of the Golden Company! Knights if we're lucky." Tytus looked west at the horizon, like someone between philosopher and poet. "When I think about seeing it, the lands of my father, the golden lion fluttering for me, even if I am a bastard..." Tytus met Viserys's gaze again, his own hope filling Viserys. "You could do that for your house. The... what was it they said about Maegor the Cruel?"

"The return of the prodigal son," Viserys said. They talked and dug, and dug and talked. "I've begun to think that I might just live by my whims. Not my lusts and desires like some madman, but just my short term needs. Digging this trench, organising a watch, and laying out what I remember of fighting cavalry."

Tytus scoffed, finishing with the picking and taking up his own shovel to relieve Viserys. "You're too much of a thinker, comrade." He grunted from the exertion. "You may *think* you're following your instincts, but ultimately it will just bring you closer to what you *really* want."

"And what's that, since you know me so well?"

Tytus shrugged. "You like to lead. You like being in charge. You don't like it when you're unchallenged, but you're also massively entitled. At least you're smart, though you think you aren't, which may just make you smarter."

Viserys struggled to follow Tytus's logic, which likely meant he was right. "When did you get smarter than me?"

"I'm not. You're just too thoughtful for your own good."

***

The Crones were halfway done their second trench, ten feet deep and five feet wide, when they were called to assemble. Atop the hill behind two hundred yards of trenches and deadfalls, Viserys stood in formation with his unit, taking a swig of water before straightening his helmet and blinking the sweat out of his eyes. They were sellswords, even if they were not yet Company men. Cogs, but crucial cogs.

"Regiment, left turn!" They stomped twice, turning in place towards the south-west. "Hold."

It felt good to Viserys, to be a part of something larger than himself. Was this how Aegon had felt when he looked west, that he was the head of such a beast of war. He took it as a sign that the Golden Company was founded by a descendant of his, Aegor Bittersteel. The last to wield his sword, many believed, lost somewhere in the Disputed Lands or forgotten in a magistrate's treasure vault.

Jon Lothston stayed atop his horse as the Company came to a standstill. The wind carried the scent of turned dirt and dry grass, as the wind rustled tall grass far to the south. It was grassy steppe for six-hundred miles in that direction, and a hundred miles every other way.

As the Company quieted, the land seemed to wake, crickets strumming and cicadas singing. An eagle screeched high overhead, diving not at any rabbit, but another bird, a snowy white falcon it ripped apart with black talons.

Viserys caught Drogo's voice behind him, he, Joho, and Baqarro having made Dothraki a secret language just for the Crones and a few trusted friends. "What I wouldn't do for a hundred screamers," the Dothraki princeling said. "Or fifty screamers with bows."

"The three-thousand of Qohor held off more than the Myrish could ever bring to bear." Joho stamped his spear defiantly. "You pure-bloods are too rigid. The Valyrians never left their dragons, and they died out. A horse is nothing compared to a dragon, yet you never leave them."

Tytus snorted and elbowed Viserys.

Baqarro said. "Dust." He nodded towards the horizon, the regiment turning in formation to face it head on as if by his will and not Jon's order. It might have been just a wind storm picking up what grit and pounded grass scattered the fertile but untracked Heel of Essos, but the rumble in the ground told them different.

They were easily ten miles off, but Jon Lothston still ordered, "Blackwood!" and like the deep roots of a weirwood they dropped behind their shields and planted their spears. In the third rank, Viserys's spear  hovered over the shoulders and spears of the two cadets in front of him. If any enemy made it past those two, it would be up to him and his eight-foot spear.

"Hold!" The dust washed over a hill five miles away, wider than it was thick as whomever charged them aimed for a flanking envelopment. They spied the tips of spears through the cloud of sand and dead grass, while their ears caught the snap of fabric.

There were more than the Stormcrows' five-hundred, the ranks no more than ten men deep but easily five-hundred men wide. Viserys did not like the regiment's chances against five-thousand light cavalry.

The dust began to settle as they fell into neat formations of five-hundred cavalry to their position's west, south, and east. Viserys spied the Stormcrows' sigil, some with different colours to signify units. A further five-hundred appeared to be various freeriders, some Westerosi and some Tyroshi, and even what appeared to be two-hundred tiger stripe-tattooed Volantene slave soldiers.

The remaining three-thousand, five-hundred all bore banners are various running cats; white hrakkars, black leopards, and orange tigers. Unlike the Stormcrows and freeriders who carried sabres and maces, their horses wore leather and mail barding, and carried flagged lances and pikes. "Company, second squadrons! Den! Den! Den!"

Every other squadron retreated from the lines, drawing their picks and shovels to start digging down into the hill, the dirt thrown up as fortification for lack of trees. Viserys had to keep his spear up and his eyes forward, trying to study the Stormcrows and Cats as they did the same to the Golden Company.

Soon the insects droned again. A gnat buzzed in his ear and he smacked at it, only for it to bounce in his eyes then up his nose. "Oi!" his captain snapped.

"Sorry," he mumbled, snorting and forcing himself to focus and settle.

One of the Stormcrows raised a white flag and galloped forward. Jon saw it and did the same. Viserys watched them talk, even catching Jon's laugh on the wind, then a violent curse. "You dare!"

"Take my offer to your men!" the Stormcrow said, a thickset man with dark hair and red-painted armour.

"I know his face," muttered Zadjet. "Prendahl na Ghezn. An Astapori exile. Leader of the Stormcrows."

Jon might have been sneering at Prendahl na Ghezn, but the glare off the Stormcrow's shield in that middle hour of the afternoon made it hard for Viserys to see that far. "Officers, knights."

The leaders of the regiment, essentially the escort in its entirety, convened around Lothston. Most broke into arguments immediately, though Lothston and Lorimas Mudd silenced them long enough to come to a consensus. Viserys hated not knowing, but just when he tried stepping out of line, his captain snapped at him and he stepped back into formation.

"Seven hells." He stretched his neck to look beyond the enemy. The wind was dying as well, leaving them to bake in the summer sun.

Lothston soon spread the order among the captains, low whispers disseminating what he did not want the enemy to hear. "Hold the order. Blackwood Blackwood Blackwood." The names of the lords of Raventree Hall spoken thrice meant they were to hold the position. To the last man, if necessary. "Hold the order" meant they were to wait.

A time would come for them to begin, as all the officers save Lothston himself rode out to meet Prendahl na Ghezn. The cadets had been taught to trust their instincts in such circumstances, watching Lothston, the Stormcrows, and the horizon. There was no help coming.

The officers greeted Prendahl warmly, laughing as they directed him up the proper route. They waved dismissively at Lothston as he remained with the Cadets, the others riding beyond the lines of the Stormcrows and Company of the Cat.

"Beneath the Gold!" Lothston roared.

"The bitter steel!" As the eyes of the Stormcrows fell to the cadets, the officers scattered. In twos and fives they fled, swords and bows taking Stormcrows and their allies with them as they ran for help.

The arrows came then, Viserys and his fellows tucking in behind their shields. Despite the torrent Viserys managed a glance over his shield, watching the Golden Company knights and officers riding out of sight. At least, those who made it away alive.

"Those men died for you, cadets!" Lothston bellowed, all the better to be heard over the steel rain. "We hold until the Golden Company arrives!"

It was as if a great weight landed on Viserys shoulders, though instead of tearing him down he hardened his back to bear it. It might have been minutes or hours later, the sun still pouring down on them, when he felt a pat on his shoulder and he stepped out of line.

There was not much food, but there was water, the entrenchment having opened them a small well of drinkable, if cloudy, water. It was endlessly muddy in those trenches as a result, Viserys stomping through a deep puddle to sit under the wall. Like many others, he drew his shield, wound up, and drove the edge of his shield into the dirt.

Protection from sun and arrow.

The worse started falling soon after, burning nails and clods of stone chucked by catapults, while horses screamed and died in the pitfalls and traps. Viserys had an hour of listening to the fighting as he rested before he was sent in to relieve another. There were injured cadets and a handful of dead between, and none were of his cohort. He thanked the gods, before feeling ill for being happy. Cadets were still dead.

The Company of the Cat had led the first charge from the leopard banners and surcoats of the most distant dead. Their horses had broken ankles and legs in the first few rings of hidden holes. A few sellswords had freed themselves from the saddle before their horses crashed and died, but they had been taken out by the Golden Company's archers, fewer than a hundred but every one a talented sharpshooter.

The formation had shifted to a Velaryon, the regiment in longer, thinner lines, like sea snakes. Viserys held his shield to the ground, while Torman, right behind him, held his shield right above Viserys's. With half the regiment doing so, it was just a matter of their traps and trenches holding up.

"At least there's shade," muttered Torman. His brother behind him protected their heads with his shield. "You said it was hot and bright."

"Now it's only hot," Viserys returned. "You've Lothston's ear."

Torman snarled, "Aye. What of it?" Oscar jabbed him in the ribs. "We hold. Nothing else to do but wait anyway."

Through the cracks between the shields, Viserys discerned the darkening sky. The Stormcrows had struck camp and pickets of their own, putting more trenches between them and the cadets. The Company of the Cat however had hobbled their horses and unstrapped their shields, tall and ovular made from wood and layered leather they locked into formations of their own. Each sellsword bore either a long-bladed short speak or two shields, starting the process of slowly and steadily taking the trenches the cadets dug.

To Viserys's horror, as they went they did not capture the trenches, but filled them and flattened the ground with their horses behind them. They lost half a thousand horses for the attempt, however. Still, they had the numbers, they had the time, and the low likelihood of word getting out. They had sent two-hundred riders to chase the fleeing officers, and mast had returned with trophies.

Viserys held out hope that the Golden Company would save them, but he heard a few men ask about the punishment for desertion. Viserys could not imagine ever betraying the Company in such a way, that Bittersteel rebelled five times for House Blackfyre, each failure worse than the last, but he never gave up and he never surrendered. The Golden Company was still built on that ideal, and the punishment for desertion was death and to be struck from the Golden Rota, the great ledger of Company members.

Then where were they? They would not desert them, even if they were just cadets. The sun had fallen mostly over the horizon, a dark red that left the enemy surrounded in a bloody red haze.

It killed him to wait, but Lothston knew what he was doing. They had the advantage still, their numbers near the same while the Stormcrows dwindled under the slings and arrows of the Golden Company.

With a sudden charge from the Company of the Cat, the attack resumed with new effort. Like thunder, light spears and javelins crashed against their shields, arrows and bolts tapping like hail.

"Hold strong!" Lothston roared. "Let them give us all they have, and still we shall hold strong! Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!" Viserys tightened his grip on his shield as he answered the war cry.

The endless drum of arrows had turned the elbow and shoulder bearing his shield to dust. The heat stung his eyes with sweat while making his head and eyes ache. The smell, dead sellswords, dead horses, and all their shit, piss, blood, and vomit making his kit all the more stifling. The war cry reminded him that he was more than just a common sellsword, not just a future man of the Golden Company, but a Targaryen.

No, Viserys was far from a common sellsword. He was a dragon, and he roared like one as the shields of the Company of the Cat slammed into them. He thrust with his spear and, when it was torn from his grasp, he hacked and stabbed with his shortsword. Yet as soon as it started, the ground shook, and it was over.

The Golden Company rolled south over the Company of the Cat, heavy cavalry followed by heavy infantry and the Company's famed lockstep legions on the wings in an overwhelming flanking maneuver. They meant to encircle and obliterate two of the oldest and most-famed of the free companies of Essos, and Viserys and his cohort nearly charged to join it before they fell behind their allies' lines, seven-thousand infantry and three-thousand cavalry chasing the enemy south.

Viserys breathed a sigh of relief as he turned to face his unit, ordered to hold firm and at ease. He caught all nine sets of eyes, even Torman beyond. Viserys nodded to Joho at his side and below him. Joho looked up at Torman, suspicious. He indicated Torman's cheek scar. "Does it hurt?"

"Itches sometimes. Yours?"

Joho looked at his chest. "Tickles in the cold." They shared a low chuckle. He added, "There was one night, where-"

A crossbow bolt sprouted from Joho's neck. It sprayed Torman with blood as the Stormcrows made one last ditch sally through Company lines.

Viserys and the cadets scattered before they fell back into formation. The Stormcrow crossbows and horsemen targeted Lothston and their captains, holding them down from the infantry.

"Joho!" Talal ran to his friend's body but Drogo drew them up.

"Ah-ho! Ah-ho" he bellowed, throwing a spear through a Stormcrow and stealing his horse. "We fight!"

Torman was still standing stock still in Joho's blood, while Talal screamed at Joho to open his eyes. The rest of their platoon was trying to wrangle themselves together. Zadjet cried, "Blackwood! Blackwood!" and made something of a formation from the remaining cadets. Viserys ran at Torman and Talal, failing to draw them into the formation but at least saving them from another volley of crossbow bolts with his shield and Joho's on his other arm.

The crossbows were Tyroshi weapons, their melodic strum echoing across the plains, the Stormcrows and Company of the Cat steadily reforming for a bloody final fight. "Run, Talal! Run!" Viserys shoved him to go, and he did, though he picked up Joho's body as he ran.

Viserys tugged on Torman but, stronger though he had become, Torman was still too large. He had an odd look in his eyes, staring at nothing and everything. "He was... right there." Viserys cleaned Torman's eyes and put his helmet on him. "Right... there."

"Peake! Move your ass, cadet!" Viserys tossed caution to the wind, cracking the haft of a discarded spear on Torman's back.

"Seven hells!" Torman seemed to remember where he was, who he was at the very least. "Where..."

"Let's go!" Viserys dragged him and they started running, breaking into a mad sprint towards the half-built formation under another volley of bolts.

Zadjet opened it to them like one of his Ghiscari ancestors, spears and shields at his command. Viserys and Torman fell in line, holding up their shields as more arrows struck home. "Zadjet!" Viserys turned looking for the Yunkish cadet. "Zadjet?"

He lay face down in the mud, arrows in his back.

Something else filled Viserys. "Squadrons! Estermont Estermont!" The shields smacked together, spears stuck out of every crack and hole. "Estermont Estermont! Right face, advance!"

What remained of thirty cadet squadrons formed into three-and-twenty spear-studded hemispheres of steel. Viserys screamed himself hoarse to be heard over the din, but finally, there was order. "Company! Advance!"

Like the rush of the Rhoyne they advanced on the Company of the Cat, an unstoppable behemoth of blade and gnashing teeth. Thousands of arrows splintered against their steel, and save some cuts and a bolt through Tyna's leg, which she easily ignored, they made it down the hill to confront the cavalry, "Platoons! Blackwood!"

They assembled into seven blocks of infantry, spears out and fanning up. Viserys understood why the captains always carried bottles of olive oil and honey for their throats.

The formations faced reforming Stormcrows, the last of the Company of the Cat chased off or in battle all around them with the Golden Company. Night had fallen and, for lack of time to light torches or lanterns, they fought by starlight.

"The Stormcrows want to make us slaves!" Viserys wondered what book of Ma Cate's poetry or some ancestors' ravings he drew from, but draw from them he did. "Are you slaves!"

"No!"

"Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!"

"AH-HO! AH-HO!"

"BENEATH THE GOLD!"

"THE BITTER STEEL!"

Chapter Text

"Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!"

Viserys smacked his shield. "Advance!" They took steady steps forward, the Stormcrows holding and then charging. "Blackwood Blackwood! Spears, you bastards!"

They planted their spears for the charging horses, their pikes piercing the horses' hearts long before the Stormcrows' swords could reach them. The second and third ranks of horses went down just as well, while the fourth and fifth crashed into them.

They retreated and turned, galloping in two charges to hit the cadets in their flanks. "Face the enemy! Squadrons, Velaryon!" They split into the narrow formation, in a series of parallel lines that made a tunnel, trapping the Stormcrows as they charged themselves.

As riders passed, spears lashed like whips, taking horses or men in the sides, the Stormcrows' armour just painted leather and silk-wrapped mail. "Company! Close Ranks!" They stepped to the order. "Blackwood! Advance!"

They encircled the Stormcrows in three stretching ranks at first, losing numbers as they struggled, but succeeded, at holding the Stormcrows on the points of their spears. Viserys thrust and drew back, thrust and drew back, thrust and- His spear was torn from his grasp. Stepping back, he drew his short sword and thrust forward again. He stabbed one man with green eyebrows, then another with a purple beard. Viserys saw the light in his eyes, wild and burning, and he watched that light go out.

Thrust, withdraw, thrust, withdraw. Cut, twist, pull, cut, twist pull. Someone patted his shoulder and he slipped out, the gap closed by the cadets beside him. He risked a look back – at least fifty of theirs were dead. "Blackwood! Blackwood Blackwood Blackwood!" The front rank dropped to one knee and planted their shields and spears, while the second and third ranks planted their spears and laid their shields atop those in front of them.

A final cavalry charge bounced off them, running wildly against their steel. The cadets formed up to renew their assault, only for Company heavy infantry, followed by the elephants, to flatten the Stormcrows underfoot. Viserys started the cadets moving steadily backwards until their own spear lines were behind a regiment of Company spears, bearing their own fifteen-foot pikes.

"Keep those shields up! Keep them up!"

Viserys's last order fell on deaf ears as more Company cavalry, and friends from Norvos from all the long-axes, drew over the cadets like a blanket. Shepherded into a stout camp on the banks of another river, Viserys was soon on a cot in a medical tent with a few others. He had some swollen thing in his knee that had to be popped to be reset, Melara had a stitched gash across her nose and cheeks, and Talal had a broken arm.

The rest were covered in a panoply of cuts and contusions, tended by a dithering Maegor and two other Dragonseed half-maesters. "Viserys, this is Gaemon and Matarys." Both more closely resembled Young Bear than Viserys and Maegor, but Viserys could hardly focus on them when he found an empty cot, nothing and everything weighing on his mind.

He sat hot and sticky from the grime of combat, blood and worse caked and drying into his skin. It dripped down his face in the sweat and he tasted and smelled it, but he just thought about Joho, and the letter Viserys wrote for him. Torman must have been thinking about it, though he had been thrust into action wrangling the cadets. He was the oldest Company's son left, barking orders as powerfully as men of his family had for centuries.

Tytus and Vaok had a more distant look, sat beside each other on stools, blankly gnawing on some biscuits. Drogo was shoving Maegor, trying to stand with two ribs and one bone in his leg sticking out of his flesh before he was stuck with a syringe full of thick milk of the poppy, and Kasté was sobbing, curled up in Black Balaq's lap, cooing and rubbing his back.

Viserys looked around to make sure they were all there, finding Cosimo busying himself with the doctors, and Baqarro unconscious but alive, three arrows pulled out of his back.

Peeling off his armour, Viserys rolled out his shoulders and laid back, sipping the tea some assistant handed him and feeling his mind go soft and pliant. Devoid of anxiety and fear, stunning clarity overwhelmed Viserys, hot tears dripping down even as he lay silent.

"*Qoy qoyi*! Go, Viserys!" Joho had yelled, the language of his mother gladly taught by Drogo when they hiked across the Heel as recruits. Had they been running from Company's sons, or running to Hugor's Hill? Or writing his letter. "Thank you, Viserys."

***

Viserys was still more boy than man when he rose with the sun, but he felt all around more different when he pulled on his boots and wobbled out of the medical tent in search of water and fresh air. Torches and bonfires fought with the stars, and the moans of the injured and dying hung heavy on the wind.

He dunked his head in a water barrel and drank, coming up and running his hands through his short hair. "Viserys." Ser Harry beckoned him to a waiting tent. "Torman's collapsed and the other Company's sons... You see, typically, the cadets have a representa-"

Jon Lothston popped his head out of the tent. "Took you long enough." Looking just as haggard and painted with mud and blood as Viserys had been, the Riverman took Viserys by the scruff and dragged him into the meeting of the officers. "Stay silent, speak only when spoken to, and speak honestly and quickly. Understood?"

Viserys snorted and woke himself, spitting out and then resetting a took he thought he had already saved. Ser Harry turned a shade of green. "Yes, sir."

Blackheart, Black Balaq, and Laswell Peake – Torman and Oscar's father – stood around a table within, Jon taking position behind the captain general.

"This was an attack on our heart! There were families down there!" Laswell slammed his fist into the table. Like one of his trebuchets, his horses of wood and stone, the deposed Westerosi Marcher knight had flourished in Essos, the lord of the single most powerful house in the Dusklands. Laswell stood large like his sons, six-and-and-a-half feet and widely built in the shoulders, chest, and hips, made wider by a single massive gold pauldron in the shape of a three-towered castle. "We are trying to build something more. Now is the time to strike Myr!"

A significant minority of the gathered officers stomped their feet and cheered their support. Black Balaq raised his hands for quiet. "I do not say combat is not in our future. Far from it! Myr is an enemy, and they are still owed for their betrayal of past contracts, but let us wait but a season or two. The cadets are wounded, the Ragged Standard and Company of the Rose are in need of time to muster new number..." Viserys liked the idea of a season to rest and recover. "...and those numbers can swell like the Rhoyne bursting its banks, what with this new peace in Westeros."

Black Balaq bore the four-winged bow of his station, leading the Golden Company's two-thousand archers, and the closest confidante of Captain General Toyne. Balaq also resembled Kasté, especially in the eyes. Whatever the emotion, their eyes were always still. Still and watchful. "Let them spend their coin on hiring hundreds if not thousands of men that flee to the daughters and Volantis. Gold we will plunder back when we take the city."

Laswell scoffed. "Gold the daughters and Volantis will use to hire more sellswords!"

"Who is left? The Windblown are in Slaver's Bay, the Long-Lances serve Qohor and begin to settle and intermarry, becoming landed knights of another name, with encroaching ties to the horse lords." Balaq waved him off. "We will have the advantage, in a season or three."

"If there is gold, there will always be men. For beneath the gold, the bitter steel." Laswell used the battle cry as a warning. "The Bright Banners, the Stormbreakers, and the Second Sons are all still in Slaver's Bay as well. In but a season, they will be back in the Heel. if the pay is good, they will go right back to war."

Balaq looked annoyed, even morose, at his defeat. "Then what would our plan be? We must send riders to Pentos and the Forge so we might begin the sieges on land and sea. We are too spread out."

Laswell nodded purposely. "My thoughts exactly. We will send two parties forward, and riders to get word to Lys and New Andalos as well. Trust me."

Harry scoffed and marched forward. "We still do not know how they knew we were here, or we would be marching north and west." Harry dropped his finger to the map. "All but the most able should make for a return to the Forge, while those who can go south. There, with the pay from Norvos, we will hire the Second Sons, the Long-Lances, and anyone else. We can."

"Sellswords hiring sellswords sets a precedent," Laswell muttered, of that he and Balaq were agreed. "What of the cadets?"

The high officers and their retainers and squires, even a few half-maesters, turned to look at Viserys. His eyes flitted around, catching Maegor, who winked, then settling on Laswell. "Unready, Lord Serjeant. Three of every unit remain unfit for travel, not without a cart or stretcher, and a further five have neither the strength nor... nor the will to travel."

"The will?" asked Laswell. He glared at Viserys with the same fury his son had once shown. "What... will?"

Joho and Zadjet were dead, and the Crones that remained... "It was the first battle for many of us. The chaos was- was overwhelming." Viserys felt his voice catch and cleared his throat, feeling exposed and hot, blushing in the tent as the officers continued to watch him, men who, from what he saw, had given not a single whisper of a thought to the wellbeing of the cadets.

All while they were camped behind his trenches, on the hill he was ordered to defend. He followed his orders. It was his hill.

Viserys stiffened his upper lip and met the Peake's hooded gaze. "They need time to rest. Three days, and carts and stretchers. I can assemble a party to build sledges from the bamboo grove to the east."

Laswell grunted and stormed off, Balaq rushing after him. He could not help but see Torman and Kasté, though with less of a size difference.

"Three days..." Blackheart steepled his fingers. "Three days, starting now. So rest up, cadet." Blackheart straightened up, and everyone silenced for his booming voice. "The world is changing. We have all felt it. Westeros crumbles. The north of Essos is carved up by new powers, and the south's feuding grows worse."

Laswell returned, seeming to agree. "Now is the time for us to stake our claim. The Dusklands are our home, as are the Golden Fields, New Andalos, and the Flatlands. We have twice as many people as three Free Cities combined, but because we are spread out, we are powerless? Not allowed to be master's of our fate? Captains of our..."

Viserys grew bored with the bloviating, slipping out of the tent and back to his unit, hissing at his aching knee and sighing as he sat. Maegor prattled over him with medical jargon, while Gaemon and Matarys set his knee and bound up all his wounds. They stripped him to his small clothes to do so, but Viserys did not blush until after Melara, Nim, and Tyna were escorted in.

It was a truly massive tent, saving on material by not offering walls, just a few privacy partitions. "How many did we lose?" Viserys asked, tugging on Maegor's sleeve.

Maegor sighed. His hair was wild and caked with dust, and blood not his own, but he looked far more awake than the officers he once counted as peers. "Initial count is one-hundred and seventy-two. You did well, but some things can't be helped." For a moment a rare clarity worked its way through the Brightflame's son, some of that Targaryen greatness manifesting through the madness. Activity, working in the field and not stuck in a tower like a hermit wizard, made him better. More than capable in fact, from how easily he snapped off orders to his assistants.

He grabbed Viserys by the shoulder and returned him to his cot "Rest now, and I'll see about getting you home."

"I hope it is handled... home?" Maegor looked at him ponderously, shrugging a bit. "Thank you, cousin. It... I do miss it like home, even if everyone I... even though everyone I love is here."

Maegor relaxed as the morning rush of work came to an end, the cadets all sleeping soundly or eating quietly, too tired to do anything else. "It will never feel quite the same as the Seven Kingdoms, but the Dusklands, all of Essos, can be your home." He dimmed the nearest lantern then sat at the end of the cot, though not before tucking Viserys in. Viserys had a flickering memory of his father doing the same for him, or perhaps his mother or brother or one of the white cloaks, but he could hardly remember their faces anymore. "The concerns of Westeros may be washed away. Much as colour can fade with time alone." He played with Viserys's hair then puffed up his pillow.

Viserys tried lying back. It was not his bed in the barracks or Blue Lantern, but that went unnoticed by his back, sighing in relief. "Did it ever feel like home to you?"

Maegor smiled at the memory that lit up his eyes, though he kept it to himself. "I've been here for twenty-five years, the family that survived Summerhall thinking I was dead." He ran his hands along his unfinished chain. It was long enough, but if the vows of a maester went unspoken, it would never be finished. "It will never be a place though, cousin." He tucked Viserys's growing hair behind his ears, and licked his thumb to clean another cadet's blood from his cheek. "Don't... don't look for home, just hold onto the feeling. You will find it, then lose it, but then you will know what to wait and look for. Then, you strike. And you never let them go."

"Wait for...?" Viserys yawned and dug his fist into his nose. His eyelids felt awfully heavy. "But wait for what?"

Maegor smiled that wistful smile again. "When the peace takes you. When all the world feels like fair golden fields. Laughing with your comrades and grieving with them. The love of a brother. The arms of a lover. Or the eyes of a son." Maegor stood. "Sleep, Viserys. For now, your fighting is done."

***

Viserys expected another fight, perhaps a fervour to work himself into alongside his comrades, but he was too exhausted to care. After sleeping hard for a night and most of the next morning, and slowly stretching himself out over the day that followed, they set off at dawn after the second night. The cadets, with an escort of two-thousand Company infantry, limped down the River of Myrth then turned west towards the Forge.

Most of them recovered from their cuts and aches in that time, while those with more grievous wounds were placed on massive trains of wheelhouses, ten or more of them towed down a dragonroad by a pair of elephants. Viserys had not thought it necessary, but after the third day of walking he was put on one of them, and he took to massaging his knee to work out some of the ache.

Despite her new scar that ran across her nose and cheeks, Melara was in much more of a flurry, cursing at their state of arrest at being shuffled away from the fighting. "Is it bad?" she poked at her cheeks and nose with a mirror in hand, her voice and bunk rattling along the road. "Tell me true."

"Given time, no. Scars need a chance to form, the doctors said." Viserys dug his thumb into his knee and groaned pleasurably. "I have one on my back that itches like mad. And yours?"

"More like lemon juice in a splinter. They used milk of the poppy for the pain, but it made me stupid."

Viserys giggled. "That or Lothston's leeches. Did you see her?"

Melara nodded. "She spoke with all of us, together and alone. We're to spend a season in the Forge for continued study. Ser Marq spoke with you?"

Viserys shook his head. "Serjeant Caspor and Ser Harry. Ser Marq is somewhere between New Andalos and Lys. They said we're to get two moon's rest and rehabilitation, but they want us reinforcing the siege."

Melara looked crestfallen. "Oh. We'd thought you would... You're not yet old enough to be squires."

"But we're big enough to dig trenches and cut trees for siege engines. Torman says it will be a long siege."

"Ah. *Torman* says. Buried the hatchet, finally?" Melara attempted to inject some levity into the conversation, though Viserys was still thinking about Joho and Zadjet. "Did you never know someone who died?"

Viserys balanced the merits of the truth. His father and mother, Ser Willem. But he didn't know them now, so what was the difference? "I did, but it was... different. You?"

"Just some older family. We thought... my aunt and her children were in danger, and... They lived, but they were all... changed? Different in a way as well, I suppose. We thought they were dead though for a time, but it just made me think about how afraid I was to die too. Seeing Nym with an arrow through her and..."

"You took a spear to the belly!" She waved him off as if he had not seen it himself. She was set to make a full recovery, and Viserys had made sure Maegor tended to Melara personally. "I didn't ever want to die. I suppose were I from a place in the world like Vaok or Joho, I would understand death from a younger age. By my age, my brother... Everything isn't easy, and that's the way it is for most people. Death included."

The road reached a bridge and when they crossed it they saw the familiar sites of the City of Craft, foundries and forges producing swords, helmets, and everything else in bulk every day. Many of the infantry starting splitting off, even Oscar's mother coming to take him and Torman to their estate. Viserys hobbled over to catch their attention, though he only caught Torman.

"That's what you saw as a boy, right?" Viserys cut through the tension and Torman's sudden rage. "I had to set my mother's pyre after she died birthing my sister. Then my sister was stolen."

Torman went from angry to confused to empathetic to sad, before ending on shame. "She was a Pentoshi lady. Arrows flew like rain when we were on a picnic, and she..."

"A picnic?"

"It's Pentoshi."

Viserys indicated Oscar's mother. "She seems nice."

"She is." Torman looked back over the Crones. "I really was sorry. He was just... he was right in front of- of me." Torman choked and sobbed, tears flowing freely he failed to staunch with his hands. "I don't even see her, just the blood. The arrows."

"I'm sorry." Viserys felt awkward just standing there, but he did not know what else to do. "Will the Warriors join the Crones in Myr?"

Torman nodded and cleared his throat. "All of our cohort will assemble under father. We're to start taking forts and settlements that pay fealty to Myr."

"Then I'll see you when we tighten the noose." Viserys offered his hand, and Torman took it, shaking firmly. "Farewell, Torman."

"Farewell, Viserys."

Chapter Text

"Another lecture?" Tytus snatched the book from Viserys, reading on his bed in the afternoon lull between lessons. "'*A Treatise on the Discursive Schools of Thought of* blah blah blah." He tossed the book at Viserys and threw himself on his bed. He had bruises up and down his arms, and horse dung stuck to his boots.

Viserys found his place in the book. "Another jousting lesson?"

"It's required for squires. We aren't all delivered knighthoods by virtue of our bloodlines." Tytus cocked his head to one side. "What's the point with reading after the histories? That's where all the excitement is. Like the Battle above the Gods Eye!" Tytus burst to his feet, jumping from bed to bed. "When Daemon Targaryen atop Caraxes stabbed his nephew Aemond, atop Vhagar, through the eye!"

Viserys said, "Because excitement isn't enough. Supplies, weapons, and armour. Even the torches! Half the reason Maelys and the Company lost the Stepstones is because they didn't have enough torches lit on the beach! The Westerosi had a quarter of their trenches dug before the Company even knew they were there!"

Tytus guffawed, covering his head and lying down again. Viserys scoffed and returned to the book, a philosophy text Maegor recommended, in a bid to help understand why the contracts in Volantis's sphere had declined. Not even Selhorys and Volon Therys's nobility or merchants had hired the Golden Company in nearly a year, while the ambitious nobles residing behind the Black Walls had not hired the Golden Company in more than two. Even the Norvoshi had bought their way out of their contract after the roads into Myr had been fully blockaded.

He made a few more notes in the margins of a clogged page of his notebook before cleaning up and dressing for his afternoon, making his way across the bridge to the Forge. While the first year cadets were houses in simple stone cutouts of Forgemount's inner walls, second years resided in wooden barracks that hung off the mountains of the Dusklands like square leeches. A few of the so-called dormitories were connected to the Forge's middle levels, where Viserys took lessons beyond sword, spear, and horse.

He found Maegor in his laboratory, deep in conversation with Lady Danelle and Serjeant Malo Jeyn, a squat and hairless Essosi who reminded Viserys of the Spider, except for his poorly covered scowl, which made him more different still. Viserys found he preferred the company of those that had not mastered the art of hiding their emotions.

Waiting in the doorway, he caught his cousin's eye then stepped out when he was waved out, first waiting in the hallways, then pacing it. He was impatient to speak with him.

He turned back to knock again when the door opened, Lady Danelle nodding politely and the serjeant grunting something about "boys from Lys."

"He's ready for you," Danelle said. She stopped Viserys again halfway through the door. "There has been some... some news from Lys, Viserys. It has shaken Lord Aerion." She patted his shoulder warmly then departed with Malo, while Viserys peered into the laboratory.

It looked the same, if anything it was tidier than usual. Viserys knew the other cadets Maegor worked with, chiefly Oscar and Young Bear, had been doing what they could to keep the workspace in order, but their advances were usually hard won. "Lord Aerion? How is that new filing system... faring."

Viserys looked around a bookshelf at Maegor, rather, his back, as he was hunched over some chest he had pulled out of the floor. His platinum hair curtained his face, and as Viserys stepped around him he saw bags under his cousin's eyes, while his fingernails had grown long where once they were short. "Maegor?"

He reached towards Maegor's shoulder, only for him to flinch away. A practiced grip wrapped around the hilt of a sword, its blade swirling black and silver steel. Its hilt and cross-guard were wrapped with leather, covering any decoration. "Apologies, Viserys." Maegor sheathed the sword, dropped it in the chest, then returned it to its hiding place. "You've caught me... reminiscing."

Viserys sat while Maegor made a show of tidying his desk. "I believe that's the standard for our house." He watched Maegor make actual progress at his desks and worktables, not looking at Viserys until it was clear, then taking as much time combing the long hair off his face. "Men kept their hair quite short when you were a boy. At least, according to Prince Baelor's writing."

"He died twenty years before I was born." Maegor slid a gold signet ring onto one of his fingers then sat. For a moment he appeared uncomfortable in his maester's robes, shifting in his seat and tugging on the collar and sleeves. His hand missed something on his belt, instead picking up a dip pen to fidget with. "Lothston told you?"

"She mentioned news from Lys."

"Ah. That. I knew a... There was this... What do you know about grey plague?"

"Like greyscale?" Viserys asked.

"A swifter variant. It claimed a..." Maegor quieted, his voice a gravelly whisper. "Someone I thought was dead long ago, whom I had learned was dead... I learned she lived this morning, only that she may well die soon."

"But if you thought she was dead..."

"I had hope, cousin." He snorted and drank from his wine, drawing a small knife to whittle away his fingernails. "Enough. Another life, better forgotten. Tell me your thoughts on Volantis."

Viserys took a breath at the sudden change in topic, but he adapted with it. He had learned that it was best to stay quick on his feet and ride the waves of Maegor's frenetic whims, rather than try to move against them. It must not have been easy serving under him when he led the Golden Company. "Of course. The Triarchy has been split towards the elephant for centuries, but the recent election of another male tiger and two female elephants would suggest a turn towards... less defensive tactics."

"Yes, we know first hand the dangers of an affronted elephant." Maegor started cutting his nails as he leaned back in his chair and kicked up his feet. In addition to his mail hauberk and pauldron, he also wore greaves. "And the Volantenes are too respectful to ever consider introducing some third party. A second tiger alone would spell worry from Ghis to Braavos."

"I believe that the decline in contracts among all sellsword companies is related," Viserys began. "Usually they buy up and swiftly... consume the companies into their militias, only reforming and releasing them after whatever war they fight for Volantis is over. They've not done that, but press on their borders regardless. They even court conquest of Lys, or clearing Chroyane."

Maegor chortled. "As you will learn, the movements of Volantis are much like how elephants naturally travel. They push on their borders, make overtures about rebuilding the Freehold..." Maegor shrugged, filing a clipped nail then moving on with tools he slipped in and out of his pockets. "But look between the lines as well. Look to these elephants. Where are their interests and investments? Etcetera, etcetera. Always look closer, Viserys."

***

News swirled in the mess hall that evening, talk of Volantis – the elephants had interests in shipping, ship building, and bricks – and the siege of Myr. Lys had come through, paying the Golden Company well in advance to besiege the city from land as their sellsails did so at sea. New Andalos's forces however, under Septon Meribald, had taken the strongholds nearest Myr, forcing their way into the alliance under not so subtle threats on Company families living in their sprawling country of zealots.

Viserys shuffled down the trays, taking his potatoes, roast chicken and vegetables, and some red pureed decoction Lady Danelle was handing out. "For the constitution."

"Must I?" Tytus moaned, though Caspor Hill was beside her to threaten compliance. He shot it back then smiled, slurping it down eagerly. Viserys was still suspicious, but he drank anyway. It was cold and crystalline, and tasted of melons, strawberries, and citrus.

"News from Qohor as well," said Talal as they all sat. Talal had grown into quite the broker of rumours and secrets, even if he did still embellish on occasion. "Norvos has been forced to pull back to the Darkwash, and the freedmen who now lay claim to Qohor are getting support from Volantis."

Tytus snorted. "The bearded priests should have kept the Company while they could. Serves them right."

Viserys elbowed Drogo. "You had that rider from your father. What does he think?"

Drogo huffed and focused on his food, which had the opposite effect he wanted as everyone turned their focus to him. "If I must say anything... Khal Bharbo has called *dozh khal*." Baqarro made a shocked sound and then some sign towards the sky. "Slavers have taken Dothraki. Tigers brought swords into Vaes Dothrak."

The Crones and their friends long knew the laws of the Dothraki, Drogo always bending their ears about the sights they will see when he brings them to his people's capital. "And when will news return from him?" asked Kasté. "Grandfather says we are to end association with Slaver's Bay."

"When there is news to be heard." Drogo's shrug signalled the end to his willingness to talk, no doubt dejected at his prospects. As his cousins and younger brothers went off to fight some ascendant Ghis, he would remain with the Golden Company.

"We'll be squires soon," Tytus muttered, changing the subject. "Likely after Myr. Do we get to pick our knights, or are they assigned to us? Father said in his last letter he would like me with a good everyman, and I'm inclined to agree. He says some men, after they are knighted, leave to become hedge knights for a season or three before returning to the Company." He took a hearty bite of carrot, then said with his mouth full, "It might be nice to travel around."

Viserys examined one piece of dried-out chicken. Everything was always so overcooked, but better that then a hot geyser at both ends of him. "I'm not sure. I am certain that we don't have a say. Given Pentos's arming though... We'll have work in the field."

"'Work in the field?' Hah! So droll. The fight, the blood, the storm of swords and picking out loot among the feasting crows!" Viserys wondered if Tytus had processed the attack by the Stormcrows and Company of the Cat. It hung like an albatross around the necks of the platoons who had gone through it, more so on those of them who had seen more killing than some of the oldest squires. Viserys had thought about that battle many times, knowing that he was responsible for the deaths of other men and women, even if they were trying to kill him. He could still see the lights in their eyes going out.

"Serjeant, attention!"

The cadets stood at salute. "At ease. Eyes on me." Pykewood Peake was Serjeant of Sieges, of identical rank to his brother, Laswell, but with a special penchant for breaking down city walls. He was a tall, hunched, morbidly obese man that looked like a storybook's depiction of a fat troll, but he had a sly intelligence that glittered behind his eyes. Torman and Oscar both spoke highly of him, and the talents of the cooks he brought into his household. "You have five minutes to eat. Report for duty at the East Gate in one hour."

There was a moment of calm before the room erupted, chatter and chewing drowning out the squires and knights hurrying after their commander. Viserys might have swallowed a chicken bone whole but he didn't care, stuffing his face and rushing back to the barracks to pack, then assembling as ordered.

The cadets were joined by the other light infantry of the Dusklands, assembled behind them like shadows of their past. Most cadets who completed their training would end up as the spear-and-shield wielding lockstep infantry the Golden Company was known for – Viserys had learned from Lady Danelle that Maegor was the one to perfect them from the freedmen levies they started out as. He modelled them after a story of the Unsullied, finding out many years later they did not bear pikes or massive steel shields.

Yet the Golden Company was at its most powerful ever, in no small part thanks to Maegor's tenure as captain general.

Caspor rode out on a chariot pulled by two stout stallions, while Pykewood assembled with his engineers to one side of the mounted officers. "Company!" Caspor roared. Like thunder, five-thousand spears crashed into the dust. "Beneath the Gold!"

"The Bitter Steel!"

"Beneath the Gold!"

"The Bitter Steel!"

Caspor bellowed a wild roar, the infantry joining him as if he had summoned them. "Company!"

They slammed their spears again.

"We march south, to a Myrish fort on the River of Myrth! They think they can claim territory, so near to us? An insult! You shall tear them from this soft villa of silver and stone, and you will show them why the Golden Company's word is as good as our gold!"

Just like that, they were off, walking in loose formations five men wide and ten men deep, down the dusty roads of the Dusklands and through the jungles on the border. As they passed the arid pastures that dotted the Myrish borderland, they picked up more company men, one thousand heavy infantry and knights and two-thousand light cavalry. The thousands of hooves tore up the road into a muddy trench, but their presence put leagues more in every direction within sight of their scouts.

Viserys's regiment marched in the lower right wing, the entire force moving in the shape of a barbed arrowhead that could quickly collapse into an all round defence. The nine-hundred cadets were officially "supplementary emergency auxiliaries," which all of them took pride in, though most did not know what it meant. They were just as likely to be used as pages and camp runners as soldiers.

"Do you think we'll be allowed into the city?" asked Kasté. "I've not been to a Free City since arriving in Braavos, and that was ages ago."

"I don't see why not. I doubt the siege is successful, anyway." Tytus seemed confident, and not because his mother and her family resided in Myr. "The man my mother married notwithstanding, we should have a feast."

"And they say you were a prince," Cosimo whispered, nudging Viserys and making them both snicker.

It took the better part of a month to maneuver into position, the horse and heavy infantry engaging in skirmishes with the Stormbreakers and the Long Lances. Both of vaunted reputation equal to the Golden Company and the Windblown, they had loot, numbers, and experience from fighting in a sprawling civil war in Yi-Ti. The Stormbreakers were knights of another name, men and women of rivers, be they Tully or Rhoynish, while the Long Lances claimed lineage with the last cavalry company of the Kingdom of Sarnor.

Both however paled when the Company of the Cat made itself known, recovered and hungry for Company blood. Viserys felt the same.

Unlike the other free companies of Essos, the Company of the Cat was founded in the east amidst the wars between New Ghis and the cities of Slaver's Bay, solidifying during the Century of Blood before falling into decline, but having found new life in the skirmishes between Qarth and the Golden Empire of Yi Ti. A formidable force of light cavalry and quiet infantry, rarely were they be caught in a pitched battle where the numbers would see them defeated, staying on the move and out of reach, taking small bites out of the Golden Company five or ten sellswords at a time.

Viserys learned that the Cats had developed the repeating crossbow used by the Stormcrows in their attack, having brought the weapons back from Yi Ti. "They should be giving them to us, not sending them back to the Citadel," Kasté complained, the din of combat echoing to them over the ranks and ranks of infantry. "New technology requires younger users to master."

"A weapon of cowards," Drogo spat. For a Dothraki, he was plenty used to fighting on foot. "Give me knife or teeth before crossbow. A bow is better anyway."

"Shields!"

A volley of arrows bounced off their shields, some even striking their spears. "We could shoot back far easier."

"Right turn, march!" Their force turned south to continue the march to the delta of the River of Myrth and the fort that lay on a tidal isle just beyond. The north shore of the river was a hinterland technically under Pentos's purview, while the south was some of the most fertile of Myr's colonies, sprawling farms and townships that rolled over pale green grass.

The raised dragonroad to the fort lay on the Myrish side of the river, the fort itself a colossus of pale brown granite atop a platform of fused black stone, with pointed towers and a domed keep. A one hundred-foot inner wall protected the keep, while a fifty-foot curtain wall guarded mangonels and trebuchets that let off some ranging shots that splashed into the river. "Perhaps they'll damn it for us," Viserys observed.

The Pentoshi side was rife with hills to look down on the battlefield, and Maegor had Viserys on his hip as the plans were laid about. Tristan Rivers, a Serjeant of Cavalry, spoke first once the maps were unrolled and the tokens placed. "We should send our infantry up the middle and to the west and south of the fortress, to block escape while our knights strike from the north. One way in, one way out." Tristan led five-hundred of the Company's knights, all barded and plate-armoured, and armed with pikes, swords, and all the bevy weapons of a sellsword. "Meanwhile, Ser Marq will lead our light horse around to hit them from the rear."

"Aye, to be smashed against their walls." Caspor cleared the board and placed the enemy tokens. "The Jolly Fellows, the Gallant men, and the Iron Shields together match our numbers. The Stormbreakers and Long Lances, not to mention the Company of the Cat, outnumber us entirely. With the time they've had to take in the harvest, we need to take the roads around them to cut off resupply. Once the rafts are built, we can take their port and smash them in a triple advance."

"No, they will cross the river to our north to escape before that." Lysono Maar drew Peake, elephant, and axe tokens down from Pentos and Norvos. "Serjeant Laswell is coming, as are our infantry stranded in Norvos in for the past three years."

"They were being paid," Lady Danelle defended, a great proponent of the alliance with Norvos.

"To do nothing."

"Total flanking is not the answer," Ser Marq intruded, taking over as the highest officer present. "We must take them to the walls, but their siege engines present too much risk. Those trebuchets will tear our horse apart, and the fort has deepwater ports on its far side." Marq's finger tapped his lips, looking from the maps to the battlefield below. Trenches were dug and spikes laid on the far side, and it would be bloody work taking them so long as the fort was still fed by Myrish territory. "Lord Brightfyre?"

Maegor peered at the map, picking up one of the Cat tokens and dancing it across his knuckles. "The Yi-Tish tactic would be to envelop and advance. Overwhelm us in fell swoops. Advance us one, establish the limits of their siege weaponry, starve them by road. If we move fast with the other companies behind us, we'll be an island and can be resupplied by the Braavosi and Pentoshi by sea. I have already sent word."

Marq narrowed his gaze, eyes flicking to Viserys. "That was... presumptuous of you, my lord."

Maegor narrowed his gaze back, and Viserys felt himself caught between them. "Heavy horse in the fore," said Tristan, clearing his throat to cut through the tension. "Light cavalry to the roads. We have forests and farms farther up the river. We can float down everything we need in the meanwhile."

"Alright," Marq began, bringing the meeting to a close. "Serjeant Caspor, you will bring the infantry across the river to the south. Tristan, you'll guide the heavy horse ahead of them. I'll cross at this ford..." Marq rested his finger on a wider section of river five miles to the north. "...and move up to bite them in the arse. They'll have supplies coming in we will need, we can worry about their trenches once we're dug in."

Marq broke the meeting, though he kept Viserys back. "Lord Marshal Brightfyre has taken an interest in you, I see."

"He is wise, Ser. He was Captain General before Ser Myles, wasn't he?"

Marq appeared to be trying to read Viserys's mind, but the exiled princeling played the idiot. In Marq's eyes, Viserys was still the boy clutching his mother's crown. "He was. He began working against the Company's best interests, his loyalties were questioned... You have thoughts on our strategy?"

"No, sir."

Marq softened. "I'm not them, Viserys. You can speak freely here."

Viserys really did have nothing to say. He had an opinion, to be sure, but he had grown mistrustful of the Serjeants and other high-ranking officers of the Golden Company. Both for keeping the general soldiery in the dark and their disregard for the cadets, Viserys hoped to disappear into the crowd of the Company. "I have no specific thoughts, Marq," he lied. "Truly. The Myrish fortress is fortified as you have said, a blow to our numbers advantage, and resupply from Myr from sea should not be a worry. Not with the Lyseni blockade. And the sellswords will be needed at Myr to guard from the Ragged Standard and Andalosi."

Marq frowned but nodded, dismissing Viserys to return to his platoon. He did so, spear and shield up, hauberk secured and helmet on. He mentioned the plans, though they were moving before he could say much. Torman, already a squire and armed with a drum, started a hearty rendition of 'the Bear and the Maiden Fair' to give them a hasty rhythm. Into the river they marched, up to their knees before they came to a small island and watching post. Infantry were sent in, and all exited hale with bloody spears, Myrish militiamen secured as prisoners.

"Myrish," Baqarro growled, with a particular hatred for the Myrish who had enslaved his parents. He was born into slavery, a glass-blower's boy until he grew too large to be of use. Before he could be sold to the arena, the Company bought him. "We shall see no action, I hope."

"All the better," Tytus said. He looked sickly pale as they advanced to the next river watch post. This one had them raising their shields while archers filed in amongst them, firing a volley that hit some endangered Stormcrows in the rear. They hit the heavy horse, were rebuffed, and charged out of the river, past the Myrish trenches, and to the fortress through the gate.

Viserys eyed Tytus. "Myr is a powerful Free City, Tytus," Viserys comforted. "They will capitulate long before anything worse than the opening moves of a siege."

"Agreed," said Talal. Still taller than all of them, he described siege engines being wheeled out of the fortress and towards the abandoned Myrish pickets. Their journey revealed that the Myrish trenches were barely deeper than ditches and the spikes far less numerous. They cheered as Tristan blew his horn and the heavy horse made a sally towards the open gates of the fortress.

Their barding shining in the sunlight, the horse made a fine charge across the two kilometres between the coast and the fortress, building up to a gallop, then turning to gallop parallel with the curtain wall from five hundred metres away at low tide. Rocks and boulders flew from trebuchets to strike them and obstruct their path, and they might have hit were they a few metres closer.

The fortress sat on an island whose surroundings would flood regularly, and while it discouraged a short-term assault, a sustained siege left time for towers to be placed in the sand beneath the water, sand bags and rocks to be moved to raise the land for siege engines, and rafts for siege towers. A true moat might have been better, like the sort he read about existing in the Riverlands.

What's worse for the Myrish, better for the Golden Company, was the high hills and cliffs that surrounded the coast, giving them and their older Myrish lenses an easy look behind the walls of the fort. The Fort of Myrth, as they took to calling it, had to aim uphill with their war engines, mangonels and catapults useless, scorpions overshooting the cliff at a steep angle. A pack mule half a mile back had been struck by one such bolt, and a few still came every day, opening up a wide no-man's land in the middle of their own camp.

Viserys watched from overhead as the heavy cavalry made the ranging charge and the pikes and spears advanced to start on siege fortifications, the cadets assigned to strike camp far behind the lines, building tents and digging canals for water to drink and to keep the latrine flowing – digging the latrine was the job of recruits, to their joy.

Within the hour the siege was underway, and two hours after that Marq and fifty of his horse returned. They had successfully blockaded the roads and started on the pillaging of the surrounding farms. They were within spitting distance of Myr itself, in the most fertile lands of the Heel, the most fertile region in western Essos. The takings in the countryside alone were well worth the journey, and Viserys always went to bed with a full belly.

That was what the Free Cities had forgotten that the Westerosi of the Golden Company had not, Viserys wondered. Though a city or castle might withstand a siege, even survive as it is resupplied by sea, the many peoples that paid them fealty in coin or goods would not. Dothraki might always take gold, but the Golden Company wanted grain – and hearts and minds – more than precious metals.

Free cities like Myr thus lose that produce twice, for they ended up in the hands of their enemy, and then they had to pay allied merchants steep rates to satisfy markets. The Golden Company had scribes from Braavos in their ranks as well, prepared with writs of transfer so Pentos might expand their territory and the Iron Bank invest in whatever new regime follows the current order. In the meanwhile, fresh supplies, fruit and beef and grain, not the rice and dried pork the Company subsisted on while campaigning, spilled into camp.

Viserys supposed a gift given at the end of a sword was still a gift, technically, when farmers got to keep their farms and their heads in exchange for peacefully boarding an infantry unit and a knight or three.

When camp was built the Cadets were sent to man the trenches, digging tunnels and rooms amongst the completed pathways or sharpening logs for defenses. With Torman and those that showed the aptitude, Viserys was assigned to the onagers, short-range war engines for striking enemies that might charge into no-man's-land. The trees nearby were tall and thick, reserved for Myr's merchant fleet, and they were making for perfect material for Pykewood Peake's experiments.

"They should have razed the forests," chided Torman.

"We move fast, they do not," said Vaok, a weaver in his life as a slave and now a burgeoning craftsman of every variety, testing the tension on the onager's cables.

Viserys summoned a recruit and indicated some briars. He found it hard to believe he was more than two years removed from his first day in the Company. "Have the recruits start cutting and wrapping the thorns around stones, and fill ten barrels from the latrine." Vaok and Torman gave him odd looks. "I read about it..."

"In a book," they groaned together.

"Ever since you met that other Valyrian, you've been so bookish," said Cosimo, returned dragging more trunks and logs behind him. Though he was still portly and round, he was also taller and far stronger. "I hear he drinks wildfire and is convinced it will turn him into a dragon."

"He's a touch... touched," said Viserys. "Though he is kind enough."

The first onagers were completed on the second day of the siege. By day four, the Company was building three a day, placed at steadily shrinking intervals all across the pickets around the fortress, but concentrated on the roads any fleeing cavalry might rely on. The ground had grown soft and wet, only the tall boots the Company insisted they wear saving them from all sorts of skin-rotting afflictions.

By day ten, the siege was in full swing, Serjeant Laswell Peake arriving with the stones necessary for a protracted siege while Pykewood departed with wood for siege towers. Laswell started with two trebuchets and four siege towers, recruits and cadets moving over the scaffolding like termites assembling in a hive.

From the top of one such tower, Viserys managed a closer look inside the fortress. There were easily two thousand horse within, the island deceptively large, mostly Stormcrows from the lightning and crows, but some were the Westerosi and Rivermen of the Stormbreakers. Heavy cavalry, all of them.

The true challenge would be the four-thousand infantry of the Company of the Cat, all in armour of medium weights with smaller, more maneuverable shields, or a weapon in each hand. Ships still served the fortress by a covered dock, and the naval blockade would not reach them for weeks.

They were in for a long siege.

Chapter Text

It was two weeks later when the Myrish first attempted to break the siege.

Viserys was on sentry duty, as still as the Titan at the intersection of two trenches. It was an hour from dawn and the eastern sky had already begun to brighten soften from black to purple. Bugles blew, alerting the Company as the fort's western gates opened.

Fort Myrth was not a small castle, six towers along its curtain wall and eight massive wings to the castle within, each with a tower of their own. It looked out of place among the green and blues of the sea, and the growing red and orange of the trees. Like all Myrish structures, it was mostly featureless brown stone, with signs of glass gardens in the courtyards within.

As the trenches erupted into activity, heavy infantry filed out of Fort Myrth to stand before the curtain wall, tall rectangular shields painted with the heads of roaring lions. One Company trebuchet loosed a ranging shot, its stone projectile coasting high overhead before impacting with the ground and bouncing another hundred feet, coming to rest another hundred feet from the front of the Cats.

There were curses from the engineers and the Company men, expected to throw a stone up and over. Slowly the trebuchets, and the catapults protecting them, were dragged forward to the edge of Myrish artillery range. The Myrish were not just aiming uphill; they had to aim over their own walls, relying on callers and range finders to throw their far more limited supply of projectiles in the right direction. The result was severely diminished accuracy at range, so Laswell Peake took the risk to move the trebuchets forward, lob a load each, and then have them moved out of range by teams of aurochs from the surrounding farms.

There were six trebuchets by then, the maximum with the bulk of Company engineers seeing to the siege of Myr itself, but each tossed a massive stone that barrelled through the infantry and the cavalry behind them, punching Fort Myrth's curtain wall behind them. The hit was followed by two more in quick succession, and that section of wall fell.

The gap was quickly filled with archers who returned a volley that rained down on the trenches, but the Company kept their shields up and withstood the arrows with minimal injury. The Golden Company's famous discipline was on display at that point in the siege. The Cat infantry running back for the gates of the fort were an enticing target for any commander, but the Serjeants restrained themselves. Viserys's training told him to keep his eyes open for more than the obvious, tracking Cat archers in their leopard-spotted armour on the walls, while Cat cavalry in tiger-striped armour with lances and pikes charged out through the eastern gate.

Their horses were painted the same colours – hung with horns and other curious pelts and hides, they were an intimidating display. The riders as well, snarling and hooting, seemed to shake some of the Golden Company manning the outermost trenches.

The Cats turned back before they were in Company range, though their sudden sally prevented the siege engines on that side from striking back, though one trebuchet was released. Its massive stone counterweight fell, sending buckets of nails, shit, and briar-wrapped stones into the rear of the Golden Company horse. Twenty were struck down dead and fifty more limped back.

When his watch ended at dawn, Viserys made the hike back to camp, stooped and hunched behind earthen mounds to avoid Myrish arrows. He was alone out of his unit, split up to better serve the siege's stretched-out lines. They had at least resisted the Stormbreakers and Long Lances, who had cut and run in a return to Myr that burned half the Myrish farms between the River of Myrth and Myr.

Just as he put some water on to boil and started peeling off his armour, a knight cantered up and dropped his pack and lance, including his horse's barding, next to Viserys. "My duties are by the mill house. Strike camp and make tea."

Viserys stood at attention. "Yes, sir." The knight rode off without another word, and Viserys resumed working despite his ten hours of sentry duty, shouldering the knight's pack and securing the barding to the lance like a hedge knight's bindle. He followed the road rather than the well-trod desire paths to the Company command quarters, horses having shredded the neat plots of land into a stinking pasture.

It took longer than desired, but the knight was nowhere to be seen, so Viserys identified his horse and built the knight's tent, cot, and fire while he attended a meeting. Viserys doubted it was anything of substance, and he was proven right at first, as four Serjeants – Marq, Tristan, Caspor, and Laswell – and Lady Danelle entered the mill house. Glancing over his shoulders, Viserys followed, falling in with the squires and infantry clamouring to see the meeting.

The mill house was a large, squat wooden cabin, once next to a river long dried up, converted to a counting house and storage facility by the Myrish. At present it was a meeting place, stockade, and brothel for the knights and officers of the Company.

Viserys scrambled back and then up to the roof of the mill house as easily as if it were rigging on a mast, ignoring the lone watchman and slipping to the scaffolding through a hole in the roof. He perched over the meeting and Marq, who led the assembly, the knights present with more than five years of service in a wider ring around the serjeants and Lady Danelle. Maegor was not there, which Viserys found odd. "Some of you know Lady Lothston already, one of our greatest patrons when we served in Myr. She brings word from the siege of the city itself, as well as word from Captain General Toyne. Listen, and say nothing until she is done."

“I expected boys as green as grass, but even your camp boys stood firm on watch. I applaud the Golden Company for their unending stores of focus and determination.”

The bulk of the Company leadership had clearly never played in the great game, taking Lady Danelle’s compliments at face value. Viserys did notice Torman’s father react less kindly, crossing his arms and sinking into his retinue of engineers. Then again, he was the only man present – excepting Viserys – raised as nobility. No doubt he knew his share of politics. No doubt he shared his sons' prejudices for House Lothston and their reputation in the Dusklands.

“And we are thankful for your aid in speaking with the Myrish on our behalf,” said Marq. “What news of Myr and the Captain General, my lady?"

"Of course. Our partners in Pentos and New Andalos have purchased the services of a number of other companies whom the Company will command, chiefly the Second Sons and the Ragged Standard, who are very eager to treat with the Serjeants of the Golden Company." There were murmurs and a few gasps.

The Second Sons were one of the greatest and oldest of free companies, and a common partner of Myr just as the Company was once to Tyrosh. The Ragged Standard on the other hand were the oldest of the Westerosi companies, formed from the remnants of the army that lost at the Field of Fire during Aegon's Conquest. "Our partners among the other daughters and across the Narrow Sea are eager to see us wedded by vow and shared bloodshed."

The Company men gave a small cheer. Claimants to attainted houses in another continent many of them may have been, but all of them were sellswords. There was not a freerider, hedge knight, or irregular known who did not tire of the endless fighting between the greatest of the sellsword companies. "And what shall Blackheart have of us, Lady Lothston?" Laswell's arms were no longer crossed, though he was looming over the table and staring derisively at her. "The siege is underway, and we have too much invested here already."

"We cannot face Myr at even three-quarters our strength!" Caspor Hill snapped, dropping his fist against the table like a hammer. "They've thousands of Unsullied and freedmen who will die for their masters."

Lady Lothston raised her hands for calm. "In fact, you are both correct. Lord Peake and his engineers shall remain here with Ser Tristan, a regiment, and the Pentoshi forces. The Andalosi will support your brother, who will lead the Siege of Myr." Laswell seemed pacified by such an honour being given to a member of his family. "The rest shall return with me to our rear command post at Lemon Lake." She indicated the larger, northern lake in the Disputed Lands east of Myr. It was adjacent to The Orange Shore, so there was a certain logic to it.

"From there, we will advance. The Tyroshi have offered Myr their support in the Narrow Sea, so there will be no aid from Lys, but also no resupply for Myr. We must hold the land between the lake and River of Myrth. I hear whispers of the Triarchy of Volantis taking an interest." Mutters tumbled over the crowd, and Viserys could not help but notice Lady Danelle's conspiratorial smirk. It was all a show, but why?

"Not as much money in Lyseni pillow boys, eh?" There were chuckles all around, and even from Lady Lothston. It was true, that though Lys was home to a concentration of wealth and nobility in the Heel of Essos, its uses were few beyond its reputation for pleasures of the flesh. Myr on the other hand had wealthy holdings and expansive colonies, not as limited in its growth thanks to its position on the edge of the Disputed Lands.

Which was why Lys had hired the Company to sack Myr.

"And what of our hope for prizes here?" Marq began. "Securing the retreat does not make for proper payment." There it was. Viserys had heard about the loss of silver and gold to the Long Lances' attacks.

"Ah. Of course." Lady Lothston laughed, a songlike sound that had many of the men swooning. They had women at camp, of course, from camp followers to their fellow sellswords, but a noble *lady*? Even though he knew her better, Viserys had wondered how well Lady Danelle would ever allow anyone to know her, ever erudite and separate as the only woman officer. "Two million silver of Braavosi minting upon you arrival to your assignments, with another five hundred-thousand gold of Lyseni minting upon successful capture of Myr and the disposession of specific magisters." 

"Two million silver?" Tristan Rivers scoffed. "Am I to purchase ten new saddlebags as well?"

Lady Lothston levelled a hard glance at Tristan. "Succeed or fail in the siege, Lys would prefer to pay you through the Iron Bank. All the better for putting distance between a failure. Further, any prizes taken in the capture of Myr are yours to keep." It was a quick combination and one hard to counter, the Serjeants deliberating openly but quickly.

Laswell maintained some reluctance, but the fee would put thousands of gold coins into his personal coffers alone, before any of the pillaging that, as a high officer, would give him a substantial share of the spoils. The officers spent more time debating when they would leave.

***

Two days after the meeting, the bulk of the Company departed for the Disputed Lands, the siege of Fort Myrth ongoing when it fell out of sight behind them.

The land between the River of Myrth and Myr was much like New Andalos, rolling green hills interspersed with small, pale rocky mountains perfect for the palatial estates of the elite of Myr. Unlike Pentos's many artists and fine foods and drinks, the Myrish wealthy were merchants and craftsmen themselves, producing both the materiel to be sold and the products of those materials. Lenses and lace were what they were most well known for, with soaps and telescopes as well, and naval instruments sold to those who had ships rather than land. Few had both, save a city itself.

His father was doubly evil, for destroying *their* city.

Viserys learned, serving Maegor manning the raven and pigeon wagons, that the Myrish were also responsible for the many medicinal herbs and roots that stocked the apothecaries and doctors of the Free Cities. The various reagents, oils, unguents, and acids bore *'Origin of Myr'* stamped into their glass container.

Trundling south, at first uncomfortably across unused tracts of plain, and then as smooth as could be atop a dragonroad, Viserys took his afternoon meal within one such medical wagon. Bar a toe crushed by an elephant and a few cuts and bruises from brawls, there were no injuries in the whole of that contingent of the Golden Company.

A fact Maegor pointed out by indicating his ledger of such things. "My hope is to submit these findings for additional secondary links in both medicine and warcraft. Oh! And in ravenry, for all the many messages. Once you return, you must implement pigeons into the raven network of the seven kingdoms. For short range messages, there is no better beast with wings."

"Return, cousin?" Viserys shook his head. "Blackheart has said what he has said, but I... Even Ser Marq seems focused on protecting the common men and women of the Company. Leaving only Lysono Maar, who knows."

"I see. You were hoping to step into obscurity here?" Viserys didn't quite disagree, and was trying to do so even if he had not noticed, offering a half shrug and wobble of his head. "You do not ask about Westeros. No one does, but you do *not*. You do remember it, yes?"

"I see it now like... What did they say of Viserys the Peaceful? That he 'hoped to make the Seven Kingdoms a new Valyria.'" Viserys shook his head, confident. "I do not look upon Westeros as he did Valyria. I miss... I miss the idea of it. Of a mother and father, a brother and... a sister."

"I shall say to you, cousin, what my uncle the Unlikely said to me. That you should always put all of yourself into something. All of your love, your devotion, or your rage. And though he failed in the minutiae, he always did so in his mission of peace and kindness in the Seven Kingdoms. A peace that had strengthened the Iron Throne enough to easily rebuff the Blackfyres twice."

Maegor leaned back and slipped his hand into one of his pauldrons. "Regardless, many moons ago I heard a rumour I hoped to investigate, which brought other information to light I thought it best you know." Maegor withdrew a slip of parchment and offered it to Viserys. "A half-nephew, some bastard grandchild of my father, was on a ship bound for Oldtown forced to turn back at the Shield Islands. He sends me word on occasion. There is renewed war."

"What does..." Viserys glanced tat he parchment then had to rub his eyes to be sure. "Aegon the sixth of his name betrothed... Margaery Tyrell... in all due time in light of... Daenerys Targaryen!" The letter was more titles and styles, before he came to the meat of the matter. "On the hand of her custodian, her brother Rhaegar Targaryen, in celebration of her fifth birthday and entry to court."

"But there is renewed war?" Viserys crumpled the message in his fist as he knotted his hands into his hair. He kept it shorn on the sides and short on top, and it was still that sun-bleached white. "And Dany... I thought she was with the Martells?"

"There are layers to this. Betrothals and counter betrothals, marriage networks that lack... What you need to know is that as the center strengthens, it also weighs down the edges, which weaken. When they are strong again, the center has been weakened holding up the edges, and so on endlessly. Follow." Maegor slipped from the hospital cart, slinging his tower axe onto his back and walking Viserys to the fields beside the dragonroad.

Where the dragonroad stayed level or gently shifted up or down, the ground was more perilous, with Maegor leading Viserys down a rocky gulley. From the lines in the gulley walls, it would be much higher in spring than their particularly dry autumn. "We know our history, of how dragons were strong enough to hold the center and its nine edges in the shape of seven kingdoms. After the dragons, the institution of the Iron Throne and the network of alliances made by House Targaryen. Convention was all it was, but why not? What was the harm in letting peace reign?"

"The harm was them," Viserys concluded. "The madness, the tyranny. Even the casual flippancy with vows like mine own grandparents. In another generation of betrothals, it could have all been our house, had they abided the Unlikely."

"Aye, and we might be having this conversation anyway. Without dragons, what was the harm in ending incest? We are both of sound, or sound enough, mind and heart. Going back two generations I am Dornish, Valemen, and Targaryen. You are just Targaryen. That is strange by all traditions of Westeros." They reached the far side of the gulley and started the climb. Viserys was thankful for his strong boots and steel-studded knee pads, while his hands were plenty rough from everything that climbing was no feat. "Even if the Conciliator did ensure we were always deemed exceptional enough for rules and traditions not to matter."

"For three centuries, we balked at their traditions. Was it so surprising that they threw us off at all, or that it took so long?" Viserys thought of his mother's crown. He had been taught how to keep it safe, but he could not imagine giving up an heirloom of his house, so how had the lords and ladies of Westeros felt when *his* house violated the continent with incest, dragonfire, and wars based on mad whim?

He pulled Maegor up the final lip for the hike back to the Dragonroad. "That is not a bad line. Not as bad as a half-foreigner like Daemon Blackfyre."

"True, but his mother was Lyseni. Quite Valyrian in my view." The train moved steadily but slowly, so they waited just off the road as the wagons rolled towards them. "So, do you want to know what's become of our family?"

Viserys nodded. "But, just... don't think... I want to know, I do. But there is this knot inside of me, rage or fear or something else I do not know. Knowing... frightens me."

Maegor nodded. "I see. And I understand. Knowledge should be gentle, the blanket of facts and warm tea of an argument well made. Do you have just one question so I might offer a starting point?"

Viserys took the moments between climbing the dragonroad and weaving their way up to the wagon. "How... did the Martells... How did my brother take Daenerys from the Martells?" Viserys rested his hands on his hips, suddenly tired by the effort and even holding back a few tears. If his sister was five, that meant he was three-and-ten. Almost grown were he anywhere in the world. Yet he still felt more boy than man.

"A fallacy, I am afraid. Rhaegar did not *take* Daenerys from the Martells. He bargained for her from the Yronwoods. She was in their custody."

"And seeking a betrothal for her at just five, is to... counter the betrothal between Aegon and Margaery Tyrell?"

"A path to an alliance for Rhaegar. Renewed war, as I said." Maegor clutched Viserys's shoulder. "Take heart, you will learn what has occurred. Chiefly that your family lives. And they might need one of your wit and experience in the years to come."

"Our family, Maegor."

Chapter Text

Myr was massive.

It was not that the urban core of Myr took up so much land on the coast of the Sea of Myrth, though it did, but that every building within the walls of the city towered twice as tall, and every fifth or sixth building was even taller still. Not as tall as the Forge, but narrow and appearing to lean on tense rope bridges and suspension chains.

In a burned-out villa on a mountain to the south-east of the city, Viserys assisted Maegor as his steward, listening in on another meeting of the Serjeants, sellsword captains and commanders, and Andalosi levies. All under the watchful gaze of Myles Toyne, like a king watching his courtiers squabble for his favour, he glowered.

"The Second Sons should lead the vanguard! None are more ferocious in the face of such odds. Odds that would unsettle perfumed knights." The Second Sons' captain, Mero, was a red-bearded Braavosi with the bearing of a pirate, amiable to one's face but always quick with an insult or curse once your back was turned. Mero's character was lacking that he was even quicker to insult you if he had an audience, whether they might agree with him or not. "Give this, this *southern wing* to the Ragged Men."

He waved a dismissive hand towards Lord Marshal Parcival Whitehand of the Ragged Standard, a fair and strapping knight of Reach stock with curly brown hair and a trim, greying beard. "We are the Ragged *Standard*, you incorrigible oaf." He rolled his eyes – a most stunning shade of green. "Lord Toyne, the Standard is knights and infantry, same as you. That we are far fewer should matter little that we are your cousins, and old comrades-in-arms besides." Parcival wore the colours of House Gardener in reverse, and claimed descent from a bastard of the last king of the Reach, and the five thousand swords of the Ragged Standard followed him proudly.

"Just like a southron to call on oaths he never fulfilled," muttered a commander in the Company of the Rose, a stout Summer Islander with the beard, bearing, and accent of a Northman of Westeros. "Go piss in a golden pot, Flowers."

"You say something, Snow? I couldn't hear it over your sister's howling." The Northman drew an axe and the Reachman a flail.

"Enough!" Pykewood Peake bellowed between them. "The only thing going up the front is the rams for the fucking gates! Or did you miss that they are half Valyrian steel? We must break the stone that holds them up, not the doors themselves. The engineers must go up the middle! Torman!"

Torman shuffled forward, loading the miniature trebuchets Pykewood assembled in an array less like a child at play and more like a master cyvasse player, emphasizing the vulnerability of Myr's gates. "They aim to draw us in, thinking we will smash ourselves against the gates, but they flaunted the Valyrian steel. Their postern gates will fall to trebuchets, but the heart of the city must fall if we are to succeed. If it is sacked and the magisters die out of order, or the wrong ones escape..."

Understanding settled over the room, and Viserys understood why Torman had wanted to squire for his uncle rather than an older cousin in the cavalry, or his own father. Though intelligent, Pykewood Peake was a middling engineer, with poor eyesight that only made him useful in building models and not operating siege engines. But he used his vast knowledge as a tactician to advantage, many assuming his size a product of brutal infantry warfare and not the reality – a love of cheese tarts.

Tristan Rivers, dressed in gold-enamelled plate to denote his rank as leader of the Company heavy cavalry, stepped around Pykewood to the table. "I must side with Ser Parcival. Kasporio?"

An olive-skinned Braavosi man silenced Mero, his fellow Second Son reddening. "There is no offence, Ser Tristan. We would happily to take the southern wing, so we might secure the Braavosi Quarter ourselves. Enmities and exile from Braavos, you understand. We hope to... take control." There were nods of assent all around. "If our Lyseni partners were willing to-"

Blackheart cleared his throat. "Continue, Rivers."

"Of course, Lord Toyne." The deference Tristan paid to Blackheart certainly added to his reputation as an iron-fisted commander, as the Second Sons found themselves outnumbered by Westerosi. "I shall join the Ragged Standard, as the Golden Company was in its earliest days."

Viserys recalled that the Ragged Standard worked almost exclusively for Lys and her interests. Founded after the Targaryen Conquest by dishonoured knights from the Westerlands and the dispossessed members of House Gardener, when they reached Essos all they had was their swords to sell and their ragged standards. The company's standard was a birdsmouth pennant, striped green for the Gardeners and silver for the houses that still claim fealty to the golden house, House Lannister.

Viserys had fond memories of the Lannisters, of Ser Jaime and his father, the hand. He would ask Maegor what became of them.

"Very well. Second Sons, you shall take the south gate. Company of the Rose, the north gate. Ragged Standard, see to your horse and footmen properly situated amongst our forces." Blackheart said it with finality, dismissing the leaders of three great free companies as if they were common squires. Nearly six-thousand more sellswords, from those three companies and various other freeriders and levies with an axe to grind against Myr.

The Golden Company officers outnumbered the man who remained, who Viserys recalled as Meribald, the armoured septon who was once a sort of militia captain in Hugor's Hill. "Septon, you had... questions?" Blackheart's growl shook Viserys's spine, which had him wondering how he could ever believe the Captain General to be kind, even with his big nose and jug ears.

"My flock is not greedy, Lord Toyne. I wish only to ensure they have a fair place in the lines. Lest they become distracted and forget which was their enemy." The threat was clear, and the serjeants flexed and strained, even Lady Danelle at Blackheart's side dropping her hand to the sabre at her hip. "My men will guard Lord Pykewood's battering rams and masons and whatnot, and be first through the breach."

Something was happening but Viserys did not know what. Ser Marq went from Blackheart's side to holding Tristan back, while Lady Danelle, Pykewood, Black Balaq, and Lysono Maar fell into hurried conversation. Harry Strickland attempted to strike a new conversation with Meribald, but the Septon's eyes had not left Blackheart. "Lord Toyne, feeding your... fourteen thousand men can't be an easy feat. These lands are poor takings. We need no gold and gems, no relics of pretender gods or the icons of heathens, just good land. It's a fair exchange the Grand Septon's offering. I truly believe that."

Viserys stood by Maegor, who was sat in a chair on the edge of the meeting. He heard him mutter, "What a counter by the Septon."

"I understand, Meribald. And that you only represent the interests of Ferdinand and his councillors." Meribald nodded. He certainly seemed a man of the world, but also one of war, with a craggy face, salt and pepper hair, and eyes bright with faith.

Pykewood took another quick piece of advice from Lady Danelle. Viserys wondered why his father had never taken counsel from women as he did men. "The magisters must all live to be delivered to Golden Company custody, and the temple to R'hllor gives us peace with the freedmen." The rotund Peake smiled warmly, but earnestly. He would not hide his desperation, no doubt to make his honesty clear to Meribald. "Do you understand?"

Meribald snorted and sipped from his goblet. He snapped his finger and Blackheart waved Viserys over, who poured him more wine. "I do," he said. "And that when widows with children to feed come to you for aid, you know where to send them, and when the fighting men start fleeing from across the Narrow Sea, we will know who to send them."

Some things became clear to Viserys as the meeting came to a close, though he still lingered on the fact that New Andalos controlled the largest army in the Disputed Lands that was not mostly sellswords.

In the fervour of the meeting coming to an end, Maegor turned to Viserys. "You're marching in the advance on the main gate?" Viserys nodded. "You will... You will be careful?"

"I will be. Lord Marshal, sir." He caught Ser Marq watching them. "What will... What happens next?"

"Haven't the foggiest. But we'll face it as one Company."

***

The advance to Myr's sixty-foot walls proceeded according to plan, the city's anti-siege fortifications reliant on the hinterland that surrounded the city and the low likelihood of one of the Three Daughters' ever coming close to being under siege. The tall, leaning towers that dotted the city each bore a scorpion as well, but they appeared to be for defense of the city *after* the walls fell.

The Lyseni magisters stomped and pranced on their while stallions at the front of the ranks before the first charge before retreating to the rear, to add to the humiliation of the Myrish. Viserys found it laughable, as they wore more and better armour than the cadets but would never be as close to combat. He reckoned that letting the Lyseni believe they were in command would keep the Company in their good graces – at least until after they had the rest of their payment.

Viserys and the Crones' platoon sat in the eighth regiment, in the eleventh rank behind pikemen and knights on foot. In short, miles from the fighting. They could see the walls of Myr, arrows falling like flocks of starlings and cauldrons of burning oil offering the distant scent of burning flesh. It poured down on those attempting to secure ladders, or tossed on the siege towers by catapults and set ablaze by flaming arrows.

There were eight siege towers at first, but one went down to fire arrows almost two hundred feet from the walls, while a second and third caught fire before they could drop their bridges. The fighting still managed to move to the battlements between the three gates, which took men away from the siege countermeasures, which opened the way for twelve trebuchets to start hammering the northern and southern postern gates.

At the same time, battering rams advanced on the main gates, the defenders there still holding strong. Two regiments were trapped behind a hill of the dead first regiment, Myrish archers picking off anyone that tried to escape back to the siege lines or press onward to the gate.

The postern gates fell by the end of the third hour of morning, the Company of the Rose and light infantry from the Ragged Standard and Golden Company spilling through the northern gate, as the Second Sons crashed through the southern gate like the Titan's roar. The Second Sons broke rank nearly as quick as they broke through, as Unsullied spilled out of the manses and warehouses of Myr's outermost boroughs.

While a few Second Sons fled back to the lines of their allies, most made away with the Braavosi of that quarter of the city, ships taking to sail well within sight. "Fucking Second Sons," muttered Ser Marq, riding by Viserys at the time.

Advancing back along the path trod by the Second Sons, Myrish freeriders and sellswords sallied towards the force attacking the main gate, guarding the advance of a regiment of Unsullied from the Ragged Standard's heavy cavalry.

"Shields!" roared a lieutenant, the infantry, cadets and all, locking shields from their position. The horns blew orders, sending all but Viserys's regiment forward to secure the gates.

Suddenly, Viserys was not so far from the fighting, looking to his regiment's wings as he planted his spear, Ser Marq's light horse and Caspor Hill's heavy infantry guarding them as a third of the combined heavy cavalry – one-thousand five-hundred knights and their horses plated in steel – slammed into the Myrish Unsullied like a hot iron poker.

Were a charge of that ferocity seen in Westeros, it would inspire a thousand songs, but in the Disputed Lands it was just another season of war. They started out walking, light horse cleaning up the Myrish freeriders and Second Sons – their lives were forfeit for their cowardice – before building to a thundering charge. The thousands of hoofbeats shook the ground, though the Unsullied were unafraid, lowering their pikes towards the horses.

It was not a story worthy of the three-thousand of Qohor, with even Drogo cursing at his previous support of Unsullied supremacy against charging horses. "Armour... Perhaps not so dishonourable." Indeed, the horses' barding deserved the lion's share of the accolade. Unsullied pikes and javelins shattered against layers of plate, mail, and leather atop already tough muscle and bone, the heavy cavalry sweeping the Unsullied back into the city and charging in behind them.

Viserys looked north at the main gate still holding, then south again at the Sea of Myrth. As the Second Sons aboard purple-painted Braavosi vessels crawled sluggishly out to sea, shallow water vessels moving under oars grounded themselves on the beach. Tyroshi infantry struck lines and started entrenching, while more Company of the Cat came charging off the ships – barges built for maneuvering the shallow waters of the Stepstones.

"They're like fucking rats!" snapped Vaok.

The Company were another distraction as, like a dagger, they sank into the side of the charging heavy cavalry. It was a poor sally and a failed one, but it gave them the opening they needed for charioteers and war engines to come charging off more barges behind them, great four-winged ballistae loosing great bolts to open the cavalry's side even wider.

"Scorpions!" roared Caspor. "Estermont Estermont!" Nine hundred shields buttoning into tight formations was a sight to behold, with Viserys catching sight of the seventh closing up in front of him just as he disappeared behind his own shield. "Balaq!"

"Archers, left!" A rain of arrows descended on the Cat's piercing maneuver, as Black Balaq led all two-thousand of the Golden Company's archers in harrying the enemy engineers.

Meanwhile, Company engines were moved into position, the catapults covering the battering rams on the battlefield and the trebuchets beyond it rotated and their throwing arms shortened to hit the enemies on the beach. That did not stop the Cats seeking a violent last stand, and it was not a quick death.

Two-thousand light cavalry was nothing to scoff at, harrying the side of the heavy cavalry and infantry lines with repeating crossbows and their smaller, faster horses. They lost more ground than they gained, but to risk attacking them was to be swarmed, and the heavy cavalry had been divided between the beach and the slow to start sack of Myr. One of the three reserve regiments of heavy cavalry was summoned to deal with the Cat, a charge entirely made up of Ragged Standard led by a knight with a banner of a red lion on a silver field.

The infantry parted around them, gliding out of formation then back in, exactly as trained. "Your spears are fierce!" the lion cavalryman roared. "Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!" Viserys cheered on the Ragged Standard as they smashed the Company of the Cat, cries of "Vengeance!" and "For the glorious dead!" ringing in his ears.

The battering rams and the force at the northern gate worked tirelessly in their assault, the Company of the Rose taking minimal losses – dwindled siege defenses were not much threat to grizzled sellswords like the Northmen. But heavy infantry were not built for breaking sieges, they were made for the open field and the sacking of cities. Seeing their struggle, the officers changed tact.

Viserys and another three thousand infantry continued entrenching at the main gate, the stone around it cracked and shifted but far from falling apart, while another four thousand were split north and south. The heavy infantry and knights on foot were directed to deal with the Cast, and Black Balaq turned his archers to any defending Myrish foolish enough to stand too tall on the battlements above the main gate. Relieved, the infantry below found the calm they needed to recover the ladders and start turning them upwards.

Viserys found himself at the picket, looking back on the trebuchets throwing stones at the wall to his right, while relief cavalry retreated and the original heavy cavalry charge dispersed to clean up the beach and the Cats. Many however made for the city gates, cavalrymen and knights free to start on the low-hanging plunder.

With a crack and a grind of metal against stone, the Valyrian steel gates began to open. The Company would not be able to loot the gate – anything nailed or bolted down was for those who hired them – but everything else... "Lines! Lines, dammit!"

It took no longer than a a few seconds for the gates to open, the Valyrian steel unmarked by all the hammering of the rams. The stone around the gate had been pummelled and cracked, but it was the gates holding the whole structure upright.

Caspor Hill and their training kept them from advancing too early, as four-thousand Unsullied charged out of the main gate. Viserys would have filled his boots with piss had he the water to do so, but they held firm under Caspor's orders and Balaq's archers.

"Blackwood! Blackwood!" Caspor enunciated each syllable, urging the Company drop tighter into their wall formation as he led the heavy infantry that remained – a single platoon – in a game of cat and mouse with the Unsullied. The locksteps followed orders to the letter, and quickly, but their commander was no man of war. A soft-faced fellow with cherubic curls and feathers on his armour, from the ceremonial whip he wielded he was likely just the man who had purchased the Unsullied.

He took great pleasure in wielding them like a tide to overwhelm units of Caspor Hill's heavy infantry, four and five at a time the numbers dwindling. But every victory was a slow one, and the skill of the Unsullied, living weapons by every definition, was wasted with a poor commander, who paid no mind to the numbers he was losing to Balaq's arrows.

Another thing Viserys saw the Unsullied lacked, peeking over his shield at the eunuch soldiers, was the ability to improvise. So rigid and unafraid, they lacked what made many soldiers their most ferocious even while acting under orders. They would not put a city to the torch or its people to the sword unless ordered, but they also would not break formation or do more than fill the gap. And they would not surrender to survival instincts that made them act faster and more ferocious, even if they would fight unto their last breath. Viserys wondered what would have to change for them to reach their full potential.

Caspor had offered no orders in long moments, the drum of Unsullied spears moving closer with every second. There was three hundred feet between them, and another one hundred feet from the rear rank to the edge of their entrenched position. The fighting was thinning but the attacking force at the northern postern gate was still exposed, the battering ram there only just softening the hinges of the gate. It would be hours before the force at the southern gate could make their way around the city and through any defenders to attack the northern gate from within, and more sellswords in service of Tyrosh were piling off their barges, holding off the remaining heavy cavalry.

It was then that wave after wave of javelins began striking their shields. All ricocheting or embedded in their shields, the cadets were alive but with their nerves wearing thin from the constant drumming of metal on metal. "Just like the Golden Fields!" Tytus shouted.

Viserys looked for more of his friends, spying Drogo and then Vaok and Cosimo in quick succession. Where was Kasté or Baqarro? Talal? He risked a look up at the walls, littered with dead and devoid of defenders, but without attacking archers as well. Where was Black Balaq? And Caspor Hill?

Viserys felt his will softening. He wanted to give up or cry. Maybe eat some hot soup, lie down for a nap, and just never wake up as the Unsullied held the gate and the heavy infantry made a last ditch charge.

So instead, Viserys raged. At the deaths of his comrades, and to extract bloody vengeance from the Company of the Cat. He even wanted to punish the Myrish, people he didn't even know, Tytus's people, for the gall of sending slaves to fight their battles for them.

As burning flesh and dying men overwhelmed his senses, he felt another of those memories he thought he had forgotten creeping his way into the edges of his mind. The sound of his father's voice as he burned men alive.

*"You have woken the dragon."*

Was that what he had felt, on the streets of Braavos in all his deep despair? The dragon?

"Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!"

"Estermont Estermont! North south east west!" The conjoined force of regiments and scattered heavy infantry fell into four spiked and armoured hemispheres. "Advance!" In a rough kite formation they moved towards the gate, Viserys's formation in the front as much pushing as it was killing its way through the Unsullied.

They entrenched in the middle, letting the left and right formations come up to pierce the Unsullied from the side. The regulars within the formations dashed around inside the shield wall, short swords and spears cutting at the ankles and exposed joints of the Unsullied, armoured with just helmets and boiled leather.

"They have no care for their Unsullied!" cackled Drogo, his spear moving like a scorpion's stinger.

Viserys agreed with them. He recalled from his studies with Maegor that the Unsullied were trained to wear good leather and mail, but the quality of Astapor's armourers had most buyers of Unsullied taking the complementary equipment for themselves.

"Unsullied!" he cried in High Valyrian. "Leave the masters! The Golden Company will honour you as warriors and free men!"

That earned Viserys more spears against his shield, so many that he had to change places with another cadet.

All the better to command. The rear formation banged their shields with Viserys, and he cried. "Velaryon, high tide!" the rear formation joined with the first and they stretched into a jagged formation ten shields wide and almost one hundred – closer to seventy – shields deep, like a slithering sea snake. "Velaryon, advance! Wings, Blackwood Blackwood Blackwood! Against the walls, Blackwood!"

The left and right formations pressed themselves into the walls perpendicular to the city's main gate, like sea-urchins of steel and gold. Unsullied bounced and smashed against them, ever faithful to their orders.

"Find the man who holds the whip!" Viserys cried.

"Or woman!" Melara retorted.

They forced their way through the gates, hammering at the Unsullied but forced apart by too much pressure. "Dreadfort!" Viserys bellowed, screaming his voice hoarse as he ordered the infantry into one singular, stolid block two shields high, with more held overhead. Rocks and bolts fell from murder holes overhead, and they lost fifty regulars to boiling oil, but they successfully reached the inner gate.

"Axes! Drogo! Baqarro!" Viserys summoned the largest men he knew to the inner gate. They were iron-studded oak, so he directed the axes to the hinges. "Once the hinges are broken, you charge and break it down, then get around the defenders, whatever they are."

Viserys directed half of the force to prepare for the quick flank-and-rear attack maneuver, some men double and triple his age following his orders. He hoped it was that they were good, well-thought stratagems and not his performative confidence. He felt that by donning the mask of the commander, he might convince himself he could command his own men. And that he was very angry and incapable of not yelling at the moment.

The gate tunnel was narrow, so he ordered the ranks to open up. The first three ranks of spears were given orders to attack, while the flanking force ran up the sides of the hallway, the rest holding the gate behind them.

After a few minutes of chopping, the doors swayed in their hinges, and the Golden Company held their breath. A battle raged behind and in front of them. Were they advancing on the rear's of their allies, or the enemy? "Company... charge!"

Drogo and Baqarro burst through the doors, carrying them as shields into an empty courtyard. Battle raged beyond in the middle districts of the city, but the main market of Myr was deserted. "Wildflower," Viserys muttered, answered with the same and passed on through the Company. They fanned out, placing two soldiers at every entry or doorway in an ever-growing network of signal whistles and whispered reconnaissance.

Viserys found himself in the middle of a meeting of minds, with the addition of a slow trickle of Ragged Standard heavy cavalry.

The lead knight introduced himself as Ser Roberron Reyne of the Ragged Standard, a freckled and cherub-cheeked ginger the size of an oxen. He swung off his equally large pale and speckle horse, smacking Viserys on the back proudly. "Your officers send their complements. Always to see a Blackfyre rising through a free company the old fashioned way. Where is Serjeant Caspor?"

There were a few mutters before the word came back with Caspor's axes and his most recent arm ring. Twenty-seven years of service, ended in moments. "Mourn later," Baqarro said, nudging Viserys.

"We need to secure the magisters." Viserys indicated the manses and streets they should look to first, pushing through the crowds of attacking sellswords, defending sellswords, and the locals caught in the middle.

The freedmen and slaves – except the Unsullied – barricaded themselves in the poorer districts of Myr, nearer the docks and around the work houses and foundries that made Myr the most powerful of the three daughters. The middle classes and up were not so secure in their decorative townhouses and garden-walled estates, and there was plenty of plunder to be had in either.

In a sudden flurry of activity, the infantry were on their back foot in a house-to-house grapple for control of the city's core districts. The Bank of Myr, the Temple of Seasons, consecrated to an array of gods, and the magisterial palace all made for grand pickings, but Viserys recalled from the meeting hours before what the greatest prize would be.

An assembly hall of carved, pale grey stone sat atop a hill in Myr, the Assembly of Conclaves, which gathered a council of three-and-thirty magisters of varying powers and political affiliations to rule the most powerful of the Daughters.

Torman came up beside Viserys, with a scroll intended for Caspor. Viserys broke the seal. "A red room, with copper finishings and mahogany furniture." Viserys nodded as they ran up the hill, outpacing the fighting as they reached the Trading Quarter. A densely-populated district of mercantile, counting, and trading houses, the area was scattered with fine establishments of pleasure and craft, from a smith that claimed the ability to rework Valyrian steel, to a pleasure house home to a woman that could 'finish a man with a look.'

The public market spaces, empty in that time of siege, gave way to the grounds of the Assembly of Conclaves, deserted excepting some sellswords playing sentry.

Viserys was at the front of two platoons. Torman went left with two squadrons, Tytus right with two, and the two that remained with him moving up the middle. As they advanced, Viserys shaved off his sixty men ten at a time to address crowds of five or fewer sellswords, falling back in line when they were done. It was a tactic the officers had named after some sort of swarming, meat-eating fish native to Sothoryos.

Soon they were moving through the offices and chambers of the eponymous Conclaves – it was quiet among the velvet tapestries and thick wool carpets, and Viserys for the first time felt like he was intruding. They roamed, searching the various council and committee rooms necessary to running a free city. It was an elegant system, but he thought the halls cavernous and the offices exorbitantly decorated, and for only three-and-thirty magisters with a city of over three million.

The rooms were organized in a dizzying spectrum, which no doubt delayed work being done, with cultural ministers placed next to war masters adjacent to kitchens. They emptied three 'red' rooms, none with copper finishings, and five with mahogany furniture, but silver-blue finishings and yellow interiors.

Viserys was about to turn back when they came upon a room with a red door. Its copper doorknob flickered like the Martell sun, but he huffed and charged through.

"Beneath the gold..." Viserys began.

The nine men and women gathered in the room were of varying origins, sizes, and ages. A few shared a look as more infantry filed in behind Viserys, more shields closing off escape.

A sandy-blonde, fair-skinned woman maneuvered her way out of the arms of a man with darker colouring. "Away from me." She pushed forward to the front of the magisters. "A word as strong as steel?"

Viserys nodded. "Secure the room." Viserys looked around, spying Tytus. "You finished outside? You move quick!"

Tytus chuckled. "Oh it went slower than planned, and this place is a maze besides."

Viserys and Tytus removed their helmets. "I had hoped you might-"

"Tytus!"

"Mother!" Tytus shoved past Viserys to engulf the sandy-blonde woman. She was tall and thin, with long arms and a long neck. The man who approached behind her had olive skin and curly, dark brown hair, with features bordering on Rhoynish. He took her hand, she knitting her fingers through his blindly. "I thought... I had hoped..."

"The boy could have warned us," the man groaned.

"Oh, quiet!" She smacked him in the chest and his spirit crumpled, lovestruck with his wife. Viserys wondered what the real reason was Tytus joined the company. "And this? Your fellow... spearman?"

"Infantry, mistress. Cadets still, technically." Viserys smiled like a prince, remembering that much as he removed the wrapping from his fist and took her hand, pressing a chaste kiss to her knuckles. He made a show of drawing the dagger from his bracer next, and shaking hands with Tytus's step-father. "Tytus?"

Tytus had reddened beyond compare, nodding. "Yes. My mother, the Contessa Miriam, and her lord husband, Duke Mehem."

"Well, given this crisis I think a turn back to my name is in order, husband. Your friend, Tytus?"

"Viserys, mother. Cadet of the eighth regiment. We've been together since the start."

Chapter Text

Having a leading Lyseni magister for a grandfather had its benefits for Tytus and his unit. Viserys and the Crones, while the bulk of the Golden Company were encamped outside of the city once Myr was secure, were escorted to the villa of Tytus's half-Lyseni mother.

Like many of the Free Cities, Myr’s grandest residences were located on the coast, with private docks for pleasure barges. There were high walls around that entire section of the city, no doubt to protect it from the rabble even while most of the upper classes of Myr possessed residences across the Sea of Myrth and Myr's undisputed colonies in the Disputed Lands.

The majordomo greeted Tytus's mother warmly, while the captain of the guards did the same with Tytus and his step-father. “Tytus, show your friends to the guest wing. You, sir master in gold, are their commander?”  

Ser Marq, having come to fetch Viserys, had lost his footing and been herded along like a cat back to the villa. He was too focused on more important work to care, vigilantly watching the Crones to protect them from freshly stockless slavers. The Lyseni would never allow the trade to leave the city as the Golden Company had forced in Norvos – while recruiters from other free companies, their ranks thinned by battle, looked on greedily. 

Viserys got a few looks that made him sick, wondering if it had anything to do with the Company men getting the best of the plunder, and not that it was "because he looked Lyseni." He knew what that meant thanks to Ma Cate.

He nodded frantically as Tytus's step-father took Marq's arm to ask him questions about road conditions and latrine drainage. Perhaps Viserys was wrong, that perhaps men of war and men of infrastructure did need to communicate.

“And you dears, lovely and fierce as Nymeria, will join my daughter and sister and I in attending to the modiste.” Melara, Nim, and the rest of their flock eagerly joined the Contessa.

Viserys, in the meanwhile, was taken in by his sudden recollection of the many nuances of life in a noble house. The family – House Bazanne, who had rebuilt their house after a massive debt incurred by hosting some foreign dignitary. The daughters had been lost to concubinage, and half the sons and brothers were either gelded for Unsullied or turned to pillow boys and discarded before their tenth name day.

A few survived and escaped, and it took most of the past two centuries, but they had been reborn under Tytus's grandfather, Bernardo Bazanne, who was not *just* a posing fop playing at war with the Lyseni delegation, but a former serjeant of the Golden Company. Lys had replaced Tyrosh as the hideaway of the Golden Company under Aerion Brightfyre in the aftermath of the War of the Ninepenny Kings, just as Blackheart had moved it to Braavos.

Viserys saw all three with Marq, Tytus's parents, and others moving down a corridor past where he and Tytus would be sleeping. Viserys wondered if he and the Lannister bastard had been put together on purpose, even if Tytus had none of his mother and grandfather's Valyrian features.

"Let's go!" Viserys tried holding Tytus back but he followed and Viserys chased after him, holding him back from a corridor as Magister Bazanne showed the officers to their rooms. Indeed, the seaside manse was more a castle on the sea, with multiple towers and courtyards, and two galleons at its personal dock.

The officers peeked their heads in and continued onwards behind the Magister. "You could have mentioned you were basically a prince."

"Have you done the same?" Tytus retorted, moving after his grandfather's retinue.

"I tried, but no one knew who the Targaryen's were. The Company's sons were impressed, but we won't be seeing them once they're squires."

Tytus waved him follow, ducking into a secret passage behind a tapestry then climbing an old wooden ladder to a hidden loft above a bookcase in the magister's solar. There were most of the officers of the Golden Company, though it seemed he was not the only young infantryman to take command, many an officer dead on the battlefield.

Though Tytus was enamoured with the discussions of battle plans and the divvying of loot, decrying the arrival of Septon Meribald then ducking back when he was almost seen, Viserys was quickly bored. What was the harm in just being a man on the road, sword on your hip and comrades at your side? What did he care of how many Myrish had converted to the Faith of the Seven and marched off into New Andalos, or fled into Dorne and what that would do for whatever house's status.

Viserys looked out the windows beyond the meeting, at Myr glittering in the night. Under less than a week of proper siege, business had hardly slowed, and Lyseni ships waiting on the horizon started flooding the ports that evening. The slaves and households of second-rate Lysene bureaucrats elevated into Myr's new magisters led the settlement, and Magister Bazanne's words rang out in his ears. "Bloodless."

Caspor, Joho, and Zadjet were dead, and the Company of the Cat had escaped, taken into the service of a lord across the Narrow Sea.

"Why would..." The meeting was breaking apart, with Tytus scooting back into the secret passageway with a confused, somewhat panicked look across his face. His eyes were wide and glossy, his brow was sloped and sad, and his jaw hung open like a fool. "I thought uncle would bring *us*..." He looked up at Viserys. "What now?"

Viserys pulled his friend up and away, guiding them back to their room then a feast. It was a whole affair, and Melara wouldn't leave him alone, but he managed to comfort Tytus and then eat and sleep. Melara tried to get him to dance, but Viserys had more important things on his mind.

He found Marq sweating evading a noble widow with too much spare time, sending Drogo at her and taking Marq to some pillowed alcove. They both wore the local garb, which consisted of a loose cotton tunic in trousers in some warm, pink or purple colour. The both looked quite odd, Viserys in some bright peach colour and Marq in  a soft blush.

"It's been nearly three years." Viserys said it firmly. Marq sipped his drink as he sat on the mound of pillows. "Enough."

"Enough what?"

"This! All this nonsense! Just let me be a sellsword!" Marq snorted, shaking his head and sitting up. "What? What's funny!"

"You, boy. What do you think the life of a sellsword is? It's march, campaign, wait. Dig a trench, set camp, and get rewarded at the end." Marq tossed him a sack of gold and silver. "Make sure that's fairly divided among your unit. And..." He dug into his pocket, pulling out a silver two skull pin and a silver arm ring.

"I'm a squire? I'm a squire!"

"You're my squire. Obviously." Marq cuffed him as he sat. "What did you think, I was going to just throw you to the wolves? This is the life, Viserys. You want to be a sellsword, then you'll be a sellsword."

Viserys threw his arms around Marq again, still shorter than the barrel-chested and scar-faced knight, as warm and comforting as when Viserys was younger boy. "How long's it been since... since Braavos, Ser Marq?"

"Five years, I reckon. That would make you... three-and-ten?" Viserys nodded. "Aye. I knew that."

They looked out on the city and the sea from Marq's balcony for a little while, a night market opening up far below on the street. "Will Tytus be a squire as well?"

"Only other one of your lot that wants to be one, so aye. He's a fair hand with a blade as well. But you and that voice!" Viserys blushed at the Serjeant's praise. "I had veterans telling me about that bellow! Beneath the gold, the bitter steel. Valyrian steel, eh?"

"It was how I was taught, ser."

Marq chuckled and shook his head. "You might think so my boy, but some things are in the man, not the company. The hand that wields the sword."

Viserys felt sure about the future, even if it was unknown. It was such a different night to his time in Braavos five years ago, with no cutting wind or freezing rain, and in the morning he wouldn't need Marq to save him. He would be there anyway though, and Viserys supposed that was why he wanted to stay with him. He had never seen Marq fight, never even fought under him and had no idea what kind of commander he was – but he knew what kind of man Marq was, and Viserys wanted to learn from him more than he wanted any knighthood.

***

For weeks the Golden Company caroused, but Myr returned to business the morning after the siege broke.

Maegor was first on the streets.

He had shaved his head in preparation as his uncle had once boasted, though with his long beard he ended up looking more like the septons on their stools at every other street corner proselytizing about the sin one courted by living in a city. At least, compared to life in New Andalos.

In his times of clarity, Maegor felt the need to chide Blackheart for courting the Grand Septon and the Sword of Hugor, but he had little option after Maegor's own mistakes in the Dusklands and Pentos.

Maegor's journey was fast despite his meandering to be sure he was not followed, dressed without his chain and in the common broadcloth and leather of a freeborn trader of sailor. Pulling up his hood as he passed some older Company men, though mainly averting his gaze so none saw his violet eyes, Maegor ducked into an alley and up a stair, only to collapse halfway up.

Dragons danced in his eyes and fire burned through his skull as if spiked chains were sprouting from behind his eyes. They were scaled and screaming and misshapen for generations over centuries and then millennia, but then one lucky shepherd, like a locksmith puzzling his way through a stubborn door, raised one like a child then mounted it like a horse.

Fire made flesh.

His belt weighed on him, Maegor staggering up the stairs then falling to his knees as he reached the landing. He saw his mother and aunts, placid in the Reach, he saw his father, drowning and burning alive from the inside out at the same time, then he saw his Serra, stolen by a missed stitch in the weave of fate.

"No, I'm not going to study warfare, it's for knights." Maegor looked over his shoulder for the source of the voice. Or was it him? He couldn't even tell anymore.

That was why he was in Myr.

He knocked twice and entered, a good latch closing the door behind him. The chair of dragon hide, dragon bone, and Valyrian steel in the room beyond was already waiting, as were the warlocks, witches, and mage-priests. The latter he had found in a hermitage in the Hills of Norvos, a few clans of Andals still alive in the mountains.

"Prince Maegor?" A red priest with skin white as milk and flames tattooed all over his head and face came up beside Maegor. "Are you ready?"

Maegor removed his clothing, then cursed as Benerro pulled a torch from a brazier and burned his beard off, along with his eyebrows. "Now I am, apparently."

"You asked for this, my prince. If you are unprepared-"

"No. Begin." Maegor sat in the chain in a vaguely supine position, comfortable but with his feet in the air and his head hanging over a round gong-like basin. "Pyat?"

"Yes, my prince." Pyat Pree took a sip then offered the bottle of shade, with Maegor slowly but steadily sipping as the Qartheen warlock started running a stone rod along the edge of the bowl. Valyrian steel, it rang like the chimes of the gods, a ringing note that split his ears open.

As the warlock rang the bowl and Benerro started chanting, the mage-priests, five of them, drew Maegor's sword, sharing the weight of the bastard-length weapon. As it neared the ringing bowl, it too started to sing, in doing so shaking off the shoddy hilt he had replaced the previous wrapping with.

His style was much less gaudy than Daemon Blackfyre's.

As the sword neared the bowl, it also neared his head, his skull about to crack from the ringing when the shade of the evening's effects hit him, not just the best wine, meat, and cakes he had ever tasted in his mouth, but the greatest whores and knights he bedded, and the best kills under Blackfyre or victory with his armies.

The mage-priests began to sway, Blackfyre's never-sharpened tip rocking back and forth with them, closer and closer to Maegor's scarred temple.

He could scarcely remember how it happened, whether on the battlefield or after, but it had been his downfall as captain general, that wound, some*thing* pressing on his mind. Blackfyre was the straightest piece of Valyrian steel around, forged in Valyrian and not Qohor like nine of every ten pieces of the stuff in Essos. The Qohorik and their child sacrifices saw to that.

With a final few rocks and the mixing of pain and pleasure reaching a point of turning him dumb as a rock, Maegor managed a simple nod and the mage-priests swung a litter farther, piercing the side of his skull with Blackfyre.

In barely a moment, all the pain and pleasure was gone, his mind going not just silent but peaceful, truly calm and not forcing itself quiet out of fear. A knot unravelled in his mind and more started to happen as Blackfyre retracted, pulling with it a sliver of bone Pyat Pree expertly replaced, as clarity swirled in Maegor's mind.

Atop the ringing bowl, his blood floated before the ringing quieted and Benerro stopped chanting. The mage-priests retreated with Blackfyre as Maegor dressed, his posture shifting and his mind coming into focus. All the anger, rage, fear, and wild lusts were gone.

But he was still a Targaryen.

He cleared his throat, the Andals approaching with his sword and a fresh hilt and handle wrapping. He took the grip in hand, feeling not just the power but the history. The talent and power that Blackfyre demanded. What it needed. "There are said to be eggs-"

"In Pentos." Maegor looked to Benerro. "Except I don't want dragons."

Benerro darkened. "We had a deal. You swore to the high priests, by fire, that you would-"

"I am the dragon. I *am* fire."

***

Viserys and Tytus waited with a few other squires for their knights. They wore new armour and clothing for the looming winter of work, even mounted on sturdy ponies that, if they kept them alive until they reached Qohor, they would be able to exchange for horses.

Vibrating with excitement, Marq and the knights exited behind another officer. A clean-shaven, bald man with purple eyes and a stitched up head. Viserys rubbed his eyes then looked closer. "Maegor!

Tytus looked at him queerly. Viserys looked around. "The cruel! I was telling Tytus. He can never remember. Maegor. The Cruel."

"Is there another?" Marq cuffed him as he mounted and the squires fell in beside their knights. It was not until a few days later, halfway to the Golden Fields, when Viserys's many questions were replaced.

Maegor had gathered the more experienced knights, and with Marq being among them in their small camp, such a meeting was noticed. Tytus had the same idea and covered for Viserys with their camp chores, as he scurried to Maegor's tent. He had no squire, erecting it all himself despite his age, though Viserys learned that age might have just been appearance and a number.

"...return to the ranks of the Company, but not any time soon. A short war supporting Norvos. We make these boys into not just knights, but commanders, then given them to Bharbo for a season or two."

Drogo's father? To what end?

"You'd have us deliver these boys to a savage warring half a world away?" One of the other knights scoffed. "Who the fuck are you, *Aerion*? Some old comrade of Blackheart's doesn't make you jack shite."

"I was killing in the Disputed Lands when you were still sucking your whore mother's tits, Peake." Viserys looked through the tent flap at one of Torman's cousins getting dressed down. "If you have a problem with the way I do things, make a challenge, as was the way when Maelys the Monstrous was in charge."

The Peake stepped back quickly, and Maegor continued. Marq spotted Viserys and, though he thought for certain he'd get cuffed later, when Marq returned he only gruffly chided Viserys then started pouring over his stock of maps by lantern light.

"What's happening, Ser Marq?" Tytus asked for them both as they started working on their dinner. "What's Lord Marshall Aerion doing here?"

"Your guess is as good as mine."

"Does it have anything to do with Pentos?" Marq and Tytus turned to Viserys. "He mentioned Pentos once... or twice."

Marq knew something but said nothing, just grunting again then bedding down for the evening. Through the weeks of quiet travel that followed, no answer was offered even as Maegor lectured them and the knights trained them with sword and shield. With his squires, Marq also taught them how to read his maps, the bits of every language he knew, and how to cook and sew well enough to apprentice a tailor, not just mend their armour.

In all that time, a little taller and a little less a boy every day, Viserys found a gulf had begun to widen between himself and Maegor. No longer odd elder uncle with his quiet nephew – Viserys rarely spoke unless spoken to – but the return from functional exile Maegor was making it, playing into his persona as Lord Marshall Aerion Brightfyre, faithful Company man even though he was deposed.

How long until he was a serjeant again? Or Captain General?

Viserys pushed it all from his mind, instead focusing on being a sellsword. He saw less and less of Maegor, and of his fellow squires save Tytus and Marq's fellow knights. Norvos's war with Qohor went off successfully, but slowly with a whole lot of blood, only ended by the arrival of Khal Bharbo and more Golden Company. The Crones were momentarily reunited, and a few of them joined Drogo and Maegor in following Bharbo back to Vaes Dothrak.

It was just after his fourteenth name day, when Viserys and Tytus were saddling their new horses. Viserys had a speckle mare pale as death, and Tytus a golden stallion. Marq came to them where they were on the edge of the khalasar somewhere in the foothills of the Bone Mountains. "We ride for the Axe. Braavos needs us."

Chapter Text

The wet winter, the maesters were calling it. Feet of rain every day for ten months already, and winter had yet to actually set in.

At least the harvest was good, Mace surmised, and the trade from the maester's searching *below* the rich soil that always made the Reach so wealthy opened trade with the east and south as never before. It meant he was able to add the best archers in the world to his army, five thousand Summer Islanders and their families who watched from the walls and towers of his domain, who trained his scouts and carved the bow limbs for everything from shortbows to scorpions and ballistae.

Every arrow was a thorn.

Mace Tyrell rode somewhere in the northern Stormlands, a land that knew him well. The smallfolk stayed indoors and the local landed knights paid their dues. He never took from someone else's land, but he did secure it.

"My lord." Randyll Tarly, a peer in every sense of the word – and shared experience – rode to his side. "Movement to the north. Tower banners, and ermine."

To Tarly, Mace had designated his borders, having named him Shield of the Reach. The security of the Rose Road was the martinet lord's his pride and joy, and it carried the bulk of the Tyrell host. "Graftons moving up the Blackwater?"

"Blue towers, lord." Tarly fell in beside him, with Mace dismissing his other advisors with a wave of his gauntleted hand. Like Tarly, he wore unpolished steel of the finest make, with layers of leather, mail, and wool to hold back the autumn chill. Far from the finery he once wore. "If I know my noble marriages..."

Tarly nodded. "Indeed, my lord. Lady Bethany Rosby was the sixth Lady Frey."

"Rosby still stands, and Gyles is dead." Rosby and Stokeworth were still garrisoned by loyal Reach knights, and would join him in the advance on Duskendale. "They have a claim. Her children, at least." Tarly wore his grief on his chest, a badge where Mace used his as a cloak to cover him. More than that, it was Mace's motivation. It was how he justified everything.

"Our visit at Hayford will have answers. Tell the scouts to send word. I have no quarrel with Lord Tully's tollmen."

Tarly summoned a knight and sent him out for the order, continuing to ride in heavy silence with his liege. He did not speak again until their tents were struck and they were drinking over the map of the Crownlands in Mace's tent. "Melessa's gravid again."

"Pregnant, you mean. She's not a cow, man." Mace scooped Randyll into his arms, pressing his furry lips to his bald head. Mace's mother had always discouraged his displays of affection, even though all of his few memories of his father were of his displays of affection with friends, family, and the people of his household. "How has Talla taken the news?"

"Poorly. She believes she'll be replaced."

Mace snorted. "Then buy her another pony. She knows she is dear to you, which is why she is angry." He brought his finger down on Antlers. "It's time. A gift for your new child."

"We have the men, but if it does not bear out, Duskendale, all your plans, will be at risk." Randyll sipped his wine. He had a tell, but Mace had not seen it yet. "I must advise against it, my lord."

"*Our* plans, Tarly." Mace indicated the wetlands and prairies that surrounded Antlers. "Bestowed on a huntmaster of House Durrandon, when it was theirs eight hundred years ago. The elk are plentiful enough to feed us while there."

Randyll shook his head. He had heard this plan before. "The Starks still hold it."

"They do."

"They almost killed us all!"

"And we almost killed them!" Mace indicated Harrenhal. "It is a signal that this fight is not done. I am still owed pelts, stag or wolf, this is how we get them."

"The Riverlords and their softening..." Randyll leaned over the map. He wore his grief, because it was not in him anymore. Mace could not believe it. "Perhaps we should let... let peace reign. People expect us to go to Duskendale, and we should, for what the loyalists did at Bitterbridge, for the betrayal after three centuries of loyalty."

"And then the Baratheons after them! They killed your son!"

"And one of yours! But I do not want to spend my whole life at war!" Mace spun away from Randyll, refreshing his wine and filling his mouth with cheese and roast meat before speaking. Randyll ate a bowl of cabbage, like something from his rations. "Eat something real. That's half salt."

Randyll shook his head. "I can feel a battle coming." He wore *Heartsbane* across his back, and he could bear it easily on foot or in the saddle, wearing it always as a token of his house. "The stress, I lose weight."

"As do I." Randyll raised an eyebrow, glancing down at Mace's middle. He was stronger than before the war, but his belly was still the stuff of songs. "I'm still your liege."

Randyll nodded, indicating one of the many nameless Valyrian steel weapons Mace kept in his camp. "And those? Are you training?"

"Hightower offers but I... I have my shields and know how to parry." Randyll picked up a poleaxe that matched Mace's strength. "My strengths were never in martial pursuits."

"I do not accept that. A man of your size? The Tyrells may be up-jumped stewards, but there are warriors as well. For instance, your-"

The tent flap opened and a man taller than Mace and a third his width strode in, yet they were still the image of one another. "My son!" Mace shoved Randyll aside to hug Willas, marvelling at how his jaw had squared and his limbs strengthened, holding him at arm's length to see the new scar over his right eye that summoned in him a volcanic anger. "Who did this?" He may have been seven and ten, but Willas was still his boy.

"A dead man. The pirates have left the Narrow Sea for the Summer Sea." Willas embraced his father again before dropping to one knee, kissing his lord father's hand. "I have returned with warriors from the east. Men of high honour of a code they will gladly teach."

"Rise." Willas was strong and the greatest firstborn a man could ask for – he had the trust and love of his men, the respect and deference of his peers, and those who heard his name were either in awe or fear at the once small and talentless warrior still affectionately called 'Sprout.' "I knew you would do it. Fourteen moons, it's been. Lord Tarly, my son."

"Lord Willas," Randyll stiffly bowed, and Willas did much the same, though in a most foreign manner. "These warriors, they wear armour... of lacquered wood and leather?"

"It is fascinating, lord. Oh, and the empress insisted on gifts after my refusal to marry her."

"You were propositioned marriage!" Mace looked on pridefully.

"Oh yes, most of us were. The Lengii value martial versatility, and the Yi-Tish traditions are quite choking." Willas had chests brought in, in which time he offered a calligraphy writing set of vibrant green jade to his father, and a contraption of a wooden stake and a bronze tube. "For you, Lord Tarly, to recreate if possible."

"What is it?" He sniffed and staggered backwards. "Wildfire!"

"That is just the start. The dust of King's Crater used against us is not sustainable. With these plans..." Three of the chests contained just books, while others contained emeralds, rubies, sapphires, platinum, and jade of every variety. "And the knights can teach our men how to train their horses and get used to... the sound."

Randyll's suspicions were heard, but dismissed, and he made his excuses as Mace and his son fell into deep conversation. It was his third journey, the first to the Summer Isles without Mace's permission, the second to Volantis for a routine trading mission. He and his cousins were the future, Mace supposed, and their weathering across the seas had given them the experience needed for the wars at home.

"Antlers, father?"

Mace groaned at his heir, indicating the land around the castle. "Vast tracts unused. There is that Essosi grain that grows well in such flooded fields."

"Father, what about about mother and Margaery? What about Loras?" Mace turned from his son, shaking his head and focusing on the map. "All he does is read the seven-pointed star, and cry. Mother just weeps and sleeps all day. Thank the Seven for Grandfather Leyton, taking on Margaery and Aegon, but-"

"We have discussed this in the past, so leave it in the past. Loras, Margaery, and your mother, are safe where they are." Mace looked at another map. "And the time has come for you to marry. When you return to Highgarden-"

"Will you listen to me!" Willas shook his father by the shoulders. "It isn't your fault, father!"

"I was static! Sloven and feasting and-" Mace shut his eyes. Willas may have been his son, but he was also his servant and heir. "You have your orders. Return to Highgarden."

"Father, I-"

"Highgarden." Mace's gaze was steady as oak as Willas stormed from the tent. It hurt him every time his children were hurt, just as a part of him died with Garlan.

Mace pulled himself upright as he reorganized his maps and laid out his tokens, reading from a copy of the *Book of the Green Hand*, the epic poem of House Gardener and the Reach that told the story of its knights and lords from the Age of Heroes to the reign of Garse VII. He was the third-to-last Gardener king, killed by Argilac Durrandon when the Storm King was in his prime, forty-odd years before Aegon looked west.

His armies were modelled off the tales, the stories all Mace knew of the history of the Reach's might as not just a producer of food, but of military might. By comparison, his ancestors had needed centuries just to build up their blood after the Field of Fire, marrying knightly houses and then lesser nobility into extinction until that first marriage to the Meadows. They had been House Tyrell's most staunch allies since, and when the Dance of the Dragons ended, they took more from Hightower and the Marcher Lords.

Every small keep, landed knight, or common hamlet had someone named Tyrell in a position of influence, and Mace had finally started using them, as never before had a Tyrell had loyalty, when they had always enjoyed wealth and fealty. His family taught him that biding his time was smart, but that the time to strike may not come when you expect it. Harlan Tyrell did not know that ceding the castle to Aegon would grant him dominion of the greatest kingdom on the continent, yet it did.

Mace would not take such a gift for granted, just as his mother had not, who bound the most powerful houses to his after the death of his father. He thanked her for it often, saying a prayer to the Mother for her.

With the tokens laid our, Mace could see them. Every man and woman in his army – because he was not about to leave half the population at home – from their spears, swords, and bows, to the tens-of-thousands of horses and millions of arrows stocked and ready.

Ledgers and treaties were all Mace had learned of lordship, of deferring to those wiser, smarter, and overall more capable than himself in times of crisis. Yet when Robert Baratheon had stormed Highgarden with his unarmed family inside, from his mother and his son to his most distant cousins lost beneath his hammer, Mace was left with only stories to build his army. Stories, and rage.

In the *Book of the Green Hand*, even the peasant levies wore leather and mail, with helmets, greaves, and shields from just the wealth and charity of their lords. He mandated it the following day throughout the Reach. He still remembered that march from Highgarden through the Dornish Marches. In one story, the passage of a knight through the desert changed him, the sand sculpting him into a better, more faithful and honourable knight.

***

*282, the Wendwater*

With bare hands, mace pulled the briars taut around the post and his prisoner, their screams echoing as a pale imitation of the pain that still wracked his body. The dying man was older, and claimed to have fought alongside Mace's father and uncles.

"Pull!" The mounted knights pulled the post upright, Steffon Estermont hanging but slowly sliding down the post, the briars and thorns pulling at his skin to hold him upright. He fell still with two-inch weeping gouges all over his body, still screaming in the night.

Mace's army carried torches, having come upon the Stormlander host late in the evening. "Robert Baratheon hides in Storm's End! We will not besiege him!"

Just as Lord Estermont was, every man in his host was tied to a post, bound first in briars and thorns, then ropes run through with nails and old arrowheads. A post every fifty feet for three hundred miles, from King's Crater to Storm's End, and Mace had little care that half of the dead wore Lannister red.

***

When Robert Baratheon had sallied out of the Stormlands and tried attacking Cider Hall, Mace met them in force and did the same thing to twice as many soldiers. The Reach had been safe since then, but he waited – craved – the day he would do it again. Would it be Rosby with these Freys, igniting war with the Riverlands and Seven knows who else, or Duskendale, the Rykkers just another puppet of the dragon?

House Targaryen may have delivered House Tyrell their seat, but they won their position all on their own, and it had fallen to Mace to defend those gains barely a generation after all that hard work bore fruit. Had the Silver Prince, the Red King, or whatever he was calling himself now, just kept to his marital bed – or at least not gone with a noble maiden of such high standing – then his Margaery and future good-son might have been anyway.

Instead, his family was dead

The tokens made him confident, and he decided he should have new maps drawn. He would offer a marriage to these Frey-Rosbys, and annex the central Crownlands. Why shouldn't he, when the North and Westerlands carve up the Iron Islands for scrap and the Stormlands go raiding in Dorne and Sothoryos with Tywin. The world was chaos, so why could House Tyrell not build itself back better? Let them call him King of Thorns, when his son will be Willas the Great, and his daughter Good Queen Alyssane come again.

Indeed, Mace had decided. First the Crownlands up to Antlers, maybe even Duskendale. How hard would it be for him to take and actually use Harrenhal, with his many people and spare smallfolk, loyal family and bannermen who were more than worthy of reward and compensation for both their effort and suffering?

More so, Harrenhal, rebuilt in a world free of dragons, would be what Loras needed. Yes. There, he would feel safe. "Lord Tyrell?"

Mace woke from his cot in his tent, sitting upright and waving in his page and squires. He had insisted every knight over a certain age take two squires, adding to his army's organisation as many squires spent half their time with the infantry as a result, and helping out among camp besides. It built bonds of brotherhood that had not existed in the Reach in some centuries, and Mace was still certain to hold tourneys, though they took on a more martial variety.

Indeed, there was a tourney every moon for the knights seeking to enter Mace's remade Order of the Green Hand, the Order of the Golden Rose. Blood fed the roses whenever a spot opened up, as the order was also a surefire path to a castle, wife, or both. Mace was also encouraging smallfolk to settle in the northern Stormlands, and had vowed to defend any Reachman who staked a tract they could pay taxes on, and offer a son or daughter or two, in the Stormlands or Crownlands.

It was an Andal manner of growing the Reach's borders and population, but Mace was not doing it out of zeal or racial superiority. He offered every Stormlander he came across the ability to exchange their fealties, but there was always a cost, and many would not pay – they could always pay, for Mace never asked for what could not be spared.

Mace had also learned about the Dothraki tactic of diplomacy. An open hand in one hand, a simple and achievable demand, and a very visible sword in the other. No illusions, no subtlety, just facts. The Stormlanders knew their King Robert would never lose focus from his mission of vengeance against Rhaegar and House Targaryen, and most of their lords and knights were off getting fat in the Westerlands' colonies. Tywin Lannister wanted his legacy, and if not the Iron Throne, then an empire of the lion.

So Mace had more land, so he left the Westerlands alone, though he did have plenty of blockades up the coast so that the Lannisport trading fleet had to go farther and farther west to get around his tolls. Again, with just the Redwynes he had overwhelming, Dothraki-style force. Thankfully, he had not had to use it since the signing of the armistice, though he was tempted to go back to Greenstone by sea and finish what he started at Wendwater. He did not, but only mostly because autumn storms in the Narrow Sea are no laughing matter.

He decided after he took Duskendale, he would build another fleet.

Mace dressed in his armour, cleaned and freshened with... "Rosewater?"

"Yes, m'lord," said his page, a Hightower-Redwyne from his quartered doublet.

"Lovely." He stood as the last buckles were fastened, sending the squires to other errands, as Willas entered, the previous night forgotten. He examined his perfumed to dab with something woody to complement the rosewater. "You have a mask?" Willas held up his own cloth and leather covering, which would secure to his ringmail coif and plate gorget. "Good."

They crossed from the Roseroad to the Kingsroad, moving at a forced marching speed as they passed King's Crater. Like some pit of hell it still smoked and glowed, maesters having told Mace ancient, stale stores of wildfire and other Valyrian magic hidden beneath the Red Keep was keeping the fire burning. Mace knew that there was less dust every year, and the green glow a little dimmer, so sent for one of his camp maesters to set about tracking the decline. He could plan for a date, be it a week or a year away.

The wind tossed the fumes over his army, smoke, dust, and worse filling Mace's nose just before he pulled up his mask. It was layers of wool, cotton, and cleansing oils originally intended to protect against dragonflame, later wildfire, developed by House Hightower. He secured it to his doublet with leather buckles, Willas and Randyll at his sides doing the same.

It was a sharp burn at first, like holding his hand too long over a candle, and that never went away. Prolonged, Mace knew it would burn the deepest parts of the lungs, then the throat, nose, and mouth, before it became too painful to breathe, and then he would die in choking agony.

He spied some silent sisters closer to the edge of the blast area, the dust all that remained of the thousands of acres of the Kingswood that once choked King's Landing to its walls. The walls themselves were farther in and just piles of molten slag, to heavy to be thrown by the initial explosion of the stock of wildfire underneath the Guild of Alchemists. "Willas, send ten men to aid them."

Randyll said, "This is why we should not come so close. We could chart a new road from Grassy Vale to Hayford in a few weeks."

"The men need to see it." Most were young, Mace recalled from his ledgers, boys and girls that sat out most of the last round of fighting before the armistice. He knew a few had a few fights with Stormlanders and Westermen under their belts from the raiding, but it wasn't a veteran army by any means.

It felt odd to Mace, to call it what he was about to do a separate war. He supposed every war was started by the one before in some way or another. "Perhaps," Randyll agreed. "They should know to put their faith in real things. Good steel, stone walls, healthy grain. But dragons were fire made flesh. They greatest implement of war and conquest in the history of the world. Then when the Targaryens killed them all, they turned to wildfire."

"Pig shit. Green slime is not of use. Fire that burns just to burn, why?"

"The alchemists did not deal in pig shit, my lord." Randyll had more affectations than Mace, chiefly his mementos for Horn Hill, his late son, Samwell, and other lost friends and family, all hung from Heartsbane's scabbard. Among them all was a vial of green liquid, which he offered to Mace. "We're getting closer."

Mace shook his head. "You have one apprentice, Rhaegar has three living wisdoms."

Randyll surrendered the point, and they rode onward quietly, the silent sisters grateful for the aid while the green boys who Willas brought looked queasy at the sight of the sisters' hollow cheeks and skeletal noses. "The smoke does that?" one muttered, Mace grimacing even as he thought of it.

The smoke was like acid you could breathe, melting the flesh of your mouth, lips, and nose. Mace still had men studying it, mostly how to counter it given reports of Rhaegar's scavenging, but any trove of wildfire or knowledge, or something broken and molten that could be repaired, was sent to Tarly's tracts in the Marches. Empty hinterland, and all the room he needed to test his engines and inventions.

Avoiding the contamination from King's Crater was a simple enough feat once they were alongside the Blackwater Rush, the copses of forest and rushing river holding down the worst of the dust and fumes, though that vinegar smell remained. Before dusk, Hayford came into view, and by nightfall, they were walking through the gates.

***

Hayford's regent, Lady Ermesande Hayford, rode beside Mace as their combined forces encircled Antlers. Her family was a sprawling house that claimed neither Andal nor First Men heritage made ready for war off the constant fighting between the Iron Islands and Stormlands in the centuries preceding the conquest.

Under Ermesande's late great uncle, the last Lord Hayford, they were richer still, the chief producer of wheat, cheese, and vegetables for the Red Keep. Such connections had paid off, granting them four thousand knights and armed smallfolk from them and their levies across the hinterland between the Reach, Riverlands, and Crownlands.

The Rosby and Stokeworth garrisons were another five-thousand, though the bulk of the host was the levied and Tyrell infantry Mace had prepared for just such a battle. He had not wanted to force a full muster, doing the traditional thing and taking men into his service who offered themselves for the campaign, if he passed through their lands.

Mace had plenty of time, however, and had gone on quite the tour. Six thousand mounted knights, and fifteen thousand soldiers. Not men-at-arms, not smallfolk irregulars or a co-opted city watch, but soldiers.

It was the largest army assembled in Westeros since the Stark and Arryn hosts joined the Tullys at Harrenhal, when they crippled Rhaegar the last time.

Mace watched as his envoy rode to the gates past the siege lines, the defenders well-supplied for a siege. Stark banners alone fluttered overhead, House Buckwell wiped out by Robert Baratheon in his rampage.

His envoy rode out a few minutes later with two men in tow. One was a young man no older than Willas, stocky and clean-shaven with a mop of dark hair, while the other was older yet lower-ranked from his poorer steel, with a ginger beard and a steel helmet covering his long head. "I am Harwin, son of Hullen. This is Alyn."

Mace waited for more titles, perhaps a house, but none came. Willas said, "You are in the presence of Mace Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden and Lord Paramount of the Reach. Shield of Oldtown, Sword of the Citadel, Marshal of the Mander, and Defender of the Faith. The King of Thorns and the Bane of the Storm."

Harwin looked nonplussed at the titles, but not the army. "Your father is horse-master of Winterfell, is he not?" Randyll asked.

Mace had not wanted threats so soon. Willas said, "Master Harwin, Antlers is the only standing castle of its size for fifty leagues. Simply vacate with whatever you like, and you will be given an escort up the King's Road."

"I was ordered to hold the castle." Harwin twisted his head to one side like a confused hound, and Mace supposed that's all he was. Another of Stark's idiot dogs. "By what right do you claim Antlers?"

"The right that we need it," Willas said, his voice quickly hardening. He had learned to lead in Leng, and Mace observed that his heir did not enjoy being disobeyed. "We have the Kingswood, but have chosen to not bring siege weapons in a gesture of good faith."

"Good faith?" Harwin snorted. "You would rob a castle of its walls, with the Red King just a few days' ride from here?"

Alyn snorted. "King of thorns? King of fools."

Mace raised his hand, quieting Randyll, Willas, and stopping the knights of the Order of the Golden Rose from drawing their swords. "We would ask your help in taking Duskendale before Winter sets in," Mace said, finally speaking. Their eyes widened as if they finally saw him on his massive chestnut destrier, not just the unmoving statue behind Willas and Randyll. "You need not violate Lord Stark's orders."

"Winter? Heh." Harwin spat, and it splashed against the wet ground. "It's still hotter than a Northern summer."

Willas called a sidebar. He muttered, "How much are men like this worth?"

"More than we can afford," Randyll retorted. "And running afoul of Stark has little appeal."

Ermesande, silent until that point, indicated Antlers to Harwin. She said, "We need the castle, and we can use you. At Hayford, we fought together when my house was weak. I was but a girl, but I remember when the wolf and the rose drew their swords together." Ermesande was something between the Mother and the Warrior, in a tight mail coif and shirt brushed yellow gold, and a long brigandine of lacquered green leather plates. Like many of the ladies Mace had seen pick up arms, she bore a bludgeon, a war hammer in Ermesande's case, with a shield on her back if she was thrown from her horse and a longbow in a case by her knee.

Clearly, what Mace knew of House Mormont's women had not diffused into the rest of Ned Stark's vassals. "We were stuck between the Wall and the Wildlings at Hayford," Alyn said. "It was help you southrons or die to Dornish spears."

"Why can we not help each other again?" Ermesande risked a glance at Mace, who nodded. She was young. Not young enough to be his daughter, and something stirred in him to see a lady in command. Or maybe it was just that she was different, or that Mace hoped Margaery would end up like Ermesande and not her own mother. "Life can be very boring, can it not, cooped up here? Return to Hayford, still close by, and we shall send ravens to Winterfell. You have not heard from Lord Eddard in some time, no?"

"The Valemen-"

"Ah yes," Ermesande continued, cutting off Harwin. "The Valemen. Attacking the North's eastern coast. Yes, a likely story. One that lets the famous Ned keep all his forces up beyond the Neck."

She had not even shaken the men, but she had sown the seeds. "Gentlemen." Willas indicated the army and Antlers. "My father does not want to storm the castle, and you do not want him to storm the castle. Take your men safely to Hayford, or stay and join our army for a time. You will be well-compensated, and your honour will remain intact. Be reasonable."

Harwin and Alyn huddled together, even covering their mouths. "Foolish of them," muttered Willas. "Lord Stark has forgotten them."

"I would not say that," Randyll said, indicating the walls choked with men. Antlers was not a small castle. "She can garrison two-thousand men in her barracks, and another thousand in the crypts."

"Stark will need the men one day," Willas added.

Ermesande proved them both wrong as a Tully banner appeared. "Apparently, half the dowry from the Stark-Tully wedding was never paid solely because of Ned Stark's pride."

Most of the men had the look of Blackwood archers. Mace opined that the marriage of Edmure Tully to Lord Blackwood's sister, using Lannister gold for the bride price, had been a masterful stroke by Lord Hoster. "Gentlemen?" Tarly said. "Have you made a decision?"

"We have a question, lord." Harwin looked at Mace firmly. "Then, we will decide."

Mace looked between the two men. The Lord of the Reach, beholden to the curiosity of a couple of Northern peasants. He nodded.

They shared another look. Harwin nodded. Alyn said, "Do you hold Lord Stark responsible for what Lord Baratheon did in the Reach?"

The entire army sharply inhaled. For a moment, Mace was not on his horse in the Crownlands – he was in Highgarden, holding Garlan's body. He had seemed so big when he hugged Mace before he left, the vision of his own father, but his body... it was so small in his arms. So limp.

Mace met Alyn's gaze. "The Mother teaches that wrath must always surrender to mercy. But by doing nothing, by saying nothing, to his oldest and dearest friend Robert Baratheon, in response or in answer, Lord Eddard Stark may as well have killed my mother and son himself."

"We understand."

Mace nodded as Harwin and Alyn galloped back to Antlers and closed the gate behind them. The banners still flew, and long minutes later an archer loosed a ranging shot that stuck between the front hooves of Mace's stallion.

Mace shut his eyes. He focused on the smell of the grass and the warm horse under him, not the chill autumn wind. He saw what he often saw in such moment, an image from a dream of a field of golden roses, of trees and flowers and quiet farms all growing strong and peaceful, their roots woven through the bones of stags, lions, and dragons.

Now, there would be wolves.

"Take no prisoners."

Chapter Text

"Silver and steel!"

"The Titan's on your heels!"

From the bowsprit, Viserys roared, "Silver and steel!"

"The Titan's on your heels!" the marines and sailors answered.

The *Spear of the Canals* advanced on their quarry, Tytus riling the rowers as Ser Marq barked orders to the marines waiting for the chance to board. They were uniformed in brushed steel breastplate, ring mail, and boiled leather, with the face-flapped frilled helms and short halberds that were their signature. "Silver and steel!"

"The Titan's on your heels!" Viserys's job was not solely to rile up the crew, but to lead the boarding party. A boreal wind filled their sails and propelled them the last hundred feet, crashing their ram into a fat-bellied Lorathi galleon.

Another Braavosi ship crashed into the galleon's other side, sleek with its two triangular sails and stretched, tear drop-shaped deck. Swift and gliding upon the water even when fully loaded with eight rowers and twenty marines, their rams were as devastating as their crew. Designed to emulate a barbed arrowhead, the rams crashed in with room left for seawater to flood in.

With four breaches in its hull, it was easy to cut the much larger Lorathi vessel down to size. The ram caught the hull and dragged out, the rowers hauling on massive lines to lift the ram on a hinge and free it before the galleon could drag them down.

The ship did not go slowly, however, and Viserys called, "Gangway!" before charging into a crowd of Ibbenese sellsails. On his left, he took the first man in the throat with the edge of his shield. On his right, he took the second and third with his boarding axe – the second with the blade to their chest, the third with the spike in their bowels. "Silver and steel!"

"The Titan's on your heels!" The attacking Braavosi shook the Ibbenese, tall and swarthy where they were hairy, pale, and short. They were matted with dark hair over snowy skin, which blended with the furs and their whale oil-stained sea bird feather capes, and not one of them was taller than a young man. All however were thickly built, with arms as thick as another man's thighs. As if someone had put Marq in a wine press.

Viserys had heard it said the men of Ib were a different race of men entirely, and he saw no reason to disagree with such a claim.

He had grown over the Long Autumn and that first damp year of winter, six feet tall and just freshly fifteen. He felt invincible with the world at his feet, certain he would only get stronger as he grew into his manhood.

Viserys was neither a strong nor particularly instinctual fighter, relishing less in the thrill of battle than measuring his panic under pressure, the dragon within ever throwing itself at its cage of training and discipline.

He still followed Baqarro's advice as well. "Better one thrust practiced a thousand times, than a thousand thrusts each practiced once." By imposing that rule, success came easy, but Viserys also grew used to the the consequences when he tried to improvise.

A Lorathi sellsword drew a dagger after Viserys disarmed him. He thrust towards Viserys's ribs, but Viserys shoved his shield between. He crushed the Lorathi's wrist but not his fingers holding the dagger – it dragged a burning furrow through his ribs below his armpit, nicking the bone and driving Viserys into a frenzy. He dropped the halberd blade on the Lorathi's neck, withdrew it, then stabbed the man behind him.

Withdrawing to the helm, Viserys locked the tiller and released the lines on the mainsail. Cutting them would have been faster, but rope was not plentiful. He got the lay of the tidal battlefield, their ship and twelve others swarming two ships somewhere north of Braavos.

The Shivering Sea was a rolling blanket of grey steel, icebergs and snow resting atop the waves. He knew land was close, but looking south he saw only more sea. He remembered the journey from Dragonstone, Ser Lewyn and Ser Jaime in hushed conversation, watching him from the sides of their eyes as Ser Willem kept him and his sister safe.

Ser Marq waved his yellow banner from the ship below, signalling 'north' and putting Viserys's attention on the two ships attacking the Lorathi *Great Maze*, while six Braavosi war cogs swarmed the Lorathi escort ships. They needed to stop those ships.

"Spear of the Canals!" Viserys roared, getting the attention of the marines. "Back to the ship! North to support our brothers in arms!"

He greeted a few men and executed a few sellswords that refused to surrender, before stepping smoothly to the *Spear of the Canals*. They sailed north, bearing down as the rowers brought further out to sea while the sails grappled with the wind. It fought them for long minutes, an excruciating anxiety arising in Viserys as their ship stalled in open ocean. The waves threatened to smash the ship against the rocky coastline of Lorassyon, before the sails finally snapped taught.

Like a bolt from a scorpion they sailed into the Shivering Sea, the shifting weight of the crew and marines what turned and kept the ship balanced on its keel. "We're coming in fast!" bellowed the captain. "All hands, tight like a maiden!"

With the thunderous crack of breaking wood and tearing metal, the *Spear of the Canals* earned its name as it momentarily flew over the waves entirely, before impaling itself in the mid deck of the *Great Maze*. It was a titanic and labyrinthine vessel, but so long as it did not sink and he did not die, Viserys would be successful.

"Spill like your father's spend!" roared the quartermaster. The salty words of sailors always bent the laws of language. "Fuck the ship raw as your mother's cunt!"

Tytus held back a chuckle as he slipped aboard, armed with a Norvoshi longsword and his Company shortsword, though inlaid with a cat's – a lion's – snarling face. "Where's Ser Marq?"

"He and Aegor are freeing the ship." On their own mission, Tytus and Viserys hurried towards the rear of the ship, climbing through the hole left by *Spear of the Lagoon* to explore the captain's cabin. "I'll take the armoury."

Viserys scoffed as he went to the desk. "Off course you will." He drew a sack and, discarding the ink, swept all their contents inside. He inspected the spines of books, tearing off their covers that weighed too much for him to carry. He logged the names in his own book before opening the cupboards and chests. A bottle of rye, three of Arbor gold, and a ring of black and swirling steel. He grinned.

He pulled on the ring, with a signet of a maze. "Anything good?"

"Maybe. What you get?" Tytus grinned and dropped the falchions, scimitars, and curved daggers that Lorathis and Norvoshi preferred. There was also a vambrace of the same black and swirling metal which Tytus claimed, while also adding an old Braavosi war hammer to his personal and ever-growing armoury. Viserys claimed a Norvoshi knife and ring mail hauberk, the leather almost red with its richness, the rings thick but light.

The property of the captain was emblematic of Braavos's war with the northern triarchy, the self-proclaimed 'Triarchy Reborn' of Lorath, Norvos, and Ibben. Their weapons and armour were well-crafted by most measures, but built to guard against Braavos's arsenal from a century ago. Viserys shrugged. It was not his war.

"Oi, whew that fock dew ye thenk ye arr?!" The Skagosi sellsail that commanded the Lorathi flagship was a giant man with a bramble of a beard and a shiny bald head, with a bronze plate bolted over one hemisphere of his cranium. "Git off et, ya wee cunts!" He drew a massive pair of axes with dragonglass along the edges, charging them and locking their weapons against his.

Viserys drove his shield into the captain's elbow while Tytus hacked with his shortsword at his leg. He seemed to pick the lesser of two pains and defended from the short sword, only for Viserys to break his other arm by overextending his elbow.

Howling in pain, Tytus brought him to his knees with a few quick thrusts and one final cut. Viserys raised his halberd to stab him. "Any last words?"

"Valyrian?"

Viserys winked. "Targaryen."

The Skagosi roared as Viserys drove his axe's spike into his eye. "You didn't have to torment the man," Tytus said.

"For all I know, that Stark bitch deserved it." Tytus choked at Viserys's dark humour, though he quickly saved his soul. "Truly, the Skagosi are monstrous. They rape and pillage across Essos. Lorath campaigned House Manderly decades ago to do something. The raven, they claimed, must have lost its way while on its way to House Stark. I read about it-"

"In a book. Yeah, I know." Tytus helped him loot the other weapons and, to Viserys's joy, a black and swirling metal torc. It was nearer a belt for either of them compared to the mammoth Skagosi. "Fine, but I get the next two. That's enough metal for a sword."

The squires had heard rumours of a rising concentration of Valyrian steel in northern Essos, attracting treasure seekers and the confirmation that Qohor was no more. The Great Khal had conquered the city, offering Qohor terms. The priests of the Black Goat sent out their three-thousand Unsullied, as they did nearly four-hundred years before.

The Black Goat of Qohor now decorated the City of Gods, the new city of khals and their greatest prizes, while Vaes Dothrak now the capital of a quickly growing... kingdom? Khalasar? There was not a word for it, not one in common, though one in Valyrian.

"Hello, squirts." Gilberto peeked his head in. "Father wants to see you. We have the ship." His eyes fell to the Skagosi. "And the captain." Gilberto slipped inside, inspecting the haul and the chest. "This? I suppose I will have to-"

Viserys dropped his axe on the chest. "We defeated him, we claim it. Laws of the ocean, bean counter."

Gilberto held Viserys's gaze, as if the marine-cum-purser meant to challenge his father's squire. He broke into a grin, smacking Viserys on his wounded side. "Relax, eh? It's yours. Though make sure the crew gets their share. Long way back to Braavos, and you can't eat silver." He winked and slipped up the stairs, tossing his roguish dark locks as he ascended out of sight.

Tytus broke the lock, grinning at the contents. "You made him out to be a bully and monster."

"That was *before* he found a woman to love."

"Please don't start quoting poetry again."

Viserys inhaled as if to do so, though he stopped and smiled. "What's the haul?"

"A couple thousand silver, two books..." Viserys grinned and claimed the books. "A certain black bracelet for yours truly, and a... a pen?"

Viserys gave it a look. "A dip pen. It's sharp enough to be wielded as a weapon."

"And another ring. With a dragon's head."

They swapped the pen and ring. It was not Valyrian steel, but gold.

Back up to the deck, they gave up all but a handful of silver coins each. They would get their pay, their dole of the loot, and their bonus as sellswords – the marines just a fraction of that.

Viserys was not blind to the self-serving nature of working as a sellsword, but he liked to think that, since the Lyseni and Andalosi conquest of Myr, he, Ser Marq, and Tytus had taken only the contracts that aligned with the values of the *new* Golden Company. Though early on they continued their work among infantry and cavalry exclusively, Ser Marq and his squires soon found they thrived as a trio supporting local militias and irregulars.

Those ends brought them back to Braavos, serving as 'mercenary marines' as the Sealord called them and the five-thousand like them. Some were Golden Company, most were not, the dregs of the smaller free companies not moved on to more work and recruits in Westeros or Slaver's Bay.

Viserys took to ships again with gusto after three years on land as a cadet. Forays on riverboats and barges notwithstanding, the journey back to Braavos, hearing the Titan's roar as he entered with salty calluses on his hands... Not for the first time in his life, he only had unknown ahead of him. And just as his time as a boy sailor and boy soldier came to an end, Viserys detected that his adventures as a squire were also nearing their conclusion.

Sailing with the marines back to their encampment on mainland Essos, they ate a quick dinner of fish stew washed down with dark ale warmed by the fire. They fell asleep as soon as their heads hit the ground, the day just ending, and they woke with the dawn, warning horns blowing and breakfast bells ringing.

They ate fried ham with porridge and black tea with honey, though Viserys added extra hard tack and ham. Their endless hunger as boys was finally bearing out – Tytus was athletic and manly, and tall, though the lanky Viserys was taller still.

They went to their rally point, Ser Marq joining them soon after, sitting between them and offering his heavy whale-skin cloak to guard all three of them from the wind and rain. "I am very proud of you both," he said, putting his arms around them. "I'm closer to them now, but I didn't get to bring my boys into manhood, as sailors or warriors. I'm happy it was you two."

"And we you, Ser Marq," said Viserys. "Only... now what?"

Tytus agreed. "We thought Lorath, but with these pickets here and to the south..."

Marq shook his head. "We make for Lorassyon, the maze city. There is fighting there still, but less than here."

"Trebuchet!"

"Run!"

They scattered, all three of them forced into the frigid surf as a rock came bouncing through camp, only taking out a handful of marines.

Marq gathered his boys, all four of them, and brought them out to sea on the *Spear of the Canals* to dry by the braziers below deck soon after. Aegor said, "Braavos will not try to hold the mainland for long. Only until the islands are pacified." He stroked his moustache as if to emphasize his point, very closely resembling his father's height and girth as well.

"Then to Lorassyon? A hive of pirates." Gilberto chuckled to himself. "Oh fuck, we're fighting pirates?"

Marq spat out a porthole, paying no mind to the rain lashing his face – though with the pox scars, tattoos, and brands all in the same spot on his cheek, he'd had plenty worse. "The maze city is small, but deep and dense, a leaden weight of a place with all manner of villain and privateer this side of the Stepstones. Winged men, bloodless men, and men who serve a thousand kings on a thousand isles." The ship plied out to sea beyond a Norvoshi stretch of coast, whalers and merchants that had grown fat off trade with Braavos conquered by them for supporting the Lorathi encroachment that renewed the fighting. "We will need them if we are to take Lorath."

Lorath, it had been decided, would not survive. At least not as more than a page in the book of the history of Braavos. The mazemakers and the attacks they weathered from the Valyrian dragonlords was far more interesting history, so that at least would avoid the Sealord's wrath.

Lorassyon came into view at midday, small icebergs steaming in the winter sun crowding its rocky shore. The island was a flat table of black stone and shale perhaps thirty miles long and ten miles wide.

From afar, the only structure on Lorassyon was a black slab with a few columns of smoke, but as they approached and rode a wave towards the sky, they looked down at the city within the maze, the bones of dead whales and ships turned into the bones of a living city. Larger houses were built on the coast, with private docks for merchants dealing in whale oil or exotic items from the far side of Essos. Ser Marq indicated a fort on the north end of the island, the whole crew disembarking and portaging it to the fort's yard.

They made their way inside, the fort a modest holdfast and some barracks behind high walls of coral and black seastone held together by plaster and concrete. It was more a base of operations for a trading company than a truly defensible fortification, but the walls were solid and the cellar full enough to hold them for a season – five moons, one for travel, three for campaigning, and another for travel.

He never actually *learned* what any of the jargon meant, just what he was supposed to do when he heard the words. They had stopped handholding Viserys the day he took command in Myr, though he was still known for his feat agains the Unsullied.

They settled in for the day, building fires to burn out the damp despite the smoke, then putting the word out that they needed fighting men for the assault on Lorath, and could pay. They would get more than the utterly desperate, and Braavos would have more marines and settlers.

Viserys set himself up in the barracks on the oft-ignored bed nearest the hearth. It was cold, but there were walls, so there would be no huddling by the fire, and most others avoided the uncomfortable heat. Viserys chalked it up to his weathering in Golden Fields, so he never complained.

"Have the time?" Gilberto nudged Viserys, showing off a familiar wooden box.

Viserys dropped most of his gear save his axe and followed the Braavosi to the barrack mess while the other marines and sellswords sparred or sharpened their weapons. "I have armour to repair. And stitches to change."

"Ah, but you need practice far more." Gilberto opened the box, unfolding it into an intricately-painted cyvasse board, terrain of some imagined or long-lost continent laid out between them. "I found some new pieces."

Viserys groaned at what he thought was a bird shit-stained squid, intended to take the place of his dragon. It was black stone of some kind, with a crack that had been filled with some sort of bone or wood. "A purchase is only a bargain if you spend your coin sparingly." Viserys crossed his arms and looked down his nose at Gilberto admiring a ring of sea glass and wood he said was the bone of a sea dragon, purchased on the Axe not two moons past. "And for yourself?"

Gilberto replaced his king with some sort of whale, and a few of his knights. Their powers did not change, but they were stone, not carved wood. "A hrakkar, the merchant said. And a wild dog-bear from Sothoryos."

"That's a wolf. A lion and a wolf."

"Where's your sense of theatricality?"

Viserys claimed the opening move, hiding all but his scouts behind some mountains with multiple escape routes. "I'm not a bravo."

"No, you're only a Targaryen soon to be a knight all in gold. Farthest thing ever from *theatrical*." Gilberto claimed some islands off shore, then wiped out Viserys's scouts with his knights. "Like a rat in a trap."

Viserys's preparations started panning out, sallying his knights and flying his kraken – powers of the dragon – over the mountains. He lost half his infantry in the escape, however. "Acceptable losses."

"Oh, so you planned to kill your men, did you?" Gilberto encircled Viserys's knights, picking them off as they went to the dice for the duel between their dragons. "What shall you rule, ashes?"

"You act as if I'm projecting." Viserys went on the defensive. He sent his dragon on a chase, harrying Gilberto's units. Together, more than enough to overwhelm a dragon, but too spread out for any one piece to effectively defend.

The issue became Gilberto doing the same, and that he had far more pieces left on the board. When the evening meal was being served and Tytus sat beside Gilberto and Aegor beside Viserys, and the game crawled into its third hour, Viserys said, "What else is the dragon? A king?"

"Aye. He's the soul of his army."

"But what if he's a cruel tyrant of a lord? A villain, even, like Harren the Black? If his men won't turn on him..." Viserys took a bite of his stew, observing the notes of red wine. The quartermaster on *Spear of the Canals* was quite the cook.

"Then his men are fools, or he knows they're fools." Gilberto was happy to win as Viserys threw his pieces at his dragon and knights. His dragon was a threat, but he rarely used it, the lion and wolf doing far more of the work. Viserys let it happen, and just before his last piece was claimed, he tipped the squid. "That was easy."

"I told you, I didn't want to play."

Chapter Text

With a huff of frozen breath and wipe of her brow, Catelyn retreated from her brother, lowering her blunted training sword and donning the fur offered. "Thank you, Jory."

"Of course, my lady. Towel?" She took it, her brother doing the same. They sparred in the square yard of Hammerhorn, hosted by Lord Goodbrother until the spring storm passed. "Lady Stark, Maester Murenmure says you've a raven from Winterfell."

They all craved news, so she and her maids were quick. She had five – two from the Riverlands, two from the North, and one from the Iron Islands – and as always the Riverlanders cringed and gasped at her bruises and scars. All of them looked at one scar specifically.

She always thought the turn in her character simple, after the war came to Winterfell when Ned was away. It was a short siege but a bloody one, and it was as if that siege, that first winter of hers in the North all alone, had christened her.

Catelyn was named in the eyes of the Seven, but that was when she became a Stark. A she-wolf, who would feed her children from her breast as she lay dying if necessary, and had done so with what may well be her last babe.

"Mama!" Arya squealed in excitement, shoving her way out of the nurse's arms, smacking her head on the floor, and running to Catelyn without even a tear.

Catelyn scooped up her crazed daughter and tickled at her neck and ear with her nose, making Arya giggle and squeal even harder. "Are you ready for supper?" Arya nodded, so far too nervous to speak when they weren't alone. "Come along."

Passing her back to the nurse who tended the growing goose egg on Arya's forehead, Catelyn played with her fresh braids as her maids laid out her outfit. First she would don a warm smock, and stockings and long sleeves, then a wool skirt and doublet, a long leather gambeson with strips of ring-mailed leather that reached the ground, and finally a thick dress of layered mail, broadcloth batting, and grey-navy brocade featuring dancing wolves – one with a kraken in its teeth. All the layers helped keep the cold out, and the weight of the armour was reassuring.

She was just pulling off her robe to don it all when there was a knock at her door. "It's Edmure, big sister."

She donned the smock and then put the robe back on, waving in the heir to Riverrun. He looked the proper future lord cleaned up from the day's exertions, from exploring the Goodbrother mines with the Lannisters, to their sparring. He was taller than her, when he was still but a boy when she left for Winterfell. There had been ravens sent between them and their sister, uncle, and parents – family first, in their house – but five years had left their mark.

Her brother was a husband, a father, and a widow by sixteen, but at nineteen he had finally grown into his knighthood and the Tully name, a trim beard making him more the man and his own fine red and blue accoutrement styled around a silk doublet of vibrant red and the richest blue. The smallfolk loved him, their father sang his praises freely and often, and he was already handling business as the lord of rivers and hills.

Which was why he was in her quarters. "Fine enough place. A bit too much iron." He shivered. "And this wet is in my bones."

"The trick is your fire. Always put more wood on before leaving the room." Catelyn did as much and sat by her hearth, all her weathering unable to make up for preference. "Why could you not wait until supper?"

Edmure's brow furrowed. He was not a great thinker, Catelyn's brother, despite the praises of Riverrun's maester that he possessed the capacity for great thought. He preferred his sword and bow, in truth. "I needed to speak with you alone. Lannisters and Ironmen and Northmen..."

"Two are our friends."

"One quite recently."

Catelyn sighed. She knew her house's feelings about the North's alliance with the Westerlands, and her own turn towards the martial. "We don't have an entire coast to trade with anymore."

Edmure sat, tension flooding out of him as he felt the warmth. Winter wars were uncommon in the Riverlands. He took a steadying breath. "Northern merchants will have to begin paying Riverlander tolls."

Catelyn felt her face fall into a most unladylike expression. "You came all this way to... spit in my face?"

"Cat, I-"

Cat found her feet. "Northern trade saved the Riverlands! How much beef and potatoes and barley! Five thousand barrels of jam because you had thousands inland with scurvy!"

"Seven hells, I know! But we aren't getting half the trade!" Edmure massaged his eyes, scratching at his scalp and running his fingers through his beard just like their father. "Your merchants use our roads at lower costs, only to sell all their goods in the Westerlands. This is not a short time coming, and we warned that the Westermen started a stink about the dowry and would be pulling merchants from our markets."

"I spoke with the brothers," Catelyn began. "They assured me that it was safe for Rivermen to trade in the Westerlands."

"Aye, in Lannisport or in the shadow of a great house, but the roads between are rife with bandits. Tywin Lannister has a rabid dog problem, all hidden in his mountains." Edmure rose to his feet and crossed the room suddenly, pulling the belt and scabbard from where it rested by his sister's bedside. "Seven hells."

He said it with awe, and Catelyn took some pride. Valyrian steel made a beautiful weapon, and hers doubly so. "Nightfall."

"You've not changed the name?"

"With winter, night gathers, and there is power in a name." She tossed him the next garment. "You're here, so make yourself useful.

He did so, though not before he looked down at her midsection. It was flat but soft – three children – but Edmure looked at the scar below her navel that ran from hip to hip. "You must've been... in half."

"The scar is the same length, though I am far smaller." She indicated where her belly was with Arya, larger than either Robb or Sansa.

"Does it hurt?" Edmure said as much with a softness to his voice, but a tension. He wasn't a little boy anymore, but a man, and Catelyn detected his fear and anger that his sister almost died. "Who did it? How?"

Of course he heard the stories. Everyone north of the Neck knew the story. "No, it does not hurt. Does that hurt?" She pointed at a scar on his eyebrow, from when he had run into the maester's study and smashed a glass bottle into his face at the age of four. "Ser Rodrik Cassel, Winterfell's late master-at-arms, held the blade. He had only done it on a pig, but knew I could live."

"Why?"

The truth was because she had three arrows in her and a broken leg. Because the siege was broken and if she was to die, better she die bringing life into this world screaming, then lay down dying when there was still breath in her body and not raped with her gravid belly pummelled for fun by some vicious Greyjoy.

But Edmure did not need the truth, his wife not having died under any circumstances but the natural, when the Green Fork burst its banks last spring and flooded the road, drowning Alysanne Blackwood's camp as she slept.

But he was infatuated with her, and might have grown to love her properly despite the important politics of their marriage. "Because she's my daughter. I could not... I just had to. When she would not turn within me, one or both of us soon to die... Jory could have escaped with her, if necessary. As it is, he fell defending us before Lord Gerion arrived."

He tied her into the gambeson and dress as only a former squire could, his lacing on her sleeves far neater than that of her maids. "Whereas I didn't even know her long enough to miss her."

Catelyn's heart broke for brother. "But you miss her now, little brother. Grief is just love enduring." He was not teary or upset, though they embraced regardless. She had never had to mother her brother, but they were still close, and she would always be thankful for that. "It's true, gold travels better. A proclamation from Ned to get the mill grinding, with a... preference for Seagard among ships from the North and Iron Isles."

"That sounds too good to be true."

"It's a flaw of our people to not take our laurels when we get them, little brother. The Riverlands could be torn by war tomorrow, but you and father finally built something our house was too weak to do before."

She buckled Nightfall high on her waist, out of necessity so the tip of the scabbard did not drag on the ground, but also cinching her like one of her mother's corsets despite the thick layers. The Mormont women tried to be men at war, but Catelyn was *Lady* Stark. Why could she not bring poise, patience, and modesty to warfare? She need only be passive with her husband, per the Seven, but even Ned would hate nothing more than if she were passive.

"The issue as I see it is Tywin's adventuring. The problems of the Westerlands are spilling into the Riverlands because of his abandonment of his landed knights and smallfolk." Edmure escorted her down to Hammerhorn's hall, the both of them coughing throughout the dank, smoky halls. "I thought you were doing away with the Ironmen?"

"When those given the option to surrender do so, you must help them to their feet, or else they will strike your neck. Tywin Lannister taught me that."

"You learn from him?"

"I would be a fool not too. Tywin Lannister is many things, but a fool is not one of them. His knowledge of leadership and war were once unmatched." Catelyn inhaled the great hall as Jory and her other guards fell in behind her, along with a few of his knights and Blackwood archers. It was crowded and the mood was celebratory, as much from the news as the Goodbrothers themselves always anxious to add to the festivities.

"Hail, Stark!" Lord Gorold Goodbrother atood with his horn in hand.

Every voice answered, "Hail!" and quieted as Catelyn glided up the dais, chin up and eyes forward. As she took the place of honour as scion of House Goodbrother's liege, satisfaction flooded her mind, and she let it put her face at ease.

For years, she was her father's heir, and after Edmure was born she was a future great lady, so she had tolerated much, from jeers to leers to exploring hands in dances, to a husband she did not know and a loveless life forgotten in the snow. Where she was now, she had earned. Done it herself without all the blood her advisors once insisted upon, save her own. "Hail, Goodbrother!"

"Hail!"

Catelyn raised her horn and drank. Ale was far too sweet. No wonder men loved it. "This was a trying winter, there is no denying. But I look upon you all, Ironman, Valeman, and Northman, sea and mountain and ice, let it echo to our enemies... here, we have built a future. Winter came, and winter has gone!"

They cheered as Catelyn sat and ordered more casks brought in, finding her seat and finally taking a breath. "You know your audience."

She chortled at the man to her right. Tygett Lannister was a man of few words yet they were always sage, even if he never realized it. "Words are wind."

"Have you gone native?" a much more playful voice said, driving Catelyn to her feet to embrace Gerion Lannister. "We southrons deserve to be a little more ostentatious."

"Only you Lannisters." Gerion laughed, and with his gold earrings, chains, rings, and gold-threaded doublet, he could not deny it. "There are Northern fashions, I assure you. Some Reach here, Riverlands and exiled Vale there, you might even call it cosmopolitan."

Gerion chuckled as he sat, forcing his elder brother down the table so he could sit next to Lady Stark. "If cosmopolitan is what interests you, what say you to more Westermen in your tracts? I've a daughter your son's age, as well."

Catelyn enjoyed the alliance with the Lannisters, but the youngest brother of a lord who could offer only gold was of little value to her. "Jeyne's mother... Spicer, was it?"

"Oh, leave off it. Sybil's not so bad, nor is her pedigree. I was the fool that let her drag me to bed."

"Maidens of small houses have few options. What of these Westermen?" Catelyn tucked in to a salmon steak the size of her head, forcing Gerion into the position of storyteller. Their fathers families being closely aligned in the War of the Ninepenny Kings had left them in the same circles as children. Gerion as the youngest was given the chance to feel older than someone, and Catelyn, as the eldest, feel the youngster.

Though their friendship existed more on ravens and the occasional dance, they had both used it to help broker the armistice that brought all the kingdoms to the Gods Eye three years before, though neither had seen it.

Gerion said, "Given the... state of affairs in Bear Island-"

"Your brother sacked it. Go on."

Gerion reddened. "A fort on the Frozen Shore. There is a river mouth that would serve as our next ranging point."

"Your brother's next outpost, you mean. And right on our doorstep?"

"Officially, the Frozen Shore is north of the Wall, and officially beyond the purview of House Stark."

"The Ice River spills into the sea *south* of the Wall." Catelyn took another bite and chewed slowly.

"The state of Bear Island was not so grand before, but now it is built back better thanks to Lannister engineers and Lannister gold. We do not seek return on investment, but we know what we have given you. Rather, the Mormonts must now find some way of supporting their new castle and hamlets on their own. Whaling is plenty lucrative in the Sunset Sea, as is mining in the Frostfangs, according to our scouts." Gerion returned to his soup but frowned, as it had cooled. "And then who knows. The Frozen Shore cannot go on forever, and our explorers sail farther from Lonely Light every expedition."

"To say nothing of the cold weather, lack of building materials, work force, or any signs of civilized life beyond savages in ice huts, I am to believe Lord Tywin wants this all for some whale oil and pelts?" Catelyn tried to read Gerion, and even behind his thicker beard and broader shoulders he resembled a younger man, though no less gregarious.

Her father and uncle said he was most like his father as well, which gave Catelyn other ideas.

Gerion, however, proved Hoster and Brynden Tully wrong. "You say savages, I say work force. The North came to the Iron Islands as revenge for Barrowton, just as you went to Lannisport for Bear Island." Gerion sipped his wine. "My lord brother has found men of quality who know how to... address local populations. Besides, there is no reason we cannot have a civilized dialogue. Value for value. And our scouts show there is no one residing on such land. No castles, not even a settlement. They may not even notice us."

Catelyn knew of Tywin and House Lannister's takings in Sothoryos and dealings with the Volantenes for logistical support. "The population will be your problem," she said, maintaining her light tone and easy posture. Gerion listened closely, and did not see how her pinky twitched towards Nightfall. She sensed the association between wolf and lion neared its end. "There are no more, likely fewer, than half a million wildlings."

"The Westerlands are densely populated, and Volantis is taking back the night with whale oil lamps." He swirled his goblet and inspected the colour. "Dornish red in the Iron Islands. An entire bottle for a pair of gold lions. Made possible by Lannister ships that bring the south and Narrow Sea to this dark and stormy part of the world. You should see the size of the trees in Sothoryos, Cat."

On the backs of slaves, Catelyn was certain. And the North's trees were plenty large.

A noble of the Tywin Lannister's stock flesh-trading a world away, was still trading in flesh, as if distance made up for the crime. "The Haunted Forest's trees are large as well, no?" Gerion continued. "The Lengii have a spice the Myrish and Valemen say gives them visions of the Seven. We cannot make the journey for some time, but with larger ships..."

"The Arryns still assault our eastern shore," Catelyn said with a genuine shake of her head. "They have only just been pushed from the Three Sisters and new houses raised to secure them, all while we must address a... a protest form of the faith that has grown in popularity across the North. To say nothing of the blockade between Widow's Watch and Witch Isle keeping it far too perilous for all but the most vital trading missions."

"But with House Royce on Pyke and the Moat's rebuilding... Not a canal, but an aqueduct of sorts for transport overland of-" Gerion stopped, already crestfallen at Catelyn's face. "Reform of the Watch for better travel north of the Wall, then. The pelts alone... Sand from Dorne from the Neck to address the swamps? Widening of roads has proven-"

"My lord, the North is vast. Vast and diverse, and any of the myriad problems that can be solved or addressed are being addressed in order of importance." He opened his mouth to continue but she spoke over him. "The Moat is undergoing only basic repairs, my lord. The Neck is too vital to the defense of the North, and there are more important projects at Sea Dragon Point and Flint's Finger." Catelyn took control of the conversation. "If House Lannister wants to build on the Frozen Shore, they are welcome to do so. But I would remind you that the wildlings, uncivilized though they may be, carry the blood of the First Men, same as anyone south of the Wall. They are men, same as you. Thus, if you attempt any sort of action north of the Wall, not only will you do so without the support of House Stark, Winterfell and its bannermen, or the Night's Watch, you will invite horrors of the flesh on a scale you have never seen."

"But-"

"Use that education Casterly Rock purchased you in the free cities, my lord." She hardened her voice. "Imagine a people that do not know your name and do not fear you. More importantly, who do not fear your brother and know only the Rains of Castamere as a meaningless song. But the North remembers." Gerion's eyes were hard and unblinking, focused and matching his brother Tygett, the quietest of the brothers with the most scars. He missed part of his lower lip, left ear, and the tip of his nose, and he was chilling to look at, especially with how his fist gripped his meat knife. Catelyn, her guards, and Lord Goodbrother bore the only weapons in the hall. "If you were operating under the belief that I or any of my lord husband's bannermen would help you do to another what you did to the Cleganes, the Farmans, and the Greyjoys, then you were mistaken."

Tygett's voice passed his teeth in a rumble. "House Greyjoy gave us no choice. The siege of Pyke-"

"Was a siege. We needed as many of Balon's four children alive. Now, we have none and three new pirate lords." Tygett still glared at her defiantly, though Gerion averted his gaze. "Now, tell me of Rolland. Is he excited for his fostering?"

***

Catelyn dismissed her maids and shut herself into her chambers with Arya. Word of the storm breaking had arrived during the feast, which turned an already raucous celebration all the more so among those lords and warriors bound for home.

Knowing better as she unbuckled Nightfall, she pushed it onto her bed as Arya deftly climbed out of her crib to reach toward the blade's hilt. Catelyn tutted as she tugged off her dress and piled more wood on the fire, moving Nightfall to her bedside and bundling Arya in her arms. "Did you eat?"

"App!"

"Apples?" Arya nodded. "What else?"

"Shh!"

"Fish. F..i..sh..." She sounded it out.

"Fsh." Arya devolved into a giggling heap, burrowing herself into her mother's chest and snoring easily. Catelyn should have slept quickly, but instead she watched Arya. She felt so far from home before the birth, but in Arya's grey eyes, dark hair, and long features, she saw Ned, and missed Robb and Sansa a little less.

She would see them soon, after the fleet's return to Sea Dragon point and a peaceful ride through the Wolfswood. Discussions of Robb's fostering and betrothal would begin, and the same for Sansa.

Arya shook in a sudden panic, waking with frantic eyes Catelyn put at ease with a look and a caress of her daughter's back. "Hush, child. Soon, you will see the lands of your father. Robb will belong to Winterfell, and Sansa to the North. But you, Arya, will be all mine, and it is us who will keep the North safe."

"Awoo," Arya breathed.

Catelyn offered her lowest, quietest howl in answer. "Yes, my child. You are a wolf. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives."

Chapter Text

With Gilberto gathering sellswords and Aegor organising the fort, Marq and his squires took to the city proper. Though they were not the only crew of Braavosi-aligned marines and agents on the island, that they travelled as a three kept the locals off their backs.

Viserys had donned a heavy mail-lined doublet and brigandine, and vambraces and greaves with a leather cloak, and his short sword and one-handed halberd. He desired the weight of his shield, but Marq chided, "It's tight quarters, and you have a dagger and knife besides."

Viserys wanted to argue that those were for other purposes, but he took the hit and donned his gorget just to be safe. Tytus dressed lighter in leather and ring mail with a shoulder cape, while Ser Marq bore his heavy mail, leather, and whale-skin cloak, with only half as many weapons as usual. They surely looked grizzled, and Viserys all the more mysterious as he tied his hair under an scarf and donned a hood over top – only Lyseni marines had white hair, and Lady Danelle had advised Viserys that he should not be the one to cause a diplomatic incident.

They worked their way through an outer district of winding streets around rocky estates, and into the maze itself. Viserys had expected a simple structure of stone bricks, not a six-story megalith of fused grey and white stone whose pathways snaked for hundreds of miles over most of the island.

"While the princes and magisters do have control of most of the island from without, within the freebooters and sellsails have taken control." Marq led them around a street priest in a hair shirt with a long, matted beard. He had two axe-bearing Norvoshi warriors for guards, distinct for the knotting patterns depicting scenes of their god of redemption and rebirth. "With the backing of the Bearded Priests, it seems."

Tytus's hand had drifted to his sword, though he dropped it when he saw how it made the locals follow him with their eyes. "Stands to reason government lies in the heart of the maze."

Marq snorted. "Government? Gods I forget how fucking green you both are." Marq waved for them to follow, down a narrow street barely large enough for two men abreast, the ceiling low enough to touch. Stalls lined the maze walls to either side, with narrow residences above them constructed from driftwood and whale bone. "When I said sellsails and freebooters, I meant it."

The scar-faced knight made a sharp left down a steep flight of stairs into a den of the literal variety, the walls, roof, and floor all tightly-packed dirt and smooth stone. Viserys felt he was in a far more ancient part of the world than anywhere in Essos or Westeros he had ever been, the very air stale and dank with a thousand-year rot.

"Speak only when I say, and keep your eyes open." Marq gave his squires a firm glare before sitting on a squat stool across a small table from a small, bald man with a falcon's nose. He carried the distinct rapier and earrings of a bravo, but the dark teal and brown preferred by Braavosi admirals. Not just any admiral. "I thought you were known here?"

"Before he was First Sword, Syrio Forel had a grimmer face, and far more hair." One adroit hand rubbed his empty scalp. "Your squires as well, they should do to cherish their hair. You, Lyseni?"

Marq grunted for Viserys to speak. "Not technically. Syrio Forel?"

Syrio smiled, sly as a cat. "You are... a lion, Westerman?" Syrio looked to Tytus, resting his chin in his hand. Marq rolled his eyes at the flippancy and stood to fetch drinks. "Very far from gold mines."

"Only through my father, First Sword." Tytus stood a little straighter. "But once I am a knight, I hope to return."

"The conquering hero?"

"The prodigal son," Viserys said, insisting that Tytus be honest. "He has been left to his own devices long enough. We'll be knights within two years." Viserys spied a few other Lyseni with silver and gold hair, so he removed his hood and scarf. "But for now, what would you have of us?"

Syrio frowned at the squires cutting through his witty repartee. Tytus added, "We are sellswords, Master Forel. Not sell-diplomats."

"I am no master, sellsword. Merely Syrio Forel." He slapped the table just as Marq sat. Beer for him and watered mead for Viserys and Tytus. "There is a... captain. Near a vice-admiral by Braavosi standards. Ibbenese, with some pull in Lorath's whaling industry. He has proven... unnameable to Braavosi schools of thought. That, and his joyous participation in the Shivering Sea flesh trade. They've started raiding the Vale and the North, and we neither want nor need Westeros, at peace or war, turning their eye east."

Marq nodded, downing his drink and hissing. "We can kill a slaver and his thugs. Sounds like standard shit." Marq snorted and spat in his hand. "You got the payment? In gold, as specified."

"I don't think he's done, Ser," said Viserys.

Syrio winked at Viserys. "The killing of Captain Togg Joth would be nice, but simply a secondary request. No, they took someone. Someone the Vale, much of Westeros, believes to be dead."

"We're not thieves, Forel," Marq growled. "Who is the target?"

Syrio smirked, spitting in his own palm and shaking Marq's much bulkier hand. "The Lady Arryn, Lysa Tully. Red of hair, like copper, with blue eyes and dimples. Slender and delicate, and, when she was taken, with child."

"Why would she be caught dead outside of the Eyrie?" Tytus asked. Viserys almost closed his ears out of reflex, but for a mission he supposed he needed to know. He rarely sought information about the Seven Kingdoms, partially out of adolescent emotion, but mostly because he did not like being reminded his family was still fighting after almost seven years. "What, visiting a lover?"

"Nothing like that. A part-Braavosi house among the Fingers. The entire household dead, but Lady Lysa, missing. I had the pleasure when the Masked Falcon and she treated with the Sealord a few years ago." Syrio grew more somber. "But the rumours are not good. While Lady Lysa herself has not been brutalized, she may still have seen or been subject to other torments."

Viserys asked, "Why should that matter? Alive is alive."

"Lord Arryn... has made it clear that his heir is of more importance."

"She may have lost the babe, boy," said Marq. "We understand. If she is alive?"

Syrio gave a disengaged shrug. "The Andals are men of utility and pride. They abandon their daughters and wives if they are mistreated beyond their own control, and go to war against sons for the sins of the father."

"The confirmation is what they want," Marq explained. "And our word is as good as gold."

Syrio passed a sack from his cloak to Marq. "Five-hundred gold falcons, for your silence and fidelity, and another thousand if the heir is intact and safely returned to Braavos."

Viserys felt sick. Tytus had a grim look on his face, so he assumed the Westerman felt the same. Marq had his typical grimace. "And if we do kill Captain Jagged Tooth?"

"Togg Joth," Syrio corrected. "The reward for his head is twenty-thousand Braavosi silver. Your current fee includes watching his fort on the northern tip of the island, but with his death, some doors may open." Syrio made his goodbyes and stood. "Syrio Forel shall come to your fort again within the month. Until then, farewell."

Marq waited a few minutes before urging the squires finish their drinks and depart, his squires close behind. They exited the maze and walked north along the perilous eastern shore, mines and tall, leaning manses of black stone clinging to the island's shore of shattered seastone. Following the street had them walking on top of the maze some two-hundred feet above the sea soon after, the stone slick from rain and smooth from time, which all made for perilous walking. Viserys felt sick seeing a few people tip, slip, and fall to their death. He had seen bodies fall off the walls of Qohor and some tall towers in Vaes Dothrak, but those deaths were all punishments or self-inflicted. Death by accident seemed so... unfinished.

Viserys felt his heart in his throat at the height, dizzying as he looked out on the Shivering Sea. It was a rolling plain of steel and snow, crashing waves making for perilous travel. A few big-bellied whalers and fishing vessels eked out a living, but with all the dead sailors, sharks were the main taking.

Tytus indicated a wharf at the bottom of the cliffs as they descended another wooden walkway, creaking underfoot. A crane hauled at a bloody heap in the water, reeled up to reveal the black and white skin of a massive sea creature. It was too large to be a dolphin or even a shark, and its long black fin looked like something out of a story. "Sea wolves, the Dothraki call them," Marq said.

"Orca," Viserys and Tytus both corrected.

Marq snorted dismissively. "Come. We're almost there."

Togg Joth's fort was a fortified shipyard, a combination of stone, ice, and hulks of ruined ships making a forty-foot outer wall with five watchtowers twice again as tall. Within there were warehouses and a fortified dockmaster's house, typical of all ports, while the yards between were dotted with overseers and chain gangs building ships.

"Norvoshi wood," muttered Marq.

"They've already withdrawn support, but they've their own warriors." Tytus said, indicating a few Norvoshi sellswords with axes and straight short-swords, and fur-lined hats and well-made ringmail and plate armour.

"And knights. 'Armoured men of the Hills,' Melara called them." Viserys indicated his own captured Norvoshi ringmail and leather brigandine. "Their swords resemble those of the Andals."

"It's said the Norvoshi and the Andals both began as former conquests of the Sarnori." Gilberto came up behind them with a group of twenty marines and forty various sellswords, freebooters, and street toughs from Lorassyon. "How shall we do this?"

Marq indicated the open gates. "There's no time like the present. Get in, barricade the gates. Viserys, take that eastern watchtower. Tytus, the west." Marq stepped up, cracking his neck and his knuckles, drawing his sword, and cutting down the first Ibbenese guard who stood up to him. "Move!"

"Your father's half mad!" Tytus cried as GIlberto set a line with ten sellswords and sent the marines in to secure the fort.

Viserys took the ladder up past a guard, shoving the next who tried to stop him off the wall. He drew his halberd on the next man, driving the spike through the mail and whale hide on his chest. The fort's guards were mostly Ibbenese, stout with wiry hair caked with scented oils and a salty sea grime. The next Viserys deflected with his halberd, then drew his knife, sidestepping a sword and cutting the man at the knee. He fell, and Viserys hacked his halberd into his shoulder.

He fell down screaming and would die slow, but Viserys did not have time to finish him off. The top of the tower was home to a heavy ballistae and three archers. The first Viserys cut at the ankles before he came up the ladder, the next he gutted with his short sword. The third and forth both shot at him.

The ballistae bolt went under his legs, tearing out the back of the watchtower. The archer's arrow landed in his chest, the tip scratching his skin but held back by his brigandine's rings.

"Yield!" Viserys tore the bow from the archer's hand and punched him hard across the face. The man at the ballistae scrambled to draw a short sword, and Viserys chopped down on his wrist. He twisted his halberd at the last moment, and instead of amputating his hand he simply broke the marksman's wrist. "Yield."

He yielded. "Joth's in the fort but he'll be running for his ship. I swear on my mother." He was Lorathi with a strange accent, between Norvoshi and something old and foreign.

Viserys looked down on the courtyard. Tytus had taken the other watchtower, while Ser Marq and the sellswords besieged the dockmaster's house and the marines secured the shipyard. Gilberto was below, holding the gate and barricading them inside. The marines grappled with Ibbenese sellsails in the yard, but the walls were mostly clear to the water.

Skating down the ladder, Viserys picked up a longsword and an iron-studded wooden shield from a dead Norvoshi knight as he ran to the small dock. It was flanked by more ship hulks and icebergs, some making for perilous anchors that threatened to pull the smaller ships out to sea.

Running with his shield up and wishing he had his helmet, Viserys ran by more Ibbenese and Norvoshi sellswords, paying them no mind but taking dispatching many a lightly-armoured freebooter and sellsail. They could not defend against his new sword's good steel, forged to Golden Company's standards during their residence and Norvos. Like all Norvoshi weapons, it was slightly shorter and wider than a standard longsword, with a two-handed handle and a large pommel, making the weapon perfect for sweeping cuts and arcing blocks.

He clobbered one slaving pirate aside with his shield, throwing him into the icy water, then slashed across the arm of another. Viserys kicked him off the dock towards the water, only for him to stagger across the sea's frozen surface.

Viserys's jaw fell open in surprise, even as the pirate charged, slipped, then started crawling his way back on to the dock. Viserys parried a quick cut and thrust back, pushing his sword through the slaver's flank and out his armpit. When he fell back, he crashed through the ice, sinking into the black abyss below Lorassyon.

The dock was occupied by three large vessels: two round-bellied whaling ships and a Lorathi galleon getting underway. Not wanting to give away his position, but also not wanting to risk being alone on a ship in the Shivering Sea. On his way to the galleon, Viserys smashed a few oil lanterns, starting a fire in the hopes that he could follow the smoke back to shore if he did get lost.

The gangway retracted out of reach but the anchor was still trundling upward, which made Viserys throw the longsword and shield down the deck as a distraction. Vaulting to the anchor chain, he scrambled up, killed one of the men drawing it up, and sent the ship, halfway under sail, into a tailspin.

Above, Viserys disappeared into the rigging, stronger than as a boy on the *Caterina Viola* but larger and gangly as well. Soon he was high overhead, a few clouds hiding him from arrows and crossbow bolts as he tried tangling and tearing the rigging and masts. Viserys took perverse pride in the chaos, letting his hair get torn from the hood by the wind. With the fire below and a bloody blade in hand, he felt like Barristan the Bold and Duncan the Tall. Those knights, at least, still sat high in his boyish heart.

Men scrambled up the rigging to do away with him even as Marq and the marines moved towards the ship against a crowd of Ibbenese whalers. Better arms and the threat of death kept them away from the sellswords, but they had the support of sellsails and a growing crowd of armed slavers hoping to protect their stock. Tytus and Gilberto had riled the chain gangs, freeing them into a tool-armed mob wreaking havoc among their enslavers. Viserys thought it all a beautiful sight.

A slender Lorathi bravo climbed up the rigging, drawing a rapier. Viserys met him with his short sword, parrying easily but giving ground as they duelled atop mainmast's highest boom. It swayed in the wind and he wheeled to catch his balance. The Lorathi thrust but over-extended, and even as he cut Viserys along the arm, he went teetering off the boom. He left a red smear on an iceberg before sliding into the water.

Another frozen wind crashed on them from the depths of the Shivering Sea. Viserys grit his teeth and wished for some good wool to cover his ears, still not used to the damp and the cold ache a year of winter on the sea left in his bones.

Only one of the fort's defenders still pursued Viserys, the fighting long since moved back to the docks. The deck was relatively quiet and Viserys, spying the proper line, gave it a chop, swung and kicked the sellsail to the water before descending to the ship.

He picked up the Norvoshi sword and a square Lorathi buckler, dashing below deck and barricading himself inside. "Near the bow..." Viserys got his bearings and started moving to the stern, sticking to the shadows as he went. The squeaking rats and groaning wood set his teeth on edge, while the rare fleeing slave or bed-warmer spooked him as they passed. "Fighting in the sun in an open field. Much better than... this!"

An Ibbenese woman charged him with a cast-iron skillet in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. Viserys took the first on the flat of sword and the second on his shield, stepping into her guard, stout and strong as she might have been, and driving his head into her face. "Enough! I am here to rescue Lady Lysa."

The Ibben frowned. "Lee-sa?" Viserys nodded. She grunted and nodded back towards the captain's cabin, holding her bloody nose while staggering to her feet to flee.

Viserys did not wait to see if she was going to fetch a warrior. The door to the captain's cabin was locked, Viserys giving it a swift kick but was rebuffed. "Seven hells." Viserys wedged the sword in the door latch, forced it down and out, and popped the lock.

He smirked as he entered, raising the shield just in time to catch a crossbow bolt. It embedded through the beaten leather and bronze halfway up the shaft. The man who shot at him cursed and raised a blood-caked axe to Lysa Tully's neck.

Togg Joth was a pimple-faced and pox-scarred Lorathi, with straw-yellow hair and a severe underbite of rotting yellow teeth. Beneath him he held her, screaming and wailing, coppery auburn hair and fear in her blue eyes. "Back up! Or I do her in!"

Viserys held his sword between them. "Let her go, captain. We have no quarrel with you. What happened to the babe?"

"Heh. We used that dead mess for chum." Viserys paled as the woman's screams fell to a blood-chilling wail. "Oi! Shut it! Or we'll give you something to really-"

"Let her go! Marines and sellswords are all over the docks!" Viserys eyed Togg Joth's axe, held close under Lysa's neck as his other hand held her up by the hair. "Your baby?"

"He, they- he... They killed her!" Lysa screeched and drove her hands, long nails and gnarled fingers, into Togg Joth's crotch between his armour, grabbing and pulling with a sound like snapping chicken skin. Viserys cringed as the slaver wailed, staggering backwards as bloody chunks fell out from between his legs.

Lysa fell backwards into him, both screaming, but Viserys dashed forward to pull her free. "My lady? My lady!"

She battered his chest then stopped, looking up at him almost bashfully. "You look like... the silver prince." She fainted in his arms. Viserys cursed as he pulled her up. He was nearing manhood, but nowhere near strong enough to carry a woman grown by himself.

Lady Lysa was, however, a rickety bag of bones, a weight Viserys could manage once he got his shoulder under her. He thought better of immediate escape, however, putting her down on a cot in the corner and barricading the doors. He used Togg Joth's axe to cut off his head, shoving it in one sack as he filled a second with the various loot of a slave ship's captain's cabin. All the chattel and flesh-trade documents, he thought to burn at first, but Ma Cate and Ser Marq would know who to pass them to to possibly hinder other slavers.

Lysa stirred. "What's that-? Ahh!" She screeched at the sight of Togg Joth's head.

Viserys clamped his hand over her mouth. "My lady! You must be quiet. There are enemies about and I am only one squire."

She moaned into his hand for a few seconds more before running out of breath, Viserys meanwhile looking up and out towards the decks beyond as the fighting intensified. She nodded a bit and Viserys let off his hand. "Where are we?"

"Lorassyon. The Free Cities. Essos."

"I know where Lorath is!" She smacked his arm and it actually hurt, likely due to his bruises. Viserys always had bruises. "I would be sick again if I could." She paled at the sight of the dead body. "Get me out of here."

"The fighting, Lady Lysa."

She stood and, timidly but with surprising speed, opened a porthole to look outside at the chaos of looting, brawling, and slaver-torture. "They won't hear. Men hear nothing over their fighting." She went to a chest by the cot, digging through it towards a layered dress of blue and teal. Tully and Arryn colours. On her fair skin, were she not so thin and weak, she would be regal.

"Lady Arryn, have you something... protective?" Viserys looked at the spare armour hung on the wall, too large for Lysa and himself.

"What of the horses? A wheelhouse?"

"My lady, we're on a rocky island with barely any goats. We'll need to run. Have you eaten? I've this..." Viserys dug into his hip pouch for some smoked meat and dried fruit he kept in supply. "Once we're at the fort, we'll see to something hot."

She gave him a disgusted scowl and returned to trying on dresses, choosing something of chiffon and linen when she had layers of wool she was discarding. "Avert your eyes, squire!"

Viserys staggered backwards at her unpleasant volume, though all the better to watch the door and keep them secure. "It is a wet winter outside, Lady Arryn. Dress appropriately."

"Do not deign to order me around. You are but a squire."

"You are in my charge. I will do whatever necessary so you are alive and intact." She poked him in the shoulder to turn around, having donned a thick robe dress of slate-grey wool. It was embroidered with images of dancing trouts and falcons, with the rare prancing maiden. Viserys indicated some wool breeches. "Those as well."

Lysa groaned childishly but donned them anyway, offering Viserys a quick if impolite view of her pale legs and buttocks. Viserys quickly averted his gaze while tossing her a pair of boots from a mound of loot he thought might fit. "May we go now? Mother's mercy, I knew he would send for me but taking so long?"

Viserys's ears thought the fighting had died down, listening at the door and hearing just a few groans of pain, not the constant clash of steel. "You're right to have faith in your husband, ladyship." Viserys slowly eased the door open. "Grab my belt."

"What do you-"

"Grab it!" He snarled. She took it firmly but with a whimper. "Don't let go. Unless I'm dragging you on the ground, you stay silent."

She nodded and he took off, in a stalking jog back the way he had come through the depths of the Lorathi slave ship.

Chapter Text

Crossing the lower deck of the ship and climbing the ladder to the hatch nearest the gangway, Viserys hauled Lysa up behind him into the honed spikes of Braavosi boarding axes.

"Viserys!" Aegor hauled him upright. "And with the prize! Father!"

The marines and Ser Marq had staked their claim over the docks and much of the ship, the fighting dying down as they gathered more and more of the escaping slaves onto the Lorathi galleon. The *Three Princes* was a beautiful beast of a ship, with the iron framing and hull sheets of an Ibbenese whaler, but the massive sails and deep holds of a swan ship of the Summer Isles.

Viserys ferried Lysa to the co-opted harbourmaster's cottage where Marq, Gilberto, and Tytus were planning out their escape. Gilberto said, "We can make it down the shore to our fort, call the return, and fortify. We have ships all throughout the Lorathi archipelago."

"Yes, but so do the fleeing Lorathi," said Tytus. "They will be desperate to reach Braavos or Norvos's outposts on the Axe."

Marq indicated Lorath proper. "Lorassyon itself is of no great use to Braavos. They will pacify it after Lorath Bay, so long as it is pacified."

"Which it is." Viserys deposited Lysa between them. "Togg Joth is dead, in no small part thanks to Lady Arryn."

"My lady," purred Gilberto before kissing her hand, Lysa swooning at his roguish moustache and beard. "Your part-Braavosi host, I am certain, was a poor protector. You shall be safe with us."

"Oh, Petyr... I mean, yes, thank you, ser." Viserys beckoned a marine and field nurse to take charge of Lysa.

Women of Ma Cate's ilk, younger and not wanting to simply keep the hearth, had been recruited steadily into the Braavosi navy. It was simple, that if their wars against Lorath and Pentos were to bear fruit, Braavos would need every body, man or woman, to aid in the war effort.

"She lost the babe," Viserys said once they were safely in a warmer room of the cottage, Lysa sleeping soundly in a small, soft bed in one corner. "Miscarried or otherwise. She's too thin for anything else."

"Well, we'll return her, for all the good it will do." Marq indicated the quieting battle beyond. "We should be off before this storm gets any worse."

There were nods of assent all around, retreating out and, with the marines, sellswords and over a hundred almost-sold persons, piling onto the *Three Princws* and returning to the other end of the island. The marines had all started out as sailors, so when Aegor bellowed, "All hands!" they hurried to secure lines and unfurl sails.

As sellswords in the employ of the First Sword, Ser Marq and his squires were assigned to Lysa in the captain's cabin Viserys had just captured. Tytus grimaced at the cot even as Lysa sat comfortably. A nurse still attended her, a pale-skinned woman with wavy dark hair and blue eyes that looked purple in the low light of the cabin. From one of Braavos's new colonies nearer Pentos, Viserys reckoned, her hair not curly enough and her skin not dark enough to be from Braavos proper.

Once Marq and Tytus had gone, Viserys sat in the corner, watching the nurse fret over Lysa, holding her wrist then making Viserys turn around as she did other examinations that involved the Lady of the Vale baring her skin. "She's sleeping." Viserys turned back to the nurse removing her apron and letting down her hair. She wore a high-waisted doublet and a long, heavy skirt of layered broadcloth and batting, and she donned a heavy fur-lined peacoat on top of it.

"The cold is something else, eh?" Viserys said.

The nurse nodded politely, turning her back. Viserys wasn't surprised – most reputable women did not trust sellswords – so he simply tucked his hands into his armpits and levelled his gaze at Lysa's sleeping form. The blankets gently rose and fell half with her breath, and Viserys found his breathing matching hers.

His eyes drifted shut. He saw his mother bleeding in the birthing bed, then burning on the pyre.

Breathing harshly, Viserys jerked awake, startling the nurse in her chair by Lysa's bedside. He smiled tightly and apologetically, and she made some sort of... sound. Annoyed? "Is she well? There were bruises, and she seemed quite thin."

The nurse sighed, drawing a piece of metal from her collar she slipped into the book to not lose her place. It looked like some sort of silver pin. "She is certainly not *well*. I'm surprised she'd not been through worse, but it seems whomever took her... well, she mentioned hearing orders."

"She woke? Why didn't-" Viserys had stood but then sat again, forcing himself to be calm. "I did not know she woke."

"She has been in and out." She parted hair from Lysa's face. "She was always too delicate for this world." Viserys wondered what that meant. "Her babe lives as well."

"She was certain she miscarried. Or seemed as if-"

"A squire you may be, and a worldly one, I would hope. But still a squire." The nurse stood. "She needs rest and quiet. Please." She indicated the door. Viserys nodded, grabbing his sword and pack and walking out the door, the nurse locking it behind them.

"Seven know what she's been through. And what Lord Arryn will do when she's returned to him."

"But by then she won't be your problem anymore, will she? Out of sight, out of mind for your people, is that not right?" Viserys was a touch offended, though the nurse seemed to remember herself. "Apologies, sir."

"That's... that is quite alright." He stood a little straighter, just an inch taller than the nurse. She was tall. She appeared about as old as Gilberto, maybe a decade or so older than himself. "Viserys, madam..."

She smiled and her eyes widened broadly, looking him up and and down and breaking the ice a little more. "Lemore, you may call me." Viserys walked them out to the deck, looking north at some floating chunk of whale flesh, swollen and covered in birds. "The Golden Company, yes?"

She indicated Viserys's arm rings. Three of copper, and two of silver. "For almost six years," he said.

"Gods, you were just a boy," she said, clutching his arm.

Viserys shrugged her off. "How long have you been a nurse?"

"For just a year. I served in Bloodstone at first with the Dornish, then I heard they needed people up this way." Lemore leaned out over the railing, letting the mist wet her face. "You're Westerosi as well?"

Snow and rain stung his own cheeks, but it felt familiar. "How could you tell?"

"'Seven know' is not a common saying. You came from King's Crater?"

"The Golden Company has many Sunsetlanders in its ranks. And I've some blood of the Riverlands and Rhoyne in me as well." Something about Lemore itched the scar on his chest. The scent of the oil in her hair or the way her voice could be a little husky without her realising. "What brought you here? There's good land in Andalos and the Braavosian Coastlands. Work, coin... men."

"Plenty of men, hm?" She cocked her head and gave him a smirk. "Is that your plan? Knighthood and a nurse to cook your dinner?"

Viserys jawed a little at the flirtatious tone. Perhaps one day he should join Aegor at the brothel. "I would hope to do well by my... my wife, madam." Viserys tried to sound firm, as he did mean it, though he had never considered it. He was still just a sellsword, after all. He blushed hard as Lemore laughed. It was a song of a sound. "And in the Company, we all know how to mend wounds and prepare meals."

Lemore looked him up and down while he tried not to do the same, though not that he could see much behind layers of clothing beyond that her figure was womanly. She had full lips, a heat-shaped face, and the most haunting eyes – not blue, but violet. "What did you say your name was?" she asked.

"Viserys."

"Your family name?"

That woke him from her beauty. "I did not say." He tried to remember who she was, cornering her against the railing. The winds of winter tore at his hair and stuck it to his face. He smelt her again, but something else. "Why do you smell like wildfire?"

"Viserys?" Lemore held him by the shoulder as he stepped around her to throw his head off the railing, feeling hot and choked in his armour despite the frozen sea air. "What is your name?"

He held his head. *Burn them all!* the voice screamed. Viserys sat down on the deck, tucking his head between his knees as jagged emotion tore through him. The fear of the little boy and the anger of the dragon so rarely needed such release, but Viserys felt a different emotion instead: fear. "Viserys?"

Lemore looked down at him, but it was not Lemore. It was Princess Elia and Lady Ashara, looking down at him with Ser Barristan and Prince Llewyn. "I am well, madam." Viserys found his feet and turned from her, wiping his face of the tears and the rain as he escaped below deck.

***

Viserys kept his distance from everyone who knew him, which amounted to hurrying from the Lorathi galleon's cabin to the room he shared with Tytus in the fort. He undressed, scraped himself of dust, and tucked himself into a den of blankets by the fire. And while nesting, he found sleep, and he dreamed.

He dreamed of labyrinthine black stone passageways, every doorway a yawning chasm, the screaming of a beast at the far end of the hallway. It grew louder and more gruesome the closer he went, joined by the sounds of rending flesh and the smell of fire-roasted meat.

He saw a tall, broad-chested man with a crown of rubies and Valyrian steel, a black and grey blade in his hands. He sat in an empty void of smoke and cinder, and he was covered in weeping wounds. "Finish what he started. Take the heads of the men who help you."

Viserys tried to escape, twisting at the waist and screaming at himself to run away, but it was not him. It was that weak, soft, stupid princeling he thought he had killed on the streets of Braavos, and he petulantly walked forward, into the arms of the cruel and the mad.

Screams came next, his bleeding and gravid mother chasing him across a storm-wrought sea. Blood dripped like rain from her eyes and mouth, staining her white shift as she staggered towards him. With a rend and roar, a dragon tore its way out of her, half-formed with the body of an infant girl half-fused where its tail should be.

It wailed, cried like Daenerys, and finally Viserys stopped, finally finding the will to flee. He staggered and landed on his knees in tall grass atop turned dark earth. He was a cadet again, somewhere in the regimental chaos of the Golden Fields.

"Blackwood! Blackwood!"

"Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!"

Viserys led the shield wall but it dissolved in dragonflame, and suddenly he was alone in a field of ash and blackened bone, five spectres striding towards him, only one materialized into the tumbling silver-gold hair, ruby-encrusted armour, and black stallion of Rhaegar Targaryen.

He reached out towards Viserys to help him up, but Viserys looked away, only to be drawn back and see himself staring down at Rhaegar from the throne, cackling as the wildfire ate at his feet. "Burn them all!" he screamed. "Burn them all!" he wailed as wildfire consumed King's Landing.

"No!" He marched in lockstep, raising his pike and a golden shield, thirty golden rings on his arms. He felt strong and old and like a true Company man. "Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!"

"Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!"

"-lyrian steel so long as the Qohorik are scattered," said Tytus. "There is a growing enclave in Selhorys I would like to investigate."

"Have I been awake?" His bed appeared beneath him right next to the stove in their shared room. He was soaked and boiling, stripping off layers of blankets and then his small clothes, opening a window to finally breathe. "Were you talking to me?"

"You've only just overcome a fever!" Tytus slammed the window shut and tossed a pile of dry clothing at him. "And we've been locked away behind a storm."

"What about the Ibbenese?" The dry clothes were perfect on his clammy skin, cradling him as he sat in a dry armchair. "Or the Lorathi, for that matter?"

"We make for Lorath proper as soon as the storm clears." Tytus glanced through the blinds at a bright snowstorm, only white visible beyond. "And you've been in and out. Your fever needed to break."

Viserys drank a bowl of hot broth with roasted fish. "And the ladies?"

"The naval nurses are all well. Popular and each with a marriage proposal, the lot of them. One was asking after you and aided Marq and I with your care." Tytus had a new scar down the side of his head, but was otherwise unharmed.

"Lemore..." Viserys mumbled to himself. "And Lady Lysa?"

Tytus shivered. "The hooting fish is insisting she could not be pregnant. She's not been with a man since her lord husband, or so she claims. Lemore offered her moon tea if that was the fear." Tytus shrugged. "That is the limit of what I wish to know. She torments Gilberto most days when not trying to order people around."

"You could just confine her to quarters."

Scoffing loudly, Tytus poured himself some wine from their shared stock of loot. "For a dragon princeling, your memory is quite poor around ceremony. This is the Lady of the Vale. The Eyrie, the Mountains of the Moon, and all the rest of the ceremony. You can't just tell her 'no'."

"It's our duty to return her. We'll make for Braavos? Is our contract finally at an end?" Tytus shrugged again.

Viserys groaned, dressing warmly and donning the captured Norvoshi longsword. He liked the length of the blade and handle, almost a bastard sword. He wore just his warmest shirt, tunic, and doublet over that, adding his hooded cloak as well. "Come. Let's find our master."

Viserys led them down the fort to the fortified great hall at the heart of the fort. It was a combination meeting hall, general barracks, and triage for the injured, their ranks having swelled with the freedmen captured by the Ibbenese. Ser Marq was on the fringes of a conversation between Aegor, another marine officer, and a Braavosi vice-admiral, the two silver pins on his collar denoting as much.

He hurried to his squires. "Change of plans. The ship and our crew, and all these new... applicants for citizenship, are bound for Lorath to reinforce the occupation. We are summoned back to Braavos to begin mustering the Company."

Tytus looked a little dissapointed to not add another of the Free Cities to the notches in his belt, but Lorassyon had to be close enough. "In this weather, ser?" he asked.

"Soon as it lets up. The sea is fairer to the north, and the galleon is our capture."

"A ship!" Tytus shoved Viserys excitedly. "We- No, you! You have a ship! Has it a flag? The happy robert, was it?"

"I believe it's called something else." Marq dug into his pack for the Ibbenese flag of Togg Joth's ship – a black shark with a white belly on a teal field. "Practically Arryn blue as well, eh boy?"

Viserys took the banner quietly. It was a little bloodstained. "What for?"

"Call it... boyhood trophy taking. From Blackheart and the other men who commanded me, to boys in your own cohort, you've heard the story of the Windblown and the Tattered Prince?" That woke Viserys from his foul feelings, Marq walking them back to his quarters and withdrawing from his pack a tattered cloak of captured banners, flags, and pennants. "This is mine, but for you..."

For each of them, Marq laid out a black, white, and yellow Stormcrow flag, a purple and red Myrish pennant, a Qohorik black goat banner from Norvos's recent conquest of the Axe, and a Lorathi banner from the naval campaigns of Lorath Bay, ended just weeks ago. For Tytus he unrolled the scarf of a bravo whom he had duelled for control of a ship's helm during the campaign, and for Viserys, the Lorathi banner he had thought he dropped into the sea from the top of the mainmast of the *Three* *Princes*.

"Five is the superstition, but a sixth for you." Tytus eagerly bound his tatters together as Viserys examined the edges. "Viserys?"

"Thank you, Ser Marq. The stories always... The tale of the Tattered Prince have always interested me." Viserys folded up the tatters and bound them together with some spare cord. "And now?"

Marq raised an eyebrow while Tytus groaned. "Oh, right. Squires. I'm to give you duties... Clean the kitchens?"

"Did that."

"Twice."

Marq tapped his lips. "No horse stalls, and the marines are so neat... Ah, Red God burn it all. Go be... productive. Learn something!" A paternal light entered Marq's eyes as Tytus tore Viserys and himself from the room, not wanting to wait for orders.

"Must you be so difficult!" Tytus deposited them back in their chambers, ignoring Viserys making his bed as he donned armour. "I'm going to assemble a party to go see what heavy-pursed slavers we can raid."

Viserys harrumphed, letting his hair curtain his face as he dumped out his packs and started reorganizing. He spied his needles and thread and pulled them from the mess, sewing the tatters rather than just knotting them together. "I'll have some peace."

"Aye. But will you spar later? And you must eat, it was almost three days of-"

"I'm fine, Tytus. I just... I don't always want to be fighting."

Tytus scoffed. "We're sellswords, Viserys. Fighting's what we do." He shut the door behind him, not forcefully but finally, abandoning Viserys to his thoughts.

Viserys tried to let his mind go blank as he sewed, his callused fingers making decent thimbles as he mended the tatters, before cleaning repairing his equipment. He had an arrow wound in the chest of his Norvoshi brigandine and a few broken links of mail in the hauberk beneath, first sewing then prying the links as he bent the mail back to shape. He had some of his old mail and started using the rings to add to where he was struck most in his body, studying the scratches and notches from glancing blows.

It was slow work, but it required more focus and his mind soon blanked for real, a rhythm taking him first as he repaired his armour, then his boots and the scabbard for his looted sword. He compared it to the Westerosi-style longsword he owned. He preferred the slender shape of the Westerosi blade, but like the long handle of the Norvoshi weapon.

He was a sellsword, so a weapon for every occasion was not unwelcome, but with his bow, spear, and everything else he carried, without a horse or cabin to stow it in, he was overburdened.

Viserys would start trimming his kit when he needed to, and not before, dressing warmly and securely, in everything but his plate and helmet, though he did still opt for a gorget. He found his way outside and took a watch shift, looking out on Lorassyon as snow fell in blankets. Absently, he sat by a brazier and started plaiting his hair, all the better to secure it under an arming cap.

The air was still and the sea beyond more like a down-filled quilt as the snow rested in drifts atop the sea. Two icebergs to the north crashed together, echoing like thunder and the breaking of the world. It shook the blanket and all that snow sank beneath the featureless grey sheet, the waves crashing in a sudden squall.

"Peace is a fickle thing." Lemore climbed the ladder up to the wooden walk. Viserys offered his hand to help her up, and she took it. She wore thick leather gloves. "You think you have quiet, then the wind changes."

"Is that all this is to you? The changing of the wind?" Lemore tightened a shawl and cloak around her neck and shoulders. Viserys stoked the brazier between them. "Braavos has a future in mind for Lorath," he said. "More than just slaving and whaling. Mines. Settlements."

"My my, a sellsword who knows the issues of the day. You'll earn that knighthood yet." He did not join in on the joke, looking dour as he gazed across the empty sea. He spied Lorath's main island on the southern horizon, rocky and barren, snow wiped clean by constant wind and rain. "You said some odd things in your fever, and it made me... think."

A shiver ran up Viserys's back, making him tighten his cloak and pray for a scarf. "I've not been ill like that since I was a boy. Caught in the rain during a storm in Braavos."

"You were in... Braavos? As a boy?" Viserys nodded. "For how long?"

"Two years." With his finger in the snow, Viserys drew the Titan's helmet. "And a few moons last year before we left for... well, here."

"And you've never been back?" Viserys looked at Lemore sideways. "Back to Westeros?"

His eyes fell to the Titan's eyes, disappearing under the falling snow. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came, instead looking at Lemore again. He imagined the cold Lorathi day was the warm golden sun of King's Landing, and in his mind he made the nurse younger and slightly leaner. "It was... almost a year before we left Dragonstone when you... when Princess Elia dismissed you from her retinue."

"It was. Just for my safety, but the bruise we painted on my cheek helped convince my brother."

Viserys saw past Lemore. "Ashara Dayne."

Ashara smiled. "You're not a little boy anymore, Prince Viserys."

Hearing her voice, Viserys might have sworn he still was a prince, images of his mother's broken, tear-streaked face and his father's scabbed fingers and floor-length nails flashing in his eyes. He dug at the visions with his fists, the snow in his hands cooling and soft. Ashara ran her hand up his back to clutch his shoulder, not close enough in their old lives for her to offer any other comfort.

"I thought it was a dream. Like a mummer's shadow dancing on the wall. Every opulent pleasure of the Red Keep, every... every horror relived in my dreams." He saw Rickard Stark burning alive before the Iron Throne, then tried to imagine the million lives who called King's Landing home burning in the same pain. "What have they done? My father, my brother... And the lords of Westeros... fighting over the carcass of my family like a pack of wild dogs."

Ashara helped him clean his face, using a purple scarf she wet with some snow. "Your brother and sister live, as do Rhaegar's sons and daughter. Aegon is boisterous and happy, Rhaenys is quick and passionate, and Daenerys is dutiful and strong."

Viserys walked the wall farther towards Lorassyon's maze, Ashara trailing close behind. "How do you know all of this?"

"My brother and dearest friends are close by them." She stood awkwardly inside his space, studying his features and face. "You never tried to return?"

"When? As an eight year old boy, or a Company cadet? With all my armies and lands?"

She put her hand on his shoulder again. "You know what I meant. Just doing something other than-"

Viserys jerked away from her. "You are too familiar. Let us consider this a happy coincidence we have met, and be on our separate ways." Viserys hoped to escape down the other ladder into the yard, but it was filled by a seven-foot snow drift. He turned towards the walkway, but Ashara stood in his way. "Move, please."

"No. I won't let another piece of the only real hope for peace slip through my fingers. Not again." Viserys tried passing her, but she stepped in the way again. Viserys grabbed her by the waist, spun them, and walked in the other direction. "You're a Targaryen! That still means something in Westeros!"

Viserys snapped towards her. "What, do they sew banners for my return while drinking secret toasts to my health? They told the Blackfyres that for almost a century. Do the lords of Westeros clamour for conquest? For someone to kneel to? Hah!"

"They want what everyone wants. Peace after seven long years of war." She was not easily intimidated, standing up straighter so, with his hunching to hide within himself, she was taller. "There is rumour of a fresh armistice in the North. With Lady Lysa, the Arryns have reason to come. If they don't, their honour and legitimacy will be called into question. With you, peace might have another agent."

"Not Dorne? The North?"

"My work is for my house, Viserys. Trust me."

He shook his head. "I've heard things. Rumours of the war and worse. Of you and one of the Starks."

He could have read something from a change in the hue of her skin, or her posture, but he did not expect her brow furrowing in anger. "The only *rumour* you need worry about is the legitimacy of other claims ahead of yours. I don't know how or when, but an ally is what you can be. And a life of peace in your homeland must be a greater prize than a life of war in a foreign land, is it not?"

"I have duties here as a squire to Ser Marq. And the Golden Company, for all it's given me." Viserys shook his head. "I have more to learn. More to do."

"They are sellswords! They would leave you bleeding in a gutter if it saved them a few silver! The lords and ladies of Westeros will-"

"It was Dornish who left me bleeding! It is the Lords and Ladies of Westeros who put me here! Who did the same to every bastard, second son, exiled knight, and raped maiden with nowhere to go! Kicked across the Narrow Sea to make something out of naught but ruins and scraps." Viserys looked back across the Lorassyon, as Tytus and his party returned with a few more new freedmen and some loot in tow. "In Essos, men and women are free to do good and have no master but their own conscience. Where princes are lucky enough to disappear, and bastards may reign as kings. In Westeros, is your game of thrones so much better?"

Ashara sighed, clutching the snowy battlements then flinching away as it began to rain with snow still falling. Viserys stoked the brazier again. "What about your family? Daenerys is hale because she is young. Though she is guarded by a neutral party for now, she may not always be."

"Who holds her now?" he asked, though he feared the answer. His brother? His father, reborn as a dragon?

"Come with me, and I will tell you. There are ships in Lorath that can take us to Sunspear, past the Stormlander blockades." She clasped his hand tightly. "We could rally them."

Viserys wanted something, but he did not know what. "I have people waiting for me in Braavos."

"As do I. We can journey onwards from there as well."

"No. No, I am still in the Company." He talked over Ashara's disagreement. "I must see to the muster and our next assignment. The Golden Company is properly reforming for the first time in years, and I am going to see my comrades again."

"But after? What about after, Viserys? When will you return?" She took his hands again, shaking them and pelading with him. "What must I say to explain what has occurred these years? But one such as you, a young knight who knows war... When?"

Viserys thought of what Bharbo had said, when he took the Crones in as his own sons after the men had to spend a season fighting the Ibbenese. When Viserys asked what it would take for the Dothraki to cross the sea. *"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the mountains blow in the wind like leaves."*

"When I am ready," Viserys said. "When I am ready, I will return to Westeros."

Chapter Text

Tower Town was the heart of all egress between Dorne and the Dornish Marches, most sellswords and exiles from Essos, the Stormlands, or Crownlands making their way along the coast and up, or down, Prince's Pass in search of work or escape from Tyrell or Baratheon justice. They rarely got much farther than the cobbled-together settlement, however, aiming for the Reach but finding work in nearby mines and terrace farms then debt-bonded with exorbitant prices on food and board.

Gerold Dayne considered warning another wave of refugees dragging themselves into town, but what was the point? They had debt bondage everywhere, and all the refugees arrived with neither coin nor food, only the strength of their backs. He might have called them foolish, if it was not in the nature of the ignorant to be taken advantage of. He would do what he could, in the meanwhile.

He sipped his mead from a mug, looking out the window of his room from the nearest inn. It was civilisation, at least, but why stake a claim so far from the rest of the world? "How much longer?"

Gerold looked across at Edric Dayne, rolling around on his bed, bored. "We arrived not three hours ago. Boots shined?"

"And laced." He indicated the old laces he had replaced. "You're looking like Dawn's in the square." Edric was too smart for his own good, and wooden swords and some colourfully-drawn books were not enough to distract him. "Do you feel different?"

"Why would I feel different?"

"Now that you're a knight!" Edric leapt from his bed to Gerold's, lunging towards Gerold's sidesword at the corner of his bed.

Gerold gripped the handle and bound backwards, leaving Edric with just the hardened leather scabbard. It was a rough blade and shorter than the longsword Gerold preferred, but they were not travelling as Daynes. "Always come at the man, not the sword. In the time it would have taken me to draw my sword and come around, you could have broken the stem of that goblet and jammed it in my eye."

"Or your neck."

"The neck is never as exposed as you think." He flicked the sword, slipping it into the scabbard smoothly. "More likely, you hit my jaw and just get me angry." He indicated his armour hanging by his bed. "Or my gut. Or balls."

"Hehe. Balls." The city beyond the window began to quiet for hooves. Hundreds of them. "That must be fifty or more riders!" Edric dragged the chair to the window, climbing up to look out at three approaching parties – two from the south and one from the north. "The rose-in-thorns!"

And "The spear.-through-sun And the green dragon." Gerold indicated the Dornish parties.

Edric said, "House Martell, obviously, and... House Tollet?"

"House *Toland*. House Tollet is in the vale."

"I though House Tollet was in the Crownlands."

"That's House Hollard." Gerold searched the three parties as they made stakes and knights started throwing people from buildings. "Civilization's come."

"Is this why we're here, cousin?"

"We are. Your lady aunt asked me to keep an eye. We'll learn about the meeting, then be off before anyone knows we were here." Gerold finished his drink then dressed in his armour, Edric doing the same with his small doublet. They were a hedge knight and his squire, Gerold's hair tucked into an arming cap to conceal its distinctive streak.

As Edric dashed off to make friends with other squires or camp followers, happy to play the lost lordling for a sympathetic whore and her customer while Gerold milled with those on the edge of a camp. 'Ned' as he called himself at such times, had proved useful at gathering Gerold information.

There were armourers and merchants that bought plunder, hedge knights and sellswords, purveyors of the exotic like milk of the poppy tears, hash, or all manner of poisons as well, and then the killers for hire beyond the fringes. Gerold wandered among them, men and women in hoods and dark clothing, with hidden hands and quiet voices.

Gerold spied one with Dornish boots on the Tyrell side, sidling to him with both hands on his belt. "The Marches were quiet, from my side of the mountains."

"It was clear skies but not clear ground. Thorns all in my boots." The man indicated the stump he leaned on. "The dragon's den has thawed."

Gerold leaned beside the stranger and indicated the Dornish parties. "Snakes in the garden?"

"Spears watch the garden gate. They net the rivers and have hunters watching for wolves and falcons." Gerold watched a familiar noble at the heart of the Dornish meetings, the scar-crossed face of Arianne Martell. "The pride of Sunspear."

Gerold said, "The storm is still in the Marches, I was uncertain."

"Why else would the sun and the rose entwine?" Gerold slipped a gold lion from his sleeve. It was the currency of Westeros's more enterprising folk. "Your money is no good here."

He indicated Gerold's belt buckle – a shooting star. "Stranger take me."

"Word was you fought well at Ghaston Grey, Darkstar." He stood, carrying not even a pack, just a small roll across his lower back – all the better to make his escape as knights in gold and green and red and orange began fanning towards Gerold. "Farewell, knight of the hermitage." He tipped his hood as he pulled it up, slipping into the camp as Gerold pulled off his arming cap and held up his hands.

All the better, in the Red Mountains' punishing winter humidity. "Ser Gerold. What a... surprise."

Gerold bowed to his liege's liege's heir. "Princess Arianne, good afternoon."

She gave him an expectant look. When he did not respond, she said, "Where is Edric?"

"I don't know, princess." He nodded towards the tent and the approaching rose prince. "Lord Willas Tyrell, I presume?"

The man to the Reach heir's right leaned into his ear. "Ser Gerold Dayne, good day. I suppose we should not be surprised to see you. The Red Mountains are your neck of the world."

"Indeed they are. Though these are not my lands, but House Manwoody's. Were they informed of this meeting? Lord Dagos does collect taxes here."

"Lord Manwoody has-" Willas began.

Arianne interjected. "The appropriate parties have been informed, *Ser* Gerold."

Gerold bowed deeply. Deferentially. "Of course, princess. You knowledge shines like the sun." He knew Arianne's satisfied smirk in how she drew breath.

"Well, shall you join us for supper?" Willas said, to his advisors approval and the disdain of the Dornish. "I've not yet had purpose to speak with... Lord Dayne, was it? I'm sorry I know your house has faced trying years."

"We have, my lord. I appreciate you saying that." Gerold thought about Edric's parents. Arthur had just picked up Dawn when Gerold began squiring for Edric's father. He remembered how he died under Tyrell at Hayford. "But we have rebuilt. Edric will be lord one day, though his regency is secure under my mother and her house's aid."

"Which house is that?" Willas asked, none too eager to Arianne's rising incredulity. "I don't mean to pry, but Dorne has been... enigmatic. Despite my attempts to get to know it better." He glanced at Arianne, who somehow did not notice as her retainers – and some arriving Manwoody knights and Lord Mors Manwoody – drew her away. "Your side of the mountains... Lord Tarly is a fair trading partner?"

"He is, Lord Willas, though I am not read in on all the specifics, as I am but a landed knight." It was not humility on Gerold's part, but a simple statement of fact. There were three branches of Dayne cousins above him, his position as the knight of the hermitage inherited from a failed Andal conqueror cousin. Other than a small pair of mines – silver and nickel – Gerold had little to his name, save his name. "But I know it is plenty fruitful, with our rice, olive oil, and spices, and Lord Tarly's iron and leather."

"Silvered armour?" Willas indicated Gerold's surcoat as the wind and sand buffed it of dirt.

"Just a polish. My squire's a hard worker." Willas walked him to the middle of his lords and advisors, all young Reachmen who had already seen war. "I must make my returns, Lord Willas. My passage here was only momentary and under cover of secrecy. I'd heard rumour of storm knights and hoped to investigate."

"So you brought the heir to your overlord to a place such as this?" Willas frowned at a cow pie in the middle of the dusty street. "Princess Elia and the Princess Rhaenys reside in Starfall, do they not?"

"I am aware that under certain amnesty terms, they must remain there." Gerold watched Willas point at spots on the ground, a pack of soldiers that followed him planting stakes, clearing the street, and laying down a command tent. "But that Starfall has one of the oldest sailing traditions in Dorne. House merchants that trade all the way up the coast and even as far as the Summer Isles and Lys."

Willas nodded keenly as fine carpets and then a desk and chairs were set down within a massive tent. "As custodians to his grace King Aegon, House Tyrell would like to offer House Dayne... an overture of friendship."

"I will pass it along, Lord Willas." Gerold bowed again then turned on a heel, striding from the camp before anyone could stop him.

***

"Betrothal," Edric said as he climbed out of the bushes and up to the road. Gerold grabbed him by the scruff and lifted him to the saddle just in front of him. "Roses grow well in the Dornish sun, is what he said to say. I found it rather obvious."

Gerold snorted, flicking his reins to start climbing the mountain trails and passes along the Blackmont-Dayne border. "Such a thing is a signal. The negotiations will take a year at least."

It was three-hundred miles of weaving paths to Starfall, High Hermitage mostly running itself as they spent just two days in Gerold's own keep before continuing onwards to Starfall. He greeted his mother and cousins, chiefly Allyria, quiet and lonely since the departure of her mother. "Did you see Kingsgrave and Skyreach?" she pleaded. "What was the Tower of Joy like?"

"An inn, I'm afraid." Gerold strolled just inside the great hall to the altar behind the throne of the Lord of House Dayne. The box was as empty as ever. "How are the princesses."

Elia and Rhaenys had approached Allyria when his back was turned, still enamoured with where Dawn should be. Princess Elia was in orange and red, while Rhaenys in red and black. Allyria in pale purple, the Martell and Targaryen were a stark contrast to the Dayne. "We knew not of your arrival, Ser Gerold," Elia said.

Gerold bowed his head, evening his breath before looking up to face the princess. "I had planned to remain at High Hermitage, but Edric insisted, and I... I missed my family."

He approached, barely kissing Rhaenys's knuckles, then doing the same to Elia, though her hand held his for a moment longer than usual. Gerold was a knight, and he knew the importance of such subtleties. He took it as a sign that the Seven Kingdoms, or Dorne at least, was healing, and that diplomacy and spy-craft was soon to displace war and siege.

"We missed you, uncle." Allyria hugged him slowly but tightly. What he would not do to track down her father. Edric's father had let slip as much. Gerold had only gleaned from the household servants of Starfall and his various distant relations that Allyria's sire was a second son of a lord from the original rebel faction that opposed Mad Aerys, which narrowed it down only somewhat. "Will you stay for long?"

Gerold inclined his head. He sought some opinion on the matter from Princess Elia, though she was difficult to read, as always. "I shall stay for a time, so I might train Edric and guard my mother as regent. I hope I am welcome, my lady, princesses."

He levelled his gaze at Elia while Allyria and the quiet Rhaenys looked to the elder Princess for approval, her dark eyes boring into him and his reasons for staying. "Please stay, Uncle Gerold! Can he, mother?" Allyria added.

"Please stay," Rhaenys echoed. She was quiet and Gerold could not say he knew her well despite their years in the same household, but she was in a similar situation to Allyria with regards to her father.

"Alright. I shall stay." He said it firmly and with gusto, which made the girls cheer. Elia's eyes flashed at him as they started off into some game.

They carried on, the Dornish day ever fluid. Gerold said, "I've been riding and hoped to take a meal, princess. I would not want to interrupt your day's plans."

"I would show you to the inner courtyard myself, if eating in the air is to your favour?"

"I would enjoy that greatly." She strode down Starfall's white stone halls, though waited by the door so she could wrap her arm around his. "This way?"

She tittered, "Surely you must know the way by now, Ser Gerold."

Gerold shrugged light-heartedly. "There are many courtyards in Starfall, and I would not assume our tastes align."

"Then I shall be the one to tell you where our tastes align."

***

With a sigh, Elia relaxed, pulling on Gerold to lower his weight onto her. From toes to nose, their skin touched, sweat and cool sea breezes making them shiver. He dashed upright, quickly stoking the fire and shuttering the windows, entirely in the nude, before dashing back to Elia's bed and drawing the two of them under layers of blankets among a nest of pillows.

She burrowed into his arms, and they slept and woke to tire themselves out, then slept again, in typical Dornish fashion not certain that first time. "I missed you," he finally said. "Any other named knights?"

"Just letters from an oathbreaker." Elia reached to her bedside, showing Gerold the messages bearing the lion of Lannister rendered in red wax. "I did think of Jaime often, once. But being nearer my children was far more important." She pressed her lips to his shoulder. "Though this has improved my move as well."

"Then with a party I say we journey to Horn Hill, as a family, and present a united front to start shoring up this new alliance between sun and rose, spear and thorn."

Elia purred. "Oh, how I love your politics. So idealistic." She kissed him firmly. "You're mad if you believe Lord Tarly betroths his only son to a Dornishwoman."

"I was referring to Edric and Randyll's daughter, and Allyria to... Quentyn, was it?" He kissed her back. "And then, to close the Dayne-Martell loop..."

He gave her a firm look, though she averted her gaze, not quite dismissing him though standing and donning a robe to fill her goblet with a Dornish red so rich it was purple. "Rhaegar may have another son, but I will not risk Aegon or Rhaenys's legitimacy. I will not."

"It was he who proclaimed his bastard a trueborn Aegon, Elia! It is in all our best interests that Aegon remain legitimate, and that would not be in doubt." He tried to hold her again, though she pushed him off and he backed away. "Why can you not look to the future?"

Elia rubbed her arms, sitting by the fire. "I think... so often of King's Landing. I was on one of the last ships out, and..." She held one side of her face, just around her left eye. As the firelight caught it just right, Gerold noticed the area seemed... strangely younger than the rest of her face. "The flash of wildfire was like nothing I ever saw. I still can't hear quite right when I'm on the sea in spring."

Gerold sat across from her, taking her hands in his. "I love you, Elia. We can be safe if we're married, and Rhaenys guarded in High Hermitage if the worst should occur here."

"You speak of a distant future that may never come!"

"Aye, but 'tis a future still."

Elia sighed, patting his hands firmly but carefully. "There could be too many... repercussions, but only for now. I promise, I will... I cannot have children. Not any more, I am certain. If that is what you are after-"

"I love *you* Elia, not some imaginary child of ours that may never come." He took his turn to watch the fire, and in it he saw Ghaston Grey and the fighting in Weeping Town, the death of Edric's father at Hayford, the retreat down across the Dornish Marches, and how a march to freedom turned into one of death. "I would rather... this life. You and I, and children who need us. I've... I've seen too much to desire children of my own, nor do I believe I could ever... truly love something that was part me."

"Oh Gerold, it was war." She stood them both up, brushing her hair and tears from her face and his. "Well, then until we are married. Ser Gerold Dayne, Darkstar, Knight of High Hermitage... Will you be my paramour?"

"Seven hells, it's not that formal." He scoffed and she laughed, and he kissed her again as they smiled wide. It wasn't matrimony, but they were together with their family and loved ones.

Despite Elia's resistance, and at his mother's urging as she would be hosting the Red Mountain noble houses, Gerold led a short tour into the Reach. Oldtown and the Arbor would come later, but Horn Hill was first, House Peake of Starpike lacking the means to finance any visit longer than a hunt – and Gerold would have to provide his own game wardens.

Lord Tarly met them himself at the edge of his lands, though Gerold was relegated to bodyguard as Randyll focused on wining and dining the king's mother. Contenting himself with training Edric, he stole various looks and moments to study the man Mace Tyrell had named Shield of the Reach. His head, once full of thick brown hair, had been reduced to a short, iron-grey stubble, and a beard of red and brown fading to silver and white. His huntsman's surcoat was ever pristine, red and green in various colours held together by the best leather workers and armourers in the Reach, while Heartsbane ever hung from his shoulder – Gerold observed that it had roughly the same dimensions as Dawn, though with a more ornate hilt with shorter quillons.

Reaching Horn Hill proved longer when last Gerold saw, having fought with the Huntsman in a short-lived alliance to hold off invasion from the Stormlands by sea. Randyll led the on a circuitous route, moving their retinue around hamlets and townships, even the occasional keep, Gerold recalled from his last journey through the Tarly lands.

He was trying to determine the scent on the air – rotten eggs? – as they reached Horn Hill, the great rotunda castle keep with massive curtain walls and city walls containing the most fertile lands and most important foundries and trades under House Tarly. Gerold thought it likely the most secure, or at least most fortified, castle in the region of the Dornish Marches, if not all Westeros.

After they'd been received by Randyll's wife, son, and daughters – three of them, each more curious and intrusive than the last – the lord finally approached Gerold after his own many attempts at doing so. "I hear they call you Darkstar. Why is that?"

"I am not dawn or dusk, night or day. But a dark star, that could be a name of mine own."

Randyll thrust out his lower lip, turning to lead him away to another portion of the castle. "Edric, he's your squire?"

"Unofficially until he's a bit older and larger. His father was a fine warrior, so I've things planned for him." Gerold nodded towards his son in the yard, who Edric was introducing himself to. "Your son looks strong for his age."

"Aye, he is. He's struggled at his letters though, but plenty of stories of his... his bookish brother, have helped." Gerold had no indication the grief was fresh, but still he found Randyll's gaze lingering on his son. "'Twould be my hope that Dorne and Reach can be friends at all levels. We do not have the water for your rice, but the land for olive trees? The oil is very useful."

Gerold caught another whiff, and Randyll noticed he noticed. "I fought at Bloodstone against the Tyroshi for a short spell. They had a strange liquid fire made from animal fat and lamp oil. Sticks to the skin, melts you to the bone." Gerold inhaled again. "Smelled like that."

With something that might have been remorse or understanding, Randyll nodded, indicating Gerold should follow him. "It has been my duty to make sense of all the advancements and leaps my Lord Tyrell brings to the Reach. Summer Islander bow limbs, Tyroshi fire, and even a strange device from Yi Ti called a fire lance." Gerold followed Randyll down into a cellar and along a tunnel to some sort of dungeon, the walls, floor, and ceiling lined with bronze. Within he saw maesters, half-maesters, knights, and some of the most well-read polymath lordlings, and ladies, of the day, a few even from the North and Braavos.

"In Qarth and Volantis, they developed and continue to refine a... a hand-thrower of sorts. But it's large and unwieldy. A hand cannon, they call it." Randyll walked him into a long chamber well-lit by torches and polished steel mirrors, hefting an bronze tube at the end of a piked iron stake. "Plant in the ground, aim, and pray. I thought the translations were wrong, I nearly executed the maester."

Gerold though to awkwardly laugh, but Randyll shot him a boiling look. "Um, well... what does it do? A canon?"

"Cannon."

"What did I say?"

Randyll was already moving on. "I looked to the history. Horn Hill has the largest repository of military history in the Seven Kingdoms, outside the Hightower, and looking to the problems rather than the results, yielded..." Tarly affixed some sort of shortsword to the end of his own... "Stock of a Tarly crossbow at first, narrowing and lengthening the barrel with a third the material. Steel, not bronze."

He handed Gerold the weapon, holding it just below the blade and just above the... flint wheel? "Some sort of... crossbow spear?"

"Takes a bit too long to load. For now." Randyll  had him lift the stock to his shoulder. "And your hand there. There is a bit of a kick. You should take some care to-"

"I've shot a crossbow before." Gerold was no squire with a shortbow, he was a knight and experienced veteran of the wars of the Seven Kingdoms, and he would not allow some Tarly to-

Gerold did not hear the shot. He saw the flash and heard a ringing sound as he came to staring at the ceiling, the cannon-spear with a smoking barrel pointed up at the ceiling. "I was going to say, take some care to your grip. It was far too firm, and your stance was unstable." Randyll pulled the weapon from his frozen hands, his voice muffled through the ringing. "You forgot your ear protection as well."

He heaved Gerold to his feet, and offered a damp rag to clean his nose of soot. "You test it inside a bell, you realize?"

Randyll snorted. "Aye, but we don't want to disturb the horses. Cavalry's still more important."

They walked from the chamber for Gerold to see Lord Tarly's other inventions, from a hand-held hand cannon, to a massive steel-cast cannon. "This will change war forever."

"But we need your nickel and olives. Steel is all that holds up for multiple uses. Iron is too brittle, bronze too soft and vulnerable to corrosion. For a few uses and recycling however, it's what we need. Storm's End, Casterly Rock... Dragons were fire made flesh, but the cannon is fire into steel, steel we can direct and control. Steel that won't kill flocks to feed it or just because it's bored." Randyll pursed his lips. "You're a Dayne. Apologies. Ser Arthur-"

Gerold picked up one of the hand-canons. It was the weight of a sword, but it could fit on his belt next to his sword. "My cousin does not figure into any of my decisions." He pulled back the wheel, snapping it behind a spring. "But Tywin Lannister, Stannis Baratheon, and Ned Stark will not allow themselves to be outmatched by Reach guns."

Randyll smirked. Perhaps, he found a like-mind. "Without all the wasted emotion of a dragon rider, on a beast that can age and die off or be killed. Keep a cannon oiled and functional, and it will last for years. Enough stock..."

He watched Gerold fanning the pages on one of the supply ledgers, the Dornishman searching for how much nickel and oil they needed. "There are mines in the Northmarch and your side of the Red Mountains."

"But we need native nickel. The maesters say its most common form is in fallen stars." Randyll showed him lines and dates of sightings of comets and shooting stars. "Almost fifteen weeks to the day, Dayne sales of nickel. But how much in store?"

Gerold snorted. "Storage? My lord, we were kings of the Torrentine. Two-thousand of Dorne's knights and ten thousand of her spears wear the silver and lilac." He paused, reaching slowly as he drew his dagger. "This is what you could say we have. Reforging is easier than fresh smelting. Our smiths have their own methods to prevent issues common to reforging. The Torrentine lands lack the aridity of the rest of Dorne, so we had the fuel to experiment."

"May I?" Gerold gestured for Randyll to do so, taking the dagger to one of his maesters, who removed the pommel, guard, and leather-wrapped bone guard – from a lizard-lion he shot off Ghaston Grey – to dip the steel in some sort of acid, etching it and studying the lines, then taking a shaving of metal to pummel it with a hammer and test other properties.

Gerold knew metalwork, as his father had been the son of a silversmith, so as the maester examined the Dayne metal, Randyll did the same with the Tarly – rather, Reach – metal. "You trade most of your ore from the North?"

"Used to be the Westerlands and Iron Islands, but we had to put an end to that." Randyll seemed impressed with the quality of Dayne steel. "Perhaps too much nickel, but remarkable nonetheless."

Gerold had learned fast hands at Ghaston Grey, and swiped a few pouches of black powder, a book he hid to retrieve later, and some shot. "Iron and our smelting process should remedy that. What say you to an exchange of the mind as well as trade?"

"This is not something we should spread lightly."

"Better we, you, my Lord Tarly, control such a proliferation." Gerold extended his hand towards Randyll. "Worry on the intricacies later. Let's change things now."

"Intricacies matter." Randyll examined Gerold keenly. "How close are you to the other houses of Dorne?"

"Starfall has always stood apart. More a partner to the Martells. We are an old house, and do not... gripe as many younger houses do."

Randyll looked satisfied, clasping Gerold's hand. "House Tarly's been the same, since the Kingdom of the Western Marches. Very well, Ser Dayne. Give me the gift of steel, and I will give you the gift of the gun."

Chapter Text

Despite all Tytus's hopes, the Three Princes was neither seaworthy nor appropriate for use as a war vessel – as a floating fortress, but not the fast and maneuverable vessels Braavosi marines needed. They watched as it was cannibalised by other ships once the storms calmed and the seas opened, just a chest of travel artifacts and navigational instruments of Togg Joth's left for them.

"First pick's yours," said Viserys.

"It's all yours anyway. Just when I thought we made a little something... Now just some hunks of Valyrian steel."

Viserys supposed Tytus, as all people did, had his own internal turmoil, no doubt relating to his absent father and the rejection of his mother's social climbing. "What did your father say about entering his household once you're knighted?"

That thought distracted Tytus. "When last we exchanged letters, he did. That was before this campaign though."

"Then surely there will be word waiting for you." They shouldered their kit and marched with the other marines onto *Spear of the Canals*, the upper decks replaced and covered to keep off the wind and rain. While Marq had a cot in the cabins, Viserys and Tytus had only hammocks on the middle deck. "We're all done with the frog landings, so it's just a matter of returning to Braavos. We'll stay at the Blue Lantern, of course."

Tytus shoved his kit onto a hook to keep it off the rain-slick deck. "You truly don't think about life in Westeros? A title and lands? A wife? Children you can pass on your name to?"

"The weight of a name."

"A name men kill for."

Viserys stowed his kit as well, hanging up his cloak to dry and donning his boarding axe and short sword. There were still pirates prowling the Shivering Sea. "I don't know what to tell you, comrade."

"Tell me you would use it," hissed Tytus. "Tell me you'll reclaim your birthright and do something about it. Good warriors have gone running to their deaths for the small causes of lesser captains for too long. Tell me you wouldn't throw away what fate gave you and robbed of others."

They had gathered a bit of a crowd. Viserys said, "What! None of you ever heard a homesick sailor before?" That scared them off, while Viserys took Tytus under his arm. "You don't need the Lannisters, Tytus. Choose your own name. Be a fixture in the Forge or New Andalos. Ascend into an officer and have a few sons here. Dothraki marriage customs are adapting more every year."

"Drogo and his sisters." They laughed at the shared memory. "Baqarro's been roped to one already, I hear." Tytus sighed, embracing Viserys roughly. "Thank you, brother."

As marines they had little work beyond the most basic of watchman and cleaning duties. At any one time, four of them were always mopping to keep the floors, if not dry, at least not flooded, while Viserys and Tytus enjoyed the fruits of their labour, putting up their feet and trading loot or playing card games with the marines. Viserys donned the Valyrian steel ring with the maze signet, testing the fit.

The torc was massive and had enough material for half a sword. "Here. If you ever find that smith."

"Viserys... Are you certain? I couldn't... I don't-"

"Yes, you could." Tytus took the prize to the surprised curses of the marines, who were trading carved shark-tooth amulets and Lorathi daggers. "I'll take that though." He indicated the Valyrian steel vambrace, sculpted for the left arm.

It was a third the mass, but of actual use, with holes to lace them to gloves. "You and your kit. You carry too much." Gilberto sat on Viserys's hammock. "What for that blade from Norvos?"

"I like the way it cuts," Viserys said, clutching the blade protectively. "What you got?"

"Make it a birth-present for my wife. She gave us our second while we were away."

"Didn't some tanner give her that babe on campaign as well?" teased Aegor.

Over the fervour, Gilberto yelled at his brother, "As soon as you can keep a woman, big brother, you may speak of my wife. What of it, Viserys?"

Gilberto was a Company man, with eleven gold arm rings himself, so it would be rude, bordering dishonourable, to make him beg. Viserys only wondered why he wanted it. "You took a Tyroshi crossbow, eh? Double-repeating, with an arching limb?"

The crowding marines, and nurses with wages to trade or bet, made a shocked sound. Ever since Tyrosh closed itself off to its alliance with the Westerosi and Slaver's Bay, their famed crossbows and artillery had started drying up among the markets. "That's a royal exchange..."

Viserys palmed his share of the silver from all the prizes they had taken. Since he was not commissioned crew, he had more freedom in the plunder he could claim. "Five-hundred silver. Mostly Lorathi, with some Ibbenese mixed in."

It was well-known that the Men of Ib mixed gold with their silver. "You sneaky rat," Gilberto sneered.

"I prefer to call it cunning." Gilberto's sneer rose to his roguish smirk. He had gone from wrathful young man to slimy bravo and finally, the mercenary with a heart of gold. Viserys had grown to like the new Gilberto, if not the rogue without. "What do you say? You prefer your swords, do you not?"

"And you a spear and shield, squire." Gilberto seemed to consider his next course of action, before he snapped his fingers at a marine, who tossed a case at him. "I captured it in pristine condition." He opened the buckles of a hard leather shell, revealing a central stock with an attached crossbow limb, two more limbs set in velvet in the box beside. Each was polished horn-of-hair, the stock burnished walnut, all set with filigreed silver on dark steel. "You understand its *monetary* value, but not its *true* value."

Viserys rolled his eyes. "This mummer's game again?" Viserys sheathed the sword and stowed the coin. "No deal."

"Wait, wait." Gilberto eyed the coin, not the blade. "Wait. Heh. eight-hundred silver, no questions asked, for the crossbow."

Viserys still knew he had the sweet end of the bargain. "And?"

"Nothing. You remember it was a good deal." Viserys eyed Gilberto for an answer. Aegor frowned and Tytus shrugged.

They spat and shook, Viserys keeping the sword and giving up a large share of his silver. He still had plenty of gold, and his shares in the Golden Company. "Now off with you. I'll enjoy my new prize."

Gilberto shrugged, snickering to himself as he made off with the coin. Aegor said, "For a crossbow that will break the first time you use it?"

"It's Tyroshi. They know their firing mechanisms." Tytus swung his legs off the hammock, picking up one of the sights from the case. "You should add some Myrish lenses. I heard of a Norvoshi astronomer who says he can read the stars up close with two lenses. Do it with a man's head." Tytus mimed shooting a crossbow and taking a bolt in the eye.

"You'r no poor shot, but you do prefer a spear." Aegor took the sight back and tucked it into the case. Viserys had assembled the three limbs to the stock, tightening the wingnuts and testing the fit, then removing the middle arching limb, for lobbing larger payloads up an over obstacles. "Or is it that you're smarter than my brother?"

"It will sell for near two-thousand dragons to a collector, more to a producer. As a marine, he would not be entitled to any of the cash." Aegor raised an eyebrow. "I'll set plenty aside for him. On my honour as a squire."

Aegor snorted. "Aye, and were you not a Company man, I would question that."

The day moved into stormy night and stormy day again, the ship not risking the strait south between two of Lorath's islands and instead continuing east towards Braavos. Viserys soon grew bored and cramped in his hammock, spending most days on watch shifts less to add a few more coppers to his final payout, more to stretch his legs and seek solitude.

Somewhere in the waves, wind, and whipping rain, Viserys lost himself. Much as when he cleaned and mended his kit or fought in the shield wall, the chaos of the world offered reprieve from the turmoil within.

It gave him the clarity to decide how he would act in the days to come – and the years beyond.

"What's this joke that's made you grin?" Viserys reckoned not even Lysa Arryn could darken his renewed mood, though her deep frown at his look of placid satisfaction was a worthy attempt. "When will we reach Braavos? How long to Gulltown from there?"

"That's your journey, I'm afraid, my lady." She looked queasy as the ship rolled over a rogue wave. Viserys had his sea legs, but even he had to grab the railing as they crashed to the far side. "The journey to the Vale from Braavos is a peaceful one, my lady. And you will have at least a week of rest in Braavos before you're allowed to depart."

"Hm." She made a dissatisfied sound, before suddenly sounding very eager and nervous. "What about Lord Baelish? He was hosting me at the time of my... when I was..."

"You were captured and held hostage, my lady. There is no shame in that."

"I know what happened!" she screeched, and it was a screech, insistent and less fearful than it was angry. "What they did to the Lady of the Vale!"

"I do not know specifics, my lady. Just that you were taken from the Vale. Not even when." Outside of his control, his eyes flicked down to her stomach. She did not catch it, instead looking east over the water. "Do you feel well, my lady? The babe?"

She nodded, holding herself tightly. "I carried Jasper and Artys small. Until almost the seventh month. I had hoped the sea air might... as the Tumblestone did when I..." Her fingers clawed at the edge of her skirts. "He'll set me aside if I lose another son."

From the rumours coming out of the Vale, Viserys had expected the pious Lord Denys Arryn, 'the Darling of the Vale,' to be much more like Baelor the Blessed. From what Lysa and Syrio said, he seemed much more a Maegor the Cruel. "You attacked him. You screamed... He said he fed it to the dogs."

"A fish I'd caught through a porthole. Its guts were about as thick as my last... my last lost babe." Viserys had to hold back his stomach at that, though Lysa – Viserys supposed, most women – had to take such injuries in stride. For all her screeching, Viserys found that Lysa must have a different, but no less impressive, strength. "And he had an axe to my throat."

Viserys indicated they should go inside, and that Lysa should eat as well. He recalled the courtesans-cum-concubines once in Mistress Caterina's service, how they spent their middle and later months of child-bearing well-fed and off their feet. Lysa was still so thin, her hair hanging limply and her cheeks dark and hollow, and Viserys doubted a seaward journey in the wettest winter in living memory would much aid her constitution.

Ensuring Lysa was situated with the nurses where it was warm, Viserys went to where the injured hung in hammocks, one nurse still working over them. "Lemore?"

Ashara met his gaze from where she was changing the gauze around an arrow sticking out of a marine's shin. "I've only two hands. Come." She indicated a vial vinegar for Viserys to wash his hands. "Hold where those two pads are." She held her bloody hands back as he put pressure around the arrow, making the marine squeal. "It's been in there far too long already, but this way, he might not lose the leg."

"I'll lose my leg? Viserys, you gotta-" Viserys knocked the marine on the ear, dazing him enough to quiet him.

"That's a nice trick." Ashara took a firm grip and withdrew the arrow in one pull, reaching in with tweezers in the other hand and tamping the flow of blood. "Was that some Blackfyre teaching?"

"I learned it from a Targaryen, in fact." Viserys kept a firm hold on the marine's leg as Ashara sewed a few stitches and bound up the leg. "Good. Now we just watch for fever."

"Fever," she groaned. "We need to test his extremities." Ashara already had his boot off, using her thumb to tickle his toes and the arch of his foot. "Good. *Now* we watch for infection. Hah! Fever. Is that all they teach you?"

"It's all we ever need to know, my lady."

"Is that supposed to make it right?" She cleaned, wiped, and cleaned her hands again. Viserys had a memory of a maester doing that.

"I have things I need to do here, but after..." Ashara turned to look at him suspiciously, one black eyebrow raised. "And there's Pentos, and... I want to help there, I do, but there are people here that need our help as well. The Golden Company isn't what it was under the Blackfyres."

Ashara sighed, drying her hands then touching the back of her knuckles to another marine's forehead. "I've thought that I may have spoken too earnestly. To be sure, I would hope you want to help, but to be frank, you are only a squire. And once you are knighted, will you have riches or a title? Land to work and loyal smallfolk?"

Viserys said, "No, but-"

"How long until you are an officer in the Golden Company, with men to call to your service? Will it be soon?"

"Not yet, but one day-"

"Exactly. Not yet. It is my fault for thinking I could so easily go back. As if crossing the Narrow Sea is some easy feat." She frowned at him and gave him a look he hated to see. Pity. "I am sorry, Viserys. Truly. I did not expect you to... get your hopes up so quickly."

Viserys sat on an empty hammock, somewhat dispirited. "I used to miss it, then I missed the dream of it. At least the dream was something though, now I just have... nothing. My comrades scattered, Tytus soon to be the same. They have dreams in Essos and family in Essos. I have family in Westeros and the conviction to try, even if I still lack a cause. More has been done with less."

Ashara crossed her arms, looking as martinet as Malo Jayn. She gave him a firm, steady look, examining and thinking. "There is no quarter given or taken in the great game. It is terrifying and isolating, there is blood and death on an unimaginable scale, and to play it is to court utter annihilation. You may die, but more importantly, your family and loved ones may die, or worse. Your daughters raped, your sons' heads on spikes, and your house burned out of all history."

She walked around to stand before him. "If you can stand that risk, that fear, and still act, then you are ready to play it." Viserys looked away so he could think, letting his hair curtain his face. "You will also need to cut your hair."

He snorted. "Why would I need that?"

"For marriage, of course. You can't expect to be a king without a queen, do you?"

Viserys shook his head. "I don't want to be king. I want to do what you said. Peace and ending the death and all that."

Ashara made an exasperated sigh. "And you expect to do that as... a sellsword?"

"I expect to do it as I am. You have allies there, I have allies here. In a year, I can land at Starfall with warriors and coin. That should make up for all that land and loyalty you mentioned."

Ashara said, "Very well. Where shall we start?"

***

They docked at a Braavosi sea fort on the north-western corner of Lorath Bay, three days after their departure from Lorassyon. As things often did in storm-ridden parts of the world, the weather turned for the worse, with all but the largest ships pulled into warehouses to guard from the pummelling winds.

Viserys and Tytus lost precious hours of rest, working the rope crews pulling ships ashore. When they finally reached the walls of the fort alone, the marines bunking with their ships, they were caked in sand, snow, dock scum, and worse after a dead walrus exploded all over them.

At least they had dinner.

"Oi!" Tytus bellowed, shaking and hammering at the gates. The wind and thunder was too much to hear the shaking gate to them right next to it, so Viserys looked for another way in.

He pointed to their right. "There!" Some of the bricks were crumbling about ten feet up. "Boost me up!"

Tytus nodded, though seemed to misunderstand as he donned his shield and anchored himself below the crumbling section of wall. The fort's outer wall was fifteen feet of masoned grey stone, while another forty feet was piled stone, trees, and wattle.

Viserys tilted his head like a confused dog, before grinning at Tytus's genius. He dropped his heavy pack and swords, oriented himself, and burst forward in a run. At the end of his run, he leapt up to Tytus's shield, which threw him upward.

Viserys was already reaching, squashing his hand into the grass, roots, and mud of the upper section of the wall. His other hand found a stone, and his feet good bearing with his ice treads. Rather than wait to reaffirm his grip, Viserys dragged his other hand up. The wind and rain was still freezing, but the day was freezing as well, so anything too weak to withstand his grip was too frozen to break.

He ascended fifteen feet before looking back to get his bearings. He had drifted right so moved left, praying for his descendants as he avoided the spikes at the top. His brigandine was long enough at least – better to wear than carry in that weather.

To his horror, the fort's yard beyond was a mess of corpses and triage tents, Ser Marq, Lady Lysa, and the rest of their posse among neither the wounded nor their healers. Viserys whistled at a Braavosi guardsman. "Open the gates! Golden Company!"

The sentry glared through the curtains of hale and shadow, his helm offering little protection from the rain in his eyes. Viserys instead dropped to the walkway and found the ladder, drawing a gold coin from his pocket. "Open the gate! Golden Company!"

"Quit your screaming!" The sentry was an older man, with a curling salt and pepper moustache and a well-worn sea-green and grey brigandine and doublet. "Who's your master?"

"Myself and my companion are squires for Ser Marq Mandrake, Serjeant of the Golden Company, in the service of the First Sword of Braavos, Syrio Forel." His eyes flicked to the gold. Viserys put it down on the table.

The guard swiped it and snorted. "The kids are alright."

He opened the gate door, Tytus tossing their kit through. "Seven hells take all this fucking leather and steel! We need horses!"

"Once the campaign starts! A Dornish courser and a Northern pony each."

The fort doors opened into a spartan reception hall, though it was so finely cared for, waxed wood and polished bronze finishings, that it looked quite opulent. The occupants were the admiralty of Braavos, from merchant-cum-naval captains dressed in silks and velvets, with feathered hats and painted faces, to half-walrus pirate hunters whose only voices were polite mutter and ordering bellow.

Ashara was quick to capture them, herself dressed in indigo and grey, and between the silver piping of her pelisse, rather than fur, she wore mail and sheets of batting. With the short sword and dagger at her waist, but matching the silver and blue of her outfit, she seemed the embodiment of feminine ferocity. "You are well-timed."

"What's happened outside? Was there an attack during the storm?" Tytus dropped his warm clothing for his armour, attempting to don it out in the open.

"Something like that, two days past. They ran into the maze further inland." Ashara seemingly had a few men in her employ, as two knights from the crowd picked up their gear and led the way with her to their chambers up the fort. "It's tight, but you've your own rooms. Your Ser Mandrake is quite the bully."

They both stumbled into their rooms, though where Tytus was soon snoring in his bed, Ashara held Viserys back. "There is a Braavosi party downstairs. In its early hours still." Viserys looked at her sideways. "One of those times where it is important to seem gregarious."

"Ugh. Fine." Ashara pushed a package into his arms, while some maids dragged him to a room where they swiftly violated him with a horsehair brush. He did at least keep hold of his hair, but they insisted on braiding it off his face, one of the women even taking some tweezers to his eyebrows.

He hissed in pain even as another made some comment in bastard Valyrian about his buttocks, and a third poked at a scar in his midsection. Feeling far too on display he batted their hands away and donned his breeches, glaring at all them and their pouting. "You a pillow biter?"

Viserys jawed a bit and shook his head. The others giggled and they all left, as one of the men entered. He looked about Aegor's age, with a heavy brow and a thick moustache. He indicated Viserys clothes, and he dressed in a black and red doublet and trousers, with knee-high black boots.

"Stand up straight."

Viserys straightened his back, as exposed that it made him feel. The man prodded his chest, and he puffed it, then he wrenched back Viserys's shoulders. "Straight!"

Viserys turned around to shove him, only for Ashara to enter and quiet the new feud. "Hm... You are a bit... rougher than Rhaegar. Taller than him at your age. Leaner as well."

Viserys looked down at the trim suit of clothes, noticing his Valyrian steel vambrace. He donned it, his longsword, and the maze signet. "How many more hours of party is there?"

"It's an hour until dinner. Now's the duelling with words."

As exhausted as Viserys was, the lights and colours of the admiralty's celebration was reinvigorating. The foppish landowners were congratulated for their diplomatic and logistical prowess, while the marine officers and privateer wranglers took the wartime accolades – the result would see them all wealthier and more powerful for the new order in Lorath under Braavosi suzerainty. Viserys did take in the other guests as a result, Braavosi ambassadresses and Lorathi noble ladies, their husbands all dead in the fighting. He spied Ser Marq in one corner, stuck between a few feuding captain's widows.

Ashara released Viserys to rescue the knight, pulling him from the hens and getting them each a cup of wine. "You'll make a sellsword yet, my boy." They both took a hearty drink, while Marq found a low table at the edge of the room for them to sit and eat at. "Sorry about the ships. You'll be compensated."

"Aye, with no chance to spend it."

Marq deflated. "I know. I'm sorry. We should have been back in Braavos months ago." He pulled Viserys to him by the shoulder. "You're a fine talent with a blade, but a better leader. Always remember what you're fighting for, and keep it high in your heart."

Viserys detected drink on Marq's breath, but the sentiment was heartfelt regardless. "It's not so bad. Less work for us come the muster. Unless we're expected to do it all on our own?"

Marq seemed to appreciate the change of subject. "No, thankfully. There's Brendel Byrne and a good portion of Peakes and Lothstons in Braavos and the Coastlands. And Caspor Hill's brood."

"Father keep him." Viserys ordered seven glasses each of some rye, three for each of them and one he tossed in a brazier. The fire danced in his eyes, holding him like a mummer's show as the drink drowned his mind.

In the meanwhile they ate while Marq drank four of something stronger. Ashara waved for Viserys to stand and he did, swallowing a belch and washing out his mouth with more wine. The food was rich and the wine dry, so all he could think about was water when Ashara introduced him to a woman.

"Lady Redwyne, Viserys Targaryen."

"She is one of your allies?" he asked.

"Perceptive one, isn't he?" Lady Redwyne said.

They tittered with one another, Viserys laughing along awkwardly. Ashara and the Reach lady held one another by the waist as well, as ladies did when they were most at ease, Viserys was certain – he was fifteen and drunk, so there wasn't much he didn't know. "I thought Dornish and Reachmen loathed one another."

"*Loathe* is... such a strong word. They are on the Marches, but we are not. We are both on the sea, I suppose."

"You only by marriage, Mina." Ashara waved to someone else and left Viserys with Mina Redwyne.

Viserys found her as fair as Ashara but in an entirely different way. She was quite short, with a strong, full figure and a mane of red-chestnut curls. She wore her houses colours in blue and purple brocade, and a skirt which she swept around to herd Viserys towards the dance floor. "You know the three-step? At least the two?"

The bards struck a classic folk tune of Norvoshi origin Viserys recalled Lady Danelle Lothston teaching him and the other young men of the Company. The kind of song perfect for a three-step.

Perhaps daringly, as the other men sought out partners, Viserys closed himself to Mina, one hand holding hers, the other on her upper back. "My lady?"

She nodded and he guided them in, doing the necessary twirls when his turn came around but primarily focusing on not losing the contents of his stomach. The spinning did not help, but soon they fell into the steadier steps, mirroring one another's feet moving back and forth. "You move with a knight's grace, my... lord?"

"I am neither prince nor knight, but I still might have a claim. Prince seems an appropriate title."

They spun again while Mina gave Viserys a far more serious look. "You put on good airs, but you need to offer something for me to respond to." He nodded at the lesson. "Try to be... less perfect."

"I thought I needed to be perfect."

"Not in a place like this. You need to know when and where you must *choose* to show weakness, so another might offer strength in return. Ceding power will leave you with more influence than can know." She let them drift away from the dance even as the tune neared crescendo. "And when to give ground or surrender."

"Power and influence are but two sides of the same coin."

She stopped them again, speaking with him at the edge of the dance floor. "And sellswords aren't that smart. Anything a lord or prince would say, you cannot say it."

As they returned to the crowding admiralty, Viserys tried to catch another look of the room. There was a man in Redwyne colours with the bearing of a knight, even if he was dressed like a bravo, following Lady Mina from a distance, and three more like him throughout the room. "I don't know much of Westeros these days, but I assume the ships of the Arbor are still known across the world?"

"My husband's house has but a few islands. How else would we support our family?"

"As you are past the Stepstones and the many perils of the Narrow Sea, am I to believe you are so desperate for allies?"

"That's quite the presumptive claim. Would you not seek House Redwyne as an ally?"

Viserys needed to pause to collect his thoughts, taking a goblet of water from a passing tray to wet his throat. "It is your own brother who holds my nephew, Lady Redwyne. Any alliance would involve his deliverance to the safety of his family, not another captor." Mina grew serious, playing real politics at Viserys's dropping of the gauntlet – mentioning the King of Thorns was not some common thing. "Queen of Vines, the Ironborn called you. How many men did you keel haul?"

"They killed my husband." She wiped her mouth from her plate of some pastry, laying down her napking then picking up the small fork again. Her nails were short, like Ashara's, but she did not carry herself like a nurse. "House Tyrell is the only home Aegon has ever known, and your *family* otherwise is one warlord, a puppet in the North, and a pair of unwed princesses. Aegon is being educated so he can be king."

"King of Westeros, or the Reach?"

"What's the difference?" She leaned in towards Viserys. "What was Westeros under your line? Its laws, buried in the Red Keep's catacombs alongside Balerion's skull, just another fossil of a bygone era? Or was it the thousand swords of Aegon's enemies, now a pile of burned slag at the pile of Blackwater Bay? Aegon will be a king for all when he is ready, and the dragon will fade."

Viserys drank more of his water, letting it cool the fire in his belly from both his anger and the drink. That was one thing he had realized, and why he had agreed to help Ashara. It was his family being used as an excuse to tear Westeros apart. Robert Baratheon's hatred for his brother, Rhaegar's delusions, or Mace Tyrell pupetting his nephew. "What do you know of elephants, Lady Redwyne?" 

"Elephants?"

Viserys had nothing, it was true, but he had what the Company taught him. "Part of what makes the Golden Company's elephants so effective is how they are raised. In the menageries of Volantis, calves are placed in weak cages they could never escape at such a young age. As they could never escape as a calf, they never even try as adults." Viserys sat with his back to the wall, looking out on the room. He wondered who he needed to be to save his family. A conqueror and tyrant? A wise conciliator or an aloof statesman? "But in the Golden Company, the calves roam free. They learn to charge and swing their tusks from the males, and how to be good mounts and walk among an army from the females. They're free to roam when not on campaign, as they would in the wild, so they are... a little more wild. They work with us because we're part of their herd, but no cage will hold them. They won't let an enemy get close enough to try, and will, as they have, die to a volley of arrows before they run."

Mina laughed softly, shaking her head at Viserys's foolishness. "And is that supposed to make me sad for him and afraid of you? Coming back across the Narrow Sea to trample us? How dare we cage a dragon?"

Viserys snorted amusedly. "No. Because peace needs a figurehead, and it cannot be some silk-soft, cake-eating, rose-scented weakling whose only ever known tourneys and feasts."

With some finality, she poured them each a goblet of Arbor gold. "You had best change your attitude towards tourneys, Prince Viserys. If you can bring something, be it men, coin, or both, I'll see to it you're given fair standing. If nothing else, I can put you near your nephew."

He raised his goblet. "Well, then... Long live the king."

She toasted him. "Long live the king."

Chapter Text

Viserys slept late the next morning, knowing only that it was morning because Tytus was in the privy cleaning his teeth. "You missed breakfast."

"I ate enough last night." His head pounded something fierce, and he was not sure if it was a lady's rouge or a bravo's smeared across his lips. "I'd have woken you if I knew it would last so long."

"I was thankful for the rest. There's a tray in my room for you, then we're to report to the western gate." Viserys ate some cold eggs, bacon, and toast as Tytus dressed in his armour, occasionally helping with a buckle or knot.

Usually, Tytus wore more mail than plate, and more leather than mail. However, given the weather and the variety of weapons they may face from the mysterious inland attacker, he chose to don a plate-and-mail gambeson of the Golden Company, with red-dyed accents and a matching gorget, vambraces, greaves, and pauldrons. "You can surely afford a cuirass and rondels with your pay from this campaign." 

"But after a helmet, a horse, and a new shield, I'll be drained." They tightened a few more straps before moving the meal and themselves to Viserys's room to dress him in his armour. He had matching greaves from a Qohorik horseman he felled, but mismatched vambraces and only one pauldron. "I'll need all my coin for a bride price."

Tytus lashed him into his mail then helped his brigandine over his head. "Truly? You'll really be done with the Company so soon?"

"It is not as if I will never return."

"But how could you? The Seven Kingdoms are a world away."

Viserys buckled his vambraces and sword belt, thankfully not having to carry his pack for a little while, though reflexively he grabbed his bow and shield. "But I won't let them part us, brother. The Golden Company, the Crones especially, always sit high in my mind when I think about Westeros." They stood at the top of the stair looking down into the yard. One of the local vice admirals was assembling a party, all in similar heavy infantry kit to make the expedition out of the fort to the island's interior. "And I won't forget you. Don't think I won't drag you along with me to get some of that famous Lannister gold."

Tytus wrapped Viserys in a firm grip, walking into the yard with his arm around him. "And I will be happy to deliver you to thee. My lord uncle's time as Hand and sack of King's Landing aside, the lion and the dragon have always been friends."

Marq came up behind his squires just as the vice admiral finished his spiel and the western gate trundled open. Unlike the gate that faced the sea, the land beside the road leading inland towards a distant arm of the Hills of Norvos was barren after months of siege and counter-siege. A twenty-foot strip of road was hemmed in by brambles and broken siege weapons and fortifications, half-buried by broken stone, melting snow, and packed mud. Marq hurried them to the front and onto some of the few horses, riding ahead to a forward camp no more advanced than a trapper's lean-to. "We're reinforcements from the natives," he said.

A marine cried out and loosed his crossbow into a tree, a figure dropping from it. "The natives?" Viserys asked.

Marq parked them and their horses by a fire surrounded by high walls of stacked tree trunks. "Lorathi smugglers and slavers. The fort was little more than the base of a work camp, and until the war began the island was a penal colony." He guided them through the forest on foot, along what remained of the road after years of winter storms.

Trees, uprooted or broken in the middle, lay tangled across the road, while the melting snow and rotting plant matter turned the forest floor to some sort of fetid swamp below the surface of the snow. Tytus groaned and looked back for their horses, but the ground was far too perilous for their legs. "We could have held back."

"To what end? So the ground can be all churned up and sucking?" Marq indicated another figure in a tree. Viserys strung his bow, a short-limbed weapon from the Dothraki sea. Plunder from Togg Joth.

He nocked an arrow, and with three other arrows and two crossbow bolts, felled another scout. Viserys walked off the road to inspect the body of a man, at least fifty from his grey-white beard and broken yellow teeth. His skin was dirty and he stank like a Braavosi sewer, and his weapon was a sharpened wooden stake. Even his feet were ruined, boots rotted away to exposed blackened and rotting toes. His wounds weren't bleeding either.

He hurried back to Marq just as they broke the treeline, without a chance to offer warning as they reached a camp scattered along the outer walls of a maze. While not as sprawling as Lorassyon's maze, its walls were higher, at least eighty feet, with but one entrance. The forest had been cleared for almost a mile around the walls, but the camp within appeared abandoned.

Tytus indicated another figure in a tree and approached. "Oi!" He grabbed the tree and with a few marines gave it a firm shake. The figure fell, fingerless and faceless. Both were still frozen to the tree overhead. "What happened here?"

Everyone moved in threes and fours into the camp, Marq leading the way with tearing open a half-collapsed tent. "There was an attack five days ago, and another in the evening the day before we arrived."

There were three bodies in the tent. A man, a woman, and a small bundle between them. The man was too hairy to tell much, but the woman had blue, porridge-lumpy skin. Viserys risked a touch of her cheeks. "They were frozen solid."

Marq dug his gauntleted fist into the muddy ground, searching for something. "Frozen a few inches down..." He pulled up green grass encased in snow and ice, then pointed towards the top of the maze at a few hanging icicles. "Snow must have been piled on top of the maze. The storms shook it, and covered the camp. The sun thawed them out."

"An avalanche is what the Norvoshi call it," said Viserys. "These people were not just smugglers and slavers. The island must have other settlements."

"It didn't. But the outer islands did." Tytus indicated what appeared to be small canoes and rowboats repurposed into shelters. "They were moving away from the water."

"But something drove them to attack."

The marines began congregating at the maze entrance, looking on in horror at the hanging scalps, bloody symbols, and wicker totems bound with string and entrails. "This was recent," said Gilberto. "The blood is sticky, and we've not had rain since dawn."

There was a sharp intake of breath from the marines and sellswords close by, with rumours spreading to everyone else. Viserys saw some of Marq in Gilberto for the way he took charge of the unaffiliated sellswords, with the same commanding bellow and accusatory pointer finger. Viserys and Tytus however stayed at Marq's side as he advanced into the maze.

"There's a logic to mazes," said Viserys, though he did not know if it was for his benefit or Tytus and Marq. "We keep one wall on our right and just follow it."

"And the other levels?" challenged Marq. "There's a reason we simply secured the maze entrances and never tried entering ourselves. Leave that for the treasure hunters."

"Then why are we walking in?" Tytus retorted. There was some forethought to navigating the maze, pairs of marines moving in to occupy every intersection and secondary entryway, but Marq led them inward with no focus on egress. "I miss the shield wall."

Viserys said, "You and me both," as they came to a fork, but one of the branches had two stairwells, one up and one down, rather than a straight path. "Why are we doing this, Ser Marq?"

Marq stopped and blinked. "I don't... I don't know." He blinked a few more times and sheathed his sword just to rub his eyes. "The Pattern... Fuck." He drew his sword again and put his squires behind him up against a wall. "Only those who learn to walk the labyrinth may benefit from its wisdom. So let wisdom be drawn from those who lose themselves."

Viserys shrugged his shield from his back to his arm, assessing their surroundings. Tytus had drifted from Marq, however, farther back the way they had come. Or was it... "Are we going to die in here?"

"No, boy. Get back here." Marq stepped towards Tytus and Tytus moved back, stepping on some ice and making a cracking sound that echoed down the maze and high over their heads. Tytus whirled towards the sound, drawing his sword and slashing wildly. "Tytus! Calm yourself!"

Marq's yelling only piled on top of the echoes, ringing Viserys's brain and eyes inside his skull. He covered his ears, but the megalithic stones hewn into the maze, black streaked with green rot and pale salt, seemed to vibrate and strengthen the knight's yelling. Tytus was no longer attacking nothing, but he was in a raucous argument about their path ahead.

Viserys tried to orient himself, planting his feet as the echoes intensified and threw him off balance. There was one path to the left of Marq and Tytus, and the stairs to their far right. Viserys risked a look behind his back at another path. But was that the path they came down, or was it the other?

He waved at Tytus and Marq, trying not to add to the cacophony by calling out. He felt light-headed waving his sword and shield at them, and perhaps it was that he staggered and fell to one knee that shook them from their argument. "Just be quiet," Viserys said, over and over again in a soft voice.

Soon the echoes dissipated, though as their ears recovered they heard other things – the clash of steel, and the thump of falling bodies.

"Which way did we come, Viserys?" Marq helped him upright, sheathing his sword as Viserys stowed his shield.

"The wall between these two even paths. We came down one of them. So we put our left hands out, and we walk. If it seems unfamiliar or we don't find the marine, we turn back, following the same wall again. Then we do the same to the opposite wall..." Viserys pointed at the wall. "If that fails as well."

Marq drew some coloured plaster beads instead. He crushed one in his hand and smeared bright yellow powder powder on the wall. "Now we know when we make it back."

Viserys led the way with one hand on the wall focusing on it, the path ahead, and the Valyrian steel maze signet ring. Echoes of combat and death still reached their ears, but it was much farther away after a few minutes of walking. Marq in the rear upped their pace, though Viserys stopped them when they came to another intersection.

Marq burst another bead, mixing it with some snow and painting the wall. "Should last a little longer."

Tytus huffed. They saw his breath. The sun was still high, but it was colder. "We're deeper in the maze. Like a mine grows hot, a maze must grow cold."

Viserys was not sure of his logic, but still certain they should turn back. There was a spiral staircase in the middle of the floor, with a smooth, stone ramp leading up and away, and two more paths splitting off perpendicular to Viserys. "Wrong way. Now we know."

They turned in place, Marq in the lead as they passed a few familiar sites and some of their own footprints. Tytus slowed and reached down, drawing a gold coin from between two stones. "Right way. I saw it before."

"So you're not just a pretty face?" Viserys said. Marq hushed them as they reached the two stairwells and pathway. Viserys's knee print was still in the dirt, as was Marq's yellow powder.

They kept up from their, following the same side even as they felt they recognised certain artefacts. Their chosen path took them up a flight of stairs and then down two others, stopping before they entered a pitch-black tunnel with sunlight burning at the far end. "This is the wrong way."

The sounds of battle had grown however, so Marq did not seem to care as he led them into the darkness. Viserys had just a few matches, but Marq had his mace and some scrap fabric, while Tytus had beeswax and oil he used for maintaining his armour. They fashioned a torch and Marq bore it high over his head, sword in the other. Viserys took position with his shield in the front, and Tytus with his sword in the rear.

They advanced carefully, splashing through freezing water. Their boots and hose protected them from the wet, but not the cold, which was steadily gnawing them to the bone. Numb from their toes at first, then their ankles and knees, the tunnel seemed only to grow longer and colder with each step, curling gently enough that soon the only light was that of the torch.

All that time, they followed the wall, but the path branched, and they felt warm wind and smelt the sea. "It's right there," Tytus said. "Let me scout." Marq nodded, holding the torch high as Tytus waded off course. He hissed as the water as it splashed into his boots and up his thighs, but Viserys craned his neck around the corner to see Tytus step into a beam of sunlight.

"It's the sun! There's a ladder!" His eager cry echoed into their ears, less painful but just as disorienting.

Marq nor Viserys questioned him as Tytus started to ascend. "We have no idea how high it would go. Mazes have logic, Ser Marq. Tytus should not-"

"Aye, but your method's had us in here for hours now." Marq spat emphatically, holding the mace downward to inspect the floor. "Cracked and flooded for at least a thousand years."

Viserys looked down their path then back. "Where is he? Tytus!"

Marq offered Viserys the mace-torch in exchange for his shield. "Here. I'll fetch him."

"Marq, if he's gone, you'll be gone."

"Hah! He's not dead, boy. Now take the torch and gimme your shield."

"You said we can't lose ourselves. We need to be wise." Viserys did not know how else he could phrase it, but Marq's mind seemed made up. "And if you don't come back?"

"Tell them I knighted you." Marq raised the shield and advanced towards the sunlight, climbing the ladder out of sight. Viserys did not know how long he should wait, but he also knew he only had so much light, and no extra beeswax or tallow.

"Marq! Tytus!" Viserys felt a bit of that fear filling his belly. He sheathed his sword and pressed his hand to the wall. "Crone, give me guidance."

He waited for a few minutes, looking between the patch of sunlight, still golden and bright, and the beeswax dripping down the mace. One drop fell to the water below, hissing and waking Viserys from some walking stupor. "Only those who learn to walk the labyrinth will find wisdom."

Viserys strode into the darkness, keeping the same wall in his hand, the Valyrian steel vambrace in front of him with the torch. The passageway around him was stout and square, the stones sliding out of place over centuries, slick with oozing mud and ice. The tunnel continued straight for a while, long enough that the mace began to dim, so Viserys upped his pace, working to open his ears despite his splashing feet, each step landing firmly, almost a stomp, so he could keep his footing on the slick floor underwater. Condensation on the walls and ceilings reflected the torchlight into other pathways and branches on the other wall, but his side went on and on, like some vital artery with no beginning or end.

Until it ended, Viserys running face first into a corner. "Seven hells!" He was more annoyed than afraid, already in pain from the previous day's drinking and hard work berthing ships. He rubbed his nose, unbroken, his head having taken most of the blow.

He simply kept his hand moving along the wall, past the corner to a door. It was made of pale, almost white wood, set with studs of pocked black metal. There were no handles, and hinges on both sides of the door. Viserys ran his fingers up and down searching for a seam, but there was none. His height was a benefit trying to look atop the door frame, but it ran flush with the ceiling, which was only seven feet high. Viserys had passed six feet tall just that morning, pressing his free hand to the ceiling overhead.

It was solid stone, with no secret switches or levers. He recalled a story about the Ragged Standard's war on Norvos for the Lorathi, descendants of Westerman miners who simply dug their way out of a maze their bosses tried trapping them in. Of course, to get out of paying what they owed.

In that case, what should Viserys care for wood? He tested his weight against the door at first. It wouldn't budge an inch. Wouldn't even do him the courtesy of flexing. He examined the hinges next. They swung out towards him, but they looked like solid iron. He drew his knife and knocked the heavy brass pommel against the pins of the hinges, but he barely scratched them.

The door appeared to be a solid plank of wood. He reckoned maple or cherry, but it was hard to tell in the light. He wondered what it had to go through to be bleached so pale.

His torch was dying though, and he was done with tunnels. He knocked for good measure, and when no one answered, he drove the mace into the wood. It sparked and the tallow spat, and he swung again as the fire died. Possessed by his own fear and frustration, Viserys wheeled the mace around to hit the door even harder. He prayed the iron haft would hold, imagining the mace was a spear and he was not swinging it, but thrusting it over his shield. Thrust and withdraw, thrust and withdraw. Swing, crash, recover. Swing, crash , recover.

He lost the light but kept going, feeling a gust of cool air and a black spot of darkness beyond. He prayed there was wood and that luck had not stolen his matches as well as his shield, eleven, twelve, thirteen swings until the mace head broke off as well.

Viserys chose not to feel around in the darkness for the head of the mace, instead using its steel handle to dig his way through the door. After the fifth strike he felt it split up the middle, still held together by a few welds, but constant punishment against hardwood was too much for it to bear.

With the sixth impact however, the haft broke through and nearly went flying out of his hands. He saw light and a figure beyond that broke into a run down another tunnel. It looked roughly dug beyond, with pale roots hanging around a small fire of moss and peat, with snow blowing in from an opening overhead.

"Please! I'm with the Golden Company, and I'm lost in here! I've no light! Hello?" He drew back with the mace handle but thought better of it. The hole was big enough for him to kick out some more wood as it splintered. Soon he was able to reach his arm through. He pulled back, drawing his dagger and shortsword and driving them into the wood, using the mace handle like a stake driver. The blades sank deeper, splitting the wood. Viserys hooted like Drogo, reorienting himself using the firelight beyond the door, retreating ten feet, then charging his shoulder towards the narrow crack in the door.

He crashed through and into an earthen wall beyond, dirt and clawing roots scratching his face and tangling his hair. "Why has the Golden Company come so far? Old enmities?"

Viserys looked over his shoulder, towards the voice through the door. The intact door, with a carved face weeping... blood?

Chapter Text

It was all such a turn, her travails upon the sea.

First they had stolen Lysa off the seaside when she was with Petyr, and then they *tossed* her beloved Petyr into the sea. As if he was just some thing!

He may have just been some smelly green dust in an urn to them, but he was all she had before her baby.

Oh, Mother's mercy how it had hurt. Lysa forgave her mother for almost gelding her father after Edmure's birth nearly killed her. They loved one another still, but her lord father avoided Lady Minisa monthly to avoid getting her with child.

Lysa had no such luck, rendered a touch plumper by a moon in Braavos with a *very* friendly whore, then a cushy return to the Eyrie. She recalled Mistress Caterina fondly, a woman with all the trappings of nobility, husband and sons included, yet still a whore.

Lysa considered it only proper she be returned home, though she saw little cause in telling anyone about the Targaryen. What would that solve, except to anger her husband and his councillors?

No, Lysa was happy to spend the remaining moon in her apartments with just septas to serve her. They were not as witty as the whores in Braavos, nor would they play cyvasse with her, or let her show off the... assets that pregnancy had granted her, which made even less sense, as her lord husband was the only man that ever saw her – even her guards were women, a pair of giant brick-browed blonde maiden from deep in the mountains that spoke only some unknown ancient Andal dialect.

Then the push had come, making her put her feet up *and then* Lord Arryn brought his court in, only for Lysa to turn feral, climb up her bed on all fours, and grunt her son out beneath her and catch him herself. She put him on her own breast before they could touch him, while the court gasped and most of the lords and knights fainted.

A robin had landed on her shoulder from the open window at the same moment, and on the first day of spring at that, so she had named him Robert, for his father's old friend – but he was *her* Sweetrobin.

The nervous maester examined her three moons later, with Lord Arryn and four septas in the room, shaking as his metal prod moved between her legs. At least it was warm. "She is well, my lord. Better than before, in fact."

"It is as we said," Mother Gretchel said. The leader of the household's septas, it was she whom had so *inspected* Lysa every few days since she gave birth three moons past. "Lady Arryn's new habits are entirely unsustainable. She became gravid before, she will do so again after she no longer looks like a prize sow."

Lysa liked her new breasts though, looking down at them as they started leaking, swiping her son from a septa. He was a fat, happy baby, and he loved to be swayed. She would teach him to dance as well as her uncle Brynden.

"Colemon, what do you think?" Lord Arryn asked. Denys was mostly leaning on his cane, which was easier done than when Lysa saw him last, though his arm on that side was still covered by the shoulder cape that bore a white Arryn falcon on a sky-blue field, his face still covered by a white porcelain mask. "Which is healthier?"

Mother Gretchel began, "The Seven tells us that penitence must-"

Denys snapped, "You will offer guidance when I *ask* for it, septa." Gretchel dropped her head and stepped backwards, but Lysa had learned that such a show of deference was likely false. "Colemon?"

Despite the flock of septas and their glaring, the maester managed to swallow and clear his throat. "Research across many noble and smallfolk ladies has shown that a hardier constitution produces a hardier womb. Though prayer may help, the issue at hand before was Lady Arryn's habits, or lack thereof, regarding her... nutrition."

They all watched as Lysa used her knee to prop Robin up, though he had a firm grip on her breast, so she reached to her breakfast tray for more ham on buttered biscuits, interspersed with handfuls of some leafy vegetable dipped in vinegar and olive oil, just like in Braavos. "I feel strong, my lord. And very hungry."

She knew her value as well, that pretty Lyseni man had told her that much would be proven by a successful birth. Her first pregnancy had been spent fawning and showing it off, giving birth to an exhausted babe that died fast. The second she had been careful and read all the books, even pulled her hair out from the stress, yet still it had failed. The third she passed on her own – her third son – and told no one.

Then was when they started on the prayers. Constant and endless, interspersed with pilgrimages across the Vale, along with the fasting. That had led to three dead daughters in quick succession, and when Lysa ran away to the fingers for the first time.

But those failures were finally in the past, and as all but Lord Arryn filed out, Lysa relished in her victory. She was flush and hale, even her hair felt thicker, so she knew it was not the prayer. She decided it was the ham.

"You are healed," her husband stated, as his eyes roamed over her body.

"I am. Sit. Hold your son."

"My arm, I-"

"Denys." She propped her Sweetrobin up on her lap against her chest, letting her teats show for a moment before covering them. "He has your eyes and our hair, and I was gone for not five months. I was not raped, and I am healthy because I am changed. Please, I can't..." She dropped a few years, kissing her Sweetrobin's wispy hair. "I cannot be returned to my father."

He turned dark, into the Tyrant she had heard rumour of, but he quickly softened. There he was, her Darling Denys, his boyish blond hair and playful blue eyes still making him a vision. His scarring looked better. "I trust your word, my lady. Who said such things near you?"

"The septas, they... they whisper."

He half collapsed to the bed. "They pull on me from all sides, Lysa. I thought I would have no one."

That was also what she liked about Mistress Caterina, who talked to her man Marq and made him a better one for it. Lysa had learned how a few tears could get the madam whatever she wanted from the scar-faced knight. "Well, you have me." Lysa thought of her last raven from Riverrun. From her Cat in their secret language, having turned into a warrior lady. "And your... disappointment was not unwarranted. I was a poor wife."

He turned on her, wincing but softening as his son burbled and laughed at him. His eyes behind the mask were welling up and glassy, and she reached for the edge of the mask Robin clutched his thumb. "We did the best we could." She felt the edges of the melted scars on that side of his face, almost lifting it off. "My... my son has a firm grip."

"You'll teach him to swing a sword and everything." She wobbled her babe in her lap, trying to slip the mask from him. "Hold him. Please?"

Denys looked at her with a half shrug, even as he pushed his shoulder cape off his left arm. It was shrivelled from lack of use, with various green spots spreading through the white sleeves of his doublet. "Seven hells."

"The sores?"

"Aye. Colemon's asked for words to the Citadel, but with the Tyrells..." Her husband's new allies and new enemies hung between them. She had been cloistered in the Eyrie before her captivity, then learned everything second hand in Braavos, all while her hosts were mourning the death of the Targaryen. He had picked Robert over Mace, and everything... She grew sad at the thought of him. Her husband had some Targaryen in him as well, was that why he was allied with Robert Baratheon? "When we push into the North-"

"Why the North? Eddard and Catelyn-"

"We will not discuss this again." Denys backed away just as Lysa was lowering Robin to his arms. She had to lunge to make sure he did not fall, which dropped him too suddenly, and he started to cry. "I will visit you tonight, wife. Good day."

He rushed out and slammed the door behind him, leaving Lysa with her crying son. After he was calmed and sleeping, Lysa tidied herself and went to her solar. It was for the lady Arryn, and empty and dusty from decades of misuse.

Answering some letters and sending some more, she thought of her husband and his war on the lands of her sister's husband. It would be a feat for any force to reach Winterfell from without, that much was clear, but now that she was healed, Lysa knew she would be watched for information about the North. Luckily, she had been sure to befriend the ladies of the Vale between Gulltown and the Eyrie, employing their ravens so as not to always route her messages through Riverrun and Storm's End.

She returned to court that afternoon, hair braided and her new figure somehow squeezed into a matching pale blue dress that fastened at the collar. It had no embroidery, no other colours, and not even visible skirts, and was stifling as a result, choking even as she insisted on carrying Robin herself as she entered on her husband's good arm. Every lady was dressed as plainly, almost austere.

Lysa had added a diadem gifted to her by her father, and one of the few pieces of jewellery that was hers alone, not House Arryn's – silver threading, with dancing silver trouts beneath soaring platinum falcons.

The majordomo cracked his cane against the floor. "Presenting, Lord Robert of the House Arryn, heir to the Vale, heir to the Mountains of the Moon, heir to the Eyrie and the lordship of House Arryn of the Vale!"

It was easy for Lysa to stay bright and happy despite her physical discomfort, the ladies cooing over Robert and the lords congratulating their master as they entered the fray. She caught a hint of her gregarious husband, only seeing him as such once, and that was before they were betrothed. She saw his kind eyes soft laugh, and from behind with his full head of blonde hair, Lysa could forget about his deformations.

Her Sweetrobin was a cross between his parents, with strawberry-blond hair streaked with lighter gold and darker red, with the long Tully nose but the Arryn hooked tip, and vibrant eyes that crossed the sky blue of the Vale and the dark blue of the Riverlands. In his blue and white cap and gown, he was the picture of a prince, and though she handed him around, Lysa was certain he was never far from her.

Before, she had been on her own in the Vale. The same was the case after her return from Braavos, though she was more aware of it, how the septons, the Warrior's Sons, and the Winged Knights followed her boy with their eyes. *"Talons or claws, they will dig in and tear your son apart if you let them,"* Cersei Baratheon's letter said. A woman who embarrassed her brother, now warning her? *"Falcon or lion, you must protect your son, first from his father, second from those who follow him."*

Lysa rocked her Sweetrobin as they made their way around the room and up to the dais in the High Hall, Jon Arryn's weirwood thrones replaced by the original moonstone chair, said to have been carved from the heart of the mountain. Lysa was afforded a cushioned stool, passing Robin to Sister Mela behind her – Mela doted on the boy, and was one of the few that did not cringe at Lysa feeding him herself.

"To business," Denys muttered. Colemon nodded to reassure him, though he still shook as he took his place standing by the moonstone chair. It was a pallid white, and as the late morning sun hit the chair from one of the many skylights letting in the winter air, it took on a soft white glow. Lord Arryn was granted his position by the Seven who are One, according to most, but Colemon, man of letters and skeptic that he was as well, needed to squint to look at him. "Order!" Denys cracked his cane on the floor, silencing the court and startling Lysa and Robin, who made a surprised gurgle. "The Sisterton siege."

A knight in the rising sun of House Donniger stepped forward. "My Lord Arryn, the Sisterton siege has failed, may the Stranger keep the dead. Our attack was rebuffed and our forces... our forces scattered. Fewer than one of every one hundred men survived, may the Warrior bless them.."

The court muttered but was silenced quickly by another crack of Denys's cane. "I have had a vision." The court stilled, as Lysa looked at her husband queerly. A *vision*? Since when did the Seven grant visions? "The Warrior tells me we must redouble our defense of Karhold. Widow's Watch is of little strategic value."

Members of House Grafton were riled. Some of Denys's most important, and most distant, supporters. "My lord! Lord Grafton's good-daughter is with child! When it is born, our claim on Widow's Watch-"

"Will be useless." Lord Arryn levelled his gaze at the Grafton. "Your name is?"

The Grafton paled. Lysa wondered what was happening. She had yet to tell any of them it was her first time at court, and wondered if this scene had played out in the past. "Ser Marq Grafton, Lord Arryn."

"Your father?"

Marq swallowed, and did not immediately answer. The court nobles assembled around him had started thinning out, leaving him with just Winged Knights nearby. They were uniformly Andal and of Arryn blood, blonde and blue-eyed, tall with broad-shoulders and a longsword and shield. Their plate was brushed steel enamelled sky blue and moonstone grey, with a falcon feather for every victory in their helms.

"I asked غخع a question, Ser Marq."

"His lordship's uncle, Gyles Grafton," Marq said, firming up his voice.

Denys nodded. It was a strange look on his face. Not a frown, but a look of... acceptance? "Step forward."

Marq moved steadily despite the panic on the faces of the other Graftons, to say nothing of the glee of the Gulltown Arryns. Lysa recalled that Mistress Caterina's man was named Marq. Marq Grafton looked cut from the same cloth as him and her Uncle Brynden, with greying، dirty blond hair and a well-kept beard, in the garb of a highborn knight. A cousin to the lord of House Grafton was no small position, and a man such as he was a valuable ally.

"Ser Osric?" At Lord Arryn's order, one of the Winged Knights stepped to the other end of the High Hall, opening the Moon Door as Marq was seized by two more knights.

No one did anything. No outcry, no calls for a trial, nothing.

Lysa could not stand it. "Robert needs a sworn sword, husband," Lysa said, just loud enough so the court could hear. "Let us not waste the... wisdom the Warrior's experience has heaped on Ser Marq, even if his failure has dissapointed his lordship."

What was her mouth doing? She was speaking, but Cat's voice was coming out. Or was it Petyr's? Maybe her father, with all his endless lectures to her sister and brother.

The Winged Knights had not stopped and the Moon Door was opened, tossing banners and skirts alike with the high mountain winds. Instead of looking just to her for an answer, or closing his eyes for peace with himself, Denys looked to one of the Septons near the foot of the dais, who nodded. "Very well. Ser Marq, until further notice, you will be my son's sworn sword, until such a time you prove your loyalty once again to House Arryn, the Vale, and the Seven who are One."

House Grafton would not be punished, but the lone knight would be? Lysa wondered how Marq could be to blame for relaying a message about a battle half a kingdom away. Facing an enemy the Vale had invited, at that. Lysa thought it all quite mad.

At least *that* was the same as before.

Denys turned to his wife. "You can take charge of such a man?" Lysa's eyes flicked to Mother Gretchel, then to the other ladies and a few of the men she'd seen eyeing her new assets. "The Seven say-"

"Who rules in the Vale? House Arryn, or the Seven?" Lysa's proclamation was bold as could be, and not in a good way by Vale standards, but Lysa was chuffed, and in Braavos the ladies were so bold, calling their men on their failures and easily offering what it would take to bed or wed them. The septon at the foot of the dais had darkened, hooded eyes and stringy white eyebrows stilling on Lysa. "It is your decision, my lord."

Denys looked a little panicked, though he seemed to turn into the wind from the Moon Door and relax. "Ser Marq, my solar."

Court continued much the same, and the next three messengers earned similar treatments – they were spared – though more of the Faith were perturbed. When next they were alone, Lysa asked Mela, "What of these executions?" Mela stiffened, even as Robert spat his lunch on her habit "You are not sworn to the faith already, are you?"

"Married to the Father, my lady." Mela's habit covered thick black tresses, donning a fresh one Lysa offered. "Thank you, Lady Arryn."

"Killing the messenger is a foul tiding, dear. Why, my uncle the Blackfish said-"

"Nothing of tidings, my lady!" Mela hushed her and pulled Lysa close. "No tidings, omens, or luck. Coincidence and blessings only. Trust me."

"I will not be afraid in my own house!" Lysa pushed Mela off, putting Robert down and moving to her solar. Mela picked Robert up and followed her. "I will write to my father forthwith. I'll get some loyal men just for me. Maybe a lady or lesser lord or two as well!"

"But Mother Gretchel-"

"I laugh at Mother Gretchel. Hah! What a witch's name for a witch of a woman. Gretchel. Blech." Lysa gagged and made Robert laugh. When he laughed he was her Sweetrobin, but already to everyone else he was Lord Robert. There had even been congratulations from his namesake, who offered to foster the boy in Storm's End. Lysa wouldn't mind getting her hands on Stannis's daughter, so agreed. "Knights and men at arms, of course, and a well born knight or lesser lord to lead them. A lady of my household... Mela, what's your birth?"

"My birth, my lady?" Lysa looked the septa up and down. She was beautiful, but common with strong shoulders and a wide lower half. A less witty smallfolk woman would be in the fields heavy with her third babe at her age, instead Mela was educated as a septa, and found herself the confidant of a great lady. "My father was- *is* a game warden in Snakewood, but he has mostly stopped working. I had two brothers and five sisters."

Lysa nodded. Such educated smallfolk had turned into something... new, a sort of peasant with a lot of coin and influence, sometimes even land. Though in the Vale they were very uncommon, unlike the Reach and Riverlands, where they were necessary, and the North, where they were needed with all their savage settlers from beyond the Wall. "Continue."

"I was the fourth girl. My elder sisters married knights and a merchant."

"Your brothers?"

"Still game wardens. The younger, Artys, leads hunts and fishing trips as well. There was enough extra coin to free our younger sisters..." Mela trailed off, still as Robert pinched her nose. "Apologies, my lady."

"Free them?" Lysa stood, moving Robert from Mela's arms to his toys atop piled pillows and carpets beside her desk. The room was enclosed otherwise, with none of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the rest of the Eyrie, so she was happy to let Robert roam and explore. "Free them, Mela?"

Mela looked around, avoiding Lysa's gaze. "You really don't... you don't know?"

"Know what, Mela!"

"They take them for settlers!" Mela burst into tears and collapsed, and for the first time in her life, *Lysa* was the one to comfort a weeping maid. "When the green plague came with the rain, everyone in the souther- southern Vale died or was barren, and in the north behind the Mountains of the Moon, where we were safe, they..."

Lysa recalled something about spare maidens from before her captivity, but it was a blur. She comforted Mela as she cried, then helped her to explain so Lysa understood. It could not be as awful as what she thought, all those men with no plunder, home from war to find their children dead and their wives barren. She had known how the Riverlands had suffered, but the rivers of the Trident had been House Tully's salvation, holding back the worst of the green plague in the south.

To Lysa's horror, it was far worse, yet still the suffering wrought by the green plague and everything else brought about by Mad Aerys's wildfire did not justify the anger of the people, and how the Faith stepped in to relay their grievances to Denys when he was still only Lord Regent in Jon Arryn's absence. In one of her messages, Cat mentioned, of the Rebellion and warring since, something about a growing snowball – some Northern maxim Lysa thought appropriate, including her husband invading his own Stark good-sister's home. He had counted Ned Stark as one of his friends, but after the Treaty on the Gods Eye...

Lysa recalled how Denys had been so delicate. So gentle. He was not to be married at all at first, and the alliance in jeopardy, but he stepped in despite his grief for his wife and son, who had not two moons prior passed from a fever that swept through the Vale in the year of false spring.

Later that evening, after supper and alone with her thoughts and Robert, Lysa's mind meandered to those days before her captivity with the Ibbenese. The praying, the fasting despite the vomiting and stabbing hunger... she ate better in months when the Ibbenese saw her belly, feeding her beef and potatoes, and not fish despite it being far more plentiful. They did not explain why.

But then before that, the praying, the hikes to distant septrys and chapels scattered across the Vale in caves and caverns across the Mountains of the Moon and along every craggy cove of the Fingers. There was rarely anyone *else* in those places. Other septons and septas, silent brothers and sisters, then later brown brothers, the faith militant, and at larger sites, even Warrior's Sons and penitent nobility, but never smallfolk. Never those doing the work of feeding the Vale and arming the Vale for a war they had not asked for, after another war they did not want to be involved in in the first place.

Lysa decided she would have to do something about it, if for no other reason she loved her sister and knew better now. She was a proud daughter of House Tully, Lady of the Vale, and mother to its heir, so she would use her position.

To do what, she had no idea, but that was in the future. For now, she wanted knights who were loyal to her. She found Ser Marq to be most skittish after his private conversation with Denys. She hoped her brother would send someone good, like Marq Piper – why not another Marq. That would be a sight, to see him poking the Andal septons with his need to drink and whore and why he could not.

Ugh, so much to do and so little time, she thought to herself as her husband opened the door. She tried a few moves Caterina had told her about, but Denys was not interested, not staying when he was done thrusting except to say, "I hope you do not make a habit of interfering at court. We have a way of keeping things efficient in the Eyrie. You will learn that if you want to be involved. Do you understand?"

Lysa looked at him, still dressed in his many sleeves and mask. "Yes, my lord." She sighed but shed no tears, more angry at herself for wasting time on Petyr and then her own woes. She never did feel quite right after her father made her drink moon tea. She lost count of how many times she drank it, he was so afraid she was with child. It was so simple and so cruel, but had gone from him as her gaoler to her husband and the Faith. But just maybe, she could make something for her children instead of whatever Andal zeal had seized the Vale.

Chapter Text

Viserys stood at the bottom of a sinkhole, a cloudless, starry sky far overhead. He looked back at the door, wiping his fingers through the running red liquid. It was... more vibrant than blood, the darkness consumed for something more vital to take hold. "Who are you?" the door asked, and the sinkhole whispered, "Who-who-who-who-who-who-who,"

Viserys staggered backwards as the door opened its eyes and looked at him with pinched, snow blind eyes. "What?"

"Who are you?"

"Viserys Tar... garyen." The door closed its eyes. "Open." He repeated himself in High Valyrian, then Dothraki and Rhoynish for good measure. "Hello!"

"Shh!" A child dropped from the rim of the sinkhold, looking at him with pale brown eyes and leafy green... hair? It looked like feathers. "You will wake the sleepers." He followed the child as she sat by the fire, gathering dead white roots to build up the fire. "We've not seen someone through the White Gate since..." She looked up at Viserys, holding his gaze with hers. An ancient gaze.

He drew his short sword, putting it on the ground in front of him as he sat. It was cold, but still, and it was night overhead. The air itself tasted different, not merely older but something more primal. "Where are we?"

The child looked around, deflating as her shoulders drooped. "So few of us now. Fewer. They will build with this winter."

"Who will build what?" Laughter echoed down the other tunnels and he spun towards them, on his feet with weapon in hand. "Who's there!" He turned back to the child. He was not an old enough squire to do more with recruits and cadets than the most basic orders, and Lady Lothston's children he met were even younger than this deer-spotted child appeared to be. "Who are you?"

"A question that I can answer. Took you long enough." She stood. "Follow me, and don't wander." She walked into the darkness.

Viserys picked up the largest piece of burning root and followed. He could see his breath and his teeth chattered randomly. He wore layers of armour, and he was warm, but for keeping the damp away and surviving the crashing sea, not... "Where are we?" he asked again, softer and hoping his panic was clear.

"Fret not, Viserys Targaryen." The child turned and faced him, eyes aglow from the fading torchlight. "Are you very cold?"

"I'm getting there." A warm wind pushed through the tunnel, blowing out the torch but saving Viserys from the cold.

Pale moonlight starting draining through the roots and packed earth overhead, catching dragonglass spikes set into the walls. Barely a breath, Viserys whispered, "Merlings," and the child shot a dark look back at him. "Typically I am aware of where I am."

"Typically, people don't break down the White Gate." She stopped at a fork in the tunnel. "Although, you are the first to pass through it in some time."

"How much time?"

The child smirked and kept going. Viserys had heard the stories from sailors from everywhere from the Thousand Isles to White Harbour about Merlings, but he could not smell the sea nor hear the wind despite the comfortable warmth.

"Marq? Tytus?" Viserys used his heel to dig a furrow in the ground, looking down one tunnel and treating it like an extension of the maze, continuing along the same wall. "Only those who learn to walk the labyrinth properly will find wisdom."

"Yes, but wisdom leads to so much pain." Viserys searched for the voice as it, *he*, spoke to him. "Better to live in blissful ignorance."

The child dashed into the darkness, leaving Viserys under roots that hung twenty or more feet from somewhere overhead. "Show yourself! Where am I? Who are you!"

He heard a giggle and thrust towards it, earning a gasp but no other response. A child rushed by and cut him on the hand as another wept, their dragonglass blade breaking against his Valyrian steel vambrace with a sound like a crystal gong. "Leave me be!" He swung his blade wide but as it cut the hanging roots, the bloodred sap aged the weapon centuries in a moment. The blade chipped and pitted, the pommel broke off, and the leather over the handle and hilt rotted away to dust.

Viserys dropped the ruined weapon just as his hand started to ache, catching it in the light and seeing a liver spot on his thumb that faded away in a few more seconds. "You are too unkind to those who sing the song of earth." The roots appeared to start waving, opening, listening to a voice opening another pathway. "You have a long journey back. Come."

Having no other option, Viserys drew his dagger, passing it off to his other hand as he winced at the stinging cut. "How do I get back through the door?"

The voice quieted, less omnipresent and more a distant echo, as if it were speaking to him from across quiet water. "It was an entrance to you, but yet an exit for others. You will find that not all roads can be travelled twice."

His route took him down a tight, winding tunnel carpeted with bones of all shapes and sizes, before descending steep stone stairs to a massive cavern. Viserys could hardly see anything a black abyss that hid a river he could hear rushing far below, but he felt something guiding him forward.

Across a stone and earthwork bridge crossing a canyon, he approached a pile of the white roots growing out of the ground, not the ceiling. Like the legs of a thousand white spiders, they opened as he advanced, at the same pace when he slowed down. More laughter, and then some melodic, throaty song, echoed down the tunnels. It was discordant and chaotic in his ears, disorienting and unfocused.

"Hush now, my friends. He is not so gifted." Viserys looked up as the final roots parted, revealing a pale, skeletal man in rotted, black clothing on a throne of the same tangled white roots. He had hair fine as spider silk, long enough to reach the floor, and roots growing through his body and one eye socket, the other red and raw.

Viserys looked over the space as the singing and laughter died, only the still creaking of the roots to fill the silence. "Where am I? What happened to Marq and Tytus?"

"Who?"

"My knight and fellow squire!" Viserys looked around. "Is this the Hills of Norvos? I heard of a septry east of Andalos. Is this-"

"Heh. I am no septon." The man's red eye turned milky white. "They are alive. However, far of your reach." The fingers of his right hand drummed some root hung with an old bowstring. "Who are you?"

"Viserys Targaryen," they said together.

Viserys found as he calmed, he began to shiver again. The air was stilling, but it was cold fa. "Who are you?"

The air grew warm and soft in an instant, what felt like a summer breeze coming down the tunnels. "I wore many names when I was quick, but even I had a mother, and the name she gave me at her breast was Brynden."

"Brynden... Like the Blackfish?"

"Perhaps he was named for me. Some still are. Not so many as before. Men forget. Only the trees remember."

The child stepped out of the darkness, the same girl as before. "Most of him has gone into the tree," she said. "Strength remains in his flesh for a final task, but a traveller... that is something the Old Gods could not portend."

"How he was delivered here is immaterial, Leaf." The roots unfurled to lower Brynden to Viserys's level. Beneath the eye socket full of roots, and across his cheek and neck, he had a large wineskin birthmark. "You truly do not know me?"

"There is a... a tickle. A memory of part of a story. Two of the... the Blackfyre rebellions?" Viserys fidgeted with his arm rings – three copper, two silver.

"Three of them," Brynden corrected. "You are of the Golden Company? Bittersteel's offspring?"

"I am. Proudly." Viserys showed off his arm rings. "Soon I'll be a knight, and they will all be turned to Gold."

"If you can get home." Like a whip, one of the roots lashed around his neck and forced its way into his ear. Brynden and the tunnels disappeared, replaced by a great white tree with red leaves, at the edge of an endless snowfield beneath a starry sky. Beneath the moon in the west lay tall, jagged mountains, while the forest sprawled to the horizon on all sides but north. "You must go east, then south. Follow the coast to Hardhome."

"But... where am I? What is Hardhome?" His voice rang like a bell inside his head, his gaze drawn to a bird's eye view of a green and grey crater. Then time wound back, and the crater reformed into an emerald conflagration and then a city with a red castle at its heart.

His vision was thrust north, across countryside, swamp, and two-thousand miles of snow-covered land bisected by a wall of ice greater than any wonder of Essos Viserys had ever seen. "Seven-hundred miles long, give or take a league." The man, the old god, that sat before him smiled in a most ungodly manner.

"You are lost, Viserys Targaryen," said Leaf. "You are lost, but you are not beyond the realms of men. Many others have been lost, and you are not the first that is not yet when they belong." Viserys looked down at the bones on the floor, ribs and skulls and some with hair or rings on their fingers.

The roots started opening, dropping bags, packs, and gear from the ceiling. Most of it was either black or roughly sewn animal hides, though he spied some fine leather and bronze armour marked with old runes. "You can hunt, I hope?" Brynden asked.

"More of a trapper, I'm afraid." Suspicious as he started, before too long Viserys was eagerly digging through the kit, taking a castle-forged dagger with a black handle and sheath, a bronze skinning knife decorated with runes, and a spear with a crooked haft but a large, barbed steel head. It more closely resembled a broken halberd, but it was nine-feet long and perfect for how he used it. "Seven hells." Viserys dropped the spear and withdrew a sword.

The leather around its handle was cracked and flaking, the scabbard was falling apart around the blade, and the pommel and the ruby set in the middle of the cross-guard were caked with dust and grime. The handle was dried and cracked white wood. Weirwood. The word came back to him, but the blade..."I'd forgotten about that."

Viserys held the sword aloft, watching enraptured as the moonlight danced like silver fire in the blade's swirling veins. "Do you... know what this is?" Subtle as his own soft voice, Brynden nodded. "Whose was it?"

Brynden might have smirked. "Mine. My uncle's before that, bestowed upon one worthy wielder every generation since it was first forged for our family. Ours was never a wealthy house, but in history... we were mighty."

Viserys looked from the sword to Brynden then some of the kit. About a quarter of it was black or forged in a Westerosi castle. "Bloodraven?"

"I wore many names when I was quick, but even I had a mother, and the name she gave me at her breast was Brynden."

Leaf said, "You should go now, while this weather holds."

"It's still night. He's my family." Viserys turned from leaf to his distant uncle. "Brynden, my lord? Come with me. Let me remove you from-"

When he raised the sword to chop at the roots, like a snarling cat Leaf bared her teeth and curled back to pounce. "He is the last!" she screamed. "You will leave him!" It ran through his ears like shattering glass, all the other voices in the darkness erupting into a screech as well.

Brynden raised his hand and they quieted. "Go, Viserys. It will be night for more than a year still, and you have a long journey."

Shaking his head while glancing back and forth between Brynden and leaf, he felt hot anger bubbling up inside him. "You can't! We- The Seven Kingdoms are tearing themselves apart! They need us!"

"I wore many names when I was quick, but even I had a mother, and the name she gave me at her breast was Brynden."

As quick as it had burned, the fire was quenched. "He fought and led and made peace already, Viserys Targaryen." Leaf was calm and peaceful again, though Viserys had little doubt that just like a storm, she could erupt again if she so desired. "Now he must sit and wait. And he must do so alone."

"My family, *our* family... They need us." He shouldered the pack and found another scabbard for the sword. "I needed you. Did you know that I was..."

Brynden's gaze was unwavering. Viserys felt he was the little boy again, staring up at the Titan of Braavos and his unwavering gaze. He felt that little boy die inside of him for a second time.

"Dark Sister," Brynden said. He pointed one emaciated finger down the tunnel to his right. "Follow the song of winter, if you hope to live beyond these caves."

Viserys turned from the cave without another word, using one shield as a sled and a second, bronze with runes and sized like a infantry shield of the Company, to dig himself out, pushing through to packed snow where the snowfield met the forest. The ground was scattered with red leaves, and their branches craned overhead, offering shade from the stars above.

Thanking the smith for the layers of leather and wool in his new equipment, Viserys put up a furred hood and starting walked, half crawling, half hiking his way through the snow. He lost sight of the sky more than once, and even saw a crack underneath after the first hour that looked like it went straight down to the blackest pit of the seven hells. Keeping his journey as straight as possible however delivered him safely to the treeline of the forest.

It could have been minutes or hours later, though Viserys built up a sweat just the same, looking up at the stars as he hiked along the treeline. He stayed well outside the far darker shadows within the forest, cast by the moon and stars across a blue and purple night sky. The nights were long in Braavos during winter, the days overcast or cloudy and azure, sometimes with snow but more often freezing rain, but an endless night was something Viserys had never even thought possible, even if summer days in the Dusklands were similarly endless.

He struggled to orient himself, before he found the uppermost leaves of the weirwood tree behind him. Putting it behind his right shoulder, he turned southeast into the forest.

Never before had Viserys been in a wilderness like that snow-covered land, many a sellsword knowing better than to wander away from civilization – where else could a professional soldier find work? Hermits and feral freedmen did not have work for sellswords in Essos's hinterlands, so he doubted he might come across a knight or fair lady in the northernmost part of Westeros.

It was cold, obviously, but the air was still, Viserys finding it easier to remove his outermost layers until he was down to just his tunic on top, save his hood, and his breeches, small clothes, and boots below the waist, though he still wore Dark Sister and the Valyrian steel vambrace.

Viserys found it difficult to think about anything other than his situation, so he didn't. He just walked.

***

The moon was bright and a warm burn was spreading across his cheeks. Had Brynden not granted him a vision of King's Landing before its destruction, Viserys might have still thought he was in the Hills of Norvos, or perhaps back in Lorassyon after a blizzard.

After a few hours, sucking on some snow while packing it into a waterskin to melt, he came to an unmarked crossroads. If he wanted to stick to the snowfield, he would have to turn north-east, adding Seven knew how many days to his journey. There was a south-westerly path around a hill and into the forest's interior nearer Brynden's weirwood, and a winding trail east through more forest, and along a rushing river.

He chose the river, walking for what he guessed to be an hour before selecting a gulley made deeper by wind-carved ice and rock. Building a fire from the plentiful wood, Viserys had little care for his safety and nearly just laid down to rest. "Food."

Gnawing on some venison and cheese probably older than he was, Viserys went to the river, splashing some water on his face and neck to rouse himself, then assembling some traps and simple snares. He spied the tracks of rabbits and foxes and bigger prey besides, so he was certain to catch something coming to the river for a drink. He soon had five simple rope and cord snares set near the river and in the forest around his camp, taking note of some landmarks so as to retrieve the snares. He had no reason to fear the Westerosi here. He was able to speak their language, after all.

Viserys kept his head on a swivel as he walked back to camp, the long shadows of the trees masking the forest from him. He looked up towards the stars, through the canopy just barely spotting the Manticore and the Elephant, then the Great Stallion and a few of Drogo's ancestors. Viserys knew others like the Shepherd and the Hunter, taught to him by Maegor from codices printed in Old Valyria, and a few of Rhoyne and the Summer Isles as well.

Wind buffeted his face. "Is anyone there?"

The solitude of that new existence was slow to descend upon Viserys, alone and far from home with just a few ancient bits of gear and an ancestral sword of his house. No one answered, and when he returned he built a large second fire and laid down on the coals of the first, groaning comfortably in the warmth.

He closed his eyes to sleep, then woke, still warm but the fire burned low, well-rested with the world beyond his cave still locked in starry night. Feeding the fire, he went for his snares first – two trapped rabbits, one that had strangled itself and the other trapped by its back leg. Viserys moved slowly, petting the creature softly once it had tired itself out. He tucked it into his lap and broke its neck with a twist of his wrist.

He skinned and ate both, retrieving the other snares and breaking camp in minutes, keeping his Company training sharp before carrying on east. Viserys's path through the Haunted Forest – he thanked the Night's Watch for giving all its brothers at least a basic map, much like the Golden Company – went farther south than east at first, so he hoped to follow an unnamed river upstream to the Antler River's headwaters. So he walked, and walked, and walked.

Chapter Text

Viserys made good time, using the Night's watch heater shield as a sled and donning some bear paws over his boots. They kept his toes warm and helped him stay on top of the snow, though the Haunted Forest was not too snowy, the pines, oaks, and weirwoods offering plenty of cover for his daily shelter or den. Indeed, he did manage to work out some passage of time, the moon and stars waving back and forth despite the endless night.

In the meanwhile, he grew wild, spending that first month moving south and east while hunting, trapping, and trying to keep his skills sharp, though more often than not he needed to be setting more snares. Rushing rivers sometimes meant fish, and he would eat a little better, but food and a growing, gnawing hunger occupied Viserys's mind most days. After another few weeks, though he could not be sure, he came across an abandoned village, managing to ransack it for materials for more snares, and finally a bowstring and some fat and beeswax for more. He even found some cheese and salt.

With an old wooden cup and a steel needle, Viserys fashioned a compass and sunboard. Using a blank hide he stretched and scraped thin, with some charcoal and a bit of pine sap and rabbit blood as ink, he charted his path roughly from the Night's Watch maps, setting off with some proper winter clothing from a ruined hut. Doing it all made him feel a little less wild, but still nothing close to civilized.

His second month was busier, as he managed to shoot a few dear and eat more fish and berries, feeling a little stronger and less beaten down by the variety. Climbing frozen hills and fording rapids naked beat him right back down, as he mangled his hands on sharp ice and nearly lost a toe to the frost.

More such travel brought him to an island made by the winter ice, and with some rope from Brynden's cave he built a simple line and raft, moving wood to the island so he could smoke his plentiful salmon. All the maps said the rivers were few and far between between there and Hardhome. With Dark Sister he cut small branches he fashioned into a stronger sled, having tired of descending hills as well as going without the shield on his arm – he had just the bronze marked with runes, the Night's Watch shield having fallen apart in the cold.

Though Viserys had not had need of such protection, he did his best to stay alert and on guard anyway. At times he panicked, fear and anger bubbling up from his guts, but the time would come for him to work through those feelings. For the moment, he was still very far from home and very, very alone.

The Haunted Forest was more populated from there, Viserys hearing but never seeing wolves and deer. He found plenty of snow hens and wildcats, the former eaten and the latter avoided – whether a wolf bite or a cat scratch, he had no desire to hunt something that could kill him. He did keep his bow ready and his eyes up for more signs of deer, though there was never more than some tracks and the distant crash of duelling stags.

In all though, it was not a terrible existence. He was doing more than surviving, growing strong off the meat, nuts, and Night's Watch biscuits, and feeling his feet begin to outgrow his boots. He did, however, also start searching for other ways to cope with his solitude, which most often ended with him talking to himself. "What does it mean that I have Visenya's crown and her sword? Will it still be behind the brick when I return to Braavos?"

"You could never know. Consider that no one else knows, meaning it may be hidden forever." He packed the salmon and walked onwards, the harness he had fashioned for his shoulders going taught as the sled caught a root.

Viserys shoved it back, rotated it, and pulled it onwards. "That's an interesting thought."

His eyes were dry and his face cracking when he stopped again, the moon having drifted towards the horizon for a few hours before rising again. The snow was a shadowless grey despite the cover of the pines, colossal but still swaying in a wind that grew stronger the farther south he travelled, as if it were trying to throw him back north.

Viserys looked behind him, at the trench he had left in the snow. “First year of a winter, what did Maegor say…”

He groaned and started south again. “They must have made there way out by now. If Lorassyon is taken, then Lorath would not be far behind. The Norvoshi… the Norvoshi…”

Gods, he was tired.

He dropped to his knees to make camp, setting his fishing lines and snares but still swaying and tired. The wind rose again, scattering crystalline snow across his camp. It blew out his match and he cursed. He had seven left and his flint as well, so he steadied his tinder and lit another match. This time it caught, only for a cloud to pass over the moon and chill the air around him, snuffing the fire. "Seven hells!"

A tremble ran up his spine and he stopped. The dragon went dormant and the cadet stilled. He heard the crunch of wind-packed snow behind him. His fingers were just inches from Dark Sister, cleaned but with the pommel and ruby settings covered with strips of black cloth.

"Move, and take an arrow in the back." It was a man's voice, deep and plain.

Viserys inched his hand up. He had a knife sheathed on the front of his waist. If the man was alone, he might have a chance. "I want no trouble."

"Yet you came looking." His common was good, but the accent strong, like something between a Northman and Ibbenese. There was something else. "Speak your purposes, snow-hair."

Viserys looked down at the ends of his white hair hanging over his shoulders. "I wish to go back where I came from. Across the sea, from a place called Hardhome."

"A ruin populated only by crab-worshippers and ghosts." Two steps in quick succession then a third very slow step advanced towards him. Viserys saw the man's movement in the polished surface of the bronze shield.

Viserys heard the rush of steel and half dove, half spun, drawing his knife to try and put something between himself and a polished bronze sword. The blade cut through his arming doublet under his armpit, but missed his flesh.

Rushing up the blade, Viserys confronted a lean, grey man in bronze armour painted with blue and yellow whorls. His sword was stout, longer than a short sword but shorter than a longsword. As graceful as any bravo, he disarmed Viserys. He aimed to hold him at sword point but Viserys kicked up the shield, which shook under the sword strike.

The man in bronze muttered something in another tongue, seemingly taken aback, which Viserys took advantage of, snatching Dark Sister and putting some distance between them. The response came fast, a quick series of thrusts and shallow, hacking cuts that wove gracefully one into the next. Viserys caught the majority on his shield, parrying and countering those that slipped around the shield, as if he knew that its weight would take Viserys by surprise.

Once he thought he might lose, riposting and thrusting towards his exposed chest, only for the stranger to counter parry, throwing Viserys's sword arm up and back and exposing his entire right side to attack. But he hesitated, long enough for Viserys to interpose his shield and throw himself forward, crushing the man under him. He was taller and older, though more of the latter than the former. "Who are you! I am a stranger here!"

"You are a thief! You travel with stolen-" He went still out of sheer confusion when Viserys stood. The stranger's weapons and armour were the same bronze as the shield from Brynden's cave, as were the spear and shield hanging from the saddle of a shaggy pony.

"You were going to kill me for a shield?" The stranger scrambled to it, buffing out the damage with his sleeve. He wore heavy wool and leather clothing sewn with bronze sheets and rings, heavy furred boots with thick bronze greaves, and a thigh-length shirt of bronze scales. "You're no wildling."

"Praise the mothers... No, I am not." He stood, doffing his helmet – it looked like something Norvoshi or Ghiscari, perfect for a soldier in a lockstep legion. "I am Sigorn of Thenn, Westerosi."

"I am no Westerosi," Viserys said, the words coming easily to his surprise. "Not for many years. Viserys of the House Targaryen. I was across the sea, and a maze's magic brought me to a cave beneath a weirwood tree far to the north."

Sigorn nodded. He had grey eyes and muddy brown hair dashed with blonde and auburn, and he was clean shaven with some faded blue face paint chipping off across his cheeks and nose. He looked far older than he was, the youth in his eyes, voice, and sword arm belied by a craggy face and thick, halting accent. "I followed your trail from the cave of the last one. And we hear many rumours in Thenn... You will not find safe port in Hardhome."

Viserys used the opening to return to his campfire, sheathing his sword and then picking up a half-roasted fish. "I've too much from fishing and trapping. Eat, please."

Sigorn nodded firmly, gathering his kit and clicking his tongue, the pony following dutifully behind. He tore off a piece of the roasting charred salmon, eating a mouthful and watching as Viserys did the same. "You have guest rite in Westeros?"

"I think we're in Westeros. And they do, far as I'm aware." Viserys would not mention his father's violation of the tenet. "Where is Thenn?"

"In the mountains to the distant north-west. Valleys and dens warmed by earthfire and hot spring." Sigorn removed his scale shirt, a red fox fur and leather shirt beneath. It was a fine garment that would be worth its weight in gold in a sartorial district of the Free Cities, and Sigorn was wiping salmon grease into it. "We are not *wildlings*. We have laws and lords. Order in a land of chaos."

"What brings you so far from civilisation? And speaking the common tongue so well."

He barked and snarled something. "Few speak the Old Tongue. And I have Questions. These years have been... fat for Thenn. Mine father feared we had not grown just fat, but soft. All unmarried men were ordered to go and bring back riches. Some men went on raids, some greybeards went north to offer themselves to the cold gods, and the yearlings went for the easy route, stealing their girl and taking off for the peace and easy life by kneeling to the wolf."

"Why be suspicious of prosperity?"

"We cannot grow beyond our borders. It is mountain and ice hard as stone. If we have too much, we soon have too many mouths. War, famine, disease. All would come. We learned, before dragons crawled from the earthfire, that too cull was the only way to survive. So Thenn might endure, the Thenns will happily die."

Viserys grew keenly aware of the vastness of the lands beyond the Wall, and those beyond it from him. He listened to the song of winter, which might have been the wind or the crackle of snow, or his and Sigorn's island of warmth and companionship in a sea of featureless cold. "Where are we now?"

Sigorn indicated a nearby stream. "There lies the southern border of Hornfoot lands. You were lucky, they are all hunting up in Skirling Pass... We are now one hundred leagues from the Wall, as the eagle flies."

Unfurling his map, Viserys made a few markings then indicated their location. "Here?" Sigorn rotated his head and nodded. Viserys groaned. "That's twice as far to the wall than I've already walked. I need to get across the Narrow Sea."

Sigorn had withdrawn a dried brick of something, cutting off two chunky cubes he set to soften in a pot of simmering water. To Viserys's delight, the cubes dissolved into a thick and hearty soup. "Good for campaigning, is it not? You should go here. Eastwatch." Sigorn indicated the eastern end of the Wall with the tip of his knife. "The watchman there, Pyke, he's a pirate, but honourable."

"Another week of travel..." Viserys closed the map and returned to his meal, filling his mouth with salmon then building a tent around them. "My history of these lands is poor, but you speak of the Night's Watch with... respect."

Sigorn shrugged as he removed his boots and stockings, laying them all out to dry and warm among hot river stones. Viserys took note. "Times have changed. The kings of the south sought war, but so did one of our own. A Watchman came to us in the summer, offering words and promises. But some listened, and from across the north, the *real* north, went south to kneel to the wolf."

"And everyone just... walks?"

"Some row boats on the rivers." Sigorn propped his feet up to dry by the fire, sipping his soup from a cup. "If *you* travel down the Milkwater though, you'll lose your ears, cock, or worse. But with me... I might have need of a companion, if you can keep your head down."

Viserys wagged his head. "Solitude has its merits, but... it has worn thin. I would be honoured if we were to travel together."

Guest rite securing him, Sigorn whistled, summoning a large brown eagle from a distant tree which landed on the pony's saddle. "I shall sleep later. You have travelled for many hours."

Viserys surrendered, quite happily at that as Sigorn offered a thick bear blanket to sleep on. It smelled of peppermint and... cinnamon? "I can hardly tell in this endless night."

"As the clan mother says, better endless than long."

Viserys saw no reason to resist, filling his belly with some of Sigorn's soup and a cake-like bread made from some yellow and white grain. It was subtly sweet and soaked up all the hardy broth his spoon missed. Viserys had some oats he offered the pony before erecting a tent and finding his way to rest.

He slept well, waking naturally a few hours later to Sigorn meticulously polishing his armour. He had a matching short sword, axe, and knife to match his other bronze weapons and armour, along with plain bracers and rune-carved pauldrons. "You talk in your sleep," he said, not even looking up from his armour.

"I've heard." Viserys sat upright, feeling groggy from all the food. He washed out his mouth and spat, starting with a few dried mint leaves he chewed and packed into his lips. "This is fine metalwork."

"It's not steel, but when most of your enemies have only bone and dragonglass, bronze is more than sufficient."

"Regardless, you're welcome to these." Viserys selected the spare swords and knives he had brought from Brynden's hoard. Brynden Rivers, his uncle. He would return the favour, and not waste a thought on him again. "For your journey, if nothing else than as compensation for guiding me onward."

Sigorn grunted an affirmative, packing away his armour then eating half the herb-baked hen Viserys had put on before he slept. He laid back while Viserys stood, walking around their camp to the stream. He checked his snares – nothing, for the first time – and in the journey back the wind rose, picking up ice crystals and pine needles, but little else. Weaker than before.

His new companion not set to sleep long, Viserys sat about dressing in some of his armour that fit with his acquired wildling attire. He was finally warm after some recommendations on layering from Sigorn, who himself had struggled with repairing some stitches in his clothing until Viserys offered him some spare needles from his trove, Mistress Caterina having drilled it into him like marq with he longsword.

When they set off later, Viserys was plenty surprised to learn of the rich lives of Thenns, from shadow plays and bloody-fisted bouts, to poetry, prayer, philosophy, and astronomy, all four of which were closely intertwined in Sigorn's stories about his sprawling clan and their allies and enemies. "It is said that the first metal worked by the First Men was metal that came from the stars, but when this metal ran low, so soft and easy to work, their fires could work only bronze. We keep that tradition alive. Have we the wood, we might one day work iron as well."

"I had thought the old gods those of tree, stone, and the wind on the river?" asked Viserys, recalling his lessons with Lady Danelle and Maegor. "The stars and song as well?"

"No, but in the stars is where we might see them all together." Sigorn indicated half of the hunter and the bear's head, then the Maiden's lower half. "There is the White Tree, and the First King about to cross the River." He consulted a cluster of coloured and spaced knots and beads, looking between the stars and his recordings. "Aye, Antler Town is a good choice. I see it in the stars."

They moved in companionable silence for the rest of their journey, journeying southeast along the tributaries of the Antler River. The wind rose steadily with each passing day, the sky clear even as the river beside them froze over and the rough trail was filled with broken branches and piles of crystalline snow. It gathered like sand, the air so cold that each granule held its shape, twinkling like stars in their eyes.

Sigorn was soon forced to dismount, and hitch their larger sled to the stout beast's saddle. "Move your arms and armour to her saddle!"

"It will only get worse! We should make camp!" The wind clawed and dragged at their voices and froze their breath in their chests.

"Which is why we must make haste!" Sigorn helped Viserys move his gear over, then sat with him on the sled. Barking in the Old Tongue of the First Men, Sigorn urged the pony into a steady canter, the sled rolling over smooth ground as the beast of burden barrelled through the dusty snow.

Viserys held on for dear life as the sled took off far faster with a sudden shift in the wind, Sigorn struggling to hold the reins. "Something's spooked her," he muttered, the wind dying as, perhaps finally, clouds crawled over the sky and darkness overwhelmed them, the wind howling as it rose to drag them back north.

Snow began falling in blankets, but the night was too black and endless for them to see more than the outlines of each other and the pony's rump. A familiar shiver up his spine and Viserys looked back, his heart going cold at two icy blue eyes atop a wolf black as night and the size of a pony loped after them. It's half-rotted flesh and hide hung in strips, half its skull exposed as it hastened after them.

It gnashed its teeth, a crack like thunder drawing Sigorn's gaze. He cursed in the Old Tongue, flicking the reins and turning them harshly south. "It is day! We need the sun!"

Viserys tried his bow, stringing it with some difficulty then rising to his knees on the back of the sled. His first arrow went wide, but the second snagged the wolf's right ear, tearing it off and pinning it to a tree. The monster made barely a sound, growling a little more as it loped after them. It opened its mouth wide, moving faster and lunging towards Viserys.

He moved too slow to draw his sword, but fast enough to try redirecting the wolf's massive jaws. He punched it hard, feeling the mazemaker's ring break through the monster's snout. With a whimper it fell backward into an unmoving heap of fur and flesh.

Sigorn in the pony meanwhile moved them faster and faster through the forest, the beast of burden in a furious gallop dodging trees and hopping over roots. The thick snow made for easy travel for the sled, though its rudimentary construction was bearing out as the knots and dowels that held it together started to creak and strain under the pressure, extraneous kit slipping away from them as it went. "Hold it together!"

Viserys gripped both sides of the sled, Sigorn with the reins in one hand and the sled's rear in the other. The pony crashed through underbrush at the treeline just as more barks and hungry snarls rose behind them, as the pony went galloping down an embankment and they went flying through the sunny sky.

The wolves, unable to arrest their momentum, went sliding off the ridge as well, collapsing dead once the sunlight hit them. Viserys and Sigorn landed farther away, Viserys trapped buttocks up in a snow drift. With a heave, Sigorn heaved him upright, hugging him earnestly then raising his hands at the approaching wildlings. He called out in the Old Tongue, then in common. "Hail, travellers. We make for the Antler Town with pelts and fish to trade. Please, try some smoked fish."

The wildlings appraised Sigorn, nodding eagerly as he passed them some of the fish and two of the pelts from his own haul. Viserys did the same. The men stood in a cluster beyond a closed palisade gate atop a risen trail at the end of a road, the Antler River crashing through icy rapids below them. It was just as cold and windy, but clear, the ground more icy beach than snowy forest. The mist that landed in their hair and eyes quickly froze, so they tucked themselves back into their hoods as the gates opened and the pony trotted back to Sigorn.

The settlement beyond was a bustle. Though a far cry from even the smallest of Narrow Sea fishing villages, Antler Town was a relief for Viserys and his senses, seeing, hearing, and smelling life again after three moons in the trackless winter. "What were those things?"

"The Haunted Forest is an old part of the world." Sigorn wrangled his pony, indicating the ships docked on icebergs nearly a mile out to see. People were walking across the ice as if they were strolling through a Lyseni pleasure garden."They come and go from Skane often. We've treated with the Skagosi, and they are a fair enough people for southrons. Finer still, since the Stark allowed them to build a pair of fleets."

Past a narrow bay, Sigorn led them to a longhouse built from driftwood and wattle somehow grown with green grass. "Find a Captain Stane, offer him this." Sigorn drew a steel wolf medallion. "Winter is coming."

Viserys took the token, then dug into his own pouch, offering an iron coin from Braavos. "If ever you are in a port and in need of aid..." Viserys saw a purple-sailed ship. "Find a Braavosi and hand them this coin. Say the words, 'valar morghulis,' and they will bring you to the hidden city."

"A gift of iron is no small thing. I thank you, Viserys Targaryen." They embraced again, a little more formally. Informally, Sigorn added, "The Skagosi are territorial, their breath stinks, and their cooking and the beauty of their women has made them great sailors, but they are stout blood of the First Men same as any wolf, bear, or man flayed. Treat with them in honour, and they shall do the same for you."

Viserys gripped his new friend's hand firmly. "I will, Sigorn of Thenn. Fair travels, and may we meet again."

The driftwood hall was busier than the other clan longhouses, most abandoned or the subject of ongoing fighting, the Skagosi with something resembling order, men in heavy tartan skirts and sashes, all fair Westerosi with ginger or black hair. They wielded massive steel greatswords or longswords with round wooden shields, and all carried a heavy longbow. The men were tall and barrel-chested, and matched for height Viserys was squashed and squished making his way through. "Stane? Cap- Captain Stane?"

"Oi!" seven men said around the room, which did not help. The longhouse was an outpost of House Stane, he learned, but they put him before the man charge of the fort – a red-faced red-bearded, white-haired Northman in a green and brown tartan skirt. "Whew tha fock's coom all this wee justa speek with tha Stain?"

The other Skagosi crowded Viserys. In for an iron coin, in for his arm rings. "Viserys Targaryen, of the Golden Company."

The crowd erupted but 'the Stane' silenced. "Shut yer holes!" The Stane sucked his teeth, kicking up his feet as he stood and giving Viserys an unpleasant sight. "Me boys saw yew with Sigorn." He poked the medallion. "Yew hang on to tha'." He pushed through his men. "To tha docks yew lazy fucks! We're bringing a dragon to the Ned!"

Chapter Text

The Bay of Seals was a cruise on a pleasure barge compared to the crashing storms of Lorath Bay. Viserys's Westerosi companions, and time with Sigorn, had granted him enough understanding of the queer accent of the Skagosi, something mountainous and brogue. Captain Stane reminded him of Bharbo were he a a ruthless sailor – he loathed the title of merchant, for he never sought a profit from those who did not deserve to be swindled, chiefly the elite of White Harbour and the Vale, now Braavos and beyond as they built larger and larger ships, even establishing colonies on the Myrish coast, they claimed.

Viserys spent most days at rest, thankful for it and on the captain's orders, though after the second day of trying to stay warm while staying still, he took to walking the deck and climbing the rigging. He was nearer a man, finding it harder at first to climb with his heavier weight from travel. Three months of naught but meat and forage had given Viserys a fair bit more mass and height than he recalled as well. It was just as well, holding off the cold, not wet or sinking into your bones, but the kind that chapped your lips and sapped your strength.

It was as if with each passing day, though they travelled south along a forested coast, the air was growing colder. Thick frost and salt crystals grew from the hull and ropes, and wind scoured them with shattered hail. Viserys climbed the deck on the fifth day, leading some of the deck boys in a few basic sword forms. Stane had mentioned "the falcon's war" but had not elaborated.

"We've not the tides to reach Driftwood Hall nor Deepdown." Stane manned not a rudder or a tiller, but a wheel, as if he were driving a pleasure barge. The *Charge Breaker* was anything but, it's hull more bronze and iron than wood, its three massive sails serving a mangled knot of rebar and iron at their prow. It resembled the driftwood tree of House Stane, and Viserys had heard nothing but stories of the vessel's mythic exploits since his arrival.

"These skirmishes here?" Viserys had his map drawn, indicating Karhold. Stane nodded. "They have the ships and sailors?"

"The Graftons were an early ally to the falcon." Stane spat the word falcon, indicating the rivers below. "Last Hearth is friends, but the Dreadfort is the heart of the North's defense. Where the Ned and the Skinners have been fighting the good fight." Captain Randolph Stane had grown far easier to understand once Viserys understood his accent, a war hero and sailor of some renown, despite all promises the Skagosi made to House Stark to not build ships.

They had led the construction of the North's new defenses against the House Arryn-conquered Karhold lands, holding back an endless barrage of Arryn-built vessels after years of establishing false relations with House Karstark.

"I need to get to Braavos, not White Harbor."

"Don't be pissin' yer pants, gold boy." Viserys had taken to wearing his Golden Company rings and badge. With the buffed bronze shield – Sigorn had taken the shield from Brynden's cave and given Viserys his own – it was even closer to the right colour. "A man of your talents would be welcome under the Stark. There's knights of tha Vale, Barrowlands, and Iron Isles as well."

"I have my own war to fight. Freeing Pentos from the grips of slavers, and restoring a lost prince."

"Aye, but the falcon's done more than slave. He's attainted names and lands. Stolen artifacts and burned 'em for sacrifice. Like the worst horrors of tha Andals. 'Twas my hope the Ned makes himself Theon the Hungerer." Stane indicated a wide promontory on Skagos's coast. "From here, we're on triple watches for the falcon."

Viserys had thought the fighting between the Vale and the North a squabble over the Three Sisters made into another needlessly bloody war. It was that, but so much bloodier, from the sack of Widow's Watch, Karhold, and Ramsgate, and their conquest and continued fighting for control, and the sacking of Gulltown port just six months ago in response. "It's been quiet for that long?" Viserys's hands found a comfortable place around Dark Sister on his waist, the thick mists obscuring massive black mountains on skagos, and the sea beyond. The grip was replaced with fresh weirwood, the rest basic steel finishings,

"Here even longer. They raided Deepdown 'n blockaded the Bay of Seals for a season. A few bellies went empty, but it starved tha Watch."

The order had all but collapsed for lack of men, those normally recruited from dungeons sent to die against the knights of the Vale. "They had the gift. There's hopes with spring on tha horizon."

Spring was a distant memory, more closely remembering the false spring before his exile began. Exile? Was that what it was? If he stepped foot in the North, he would be back in his father's domain. Or was it his nephew's? His brother's?

"What do you know of your king, Aemon?"

Stane snorted. "I saw 'im at the gathering of Lords in Winterfell. Dark boy. Stark look, but the way the old falcon looks at him... heh. Jon's shade, they call 'Emon."

"Aemon," Viserys repeated. Bastard or no, he had been raised to be king of all Westeros, but nominally the North and portions of the Riverlands and Iron Islands, under the regency of his uncle, Eddard Stark, and the custody of Jon Arryn. As the war reached a fevered pitch, Lord Arryn joined Lord Stark in pushing back the Westermen and Reachmen from the Riverlands, before they both retreated. Arryn left the Eyrie in the care of his decided heir, Ser Denys, the Darling of the Vale, and his gravid wife, Lysa Tully.

The details were unknown to a Skagosi clansman like Captain Stane, but Viserys determined from him and others that the Darling had seized power and turned on houses of predominantly First Men Ancestry, and in the first push besieged the North in the name of the Andal right to Westeros, as granted by the Seven who are One.

Viserys had not fought in many wars, but he felt worldly enough to know Ser Denys was the aggressor. He wondered how Ferdinand might react. As it stood, the Grand Septon was rarely absent from conversations of politics in western Essos, but Viserys could not help but draw a connection between the two.

"Ho!" cried the lookout. Viserys peered into the fog, jogging forward with the other armed men. Stane had taken thirty of the Free Folk into his service, brutal fighters now armed with Northern steel.

Out of the fog crawled an adrift ship. Some crows cawed and Stane steered them clear. Viserys looked across at some dead bodies, the skin of the dead frozen sore and burst pustules black with rot and frost. The scent of rot froze inside their nostrils, sending the ship into a flurry to burn the smell away by stoking the braziers.

"We should scuttle that," said Viserys, having heard many a nightmarish story from sailors who faced plague.

Captain Stane guffawed. "It will soon be weighed down by rain, then freeze. It is winter still." The fog bank covered them like a blanket. Viserys could barely see his hand when held out in front of him. "More fire!"

Viserys joined the crew, lighting torches and braziers across the deck. They burned away some of the fog, enough to give them a halo of smoky air that cruised across a grey plate of sea. "You said the first fighting was here?" A lighthouse loomed overhead, casting them in light as it swept by, before settling on the ship. "What in Seven Hells?"

Not since before he joined the Golden Company had Viserys been so caught off guard, the crew of *Charge Breaker* turning to battle as they donned heavier armour and larger shields, while Captain Stane shrugged on a heavy leather and mail gambeson with a few thick pieces of sealskin armour.

Viserys already wore most of his armour, moving below deck for his shield and a few extra pieces of plate. He desired a helm, but a great bucket had no appeal, so he wore his mail coif around his neck and braided down his hair, drawing the handful of bells and rings gifted to him. Or won, in the case of a ring of red gold embossed with three castles – a gift from Torman after they quashed their feud.

He had not had a real fight since the seas around Lorassyon, but from the state of the deck the same could not be said for the Northmen on deck. They wore shields and sallet helms, with layers of mail and leather. On their larger bodies, they could manage more armour than a Braavosi marine, but not drowning would mean they drop their shield and get skewered by archers.

"Shields!" Stane and the crew raised shields against three volleys of white-fletched arrows. Viserys estimated three-hundred men across six ships. One in every ten arrows was aflame, most harmlessly striking the snow- and ice-caked deck and rigging. "All hands, ahead!"

With no role, Viserys kept his shield up and stayed at the Captain's back. They took another volley from the rear, doubling Viserys's estimation. But why would the Vale waste six-hundred men on guarding one light house?

The sails caught a southerly wind, carrying them into the Shivering Sea and past a blockade. A smaller boarding ship came alongside, but abruptly Captain Stane tilted the wheel, pulling the vessel and all its inhabitants under their studded keel. The few who hung on to *Charge Breaker* quickly lost their fingers to Skagosi axes an drowned in the cold water.

The curses of Valemen echoed to them across the water as the blockade fell behind them. "Your ship is aptly named, Captain." The flooding out of Viserys and off the deck as the wind grew even stronger. "The Karstarks manned a lighthouse?"

"And now the falcons roost there. The sun of winter set two years past." Stane made a few adjustments on the wheel then passed control to the pilot, leading Viserys to look out over their wake and the ships giving chase. "There may still be fighting between here and the Three Sisters. You've fought at sea?"

"I have."

"Good."

***

White Harbour was Lorassyon, Braavos, and Hardhome in one, as cultured and clean as it was freezing, protected from the sea by forts and watchtowers but the city itself sprawling endlessly up the White Knife surrounded by punishing winter winds. Great strip-mines of a sight that would make Old Valyria proud dotted the Barrowlands to the west and the Hornwood to the east, while the Bite beyond was a pirate's nightmare – Redwyne privateers, Northern marines, and more than a few Ironborn amongst the Skagosi, Bolton, and Manderly sailors.

Captain Stane finally took some coin from Viserys, last of all an iron coin from Braavos. He understood its significance – every sailor worth their salt did – and took it gratefully. "I wish ye luck finding passage to Braavos." They shook hands firmly, then Captain Stane kissed him on the cheeks and then firmly on the lips, salty moustache and all.

Half-staggering from surprise at first, Viserys made his way off the deck and to the quay beyond. He was in Westeros once again, a fact that was slow to sink in until he ran out of leads.

There was not a single Braavosi ship captain in White Harbour, every marine, sellsword, and bravo contracted to the Northern navy or in the service of one of their houses. So, Viserys dropped his pack by his feet and sat at a corner table in an inn once famous for its lamprey pies. The influx of refugees from the war farther up the coast had consumed all the fish in the Bite, so the inn's owners were left serving what everyone else served in White Harbour – beef, beans, and barley. Viserys found it a wonder, a haunch of beef the size of his face for only a handful of coppers. The people of White Harbour however were sick of the slow-to-cook meat, most relying on communal cooking pots, most wood used up in the shipyards.

Viserys had the coin so, as afternoon turned to night and the seaside wards to crime, found lodging in a nicer inn among the taller, older buildings near the New Castle. Inns and shops were open late, a thriving night market thick with lesser nobility and the cream of smallfolk society, while knights and bravos aplenty roamed in search of work or a fight.

Spying more than a few unemployed sellswords as well, Viserys fell in with them more out of comfort than anything before he tried buying passage or new boots and armour, clustered around the base of an alabaster fountain with a merman's statue. Most were young men like him, though armoured far poorer and much less sure of themselves. Not wanting the attention, Viserys kept his hood up while removing the bells from his braid, lowering his pack and shield to the rim of the fountain, and kicking up his feet to maybe catch a few moments' rest.

"Nice sword."

*That didn't take very long*, Viserys thought. "It is. And I know how to use it."

"You're not from 'round here." Viserys looked up at a broad-chested man with a rough beard and salt-stained armour and weapons, but a young man's zeal for life. His hair was dark and his skin worn more by wind than sun. "Where'd you come from?"

"Skagos. Braavos before that. I was... shipwrecked." Viserys tilted his head to make sure his eyes did not catch any lights, the city watch coming along to light whale oil lanterns as night crept in. "You look the typical sort of Northman." Viserys swung his legs down and stood, taller than the stranger. He had no doubt he was weaker, but in a fight with swords, such a thing rarely mattered. "Viserys."

He had considered a fake name, but what was the point? Who would remember a hated king's lost second son? "Flint. Robin Flint." Most of the younger sellswords were angling to enter Robin's line of sight, while the older ones assembled in an orderly fashion. He supposed someone had to be the one to assemble the hordes of freeriders and hedge knights used by the sunset kings in their wars. "Where've you fought?"

"Myr in the siege for the Golden Company. In the Golden Fields before that, and Braavos's war against Lorath more recently." Viserys drew two bloody pennants from his pack – Arryn and Grafton. "And your own coast." 

"And you're, what, a knight at sixteen?"

"Just a sellsword, Lord Flint." The other Northmen behind Robin chattered earnestly. "I need passage to Braavos. If serving you can get me that, count me in."

"You've commanded men?" Viserys nodded. "Teeth?" Viserys bared his gums. He used some string and a chew stick every morning and night. "Cock." That was fair enough, Viserys knowing for a fact how disgusting most sellswords were. Given the cold though, he preferred the delousing powder.

A few men stood with their backs around them, and he and some of the other new sellswords bared their rods and stones. Viserys got a few odd looks, but Valyrians, like most Essosi, did away with their sons' hoods.

Before dusk's end, Robin had assembled a posse of fifty, from hedge knights and well-equipped militiamen to a few deposed second and third sons of First Men houses in the Vale. The North did not exactly have a dearth of castles, but nor were they abundant. "Where're your arm rings?"

"Here." Viserys bore the three copper and three silver. The man who asked was younger than he, stocky and pale with a wide nose and shock of thick brown hair. He wore a green surcoat with a broken black wheel, with a matching arming doublet, cuirass, vambraces, and half the kit otherwise of a knight. He bore a bearded axe on one hip and a mace on the other. "They're turned to gold when we're knighted."

"Blackfyre magic?"

"...no? They just give us gold ones. I've seen the ceremony."

The boy seemed to almost bask. "You've fought in real wars then!"

Viserys offered his hand as they crossed into the yard of the Wolf's Den, a few thousand men training in the great garrison of House Manderly and the Northern navy. "Viserys."

"Donnel Waynwood." He shook Viserys's hand firmly, pointing around the yard and fortifications. "That's where you'll process for your pay, if you can't read there's half-maesters. Over there for sundries, basic supplies, and armour repairs, and the armoury and quartermaster are there." Viserys had no desire to weigh himself down anymore, though he did purchase some thicker small clothes, doublet, and breeches, and a new pair of boots lined with lambswool, ditching his many extras though keeping Sigorn's gifted bronze shield and some of the finer white pelts he had sewn into the collar of his doublet.

Donnel purchased a large, round shield. Slung across his back, he could have been a tortoise. "That green may be for Estermont." A pale man of Torman or Drogo's age took Donnel in a friendly headlock. "You look a turtle."

"And with my helm, I'll be a fury, my lord." Donnel strode into the training yard, donning a frog helm and looking indeed like a turtle-made-knight, the broken wheel of his house painted across the shield by a Valemen in grey and bronze. "Come, Viserys! Spar with me."

"It's getting late. Do we not leave on the morrow?" Viserys looked up at the night sky.

The pale man pointed to Donnel, while others hissed for a friendly, possibly bloody, fight. "He'll wear you down. Best you give in now and have a friend for life."

Viserys looked the pale man up and down. He wore fine black riding leathers with spots of silvery mail, and a pink shoulder cape with a black crux. "Did he wear you down, Lord...?"

"It was expected of me." Viserys still needed a helmet, but he went without. Donnel wielded two weapons, so Viserys donned his shield, the Thenn bronze, but when he drew his sword, he turned a few glancing onlookers into a crowd of eager spectators. "Domeric Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort." He bowed deeply, flourishing his cape as he came upright. "You had best go now, or have the men call you a coward."

Viserys did not respond, instead dropping his pack, raising his shield, and drawing Dark Sister. He held it high, and men and boys alike basked as the star- and lantern light danced in the metal like silver fire. Levelling the point at Donnel, Viserys advanced, smacking away a swing of the mace with beaten Thenn bronze. He thrust towards Donnel's axe arm then redirected into a shallow cut, his sword biting into the steel rim of the shield on his back. 

His shield danced with the mace in Donnel's other hand, trying to break his arm, though Viserys stayed loose and ready to retreat instead of pressing with his greater reach. Donnel was quick, for one so round and stout.

Donnel did not move, though he favoured his left foot, always rotating with it as his pivot. Viserys came at him from the same side, twisting at the last moment and kicking him in the back, sending him sprawling. He rolled to his back, only to be trapped, and Viserys robbed him of his mace before he found his footing again, slipping the shield to his empty hand.

"A rare skill, Donnel," Viserys praised, rarely seeing one who was equally strong with right and left.

He charged with his shield as if he were in the legion wall, chopping at Donnel's axe, parrying off the blade, and slipping Dark Sister behind his shield and to the straps of his helmet. Donnel tried to put his shield back between them, but Viserys kept it back, only for his axe to strike him in his plate-armoured shoulder.

Viserys stood, and sheathed his sword. "I fear we should not press our luck any longer, scratching flesh after armour."

Donnel looked sombre in his helmet, but he was grinning from ear to ear when he removed it despite the dent from Dark Sister's pommel. "You'd have killed me! Most certainly!"

The pale man, Domeric Bolton, offered his hand to Viserys, looking him in the eye rather than at his sword. "Robin Flint hired you on my behalf. For the next few moons, passage to Braavos notwithstanding, you're mine."

Viserys shrugged. "Gold is gold, here or across the Narrow Sea."

"It's not the Free Cities," Domeric said. "But we hope you enjoy your stay."

Chapter Text

The trek across the North was quiet but long – nothing especially taxing for Viserys, his constitution steadily improving actually with the better food and steadier sparring. The setting of camp, pickets, and ditches common from the North to Yi-Ti had none of the order of the Golden Company but twice the discipline, while any maneuverability the Northman lacked they made up for with brawn.

Indeed, most of those in the young Lord Bolton's service were thickly built Northmen, nothing like the athletic Essosi of the Golden Company, even the Westerosi in the Golden Company primarily lean southerners. Viserys found that Domeric Bolton was the exception to that rule, not as tall as himself but lean and agile, taking simple meals and drinking mainly water or tea. Viserys never even saw him eat meat, only ever seeing eggs and pickled carrots on the lord's plate.

Viserys observed the clear-cut forest of the southern Hornwood, a third lost to raiding Valemen, the rest to the Redwyne-built Northern fleet. "No tree in the south is as large as Hornwood oak and spruce."

Domeric caught Viserys inspecting a tree stump. "A shame. It must have been a sight."

"It was. But it's growing in the north, and the oldest trees are left alone." Domeric dismounted from his pale mare, unstringing his bow and assembling a Tyroshi crossbow from pieces in his saddlebags. "Problem?"

Viserys felt himself sneering. "Sorry. Never like crossbows."

"Aye, too easy to use, but..." With his crossbow in one hand, Domeric drew his sword. "It's quite effective, in a pinch."

"I prefer a shield."

Domeric shrugged and moved on from Viserys, making more small talk with the other sellswords.

Ten days of marching brought them to a campsite south of Ramsgate on the coast of the Shivering Sea, a modest port town but with high stone walls guarding a busy wharf, the skirmishing at sea beginning in earnest as the navies of Grafton and Manderly maneuvered. "No siege weapons?"

Waymar Royce was a companion of Donnel, the same youthful squire-without-a-knight. "There were, but then winter came, and holding the line became more important. My brother lost an ear to the frost, and he cut his catapult to tinder earlier than the rest."

The land upriver was a little more alive, the forest guarded for hunting and trapping of the furs and fungi that backed House Hornwood's growing wealth. Archers and uniformed heavy infantry roamed the Hornwood looking for spies as well, wearing the orange and browns of their house beneath a mottled cloak that acted as camouflage. Viserys liked that idea, but there were trees aplenty as well.

"Could they build more of those hamlets?" Viserys pointed out a cluster of stone and wattle buildings grouped around a tall wooden tower, itself within a steep earthen moat lined with spikes in every direction, save a wooden bridge as wide as a cart. "Within the forest or back in the-"

"Domeric and his fucking burgs," grumbled Robin Flint, walking among them even though he was free to ride. The ground between the Hornwood's massive coniferous trees was flat enough. "They've no use but in the movements of armies, yours *and* the enemies."

"Aye, but they could be built up into towns, as the Daughters do in the Disputed Lands." Their posse crossed a bridge of timber and moss, the forest floor growing onto it, the brackets that held it upright stained and aged to a rich orange. Viserys indicated a blind up in the trees, two Hornwood archers watching them. Viserys felt uneasy and exposed, shifting Dark Sister to his back and keeping his boarding axe and short sword accessible.

"We won't be launching any surprise attacks anytime soon," Domeric muttered, catching Viserys's eye. "Across the bridge, turn left! We follow the river!" Viserys settled in at the young Bolton lord's hip, next to a dour, grizzled man in heavy plate over his legs and hips, cloaked with the same pink field and black crux. "Steelshanks, be polite."

Steelshanks snorted. "To you, I'm Captain Walton."

"Mind the horses and watch our tail." Domeric waited until Walton was out of earshot. "He was my father's man. Not cruel, but overprotective." They followed the river east, towards a sprawling encampment behind the confluence of two rivers. "Golden Company men hold to their word, do they not?"

"Almost as a rule." Viserys peeked at the lord through the corner of his eye, his own eyes on the various smithies, crafting houses, and noble banners of the camp. "And I would like to return to my comrades as soon as the shipping lanes open."

"And how is it you came to be in... Skagos, was it?"

Viserys wondered what Domeric was playing at. "My ship was lost in a storm in the Shivering Sea. I fought for Braavos-"

"Against Lorath. You said." Domeric's eyes went from the shield to Dark Sister. He wondered how many people knew his name now. If word reached Lysono Maar, perhaps Marq and Tytus would know he was alive. If they were alive.

"What's our assignment, Lord Bolton?" They reached the camp gates, a high wooden palisade manned by all breed of Northman and deposed or exiled Valeman. Viserys was bored with talk. "Unless you had some word to hold me to?"

"Not as of yet, but..." Domeric took a step towards him and lowered his voice. In the shadow of the palisade, his complexion was all the more pale, like the trunk of a weirwood. "You know how to use your sword? You have killed before?"

"So have many our age. War has torn Westeros for seven years."

"Eight."

Viserys had to remember. He was six-and-ten now. A man. "Eight years. And all the greybeards are dead. I do not have much pull with the Company, but know... Know that I am in the know. About the goings on of the Golden Company."

Domeric's eyebrow twitched upward, and he nodded. "You've not given your name."

"I've given you everything that matters, including my word for the duration of this contract. Or until two moons pass."

"And if the lanes open early?"

"I gave my word, Lord Bolton." Viserys bowed his head, giving the lord opening to depart through the gates. Viserys took the opportunity to get a helmet that fit. He had no horse and was out of saddle practice besides, so he went with some Essosi sellsword's captured helmet with some modifications. Steel with bronze inlay, it had the fin for a horsehair crest, though Viserys eschewed it for both the cost and the fact that he was not an officer. He had not earned a crest.

The days following were spent preparing levies from farther afield, chiefly the Rills and the Wolfswood, for combat against the Valemen conquerors. The Arryns fought the Northmen not unlike how the Qohorik fought the Norvoshi – they faced a hardier, entrenched force, though they outnumbered them and hard the benefit of rich supply lines. They even fought with the same mad religious zeal as the Qohorik, though unlike the city of sorcerers the Valemen in the North had been abandoned by their lords.

"They grow weary after a summer and winter of their friends dying." The Umber who answered had led their vanguard charge, cleaning his sword as a nurse sewed shut a wound on his back. "They've not gained a league of land beyond their initial push, and keep pressing out of mad fervour."

Viserys had claimed the lives of two Vale knights and their squires, along with three Faith Militant settlers that charged him with cudgels. He had faced zealots when he fought the Qohorik for Norvos, and when he fought the Norvoshi for Braavos. It was bitter work, but there was no negotiating with the crazed.

"But they hold their gains still," growled Robin. "My lands, Smalljon! The Karstark lands! Manderly and Hornwood and Bolton lands!"

"Peace," Smalljon Umber, said, rising to his full height to tower over them all. "We all know you've suffered. We're the ones helping you, ungrateful bastard." Robin stormed off towards the front lines in the forest, and Viserys went after him, feeling responsible for the man who hired him.

The Flint threw himself at the holdouts, one of many hidden burgs spread throughout the Hornwood on the coast of the Shivering Sea. He did so with mostly deposed cousins and Valemen, Donnel and Waymar at his side. Viserys cursed their madness as well, advancing on the defensive. Staying low, Viserys managed to pass the skirmishing beyond the burg and over a rickety rope drawbridge. A gaunt knight with a whispy red beard charged with a flail. "For the Warrior! For Andalos!" he cried, before Dark Sister found the tender spot in his armpit.

With a twist and jerk, Viserys withdrew, moving with his back to the spikes that ringed the burg. He saw no archers or other marksmen in the trees, and with the heavy winter mist such a weapon was useless.

Robin was ahead, the Flints pushing through to the watchtower while Donnel and Waymar held back a swarm of Brown Brothers. Viserys selected the latter, the Flints still a dozen for a silver stag despite their loss of land. He tried throwing off the women and younger men, a snarl and swing of his bloody blade enough to scare off most of them.

The old septas and grown men, however, who knew no love or warmth but that of the gods, were guided to fight him by true faith. Their attacks were mad and clumsy, but strong, their ferocity that of a Dothraki. Drogo had taught him how to fight Dothraki. "Shields, men! Shields!"

Waymar and Donnel's shields were not for formations, but they had strong arms, and the Northmen otherwise were good at following orders. Many bore shields of wood and beaten iron, while a few of the highborns bore steel heater and kite shields forged in White Harbour. Viserys arrayed them around him, and they did the rest with their axes, swords, and hammers as the unarmoured zealous threw themselves at an Northern advance.

They dwindled and fled in moments, only to be picked off by Bolton archers lying in wait. "Recover," Viserys said out of instinct, those who cared to listen looking at him oddly. "To the tower."

That they understood, a few following Viserys's suit as he stowed his shield on his back and picked up a septon knight's mace. He had always wanted a bludgeon, using it on the face of the first Valeman that charged him, the sole survivor of the Flints' wake. The tower was littered in Grafton and Corbray men, though one knight bore the twin falcons of a cadet branch of House Arryn.

"Robin has this in hand," Waymar said, glancing up the inner staircase, a few bodies dripping blood into massive pools around their feet and seeping into the floorboards. "Axe, sword, fists. He was in the party that greeted us. Us deposed from our home, them deposed from theirs."

"Both by Andals." Donnel spat on the Arryn knight. "Lord Stark is a stronger man than all, to have resisted their villainy when fostering in the vale." Donnel took heart from his new lineage, even if he was technically almost entirely Andal.

"Jon Arryn was a fine warden, and the Vale a fine place to grow up." A tall man bearing a black greatsword maneuvered his way through them to start walking up the stairs. He bore the heavy plate and mail of a lord, though it was functional and unpolished, if expertly made. He wore great furred pauldrons and a snowy white cloak that bore the running direwolf of House Stark, and his helmet was a simple close helm of the same dull grey steel. "Lord Bolton, I have need of your men."

Domeric walked up behind him. "You have them, Lord Stark."

Viserys let the others spill past him as he covered Dark Sister with his cloak and made sure his braid was tucked away – no young man in the North had white hair. He gathered his wits and followed, dropping the mace as soon as he saw the low ceilings and narrow hallways of the burg's tower.

The sounds of combat, of crushing metal and gauntleted fists, echoed down to Viserys, forcing him to charge up the stairs into a mad melee. It was too tight to draw anything larger than his short sword, and Lord Stark with his greatsword – Valyrian steel – had three Vale knights trapped as the blade had blocked a doorway. Viserys grabbed a Vale squire trying to pull a Flint's head off, stabbing him in the back and hacking as he withdrew.

Every thrust was a killing blow, but he had three bruises for every kill. Fists, feet, knees, and elbows, blades trying to punch through his armour and a dagger that slipped between two plates on his shoulder to carve a deep furrow towards his neck along his shoulder blade. He praised the Smith for his gorget and waded towards Domeric and Lord Stark, but hateful of his lissom body as the tide of combat tossed him past the lord's Valyrian steel greatsword blade and into the room beyond all three Vale knights.

One kicked him and another punched as he careened through the room, losing his short sword and the knife he tried drawing after. "What now?" the first knight, a Grafton, taunted, drawing an axe and buckler. The second had a longsword, the third a war hammer and shield. Both were Corbrays

Viserys dropped his pack as the men looked at each other, satisfied, the fight beyond the room turning in their favour. Viserys pulled off his scabbard and drew Dark Sister, holding the knights' attention with the Valyrian steel.

"She's shorter than Lady Forlorn," Viserys said.

He charged the Grafton, thrusting through his cuirass and mail as if it were soft tallow. Viserys pulled the blade free with a shocked gasp, almost giddy and feeling another side of the dragon start to bubble up inside him.

Viserys exchanged a few strikes with the swordsman, a stronger and more experienced opponent more than making up for Dark Sister's superiority. The man with the war-hammer came at his shoulder at the same time, but he lost his raised arm to Lord Stark's sword. Ice, if the warriors of the Company of the Rose spoke truly. Viserys was finding that most Northmen spoke truly, be they exile, adoptee, or native born.

The swordsman's shock was his downfall, his guard opening for Viserys to deliver a cut to his flank, cleaving through his armour and bone through to his lungs, covering Viserys in a puff of wine-scented breath from his open side. Seeing such a thing did make him vomit, though no one noticed as the battle wore on.

Lord Stark appeared to take mental note of Viserys, or perhaps just his weapon from how where gaze rested, before pushing to Robin on the next floor. The Flint bore an axe in either hand, with a chunk of flesh in his teeth and a knight at his feet bleeding out from a wound in his neck. Those who surrounded him were men-at-arms, professional soldiers in the employ of House Corbray, all hunched with knives or hatchets – they were surrounded by scaffolding and a low ceiling, making it impossible to swing a sword without bringing the roof down on top of them.

Lord Stark finally disposed of Ice, handing it off to Waymar as Viserys did the same with Dark Sister to Donnel. Both boys from the Vale preened even as Viserys, Domeric, and the wolf lord drew knives and attacked. Robin still had them surprised, and three were dead with knives in their necks, then a fourth as Robin descended upon them. Lord Stark bodily tackled the fifth, Domeric shoving his hands in the Corbray's mouth in some practiced, if deranged, maneuver. "Viserys! His legs!"

Viserys drew one of his many weapon belts, securing the Valeman's legs. "Do you have it!" snarled Stark.

"He's trying to bite my fingers... off!" Domeric strained and with a crack, seemed to pull out half the man's teeth at once.

"No! Not that! On my honour, please! Leave me to the Seven!" His flailing was half-mad, spiting throwing frothy blood as he spat up his own bleeding gums. Viserys had no idea what was going on, but he followed his orders, securing the Valeman and, when the tower was cleared, retrieving his gear and assembling with the others outside.

Even in winter, the indoors could still get stuffy, the clear and crisp air of the North a large part of the reason war was so welcome in winter. The would-be conquerors did not feel the same, shivering in chain gangs be they knight or lowly settler. Their eyes dripped with venom as Lord Stark walked among them, searching the faces of the women and children, and the men without clear allegiances except to the Seven.

Lord Stark removed his helmet to reveal a bearded man of tamed brown hair that fell to just below his shoulders. He handed his helmet to a younger man in armour as functional and fine as his, with a surcoat of ten white direwolf heads on a grey field with a black border. Some local small, unlanded house Viserys did not know, but Viserys knew Eddard Stark. He had been there when his father and brother died.

Viserys had to step away from the milling sellswords to gather his wits. "I will give you all the same choice," said Lord Stark, his voice carrying to him like the howl of his sigil. "Confess your crimes and attest to Ser Denys Arryn's crimes, and be given safety and security here, in the North, until such a time that you can be safely returned to the Vale."

"For more of your work camps, slaver?" One of the septons found his feet, spitting at Lord Stark's. "The Seven know of your crimes, heathen! Heretic!"

"Heretic!"

"Heathen!"

"Heretic!"

"Heathen!"

Those cries and other insults about dogs echoed among the invading Valemen. The Northmen looked to Lord Stark to answer the insult as he cursed their gods and the ways of the First Men, but the Warden of the North stood silent, watching the septon. He waited until he lost all momentum, shivering quietly in the cold once again. The snow had begun to gather on top of them even as it melted around Lord Stark. He was not king of the North, but with ice at his side, fully armoured with the pelt of a wolf on his shoulders, he was as regal as they could come.

"Your name is?"

The septon straightened up. "I am Most Devout Bertran, you... worshipper of ice demons. Servant of shadow and-!"

Domeric had walked up behind the cleric, taking him by the throat and drawing one of many hidden knives. "You insult your host, septon."

Lord Stark raised his hand, dismissing the young lord and taking the Valeman in a firm gaze. "Work camps are not what men like you should fear, Most Devout Bertran." Eddard leaned down, one hand on Bertan's shoulder, and whispered into his ear. Bertran's look of devotion fell to something resembling humanity, and then terror. "Or shall I tell your people what Lord Corbray did myself?"

"N- no, my lord. Lord Stark."

Eddard nodded firmly. "See every man to the Wall and every woman to the Barrowlands. Every child to Winterfell."

Bertran and the other men, put at ease at first, broke into a mad scramble. "My lord! You said-"

"I said your secret was safe, Most Devout. Not that you were exempt from justice. Unless you seek the alternative to the Wall?" Domeric drew his knife, though only to clean it. Bertran paled, he and the other men, all of them strong fighting men, soon to be shipped off to the Wall as they surrendered all over again. Viserys wondered how that was bearing out, if Lord Stark was filling the watch with Northmen-hating Vale knights, or if the Wildlings were keeping them all in line.

Then again, since the death of the Mad King, a good portion of the Golden Company were Targaryen loyalists outrunning the Storm King.

There was some loot to be had in the clean-up, relics to the Seven worth more than their weight in gold and silver to the right merchants making their way to the Riverlands and beyond via the Kingsroad. The North could be resupplied overland indefinitely, and as long as House Manderly held the bite and Winterfell stood, the Valemen would have to cross a land twice the size of their entire realm just to reach the castle of House Stark, which itself was only a third of the North.

Viserys supposed religion was the only explanation, mad zealotry guiding whomever was sending good smallfolk and stouthearted warriors off to die. "I thought Ser Denys was the Darling of the Vale, not the Tyrant." Viserys took a single silver chain with a simple seven-pointed star. He was not a man of deep faith, but he said the occasional prayer. Everyone picked loot much the same, leaving most of the sellsword's share to the Flints out of honour. He rewarded them with a bottle of wine and a bonus pouch of silver coins each.

They made camp in the burg, those captured set to converting the burgs they had beult, as Domeric put it, into "real burgs." They dug a steep round trench, which proved difficult in the forest in the dead of winter, breaking out picks like they were mining and building piles of jagged, frozen ground instead.

Night was falling and Lord Stark ordered them to set camp as well, most pitching tents but the lords taking the tower and houses, the small stone sept not desecrated but claimed by a few knights of House Manderly. Other Northmen bore plainer seven-pointed stars, Donnel and Waymar also bearing fealty to a more personal, less flamboyant, more austere and thus more Northern interpretation of the Faith of the Seven. It was an even further cry from the painted alabaster and enamelled gold of New Andalos and the Grand Septon.

It was after he had bathed with a bucket of icy water and filled his belly with mutton that Viserys bundled himself in all his dry clothes, hung everything damp and sweaty up by a blazing fire, and made his way towards the burg's tower. Within were the Starks, Flints, and Boltons, their leader's honour guard – twenty heavy cavalry and one hundred heavy infantry, each with the talent and armament of a Golden Company knight – camped beyond the burg's ditches.

"You wished to speak with me, Lord Bolton?" Viserys knocked on the doorframe of one of the upper rooms. Domeric was sprawled out on the bed, more rope for a monk than comfortable mattress, with one book in his hands, one on his chest, and one in his lap. "I can return in the morning."

"No, please." Domeric snapped the books shut and tried tidying his space, though Viserys did not hide his curiosity. "Theon Stark, the Andal Invasions, and the Arryns and Vale. They've been fighting with the North since the Long Night." Since before the Andals at all."

*Everyone's been fighting everywhere, always*, Viserys thought. "The contract cannot be over so soon, can it?"

"Oh no, I still have you for a few weeks more. No, it is about... that." With his quill, he pointed to Dark Sister. It had been heavy with blood and gore, so Viserys was forced to remove his leather wrappings to clean it, lest it start rotting in his hands. "Every boy in the North knows what that is."

"Do you have a question? I am but a sellsword."

Domeric shrugged. "Why lie about going beyond the Wall? You'd not be the first Essosi to end up there. Plenty of slavers or merchants seeking ivory who might have taken someone of your talents into their service. You could be Tyroshi yourself, but your hair would have most assume you are Lyseni and move on."

"I am not a citizen of your lands, nor am I bound by your laws but those most high. I've not stolen from or killed anyone that did not have it coming."

"Indeed..." Domeric said, standing when Lord Stark suddenly strode through the door. "Lord Stark."

Viserys stood. "My lord."

The Lord of Winterfell looked on them both. "Did you ask him?"

"I was building to it, Lord."

Stark snorted. "Your name?"

"Viserys."

"Viserys *what*?"

Viserys shook his head. "No."

"Excuse me?" Domeric turned on Viserys. "You dare refuse-"

"I said, *no*." Viserys straightened up, pulling his coin pouch from his belt. He counted out the ten silver trouts and three gold lions he'd been paid. "Article two of the contract states, as I insisted upon its addition, that the contract may be voided if its original terms, see article one, are voided." He counted out two more silver. "For the wine."

Lord Stark had not stepped aside, levelling his iron gaze at Viserys's purple eyes. No, not iron – steel. War had forged the brittle, quiet Stark into a weapon, honed at all times. His words were measured despite his famed honour. He was known as far away as Vaes Dothrak for it, the lord who rode wolves and carried a blade of jagged ice. "We share a nephew," he said.

"We share nothing." Viserys eyed the window. "I'll take the Kingsroad and find a ship in Oldtown. I will swim across the Stepstones if I have to."

"You plan to die in Essos?" Domeric scoffed. "Let him go, I say. He's of no use."

"It is not use I seek, but allies." Stark eyed Viserys. "I did not know your father, but-"

"I was there. He made me watch." Stark looked like he had been punched. "I owe the Golden Company more than I could ever owe my house or the Seven Kingdoms. I was a boy, and I have forgotten more-" Viserys cut himself off. "It is best if we say this did not happen. I will return to White Harbour. A smuggler brought me here, I'm sure another can get me to Braavos."

He moved to the door. Stark watched him carefully, not pleading but still desperate. He was strong and hale, a good and cunning leader, and an honourable lord, but he was pulled in all directions at once.

He stepped aside, and Viserys strode down the stairs and back to his tent, adding to the fire to hasten the drying of his gear as he started packing. There looked to be some shifty folk at the docks in White Harbour, and at the very least he could always try getting back to Hardhome to hire a vessel to take him across the Shivering Sea, or sneak aboard a Vale ship and find passage in Gulltown.

"Stay until the contract is through." Lord Stark placed the pouch of coins on a small folding table, having entered the shelter as quiet as the Stranger. "Jon knows all about his family. The bad, but also the good."

"Jon?"

"Aemon. Jon's shadow, the men took to calling him. It stuck, and he says it helps him feel less foreign. More a Stark than a Targaryen."

He said it and it was done, that name no longer hanging between them. "His mother?"

Stark studied the ground for a moment, then met Viserys's gaze. He felt warmth from the wolf lord, but more than that a craving for his own warmth, the home and hearth he missed and did all of this for. "She did not live long after birth."

Chapter Text

That winter in the North was a hell of frozen rain and biting wind.

Viserys stood in an icy puddle halfway to his knees, the sleet and hail rattling off his armour as he awaited the order to advance. He stood in the first rank of heavy infantry a few men away from Eddard Stark, every man on foot to secure the lives of their horses. The ground was perilous beyond the Hornwood, the lands between it and Widow's Watch torn apart by a network of trenches and mines. The land was good as well, and the deposits of ore plenty rich according to Waymar, though Viserys did not have to wonder long why it took the Arryns so long to use the land – the ditches and mounds were scattered with pale, bone white stumps, many of which still bled.

"They take our land just to kill our gods!" Stark drew Ice, the sound waking the miserable and frozen Valemen. "Feed the North with their blood!"

The charge was mad and bloody, a massacre by every definition. Though the Graftons still held Ramsgate, the Arryns and Corbrays who held the burgs and lands around it had dwindled. Vale winters were no laughing matter, but they had their caves and stone fortresses to hide in. The tracts of North they had conquered, while rich below ground, offered only forest and river locked in snow and ice for most of their invasion, while the summer after had been spent defending from siege.

Viserys lost ground to men more eager for killing, his own journey advance and more cleaning up the trenches than capturing of tents and their contents on the surface. The loot flowed in a river from there, the third and fourth sons of the Vale having brought what little or plenty riches they had gathered for themselves in the war. The North's Valemen took it all back.

In some ways, Viserys pondered, the assault recalled the status quo for centuries across the Narrow Sea, how the free companies might find themselves allied in one contract and killing each other during another. The sellswords of Essos however were professionals – these were men who had fought the Targaryens together, and who mourned Rickard Stark and Elbert Arryn together. Now they were killing and looting one another on the whims of the Seven's followers.

When a horn roused the defenders, the Northern infantry lost their front lines to five hundred Vale knights charging through Ramsgate's palisade, only for the charge to collapse as the first two ranks of cavalry killed their horses trying to navigate the trenches. They recovered quicker than Dothraki would, losing barely thirty men before they retreated out of arrow range. The hail was too strong too shoot anyway.

Stark's command tent was the former Corbray command tent. By the time Viserys had made it there, the executions were already done. "They need time for their settlers to get away," said Lord Hornwood, indicating the peninsula with Widow's Watch at the tip. "There are beaches between there and here to accomodate the Grafton fleet."

"They'd not risk crossing our navy!" The Greatjon slapped his massive midsection with one ham-sized hand. "In the meanwhile, we'll push the Andals into the sea."

Stark shook his head. "We can hold the waves around it, but the spring storms will begin within six moons, and then travel will be impossible." He raised a hand to Robin Flint, about to decry the proclamation. "I will not tear children from the breast as compensation for the actions of their fathers and septons."

"They stole my sister and cousins! My mother, Lord Stark!"

"And they will be punished. But nothing will happen speedily, not while they hold that fort."

Domeric indicated a cluster of his own Bolton men farther up the coast. "The Dreadfort has the men to reinforce the siege. They are already on their way and will hit the peninsula's northern coast. They know to come west to assault the fort from the other side."

"The land can't sustain that many horses. Not even in the heart of summer." Robin indicated his ancestral seat. "The cliffs around Widow's Watch are too perilous for ships as well."

"And we don't want to starve our fellow Northmen," said a Manderly knight. He was taller than Viserys, yet stout, with a greying brown beard and grey eyes. Were it not for his ornate silver armour and helmet set with jet and jade, Viserys thought he might be looking at Marq Mandrake's brother. "We'll lose no fewer than three thousand men trying to take the fort guarding the peninsula."

Were the weather fairer, siege weapons would be the answer, in Viserys's view, but the endless temperate fields and forests of the Heel were not the North in winter. The lords fell to lower voices, considering their options and the tactics before them with their retainers and individual advisors. If they could starve out the Valeman, they would, but there were too many Northmen still held in bondage. Viserys stood at the back of the tent not with squires, but the other men of war. Steelshanks and, to Viserys's pleasant surprise, Captain Stane.

"What are the Bolton ships?" Viserys asked, sidling up to the Skagosi. "Barges? Brigs?"

Stane raised an eyebrow. "Fuck 're yew up ta?" Viserys shrugged. "Some mad cross 'twixt a whaler 'n a cog."

"And Lord Bolton's men can sail in this weather?"

"They're half Ironscum, so aye." Viserys turned him towards Domeric. "Beach landing in winter is mad."

Viserys's silence encouraged Captain Stane, who maneuvered his way from the clansmen and lesser lords to the great lords in the middle of the tent. He whispered hurriedly, his thick accent making it hard for him to lower his voice, though the seed was planted.

The young lord said, "Ser Marlon, the Oldcastle fleet moves up the coast this very moment towards Ramsgate?" The Manderly knight nodded. "The siege is holding, and Ramsgate surrounded. The sea blockade will not need my ships."

The plan was in process before Viserys exited the tent, separating himself from the other hired swords. They were all fighting for a reason beyond the pay, in truth, each desiring vengeance for the crimes of the Tyrant of the Vale. Viserys, on the other hand, was still just a sellsword. He did not care much for a nephew he did not know or his kingdom, nor did he care to be reminded about the atrocities of his father, or the wars that were now spinning out of the war his brother started.

He just wanted to be back in Braavos, where life made much more sense. He took his pay, he fought and killed, and he waited. What was he thinking, that he could make some sense out of the mess of Westeros. He would find some way to tell Ashara Dayne, if ever he saw her again.

But was this not what his waiting was for? His training would end one day, and the time would come for him to... what? To end wars or fight them, to play at tactics so he could win renown in Westeros, but to what end? How could more death lead to peace?

"How serious was your service with Braavos?" Domeric found Viserys outside despite the freezing rain. "And these... frog landings?"

"Amphibious. Your Redwynes did not explain?"

"They build and sail the ships. We just fell the trees and cut the planks. There are a handful on this side of the King's Road, but no one pleasant." Domeric waved to one of the Vale knights beyond the trenches. The Valeman raised a crossbow to shoot, though the string broke in the rain, and he shot his neighbour's horse in the shoulder. "Knights of summer." He turned to Viserys. "You will join the assault."

Viserys looked south at Ramsgate, its lights and smoking chimneys futilely struggling against the Northern sleet. The palisade ran from a rocky cliff beyond a beach next to Ramsgate, to another cliff two miles to their left. "No. I will climb."

***

It was mad, but Westerosi war moved far too slowly for Viserys.

He gathered a stout unit of the quickest, most athletic warriors he could find, asking only for trust from Lords Stark and Bolton. Waymar Royce was the only man he knew already that made the cut, along with Domeric himself, who supplied all the black mail, leathers, and warm clothing that they could need.

Viserys went with just his knife, short sword, and Dark Sister, the rest coming with the same small and light weapons. Under the cover of night, with ropes, grapnels, steel crampons, and twenty good men, he ascended the cliffside. The climb was fair but the endless sleet lost them two of their number to falls. They lived, but with broken legs. The top of the cliff was a broken knob of rock clogged with cedars and a massive weirwood with a trunk as wide across as a Volantene wheelhouse. The broken, rocky cliffside did gradually descend to the ground beyond as well, rocky hills just as clogged with tents.

"There must be more than five thousand men," said Waymar. He looked at home all in black, though he had neglected to cover the ornate bronze hilt and jewelled pommel of his longsword.

"And we have ten and surprise," said Viserys. "Twenty good men is all we need, and we have forty." A mirror caught some candlelight on the other end of the palisade from the other team of would-be catspaws. "Lord Bolton makes to infiltrate. We must take the gates now."

Viserys stayed low to the ground, knife in hand as he descended, travelling via some ruins down towards the fort and the wall walk beyond a second, inner palisade. The trench between was twenty-feet deep and full of spikes and offal, camp waste of all sorts dumped within. There were knights encamped between the outer palisade and the Northern outermost pickets, leaving Viserys to creep along a walkway with ease.

The first guards were atop the gate towers, Viserys vaulting up the steps and taking the first man in the chest with his knife, silencing his scream. He drew Dark Sister as his momentum carried him forward, and he stepped up to the tower edge, leapt to the next tower, and cut off the guard's head. He caught the head and its helmet before they could fall off the tower, he and ten men filling the structures soon after.

The Valemen were all either sleeping or huddling by dying peat fires, while Viserys and the attackers had full bellies and the faith of Ned Stark – and the promise of a reward of ten gold dragons from Lord Stark's personal funds.

These were not zealous settlers led astray, but knights and lordlings they were about to fight. They knew what they had done and Viserys did not hesitate to kill them as they shivered far from home. He spied another of the sellswords and they advanced together towards the inside of the outer gate, killing the two guards and opening the gate. The inner gate came soon after, and then there was chaos. A few flaming arrows went up, along with every fifth tent in the Vale camps. The insides were dry and warm, and they caught and were soon giving the rain a real challenge.

The Northmen charged from there, washing over the Andals, the Hungry Wolf reborn into his descendant. Viserys donned the Bolton shoulder cape Domeric gifted him, his allegiance clear behind enemy lines, once the battle was in full swing Yet with Dark Sister and a Valeman's heater shield, Viserys had nothing to fear as the defenses collapsed and the knights of the Vale turned tail for their boats, the Vale smallfolk, faith millitant, and Flint women with Andal babes in their bellies all that was left.

Viserys cheered with the men too slow to chase those knights that missed the ships, more cavalry riding off the Bolton ships in the direction of those who fled. Viserys could have been in the Dothraki Sea again, with Drogo when he returned to his father for how the horsemen fought like them, the manes and tails brightly colours, their hides glossy and muscles.

Domeric led them, cutting off any retreat by sea and land. "They won't make it far! Ride! Your blades are sharp!" They rode off ahead of him, Domeric looking over to Viserys and grinning wide. "A great victory, Viserys!"

Lord Stark with the infantry swept along the southern coast as Domeric took the northern, capturing ten men and smallfolk for every warrior who tossed themselves at the endless horde of Northmen. Twelve thousand, to be precise, the bulk of houses Manderly, Bolton, and Hornwood and their banners, and all of the Flints, Widow's Watch or not, grinding over seven thousand Valemen.

Viserys let them all pass him by, coming to terms with his decision. There were things he wanted to do in the North, people he wanted to meet, even a handful of widowed ladies that reminded him of other things he wanted to explore. Was he even a man before then?

The ground between camp and the beach by Ramsgate was open, Viserys moving past the few scattered sentries to the water beyond. There was a rowboat, as Stark promised, with a note and a simple map of the coast.

*Follow the onions.*

***

The crack of thunder woke Viserys. His uttered fluttered open. Caked with sand and seawater, lashing rain soon washed him clean as he rose to his feet on a beach, the battle for Shipbreaker Bay still raging. The Black Betha stood, but one corner of its forecastle was shattered and burning.

The sellsails that chased them since Duskendale had a new weapon, one that made Viserys's nose remind him of his father. The ringing in his ears was almost as bad.

The Pentoshi weapons cracked again, drawing Viserys's attention back to the sea. He picked up a boarding axe as one of the sellsails reached for Dark Sister stuck in the sand, and Viserys took his head for trying to take his sword. He felt a true dragon when he wielded the blade, though he had been sure to hide it when in his brother's share of the Seven Kingdoms. Ser Davos claimed it was Rhaegar who hired the sellsails, that he and Robert Baratheon still feuded and grappled for a throne lost to them both somewhere under the waves of Blackwater Bay.

He sheathed his sword and started looking for a boat, but anything larger than a wine cog that could survive the wind and waves had been pressed into service. "If I'm fucking stranded again..." Viserys growled as he saw more pirates dragging themselves ashore. Like him, they knew how to dress for fighting between land and sea, but unlike him they had no mail or plate, just leather and layers of coats and scarves.

Two fell before they knew who they fought, the other three trapped between sea and beach. "My mother is Lyseni. Come. Join us!" The man on the left lunged at Viserys. Viserys parried but the pirate counter-parried and punched him in the face.

Viserys cut off his arm under his and thrust, drawing the pirate's own dagger and gutting him. He hurled the dagger at the next pirate while throwing himself backwards, then cursing as an arrow stuck in his back.

A party of mounted knights rode down the embankment above the beach, framed against a great citadel of a castle with high, round walls and a drum tower like a fist thrust toward the sky. Viserys shared a look with the living pirate and they dashed in opposite directions, Viserys sprinting down the beach as five of the riders levelled their pikes at his back. He swerved inland and then juked backwards, cutting out the legs from two horses then tackling tearing a third rider from the saddle.

He clicked his tongue as he mounted, hollered like a Dothraki, and drove his heels, taking off like an arrow up the ridge to a windswept green field. The stallion charged through a herd of sheep undisturbed by the wind and lightning. More knights gave chase as Viserys sought escape, seeing only open pasture beyond the beach.

Better to try exhausting his horse first before surrendering, Viserys thought as he split his focus between the horse's footing and the rising wind, all knights of the storm demanded his head. The ground descended into a fertile lowland and a muddy road that ran through a hamlet busy with a market fair, and like something out of a bard's tale the knights chasing Viserys chose to join the fair instead.

Some maidens came along with antler crowns, and they lustily stumbled to the half-drunk septon while farmer fathers looked on proudly. Viserys had little time to gawk as more knights rode up from the beach, however, so he turned the stallion and continued down the road at a canter. He kept that pace for as long as the horse could stand it, the rare sound of battle reaching his ears through the howling wind.

Back down the road, he saw no one, and up the road he was alone. His options were the great castle with a heavily fortified settlement beyond it on a promontory to the south, where a lone sellsword would likely be welcomed as little more than a brigand, or inland, across more empty fields dotted with rocky mountains as far as the eye could see. He had forgotten the vastness of the world – his life in the Golden Company was rough, but cosmopolitan in its own way. With its diverse membership and clientele, his boyhood had convinced Viserys that all the world could be brought to him as stories and new faces.

Yet seeing Westeros with his own eyes, the wind in his hair and just a sword and a stolen horse... Perhaps that was the life he should be living. With Valyrian steel, Dark Sister at that, Viserys liked his chances.

Continuing north, he tried to recall what he knew of the south. Ser Marq always spoke about Westeros with authority, and as a sellsword Viserys had easily fallen in with that familiar sort of life in the North, to say nothing of the influence his name brought him with Ned Stark. But in the south of Westeros, the fractured remains of the great game and various subtler wars were ongoing, or at least when last he had eavesdropped on one of Lysono Maar and Maegor's conversations. Viserys – to all appearances a sellsword with allegiances that could be bought with a few coins – was not welcome.

He would need to keep his name to himself.

He prayed to the Seven for Ser Davos as he went, asking for an end to the rain as he and the horse endured the punishing rain. What's worse, it was cold, what little light that poked through the clouds scalding and flashing in his eyes with the lightning – it was still winter in the Stormlands.

Viserys found a cave in one of the small mountains, taking a few moments of peace to determine that that the castle was the famous Storm's End. Wishing he'd taken a better look, Viserys took stock of his supplies, the horse's saddlebags bursting with grain, sausages, hard cheese, and a few fresh-baked loaves of bread. The horse blanket was yellow with a black lion, which was meaningless to Viserys, but he figured the supplies meant he was fresh from his lord's service.

He used the tent to cover the cave entrance, hobbling the stallion and looping a feedbag around its ears to distract it. He counted up his coins and considered his options. He needed to get to Essos, the how no longer mattered. He had been dissapointed Ser Davos was bound to take him to Braavos only after a route that had them up and down the Narrow Sea – Weeping Town was their destination before the sellsails chased them back from Cape Wrath and into Shipbreaker Bay, but where was Weeping Town?

He had none of his maps, not even his papers confirming his identity to the Iron Bank. He had everything he always wore, Valyrian steel and Golden Company arm rings, but none was actually gold. What rube would believe he was a Company man, and why would such a thing matter to them if they weren't getting some of the gold?

Viserys ate and bedded down. He needed sleep, and any good Company man could sleep wherever he camped. Without someone to rouse him it was late the next morning when he woke, broke camp, and started back out into the rain. He crossed countryside dotted with the occasional hamlet, avoiding people and, after his third day choked and sweating in a hood hiding his hair, bought a night at a boarding house and shaved his head with his dagger.

He loved his hair, he truly did, but it had grown thick and long over two years of winter, and a journey across the Dothraki Sea and River Rhoyne before that. Now, it was the humid final months of winter with spring fast approaching. He would grow it back, but for the time he could not look like the lanky love child of Aegon the Unlikely and Duncan the Tall.

Everyone in the Company loved to hate Aegon V, but in truth they respected how strong he had made House Targaryen and the Iron Throne. His time as king before Maelys the Monstrous rose to power was a time of great prosperity for the Golden Company, swelling with knights seeking to use their skills during a lasting peace in Westeros.

So with bald head and purple eyes, trading away much of his red and black winter gear for rough-dyed gold and grey cotton and linen, Viserys posed as a sellsword, his bald head quickly browning to a tan with plenty of freckles, the stubble he shaved every few days as he wandered the Stormlands. Ten days after he was marooned, Viserys reached Bronzegate, and something resembling civilisation.

Chapter Text

Bronzegate grew out of a solitary mountain beside the Kingsroad, surrounded by terraced pastures and fields around a town that grew against the curtain wall of a large castle with a round curtain wall. Home to more foundries than inns producing buckles, nails, arrowheads, daggers, and anything made of metal that could be used as soon as you picked it up, there were steady streams of people from lesser roads, and plenty of hedge knights and sellswords to disappear amongst.

Like the works of metal they produced, the people of Bronzegate were simple but well-crafted. Every soldier had a straight back, every smith an keen work ethic, and every maiden as lovely to look at as she was sturdy, working the bellows or anvils alongside the men. Children ran about ferrying charcoal and blooms of ore, chiefly iron as bronze had not been of use since before the Andals – Viserys sensed it was an older place despite its modern amenities, that the people of their land and the land loved them.

Most of the settlement was indeed industry, but there was a sprawling market quarter and an inviting street with a red lantern at either end. Viserys purchased himself a wide-brimmed shepherd's hat of tightly-woven straw, and a rain cloak of waxed lambskin as he hunted for some person of learning or letters, though to no avail.

Finding himself in the taproom of the *Buckle and Bronze*, Viserys kept to himself while moving his hat to the crown of his head, all the better to resemble a weary traveller more than a stranger trying to hide in his hat's shadow. He knew a few sellswords who appreciated such reputation though, and looking like a sellsword was guaranteed to get you hired, except in Westeros. Ser Davos's advice kept Viserys hiding his sword and armour inside his bed roll, the taproom occupied only by men-at-arms and foundry workers. He smiled at the serving girl as he sat, withdrawing one of his few Westerosi coins. "Ale, and something to eat."

"You want bread?"

Viserys nodded and the woman took his coin. She did not even linger on his eyes as some had in White Harbour. There must still be some trade with Essos, even in the Stormlands, who were still at war with all of their neighbours, hatred for his brother aside. Half of every rumour came back to Rhaegar, either for his lecherous raping or his Targaryen blood magic.

The food was mutton and the bread from brown barley, much like every other smallfolk meal he'd treated himself to. The meat at least was tender and well-seasoned, roasted with onions and carrots, and a sticky and smoky apple sauce. The bread was crusty and chewy, and far more pleasurable to eat than the shrivelled flatbread he could manage on the road by himself.

Like always, he ate well, purchasing another bowl and a bunch of apples along with a room, using the hours between the afternoon and evening rushes to listen to the goings-on of Bronzegate. House Buckler's lands sat in the heart of the Stormlands' populous heartland. The rocky, wind-blasted ground of the Dornish Marches guarded the Stormlands from Dorne and the Reach, but it also left half the Stormlands with no use – the climate was too harsh for farmland, and all the materials for a mine would have to be carted to a build site.

"'Fuck is this?" Five foundry workers banged through the door, taking the booth across the room from the hearth. One of them was indicating something in his hand, and the other four dug into their pockets. "Another cut!"

The serving girl wandered over, a few of the men giving her the homely looks every young man had for the neighbourhood maid. "Hops levies went up too," she said as she served them from the ale pitcher. More than she gave Viserys, and he was clearly overpaying as each man handed over a copper piece half the size of his thumbnail.

"Lucky the drink don't cost," another worker said.

"Aye, but Ma might start just doing away with it and stick with potatoes."

"I fuckin' hate liquor! Makes my nose itch!" a third grumbled.

"But it's cheap and strong. I'll get you boys your dinner."

Viserys's eyes went from the metalworkers to a pair of smiths and a boy who took a table near the door and nearer him. One of them had the look of the Stormlands, a big-chested man with black hair and eyes the colour of the sea in summer. He was clean-shaven, with a cleft chin that looked almost comically masculine, and wearing the livery of a landed knight, his coat of arms the inverse of House Baratheon; a yellow stag on a black field.

The other man was foreign, Viserys reckoned Qohorik from the shape of his nose and the sound of his voice. Men were weathered in the the Stormlands, but universally fair-skinned and broad-shouldered – he had drooped shoulders connecting to overlong arms, and short legs. "It is quite the request, Ser Noye. Might I have some time to make space for him? I've two journeymen ready to move on, and-"

"With respect, no. The boy must join you now or not at all. I have little time."

"But Greenstone-"

"Greenstone is no longer safe."

The Qohorik leaned back in his chair as the serving girl came with wine. "Milk for the boy," Ser Noye said. *An odd name*, Viserys thought. *Noye*.

The Qohorik paid her, and handed her a few extra coins and a note. "Bring that to Cedrik. I'll cover with your mother."

The serving girl nodded and scurried away, though her eyes did linger on the knight. He was the image of Robert Baratheon though lacking his beard and warhammer, infamous as he was beyond the Stormlands. "A bastard for a bastard. I like the way you think, Mott."

"*Master* Mott," the Qohorik said, staring down his nose at the boy between him and the knight. Dark-haired as well, he had rich blue eyes and looked to be about ten or eleven years of age, though he had the wide eyes of a much younger child. "I'm to stay here?"

"It's still too near your father's wife, Gendry." Gendry, the boy, nodded. A bastard, Viserys mused. "Oldtown, you say?"

"I'm not risking Gulltown or Duskendale, and Weeping Town is in the wrong direction." Master Mott drained his cup and stood. "There is a small party being assembled to go across the Dornish Marches. With your lord's seal and my connections in the Reach, passage will be easy."

"Master Mott, the Dornish-"

"Donal Noye, you're a fool if you believe it's Dornish stuck in your side." He leaned down and whispered something, making the knight brace and look up at the foreigner afraid and in awe. "The boy will do well in Oldtown. I shall see to his education, perhaps even have him squired to a Hightower knight. Come, Gendry. We leave in three days."

The boy slipped his chair and took Mott's extended hand, while waving goodbye to Donal as he ordered three more in quick succession. He preferred liquor.

A few other rumours worked their way to Viserys's ears, from highwaymen bearing Reach-made weapons farther up the King's Road, to a rebellion on Cape Wrath and ongoing fighting with the Red King in the Narrow Sea. Viserys recalled Rhaegar's affinity for rubies and crimson velvet, and his solid red cloak, but from the stories his brother was the thing that went bump in the night, Maegor the Cruel, Aegon the Unworthy, and their own crazed father all rolled into one tyrant.

Indeed, the Stormlands were proud of their support for House Arryn bringing security to the northern Crownlands, and not giving up the fight agains the Targaryen in the North, who had corrupted House Stark as they had corrupted Lyanna Stark. What ingots and worked pieces of trade, leather and wool above all, the Stormlands did not use, was shipped north to the Vale on a sweetheart deal that kept a steady supply of coin to the high lords and a few smallfolk merchants. Lord Denys had even sent five thousand of his Winged Knights with the last shipment of coin, as a supplement to King Robert's personal guard. Taxes had gone up as well, in addition to the rising cost of goods and the lowering of wages.

In short, war was coming.

Viserys had a fine night's rest and went exploring the following morning. He donned dark sister low on his back, with his short sword and knife more accessible on his waist. It did not take long once for him to find what he was looking for, a shop that was more pioneer's camp than home to a master artisan.

Tobho Mott, master smith of Qohor and King's Landing, had gathered to him a collection of Essosi and abandoned Westerosi. Primarily those living in King's Landing who escaped or survived the Lannister sack – or the wildfire – they were wealthy in skill but not much else. Among the three-hundred folk, they had but eight hedge knights and thirty men-at-arms who owed them debts to protect them. Debts secured at the Bank in Oldtown or with larger houses with whom the caravan could trade.

*Nomads in Westeros?* Viserys thought the land of his birth more and more like Essos every day, and as he walked into camp he spied a few Lyseni courtesans and one bravo who nodded at him, he wished he had not shaved his head – though it was still abysmally humid as winter faded to spring.

Tobho Mott's tent was backed onto a forge dug into the earth piled high with charcoal and bricks, being broken down to its component parts across various wagons pulled by the remnants of a King's Landing menagerie – three zebras, two giraffes, a rhinoceros, and six white Dornish stallions. "You must learn! It is your first job!" Mott roared.

"Ser Donal had me fetching blanks and shovelling charcoal!" Gendry roared back. "The bellows are for babies!"

"You are seven! Defiant brat, he warned me!" Mott snatched Gendry's ear. "To the bricks with you. Start stacking!"

"But-"

"Stack!"

Mott tossed him towards the wagons, tightening up into a salesmen as he spied Viserys. "Stranger, welcome. I have stock but it is going fast, as you can see." There were plenty of men-at-arms and knights paying off debts to pick up their orders, while a few men sacrificed theirs for greater coin from more desperate men bound for battle.

"I had hoped to enter your service, Master Mott." Mott scoffed and shook his head, though Viserys slipped his hand out from his cloak, and offered the smith the mazemaker's ring. "I was in Qohor, after the sack."

Mott's eyes went wide, and he warily took the ring, examining it in the light of a black candle. "You have more?"

"Not much worth reworking, but I could use the pieces I have, but once we are in Oldtown... Many desire simply to work it."

"I am not so civilian, stranger. You know my name. You are a sellsword?"

Viserys nodded. "Leopold," he said, thinking a Norvoshi name might give him even more cover, his purple eyes aside. "I was with the Company of the Rose up north for a time."

Tobho looked him up and down. "You can't yet be twenty."

"War turns boys into soldiers. I will admit, I have been in the south for two weeks now, and I've seen no war."

"The Dornish Marches and the Reach east of Highgarden resembled the Disputed Lands. Rhaegar raids for supplies, Robert fights for his pride and his good-father's whims, and the Tyrells... Well, I'll say not in this kingdom, just that the path of the King of Thorns, though bloody, is from fair beginnings."

"A story for another time, I hope." They worked out the details, that Viserys would pay into the small pot for insurance and guarding purposes that a Braavosi bravo-cum-banker returned to the life of a bravo organized for the caravan. They called themselves Essosi, speaking a smattering of bastard and High Valyrian and reminding Viserys very much of the Golden Company. He bought a pack mule and a bigger tent and cot in Bronzegate, and donned a little more armour despite the heat so he might look the part.

They set off west from Bronzegate two days later, towards Felwood and then onwards to waiting barges on the Blueburn River to take them into the Reach. Crossing the edges of the Kingswood from Bronzegate was quiet, though they only ever came across rumbles of brigands and one pushy patrol of knights. Felwood was smaller than Bronzegate, a few hamlets carving hafts for weapons and shafts for arrows and raising big black sheep, their wool promised to Storm's End for as long as people lived in the Stormlands.

The grassy hills beyond Felwood quickly fell away to flattened moors, hot and windy with open sky beating down a different sort of storm. Lucky for Viserys, a summer in the Dusklands's humidity had prepared him for such heat, but as the last spring in Westeros had been spent at war, none of the Essosi had felt such punishing warmth in close to eight years. Viserys was thankful for his hat and kept up the shaving of his head, wondering perhaps if he might have Tobho Mott forge the vambrace into a knife that could double as a razor – he hated stropping his dagger just to shave.

He learned Gendry was the bastard son, and cousin, of Robert Baratheon, beget from Robert's own cousin, a maiden of Estermont long since married off to a household member. Gendry had lived at Estermont until recently, before being taken in at Storm's End, only for the sudden return of his father's wife, Cersei Lannister, to quickly scare away Gendry and his father's numerous other bastards and distant relations.

Some part of Viserys wondered how he might use such a child for political ends, musing on the words of Ashara Dayne and Eddard Stark, but unable to be sure if he even wanted to be part of a land so much like Essos now. "Master Mott says you have Valyrian steel?" Gendry looked across at him from their wagon, Viserys on his horse, and freshly shoed by Tobho Mott to remove its Grandison markings. "Can I see?"

Viserys looked down at the highborn bastard. "Did he?" Gendry nodded. Viserys lifted his sword and inch from the scabbard. "Just castle-forged, I'm afraid." He winked and the boy went giddy at the swirling black metal, slipping from the wagon and running towards the other children of the caravan.

"You should not encourage him." Mott flicked the reins and adjusted them before checking the lock on his crossbow. "This isn't the place for stories."

"I thought Westeros was all stories. Knights and dragons and princesses in tall towers?" Viserys looked north and then drew his gaze south, stilling to focus on a dust cloud. He knew how to feel other horses from the saddle, but there were none. "It's what turned them into knights, I always thought."

The Qohorik sighed as he secured the reins. For all purposes, he was still a foreigner, King's Landing enough like all great cities that before its destruction, Tobho likely never looked beyond its walls. "I came to Westeros not much older than you, with but my craft and lores in hand. It was... peaceful then. Since Daeron the good it was more often than not, the Bloodraven and Prince of Summerhall keeping the realm stable." He cast his gaze to their left, nodding to a ruin atop an ancient mound in a high valley. Visible from so far away, it must have been grand in its heyday. "Summerhall was a beacon in the Marches, of unity between north and south, east and west. Not a place where a conqueror landed, but where families were made stronger."

Viserys tried to imagine them, his ancestors and their families, the many children of Daeron and Maekar, and their children filling the Seven Kingdoms with his folk. He wondered how much of his blood lay in the old, forested mountains to the north of them, or the craggy peaks of the Red Mountains to the south. He wondered who he was most like of that time – Maekar, waiting loyally on the sidelines, Baelor, the perfect king never to be crowned, or the Bloodraven, the puppet master of the Seven Kingdoms.

Dark Sister did not make him like or unlike any of them, but Viserys still felt the weight of their failures, of the last thing nearest a Targaryen golden age. But in the grand scheme, was their fewer than three centuries of rule even of note in the grand scale of history? The Starks reigned as Kings of Winter since Valyria was new, who were the Targaryens? Mad men. Tyrants and villains that thieved, raped, and murdered their way through the Seven Kingdoms.

*Fire and blood*.

He shouldn't be surprised.

Chapter Text

It was a starry night of illness for Viserys when the monotony of the Dornish Marches was finally broken. He sat atop his stool by a peat fire, huddled under his cloak and as many layers he could manage. A mad shivering had taken him the moment the rain ended two nights before, and he felt feverish and worse, with watery bowels. A Lyseni courtesan offered him poison to ease his passing, though a Tyroshi spice trader had some remedies as well.

He drank some stinking tea, and while his shivering worsened and the pain in his head turned to a shattering throb, he finally managed to keep some food in his stomach. Cedrik Storm, the bastard of Bronzegate and the self-appointed sworn sword to Gendry, erected Viserys's tent for all of them. "The boy wants to see your sword. *The* sword."

"Has Mott told ev- everyone?" He sipped some tea and groaned at the warmth, then the tent warming as the flap closed and the peat had a chance to catch outside of the wind. "I had hoped for some... anonymity!" Viserys sneezed madly, then broke into a mad coughing fit that ended in a gob of something green and sticky. "Eugh."

"Better out than in." Cedrik handed him another rag for his nose.

"My thanks. The North and beyond the Wall for more than half a year in winter, not a tickle in my throat. A few weeks in the Stormlands, and-" He sneezed again, catching it in the crook of his arm, groaning in disgust at the mess in his sleeve.

Gendry offered him a fresh rag dampened with vinegar and water. He grinned eagerly. "Is it really-"

"Shh!" Viserys said, partially out of fear, mostly to get a rise out of the boy, which he did when Gendry dropped his head and looked over his shoulders, fearful of enemies. "It is." Viserys shuffled to his bedroll, freeing his mat and blankets for the White Harbour-repaired black leather scabbard. Cedrik watched as well. The old knight and master-at-arms to House Buckler was once a boy too. "Wielded by Queen Visenya, Daemon Targaryen, and Aemon the Dragonknight, until it was taken north to the Lands of Always Winter." Viserys had learned the value of some show from Mistress Caterina. And why shouldn't he spread the renown of his house when it was great?

He pulled a sack off the hilt and stood the scabbard upright. Just holding it, he felt stronger and warmer. It had presence of its own.

"Dark Sister... Whoa." Gendry gazed at the hilt and down the scabbard. "Will... will you..."

Viserys noticed Cedrik's hand creep towards his sword. Viserys turned the hilt towards Gendry, who paled. "Carefully. It is much lighter, and as we've discovered, you don't know your own strength quite yet." He had sparred with the boy, and he was comfortable with the basics, comfortable with simple cuts, thrusts, and guards, but he had shown no ability to measure his strikes, except when he was at an anvil. "Go on."

Gendry wrapped his fingers around the leather grip and tugged, freeing the blade and letting Viserys draw the scabbard off. "It's not just light... it's... more balanced. It cuts the air." Gendry reached his hand towards the edge of the blade, then drew back. "You *never* have to sharpen it?"

"A whetstone would not even mark it." Gendry took a firmer grip in two hands, then held it before him. "Your hands should be one on top of the other, choked up on- good."

"But my grip is more stable."

"Yes, but your wrists must work together when wielding a longsword." Gendry dropped the point and held the hilt to Viserys, who stood to take it in his hand. A blade forged for conquest, he had little doubt. He had seen it, how the blade craved slaughter. Were it not for the discipline of the Golden Company, Viserys might have surrendered to that twitch of pleasure, but he took none from the thought. Such things were tied to his father and brother, and he had come to loathe both men. He sheathed the sword. "I do not wield her lightly."

"You're one of those?" Cedrik snorted.

"One of-"

"Attack! We're under attack!" came a voice in bastard Valyrian, a few bells and pots and pans throughout the camp rattling along with the alarm.

Viserys was still armed and armoured, so he secured his cloak and went out into the night wind. It had picked up a biting, chalky red dust that assaulted them on all sides, quickly sucking away the moisture from their mouths, noses, and eyes.

Gendry between them, Viserys and Cedrik drew their swords as they moved through the camp, seeing allies and travelling companions, and hearing the cries of attack, but seeing none. "There!" Gendry pointed at an orange and red haze through the dust storm – a cart ablaze just beyond their camp.

Shadows milled around it. "A trap?" Cedrik drew his scarf up to cover his nose and mouth. Viserys and Gendry did the same. "We must close ranks."

"To the smithy! To the smithy!" cried Gendry, Viserys seeing the logic and joining in.

"To the smithy!" He led them back towards Tobho Mott's tent, spying the man himself as well as half the warriors from, and most of the members of, the caravan. "Where's Buckler? Horpe?"

"Ser Brus and Ser Richard ran off with half my coin and a few of my display pieces." Master Mott nursed a bleeding nose and a black eye. "Is he not your kin, Storm?"

Cedrick shrugged. "My great-nephew. He served..." Cedrik looked at Gendry and shoved him into the Qohorik's arms. "We've been betrayed, the other knights-"

With the burst of a bugle, armed knights with white wings on their helms charged through the camp, pikes and lances skewering merchant and warrior alike. Viserys needed only the men and boy he saw, pulling them all towards the horses. "My shop! My product!"

"Would you rather your riches or your head?" Amid the thunder of battle, the Qohorik smith decided quickly, throwing himself onto a horse and pulling Gendry up in front of him. Cedrik and Viserys mounted their horses, Viserys pointing south-west. "Horpe and Buckler knew our path. Make for the Cockleswhent."

"That's two weeks in the wrong direction!"

"We have no choice! Better to live and fight another day."

Cedrik spurred his horse after the smith and apprentice, while Viserys turned his horse towards the knights of the Vale. He chose one and spurred the beast into a gallop, tucking his helmet onto his head and drawing Dark Sister. His illness faded in the burning heat as more carts and tents caught flame, the wind turning the Essosi camp into a burning whorl on the face of the desert.

"Ser Vardis Egen!" Viserys roared. He would never forget the name of the first man he killed, and he hoped it would summon one or more of them to him. "I am the Golden Company and I killed Ser Vardis Egen! Beneath the gold, the bitter steel!" It felt good to say the words, to scream the war cry at the top of his lungs, and to his credit, it worked.

Perhaps a little too well.

Fifty or more of the knights arrayed themselves around him, and he raised his sword high. "Leave, before you share his fate. Ser Vardis Egen, who died at the hands of a boy, while trying to slay an unarmed woman and girl."

"You lie!" A knight with a sun, moon, and star on his surcoat rode his horse closer. "Ser Vardis was an honourable man."

"A man who would never hold to his word. Who served a dishonourable master. The Tyrant of the Vale will die, as will you." Viserys's bravado was fading as more of the knights surrounded him. The distraction gave the Essosi plenty of opportunity to escape, but it ensured Viserys would not. He levelled his sword at the Egen knight. "Shall you die first?"

His taunt made him charge, pike aimed at Viserys's chest. His horse would never get up to speed, so like an Unsullied against a Dothraki, he dismounted and raised his shield.

The pike shattered against the Thenn bronze, but it also shattered his arm, a great cracking sound resonating from his limb. Viserys had no time to focus on the pain, instead tightening the strap on his shield and bursting towards the legs of the knights' horses. Their screams pained him, but he managed to open a path for himself, his own horse having stayed on the move. They were stronger but shorter and slower, whereas Viserys's stallion was a tall beast of as much Dornish as Stormlander stock.

Viserys did battle for a pass, Dark Sister doing most of the work with the first knight, a quick riposte letting him skewer a second. His left side screamed for relief but he fought onward, a few remaining Essosi mounting their queer steeds or surrendering to what sounded like a thousand or more soldiers marching in from the south-east.

Choosing escape, Viserys prayed to the Great Stallion for haste as he urged his horse into a furious gallop. The dusty grassland ascended to dry and rocky mountains, the wind rising into an whine loud enough to cover their escape. In ones and twos, the surviving Essosi beasts were more than capable of crossing the harsh landscape, but the space needed for each winged knight's Vale destrier made such a pursuit impossible.

Viserys rode until dawn and planned to continue on foot leading his horse, when he came across the bulk of the Essosi in a system of caves higher up into the hills. It appeared flat from there, a dusty highland like some peninsula of Dorne. They were the *Dornish* Marches, after all. "Master Mott?"

The smith and his companions were alive, if dusty and bruised from the saddle. The alarm had its desired effect, and many were hale, leaving behind much but not their coin, horses, and dearest treasures. Much had been lost, but most of the owners were dead anyway.

Tobho Mott was still inconsolable. "The steel and Valyrian stone smithing hammers, the Yi-Tish tongs! And the callipers! Oh, the callipers."

Gendry and the other apprentices were consoling their master, a good chunk of his coin and ledgers saved with his horse, however. Viserys cornered Cedrik. "Where are we?"

"Nearer the Cockleswhent, but this burst of speed only granted us another half day's travel at most."

"And there were hundreds of men moving through. They weren't after us."

"Not only." He looked to Gendry again. "You'll stay? For some Stormlanders and Essosi?"

"I'm not so heartless, despite my profession." Viserys looked around. They had coin, but no food and little water. "Then we move. Best we go now when the wind will take our trail."

"And that?" Viserys looked at his arm, saw something spiky and white, and woke up on a stretcher. "The sellsword awakens."

Cedrik was silhouetted against an empty, sunny sky, splashing Viserys with some water then helping him to his feet. They walked along a stream higher up in the mountains. "We must have been days off course already."

"Near a week. Ser Lambert was our guide through these lands since his family once held them. We were more east but farther north as well."

Viserys looked around, at the low grass and lean trees that grew on the banks of the stream, and the white-capped red mountains far to the south. "The Red Mountains."

"Still the Marches, and a lawless part before the war. Deserted since the tragedy at Summerhall." It felt good to walk, his place quickly given to an older man carrying a spear. Viserys's knee was acting up, so he took the weapon over his sword to lean on. "We were able to set your arm, but you hardly woke. Nary a grunt as we sewed up your back." He handed Viserys two blunted bolts. "Where'd you find such a gambeson? I'd like one for myself."

"Norvos." Viserys shrugged as he took ownership of Dark Sister again, leaving his shield to his horse, his left arm still secured tightly to his body. "What's around here?"

"Blackhaven is somewhere behind us, and Harvest Hall is..." The stream drained into a river which rushed into a rapid that fed a vast, open valley, fields choked with grain and cattle surrounding a stout stone castle. "A good place to rest, I think."

As they strode down into the valley, a few hamlets emptied to receive them as knights rode out from the castle to confront them. "Speak your business, strangers. You tread upon the lands of House Selmy."

Cedrik stepped forward. "Ser Cedrik Storm, leal knight to House Buckler and House Baratheon, may the Seven protect King Robert."

"May the Seven protect him." The knight in the lead examined the crowd. "You travel in foreign company, Ser Cedrik."

"We are Essosi who once called King's Landing and the Crownlands home, lord knight." Master Mott stepped forward, bowing deeply with a foreign flourish. "I am still a smith, but these vile winged knights have-"

"Have done us all a great honour!" The Essosi looked around confused at the lead knight as he led a cheer for the other knights, men-at-arms, and smallfolk. He whispered something to Cedrik, who went to Mott.

"We go forward and speak nothing of the Winged Knights," was whispered to him, Viserys securing his hat and covering his sword with his cloak, leaning on the spear more heavily, and wincing whenever someone approached the side of his broken arm. The effect was instantaneous, the smallfolk seeing him as the foreigner laid low by the Mad King's final, greatest atrocity.

"What was yous?" a smallfolk child said, tugging on his cloak to take it from him. Her mother saved Viserys, but she looked at him with the same question, though with more pity than curiosity..

Viserys could have some fun. "I was a prince of a lost land, come to the Sunset Lands after hearing of the trials of the kings here. I had hoped to lend my sword, perhaps win some land and a new title, even a simple one. But for a mad king. Fingernails long like swords and just as sharp, a smell like a cow patty in summer."

"Eww!" The children giggled at him, and he winked at some of the adults as he hobbled onward.

"What does a Lyseni know of the Mad King?" The lead Selmy knight came alongside him. Astride his chestnut mare, he was the picture of a country lord. "You must have been barely ten when he lit the wildfire."

He wore a simple full nasal helm decorated with stalks of wheat and reaping scythes, while his armour was well-tended steel and mail, with the sigil of House Selmy embossed on his gambeson. "I was eight, actually. There were thousands, hundreds of thousands, of Andals in Essos when I was serving in the Free Cities. I still remember how the smell of the wildfire clung to their clothes."

"It is an acrid stench, indeed. The stories made it so far?"

"They did. The war here is viewed as... a comeuppance. Many in the Free Cities thought the Sunset lords too haughty for warring so little and taking no slaves. And having such armies."

The knight snorted. Beneath his helmet, Viserys could tell the wrinkles of an older man, and crisp, sky blue eyes, with a blonde beard turning white. "I would consider those things worthy of haughtiness. Free people and peace are fine things to crave."

"I agree." Viserys tilted his hat a little to see the castle better, the outer bailey far larger within than without. There were two open-air, multi-level basements within the outer bailey, home to their horses, halls for training at arms, and storage of all manner of grain and supplies. The opening were covered as they entered, House Selmy secretive of their contents if not their presence, though the outbuildings and keep within were plety busy to compensate. "These lands are some of the fairest I've seen in years."

"We march on. The words of my house are fit not just for battle, and we were granted proper lordship." He dismounted and handed his reins and those of Viserys's horse to a stable boy. "Follow me."

Viserys looked around. He and Cedrik were the last warriors, the rest either dead or bravos that bought new horses and took off in a mad-dash north-west towards the Mander and civilisation. "You'll not allow me to do the same?" Viserys asked as he nodded to a Lyseni whore on the back of the saddle of the last of the hedge knights.

"With that arm?" He kicked out the spear, though Viserys did not fall. "You must actually lean. Commit." The knight led Viserys through the stables even as the lord and his family received Tobho Mott, Cedrik, Gendry, and the remaining Essosi wealthy.

"Would you not do the same, were you in my shoes?"

"I would never be in your shoes, travelling like a common sellsword."

"That is what I am." They stopped up some stair inside the gate keep between the outer and inner bailey. It was all stone, even the finishings, wood kept for hearth fires and arrows. The furniture was mostly piled pillows and carpets, though in the chamber they stopped in, there was a wooden desk before rows of cots for the selmy guards. A barracks. "Surrender your weapons."

"I am no man-at-arms."

"You are a man, not a knight, and not armed."

Viserys knew he should have committed to being knighted by Ser Marq. He had told him to. "Then I'll stay in an inn."

"No inns near here. Not a town for two hundred miles." The knight removed his helmet, placing it on the desk and opening a ledger. "We've hosted bodyguards before. I'll log your weapons and any damage, and you can bring your armour and equipment to our smiths and leather workers."

Viserys looked at the knight warily. He had a well-kept beard, his blond hair fading to white, short and combed off his face. He had the Stormlander look otherwise, tall with strong limbs and a wide chest, but with more grace and surety in his movements than the brutes Viserys had seen up until then.

He removed his hat and cloak easily, drawing his short sword, boarding axe, and all three of his knives. He did not unbuckle his sword. "I will not be giving this up." Viserys drew the weapon carefully so the knight could peer at the blade.

He narrowed his gaze. "Why give up anything at all? It shall stay with me, if that makes you happy?"

Something in his voice reassured Viserys. Regardless, it was a reasonable enough request. "It would make me happy, Ser..."

"Selmy. Barristan Selmy."

Chapter Text

Viserys met with Tobho Mott and the last of the defunct caravan. For the whores and madams, the Summer Islander Chataya, for the bankers and Braavosi, the banker Tycho Nestoris, and for the petty nobility and merchants, the Volantene Qavo Nogarys.

Mott said, "Lord Arstan will host us." They all breathed a sigh of relief. "There is a caravan that goes west to Weeping Town at the end of the next moon. Until then, we are expected to trade and, if we have nothing to trade, work. I will be working, to start building up stock again."

"You started from scratch once, dear smith. You can well do so again." Chataya pressed a kiss to Mott's liver-spotted scalp, and he nodded determinedly. "We are all very pleased, my girls and I. The men here have heavy purses. Of coin too."

They chuckled, though Viserys nearly grimaced. Chataya had taken to teasing him and he did not mind it, but he would rather someone to learn with him, not an expert of the craft. "I need to purchase a cart then," said Qavo curtly. They all spoke in High Valyrian, for both secrecy and his sake. The Volantene had mastered many languages in his life as a sailor and administrator, but the common tongue of Westeros was not one of them.

Tycho Nestoris was less enthused. "These interminable wars will not end! You would drag us back into the depths of the Stormlands? Oldtown is but a moon's ride!"

"Past the lines of the King of Thorns and the Storm King," Mott chided. "Leopold, you spoke with the knights."

Viserys said, "What grain is not sent west to Storm's End as taxes and to Weeping Town for trade is sent east to enforce the border guards at Ashford and Nightsong. There are fortnightly raids from Houses Tyrell and Tarly, and they have started ranging farther into the Stormlands this winter." Despite their years in Westeros, none had learned the politics. Once again, Viserys thanked the Seven for Ashara Dayne, she and Mina Redwyne offering his initial education in the state of the Westeros after eight years of war, while Eddard Stark and Domeric Bolton caught him up on their perspective – they were very clear about that – on the start of the war.

"The important thing is," Viserys resumed, "passage west is impossible this far south. We would need to cross wild country up and around King's Crater to take the Roseroad to Oldtown."

"As we used to," Mott said. "But Nestoris wanted to do business with the Stag."

"It is not I who said we go should this way, only to cut the time and distance to Oldtown! How was I supposed to know? The borders in the Disputed Lands are never this stable for so long!" The banker's defense fell on deaf ears, but he had coin enough to get him to Weeping Town and Braavos beyond. "How have I not heard of this Weeping Town?"

"It is accessible only by narrow paths and the sea," said Qavo. "The forest that surrounds it on most sides is wild and overgrown. Only huntsmen and Andals dare tread near it."

Viserys noticed how the High Valyrian words for 'knight' and 'Andal' were the same. If some maesters were believed, Andals had started out as Norvoshi, or something along those lines. His fake name may do him favours. "In many parts of Westeros," Chataya began, "only the locals may know the land. It is much the same in my home, where the flowers and the birds speak only to those who were born with their scent and song in their chest."

"Then we must needs prepare! I shall make a list!" Tycho set about organising the journey, scurrying off to annoy Harvest Hall's maester. He was an ancient man with a horde of apprentices, but a replacement would not be coming from Oldtown anytime soon.

Qavo and Chataya put their heads together to sell goods and flesh in bulk, while Mott pulled Viserys aside and towards the yard. "How fares your arm?"

"Stiff and aching. It keeps it still, which will ensure it heals. But I can do naught like this but talk, or duel, but I have no interest in games." He cleared his throat, then coughed and sneezed. "And I fight this illness."

"Then perhaps it is time you sit back, games or no." The warriors of House Selmy were not so laid back, their position as the first line of reinforcement on the border with the Reach, once the first defence against Dorne, breeding the preeminent warriors of the Marcher lords. "If that is true of Oldtown... They have offered the boy and I stay on, and Cedrik a keep and some widow to wife whose son needs guidance."

"What a stroke of luck." Viserys looked around Harvest Hall. The castle was dense and busy. There was an energy. "What do they have you forging?" Viserys hoped his tone was even and light-hearted. "Any Valyrian steel?"

Mott sighed. "Without the proper tools, I'll not be reforging Valyrian steel for years, if ever. I only hope now to pass on the method. It is a sombre thing, to reforge Valyrian steel. Your sword, something forged fresh from an ingot? It holds a... an innate spark. Something that can never be recreated. We reforge because we can, not because we should."

"The vambrace? The ring?"

"Of little use. I have- I *had* a few blanks. Enough for a knife. With yours, it would have been enough for something grand. But alas, *Valar Morghulis*."

"*Valar Dohaeris*..." Viserys bid the smith good day then made his way up to the barracks. He reassembled his pack with the new supplies. As soon as he was healed, he would go. He could make it to Weeping Town in the moon, and back to Braavos by ship a moon after that.

"He is a stranger, uncle." Viserys recognised the voice of Arstan Selmy, the lord of the house.

"But a boy. Raynard's crimes have-"

"Raynard has a bright future ahead of him as a knight. He's but fifteen." Viserys dropped to a crouch behind his bed, watching Arstan and Barristan. Arstan resembled his uncle, tall and blond with blue eyes and strong limbs, but a healthy paunch and thick neck unlike his lean and athletic elder, his wife and children much the same. As lords were before the war, Viserys mused.

"Raynard is a rogue and a rake," Barristan rejoined. Viserys recalled that Raynard was the drunken and violent eldest son of Lord Arstan's wife's brother, and the heir to his grandfather, some landed knight who had gathered a barony the size of a great lord's tracts. Even in that most pastoral corner of Westeros, above gold and blood, land reigned supreme.

Arstan scoffed dismissively. "The lass took to the marriage quietly, and her father was amenable to silver. And partial to my arbour gold. Hah!"

"This is not a joking matter!" growled Ser Barristan. "You fed the smith and his caravan bread and salt! Guest rite is sacred!"

"Old god nonsense. The his lordship's word is far more important proved as much." The tone of Arstan's voice turned sharp. "I would remind you who is lord here, *Ser* Barristan. The same lord who gave you position despite your vows."

"It was you who *negotiated* the extent of my release from his lordship's oubliette! I spent three years chained to a pick! These are not sane men, nephew mine. Please."

Arstan shushed Barristan. "I am entirely aware of the risk of our position! But what are we to do? They need us, and we need that land if we're to push Dondarrion. We have no other recourse, Barristan. Trust me now. Please."

"His lordship whispers venom in your ear." Barristan strode into the barracks. "Venom and lies is all you can expect from Renly Baratheon." He placed Dark Sister on Viserys's bed, eyes going wide as he saw him. "You forget war too easily, Lord Selmy." Barristan strode back and away from his nephew. "You forget all of it."

***

That evening was when the memories started coming back.

Every member of the Golden Company knew the stories of Ser Barristan the Bold, from his success as a tourney knight and how he came to his moniker, to the slaying of Maelys the Monstrous and entry into the Kingsguard. Viserys had always known the stories, but consciously, he had very little recollection of Ser Barristan Selmy. He had very little recognition of anything before Marq Mandrake's arms on the damp streets of Braavos. He had been betrayed by knights of the Seven and Westeros, of kings and duty. It was the knights of the Golden Company who saved Viserys, men and women who taught him not just duty, but service, honour and love and fraternity.

Was it Barristan who led him away from Maegor's Holdfast to the Godswood, when he was torn from his mother's arms and the queen handed to the king like some piece of livestock. Never by the Kingsguard, but they had stood by.

But was it that simple?

Viserys stood, pulling on his boots and gambeson, belting his sword around him and creeping out of the barracks to look out over the fields surrounding Harvest Hall. The sky was full of stars and the air was heavy, cool, and still, the lands of House Selmy guarded from wind and desert by the Red Mountains on three sides and the Cockleswhent to their north. In summer it was sure to be far hotter, but in winter it was perfect. He felt his nose and throat opening, and breathed."

"Ah. Leopold."

Viserys hated it. He hated using a fake name. He scratched his head and hated that he had cut off all his hair. "Ser Barristan. Apologies I couldn't sleep the air is... it's much... much quieter than I'm used to. Westerosi architecture seems only to hold heat in."

"A shame as well, but these forts were made by Andals who knew only wind and snow in winter. We get floods and mudslides in spring. And the dust storms in autumn... Had you arrived three days earlier-"

"And King's Landing? What was winter like there?"

Barristan pursed his lips. "Ah. So, you've heard my tale?"

"Beneath the gold, the bitter steel. It is true for us all." Barristan gave him a curious look before realisation passed over him. "I grew up hearing stories about you. Men who were my age, cadets and squires, when you slew Maelys the Monstrous."

"Well, now you've made me feel old. Older." Barristan looked north, indicating the Cockleswhent. "Imagine... an endless green blanket. Before the war, the Kingswood clung to the shores of the Blackwater Rush and the walls of the city. Hunters and woodsmen never tired for work in times of celebration, when the Red Keep took all the meat and the smallfolk were left with fish."

"And in winter?"

"In winter, the oak, maple, and cherry trees are sharp but... inviting. The snow is high and thick, and many leave the city to build small homesteads in the forest." Barristan looked across at him. "How does a boy end up in the Golden Company?"

"No prospects, an empty belly, and the ability to write down my own name." Viserys could see the scars of battle in the fields. Two abandoned mangonels on top of a hill had been reclaimed by some leafy vine ever held back by a herd of goats, irregular ditches and fences resembled trenches and spikes, and everyone, even the children, eyed the horizon with more fear than wonder. "And no desire to go home."

"That story you told the children was not an embellishment, was it?" Barristan furrowed his brow at Viserys, perhaps seeing the boy beneath the sellsword. "War makes soldiers of us all."

Was Viserys pressing his luck by continuing to speak with Barristan? "You fought with Rhaegar at the Bloody Ford, did you not?"

"The Storm Reborn, they called it. When I was ordered to execute innocent men... Men who had surrendered, whose only crime was following the orders of the lord of the land they lived on, I could not hope to try and..." He snorted and remembered himself. "You do not need to hear an old knight's tales. It was all a long time ago, and I have since moved past it. Better yet, you should be on your way back to the barracks for the evening. About what my brother said..."

"Tell me about Rhaegar." Viserys let his fingers curl around Dark Sister's leather grip. "Tell me about your vows."

Viserys did nothing to hide the derision in his voice, and though he continued, it was out of offense. "I could not keep to my vows. Not that any of us had in a generation, but Rhaegar was... He liked to sing. He loved the smallfolk. And they loved him. Many love him still, in those parts of the Seven kingdoms that have not felt his wroth."

"They have all felt his mistakes. North and south, east and west, he did something to everyone. Or what he did that made someone do something terrible to someone else." At Viserys's emotion, Barristan was surprised. "But why? Why would he do any of it? The Stark girl, abandoning his wife and children, his mother, brother, and sister... His allies, even. After what I heard of how he robbed the Reach in his retreat near as terrible as your beloved Storm King did to the great castles and families in... ten castles? Twenty?"

"Thirty-four," Barristan muttered, shaking his head. "I was still in the Riverlands, fighting trouts and falcons and chasing lions and wolves. Outrunning the wildfire and Robert Baratheon, ever at Rhaegar's side. Lewyn and I... I tell myself he stays for Princess Elia and her children, to be a shield for Daenerys..." Leaning over the battlements, Barristan cast his gaze west. "The King in Oldtown, the Storm King..."

"The King in the North, and Rhaegar. The King on Dragonstone."

"The Red King. He wears it well, I'm told." Barristan gazed out across the land, longing drawing his gaze up towards a haze of purple stars.

"House Bolton of the North had that title first. I think they would surrender it." Viserys started the walk back to the barracks. "I apologise for... pressing you, Ser. I have been unable to reckon with my own past."

Barristan clutched his shoulder warmly, in the universal sign of a man with little other sentimentality to give. "When you reach my age, you learn that it is better to speak of such things so the gods might hear them and bear them away, then let them harden within and hold you down."

"Often it feels only my prayers to the Warrior and Stranger are answered. The Father and Mother are deafened in their age." Dawn was breaking, so Viserys chose to make his bed and dress rather than try and get more sleep. "Might we speak more?"

Barristan agreed, charting them through the castle to the godswood at the heart of Harvest Hall. "Not many Norvoshi keep the Seven. None, would be my thinking."

"Andals made it seem... appealing." It was no godswood at all, but rather a garden of faith and cemetery around an enlarged sept. It was not completely without use, a resident septa and two grey brothers, the staff-wielding silent monks of the Faith Militant, managing the upkeep. Barristan cursed under his breath. "It used to be that privacy was not a privilege."

"Is this... Lord Renly not an ally?"

"Only if one produces knights inquisitor. He thinks himself a lord confessor, I believe. A job for third and fourth sons, as the faith always was." He nodded towards the septa. "They thought her a witch for knowing the teas the preserve health and which promote healing. They had her answer some questions, hand over a few samples of plants, and move on. These are odd times, Leopold. Odd times indeed, and unfriendly to simple swordsmen."

"Were you not named the Bold? Did you not single-handedly rescue the king in the Defiance of Duskendale?" They sat in the garden, only to stand for Arstan's third daughter. "My lady."

"Uncle, good morning. Ser..."

"Leopold is a sellsword from Essos. He is my guest." Barristan smiled and indicated the bench beside them, though she declined and strode onward. She looked to be thirteen or fourteen, with a gold seven-pointed star hanging from a chain around her neck, her dress all stiff wool broadcloth. "Bound for the faith, were it her or her mother's choice. Alas, Arstan's ambition would see her married."

"She seems young."

"Aye, but he's your age. Lord Beric Dondarrion of Blackhaven. Guards the Boneway for King Robert, and has since he was orphaned as a boy."

"So Dorne does attack?" Their seat on the bench gave them a good view of the castle's goings on, from the warming of the kitchen, working non stop from dawn until just after dusk, to the forges producing spears, swords, and arrows by the hundred. "You are prepared, in any case?"

"Some raids from the mountains, but nothing worse than the usual. Dorne is quiet, as always, and Beric is a good lad, with his own zeal. Some mission he was given during the first year of the war, he told me once."

"The man beholden to the boy." Viserys indicated Tobho Mott and Gendry. "What is happening? Really, Ser? I can be an ally for you, and I'll not let anything happen to the smith or the boy. You know who he is?"

Barristan nodded slightly as one of the grey brothers strode past. Unlike the Faith Militant in the Vale's service, the warrior zealots were far more disciplined, their robes even tied down by strips of white cloth at their wrists and ankles. "Allies to his uncle, Lord Stannis, are trying to get him out of the grips of four of the most powerful nobles in Westeros, which includes another of his uncles. And Stannis's own wife."

"Family and politics are too entwined here," Viserys said, disgust seeping into his voice. "Family and family, I should say."

"That is true, but..." Barristan stood, leading him into the great hall at the end of one of the lower tables. "The Targaryens had their moments. The Conciliator despite his flaws, Daeron the Good and Maekar. King Aegon the fifth of his name, as well." A light shone in Barristan's eyes. To be given his moniker by Duncan the Tall, and live up to it, was a grand thing. "The fact being that there has been good. I know the histories of this house, let alone the Seven Kingdoms, and before the dragon, it was a war twice a generation. More often, if the Ironborn or Stormlanders were feeling peckish."

For breakfast they ate fried toast with beans, eggs, bacon, blood putting, sausages, fried tomatoes, and tea as black as tar sweetened with honey and flavoured with mint and lemon. The drink woke Viserys like cold sea air, and it felt good to fill his stomach with something familiar to what he ate in the Dusklands – meat, grease, and beans. "And now the faith governs war, as it did before Maegor the Cruel."

Of course, Maegor had taught Viserys all about his namesake and the faith, what with the ascent of New Andalos and the Vale. "I will ask again. What is happening here?"

Barristan lowered his voice, though the din of the main hall was loud enough anyway, even without the Essosi, most having moved on days ago – House Selmy now had a few lesser lords and two-thousand various landed and household knights among their bannermen, and every house offered pages and men-at-arms in place of taxation, while Tobho Mott had already bought a whole hamlet for himself and the other Essosi who remained. Barristan said, "The Winged Knights are marching. Like demons, they terrorise the Marches. From Nightsong to Summerhall, they press boys and men into their service, claim landed knights oppose them, kill them, and take their wives and daughters for themselves."

"Is this another scheme of the Faith? The Valemen did such things in the North as well."

"Yes, but here they are in the service of King Robert, and while their Commander is loyal to the old Arryn-Baratheon alliance, the seven captains are up for grabs. They were, at least." To hear it from Ser Barristan, the Winged Knights were terrors, but to Viserys they were warlords, plain and simple, sounding like Dothraki or slavers, just in shinier armour. He had been wrong about the terrain holding the knights back, Valemen and their horses plenty at home in mountains and windswept highlands. "Their loyalties are divided between Lord Stannis, Lady Selyse, Lord Renly, King Robert himself, and Queen Cersei and House Lannister. The court at Storm's End is dense with other lordlings and landed knights who throw their daughters and sisters at all the Winged Knights, granting them some twenty-thousand men-at-arms and smallfolk infantry to toy with as they see fit."

"Seven captains leading five-thousand knights-"

"Seven thousand," Barristan said with an apologetic look. "They've been recruiting from the Reachmen prisoners and Narrow Sea houses, and it made... symbolic sense, you could say."

"Seven captains leading seven thousand knights and ten-thousand infantry... seven hells." Viserys took a second plate and filled it with beans and seven sausages. "But the Marches are...?"

The question startled Barristan. "Oh, more than thrive times that, but spread out over a massive area. The Dornish Marches have no real border, but they extend north and west into the Reach. We're some two-hundred miles in any direction from a border, and we've lost more knights and smallfolk that we could survive to the Tyrells. We've few stores left after winter, which came during a summer war. We lost good people to hunger. From noble and knight to smallfolk."

Viserys cut the end off one sausage. "How many many can House Selmy raise?" he asked.

Barristan sucked his teeth. "Right now... maybe a thousand knights. The numbers are unclear as we await word on some tracts on the far side of the Cockleswhent. I've a claim so it's my duty, but there aren't many men. Mostly women and children resettled after the fighting in the Kingswood."

"Numbers were never coming from cavalry." Viserys cut the end off the second and third sausages, eating them as he did. "This is good land still. How many men-at-arms and smallfolk? Five thousand?"

"In the Stormlands, and Westerlands, there is a difference." Barristan indicated some of the armed men at their table. "A man-at-arms is a knight of the smallfolk. He's trained, he's armoured and not an idiot, and he will be knighted before thirty if he's lucky. Some levies from among the smallfolk are just more spears." He held Viserys in suspense. "Two-thousand squires and men-at-arms, and... thirteen-hundred smallfolk."

Viserys cut the remaining sausages, leaning back in his chair with a plan percolating. "What's your claim on these Cockleswhent lands?"

"Through my grandmother. She was a Peake." Viserys snorted. "Problem with Reachmen?"

"A preference for Peakes, Ser." Viserys massaged the swell in his shoulder. Unlike his arm, it was not broken, but still throbbed with a stabbing pain. "Your nephew?"

"Arstan is ambitious, but he isn't stupid... The smallfolk would need to be fast."

"When are they coming for the boy?"

"Three moons, give or take a week. King Robert is trying another charge of the Tarly lines. He's yet to succeed, but it's good for his pride." Barristan indicated the last piece of sausage before Viserys ate it and a few more spoons of beans. "Is one of your legs hollow?"

Chapter Text

Viserys and Barristan rode into the hamlet alone, the hiding among the yawing herds of sheep and ponies that crowded the banks of streams and rivers. The Cockleswhent was some help, as pastures did not sprout a a single spring and the rains had already ended, and with it the river's burst banks.

Some settlers from King's Landing and the northern Kingswood had built a stout township in the confluence of two tributaries of the river, with mountains guarding its rear and only a barge to cross. Viserys – *Leopold* – was helping Ser Barristan scout it for alliance or otherwise, while also debating how or if to tell him who he was.

"Secure," Viserys muttered, pulling down his hat as he and Barristan walked into town. They had left Cedrik and their horses out of sight behind a hill, looking on the hamlet and the three noble banners on display in its main square just outside a tavern. With just their swords and a dusty wind to greet them, they both felt at the start of a story. "Should we be afraid?

They reached a line of smallfolk waiting to cross a river, a single barge under watch by knights not native to the Marches. "Corbray, Templeton, and Massey." Barristan indicated the ravens and hearts, the nine stars, and the triskelion. 

"Their commanders?" Viserys asked. Barristan indicated the tavern. "This heat's not so bad."

"Aye, but for Valemen and a Massey?" Barristan pointed out each of the three sigils. "Ser Lyn Corbray is the first among equals. Gerold Grafton, who leads the Winged Knights in Storm's End, is but a figurehead." They each handed over a copper star, and a silver for their mule packed with an array of Qavo Nogarys's poorest goods. Goods that could be left behind. "Ser Symond Templeton is the dutiful knight to his core. A killer with no passion or pleasure, merely cold, calculating strategy. Or so men have claimed to me."

When it was their turn, they joined a pair of boys just older than Gendry with a small herd of goats. Even they had to surrender a goat when they came up short for coin. "Where's the border?"

"Technically fifty miles west, downriver." The barge moved swiftly across the river, the town beyond busy but quiet. Viserys was familiar with the sort of tension that was in the air. "But we've not the smallfolk to use the land. When King Robert *informed* us of the change, it was when war still raged. Now the line is beyond Ashford, but... Irrelevant now." They stepped off and slipped into a stable beside an abandoned house, though it was mucked with fresh hay, and tea was being kept warm over the stove. "Take the upper room. You've better eyes than I."

Viserys explored through a side door in the house. The windows were shuttered up and curtained, but there was enough movement in the air that the room was cool without too much dust and sand. There was a one-legged old man with a crossbow in a chair, but he did not look away from the door. "Ser?"

He grunted.

Choosing the ladder, he found a large cot with a mattress stuffed with sheep's wool. It looked plain but was as soft as a Braavosi courtesan's. The town beyond the window seemed reliant on the river and a steady stream of trade from the east. People seemed exhausted, plodding from foot to foot as their beasts of burden struggled to pull small loads, and shopkeepers offered apologies to those few folk with coin. Viserys unpacked a bit and laid Dark Sister between. "I'd think you would want to use that."

Viserys looked up at Barristan in the door. "Corbray carries Lady Forlorn, and a Valyrian steel sword is not what one could call 'subtle.' We've a mission, do we not?"

Barristan led the way out to the street again, in time to be interrupted by the raucous carousing of Vale knights stumbling from... "That's no brothel."

Viserys swallowed hard. There were fifty of them, a bleeding body by the front door, and what looked like five beaten and broken girls being dragged behind them. "You Sunsetlanders will give the Dothraki a run for their money."

Barristan sneered as they meandered to the tavern. "We need information. If we can prove it, Lords Renly and Stannis will-"

"Ho! Who's this?" Viserys cursed as one of the Vale knights' looked his way and caught his eye, drunkenly stumbling towards him and reaching a hand for the brim of his hat. "You a fuckin' Targaryen?"

"He's Lyseni." Barristan tried putting himself between them but Viserys slipped towards the Valeman.

"Indeed I am. I apologise for my companion, he has been some years from Westeros." Viserys knew he had an accent as a man he did not have as a boy, the creoles of the Free Cities and Braavos making him sound plenty Essosi. "We had heard of good knights in these lands."

The Valeman looked chuffed before remembering his duty. "Well, we've no need of you lot here. Andals only!" He reached for his sword, drew it, and swung at Viserys.

A lot happened in a very short period of time. Barristan was not drunk, so his sword was out first, but it was clear who reached first. Then, as the Vale steel caught the sun, his ears caught a sound he never heard so far away before, as a narrow Valyrian steel sword, narrower even than Dark Sister, cut off the Vale knight's arm at the elbow. "Tsk tsk Ser Malcolm."

"MY HAND!" he wailed, before swiftly passing out.

Viserys still had his hand on his sword as Lady Forlorn's point came to rest under his chin. "Now, what *is* and Essosi doing in the Marches?"

Barristan was surrounded by pikemen almost as fast, so Viserys needed to think fast. "I was hired."

"To?"

Viserys looked back to Barristan. "To kill Barristan Selmy."

***

Of course, they had taken them both into custody, but Barristan's inability to hide his anger proved the point of the Essosi sellsword 'Leopold'. Viserys managed a wink he hoped the former kingsguard saw as they were dragged away.

He was in the main room of the tavern, stripped of his weapons and hat but not his armour, Barristan gagged and thrashing beside him. Viserys tried looking bored, perhaps that such a thing had happened to him before. Sigurd had almost killed him, and he found his way out of that. He even made friends with Torman Peake.

"Leopold of..."

"Norvos. Bit of Pentos here, some old blood there." Lyn Corbray struck him with the back of his gloved hand, removing it and then the armour on his arms and chest. "Ow."

As he rolled up his sleeves, Lyn said, "Every time I think you are lying to me, I will strike you. Do you understand?"

Viserys looked at him. Ser Lyn Corbray was tall and lean, with high cheekbones and a sharp jaw. He was beautiful, and he seemed to know it, but there was wrath in his eyes. In High Valyrian, Viserys said, "I'll fuck you with your lady!" Lyn punched him, as expected.

He tongued a tooth back into place and bit down to plant it. "Well?"

"Yes. I understand." Barristan was looking at him confused.

"You were sent here to kill Barristan Selmy?"

"Yes. Not exactly." Lyn was wiping his hands, having a chair and table brought forward. He ran his fingers over bottles of wine. "The Norvoshi. First planting after a forest fire that year." Lyn indicated the bottle again to be sure. Viserys nodded, and it was uncorked and left to breathe. "To sow discord where I could in Westeros."

"Why?"

"To prepare it."

"For whom, *Leopold*?" He poured two glasses of the wine, observing the profile with his nose while reading the bottle. "What... what fine terroir."

"I should not be surprised you understand High Valyrian." Viserys smelt the wine wafted around his nose before Lyn allowed him a sip. "My thanks."

Lyn nodded. "Ser Symond?"

"My lord!" The Knight of Ninestars had cold blue eyes  and a large nose, masculine with dark hair and looking very much at home in the Stormlands, and he followed Ser Lyn with his eyes, hanging on his orders.

"I prefer the heart of a matter, do I not?"

"Yes, my lord." Symond walked over to Barristan and, still with gauntleted hands, punched the Selmy knight.

"For whom, Leopold?"

"The Golden Company. Prince Maegor Targaryen assembles an army to take Pentos, and one day retake Westeros."

"Who the fuck's Maegor?" muttered Justin Massey in the rear. Like Symond, and Lyn, he was powerfully handsome, with crows feet and greying hair. Viserys had known plenty of captains like Lyn, he thought. Especially in Essos, where folk were overall far less judgemental.

"First son of Aerion Brightflame." Barristan slipped Symond's next punch, standing in his chair and smashing it beneath him.

This was not Viserys's plan, but he joined in, smashing the same and lunging for Lady Forlorn. He found the wine bottle instead, and clubbed Ser Lyn before he could draw the deadly blade, swiping his hat as Barristan stole a sword and killed eleven famous knights as Viserys fetched horses. They rode fast across town back towards the Cockleswhent barge, skittering to a stop on horseback. "Where's the next crossing!"

"Ten miles upriver! We'll not make it!"

Viserys spun around, the wind tearing off his hat back towards the town. "I'm not leaving my sword."

"Your sword? You dare to- Leopold, who..." Viserys urged his horse back to a gallop, rising in the saddle to take on the charging knights. It was no Dark Sister, but still castle-forged steel from the Stormlands, and speed and surprise won him a pair of kills, while Barristan handled another seven on his own. He was so fast, so efficient, it was like art. A dance, really, to see him in the fray.

They ditched their horses and dove into a hedgerow once the road was clear, though warning horns and bells were ringing. "No rowboats? A canoe?"

"Fuck's a canoe?" Barristan dragged him through the underbrush at the edge of an arid pasture. "We can follow this west. I've friends at Ashford." He turned on Viserys. "But talk first."

He had his hand on his sword again, one hand on Viserys's chest. Viserys remembered him in the same position at... was it Harrenhal? King's Landing? The other man, it hadn't been Ned Stark, someone slightly shorter but broader chested, who stood loudly and proudly where Ned was quiet. "Ser... I do not think you would believe me."

"Dark Sister was given to me by its last owner." The answer came to him easily, even if it was a preposterous way to explain. "The truth is that he gave it to me because I am his family, and was not using it. Brynden had not in a long time."

"And you? Some Blackfyre or Brightflame bastard to..."

"Ser Barristan." Viserys didn't know how to say it, so he wanted to show it. "You and Rhaegar would... spar in the yard with live steel. Rhaegar said it helped remind him-"

"-of the blood, not the glory." Barristan's hands fell to his sides, before gingerly reaching out to Viserys's head.

"This way! The trail goes this way!"

"Later. We run now." Viserys started them going, then made a left to turn back towards the village. "I want my family's sword."

A few moments later when those chasing them quieted again, Barristan said, "Wait. Prince Viserys?"

Viserys smiled. "Good to see you again, Ser Barristan."

***

Returning to the stable house was no easy feat, returning just after nightfall to find Barristan's nameless ally gone. "By now Cedrik will have heard and returned to Harvest Hall."

"You're a famous man, so I doubt it much matters." Viserys secured Dark Sister around him. "In for a copper."

"Aye, but we still need to get word to House Baratheon. The Winged Knights are acting well beyond their... Sit down. Please. My prince. Apologies."

"No. I will not have that. Fuck. Not that you have to follow my orders, but..." Viserys shook his head as he sat to eat the meal Barristan prepared, in spite of the fact that they had agreed on the journey Viserys would do the cooking. He was still *Leopold* then, he supposed. "I spent the last nine years-"

"Six-and-a-half."

Viserys looked at him funny. "Ser Barristan, I'm seven-and-ten."

"You're fifteen-almost-sixteen, my prince. It has been two-hundred and eighty-seven years and five moons since Aegon's Conquest. You were born on the twenty-eighth day of the eleventh moon, two-hundred and seventy-two years after the Conquest."

Viserys looked down at his hands then up at Barristan. "It felt... it felt like much longer."

"I'm sure it did, in the scale of things. You did... not do much those first eight years. Not that anything is wrong with that, any other highborn boy would just have a few moons of paging under their belt." Viserys was still digging around at his food. "Where's that hollow leg?"

"It's just..." Viserys suddenly didn't feel seven-and-ten. "They took Dany right in front of me." He tried wiping his eyes, but he still wore his armour, and he had no hair to hide behind. He felt cold and exposed and started trying to warm his bare scalp. "What am I doing here? How did I even- What was I-"

"Viserys." He looked at Barristan's cool blue eyes. They were like pools of still water, deep wells of simple wisdom. "How is any of this your fault?"

"I just... wanted to go home. To Braavos and Ser Marq and Tytus." He missed the gold and his tent, the marching and the calm before the storm. Westeros was all tension all the time, and he hated it. "I am a sellsword. I am in the Golden Company. And Maegor did help train me. But none of that was true. I don't know how I got here. I mean, I do, but not how I came to Westeros."

"What matters now is how we move forward... Viserys."

They worked quickly from there, scouting from the upper window in shifts so they could catch some sleep, then sneaking back to the hedgerows to instead follow them upriver. There were signs the Winged Knights had gone door to door, but they seemed only interested in people, and everyone not working a field was still in their homes come morning.

There were two knights at the end of every street and most alleyways, and Viserys had no idea how they could reach the edge of the village. "How's your history?" Barristan asked as he had them remove their heavier armour. "Selmy armourers will replace anything you lose." From the upper room, Ser Barristan climbed through the window to the rooftop, hopping to the next roof as gracefully as an acrobat. "Do not resist movement, simply jump, and land. Relax." Viserys shifted his weight and jumped. He felt himself stiffening up as his feet fell towards the rooftop, and he just imagined his legs like two nails plummeting through the thatched roof. Instead, he relaxed, falling into a crouch that he easily stood from. "Good job, lad."

They followed the rooftops from there, though there were no street lamps or lanterns, just the knights' torches. "This was far harder in Duskendale. The buildings were not so tightly packed, and the light of the oil lamps extends... upward in places." They stopped before vaulting over an alleyway. Viserys retreated to avoid the gaze of a knight, but Barristan did not, staring right at him from three storeys up. Just enough of the torchlight caught Barristan's eyes when the Valeman looked up that he startled himself backwards. Then Barristan stepped out of sight, while the Valeman covered his whimper of fear with a grunt and growl. "He'll not be telling anyone anything."

They vaulted a few more alleys then slipped to the street, crawling or moving while crouched along a low hedge, hiding under it when Ser Symond rode by at the head of fifty knights. "Vale knights in every crack and crevice," Viserys murmured.

"It's worse on Cape Wrath." Viserys held Barristan back from the road for a moment before they dashed across, slid down an embankment, then waded into the river.

With knights only on the north side of the riverbank, the risk was lower the farther they swam, keeping calm breaths in anticipation of being sighted. If they said one word, the water would make sure the watchmen saw, but they reached the far bank and took off in a mad dash down the road soon after.

Cedrik was gone from their hiding place, but Barristan grinned broadly, indicating some smaller boulders beside a larger one, left abandoned away from the mountains where it belonged when the world was made. "Help me with these." They levered the boulders away – perhaps Viserys was not as old, or strong, as he thought – and found a trove of food and wine, though there were plenty of wells that side of the river. "You did better than your father."

"The Defiance of Duskendale, aye... Was it real, or did he deserve it?"

"The defiance, the cause... Tywin Lannister was a good hand for House Lannister and their allies. The high lords said nothing, because why would they, but House Darklyn had to answer to merchants, guild-masters, and the lesser nobility who had made up their lack of land and knights with trade along the coast of Blackwater Bay." They started walking as the sun climbed, dry before they crossed the rise that put them inside watched Selmy lands.

The both of them were put at peace, but Barristan most of all. "It has been... good to finally meet someone who knew me. Who knows me."

"War changes a man. I think you know that." Barristan waved to the mounted Selmy knight walking down the road towards them. He recognised Barristan and they passed peaceably, though Barristan took a large scarf from him. "Cover your head."

"It's just the sun." Barristan pushed the garment into his hands, and Viserys wrapped his head in the fabric.

Viserys slept hard once they reached the barracks, though Barristan went to the rookery and the maester just as he woke. Viserys did not rise again until the early afternoon, lounging in the barracks then rising to take luncheon with Barristan again. "There was a raven from King's Mountain, and another from Weeping Town."

"Both were already riding for Harvest Hall?"

"For the Marches, perhaps to reinforce Ashford or attempt an assault on Grassy Vale. Rumours always swirl. No, it is just us in between, but I sent word to Storm's End, Nightsong, and Blackhaven for the sake of a record."

"Then I suppose... that's all. The Baratheons come in and save everyone?"

Barristan chortled. "That's the basic idea. There is politics, but unless Lyn Corbray has plans to explain why he would attack Barristan Selmy, or side with the man who was sent to kill him..."

"Aye, but how did you know the Valemen want me dead?"

"A hunch about foreigners. Your friendship with my..." Viserys felt his appetite dissipate. "I don't want to be saying his name."

"Your brother." Viserys nodded. "I will not say I understand, but if you know half what all Westeros knows... Well, King Robert did not take the insult well, nor did he believe Lyanna when he tried explaining it to her. Her passing in her labours, it was believed by many that only she could have... pacified them. But Robert's hunting kept her on the move, and then Highgarden was sacked..." Barristan shook his head. "That's neither here nor there. You did well, and you saved us both. Now... Come with me."

Barristan led them to his small office above the barracks. He had a few old but fine tomes stacked on his desk, but withdrew one in particular. It was white lined in gold, with seven swords on the front cover. "Seven hells. The White Book?"

"My orders at the time... Aerys was more fragile each day, and the royal family was no longer in the capital. The North had declared for Aemon, and the record could not be lost." He indicated the others. "But these are records. The last updated copy, with the Queen's last pregnancy with Daenerys... and you."

"Not many will recall a second son of a hated king." Examining a map of the Stormlands, he traced a path to Weeping Town. "I need to leave soon. With spring ending, the Golden Company will be rallying in Braavos. Oldtown is not an option. Not for me, anyway."

"The Golden- Viserys, they are sellswords and-" Barristan read Viserys's reaction quickly. "Well then... alright. We should leave before Stannis and Renly arrive, though you have plenty in common with the former. Tobho, Cedrik, and Gendry will join us to Blackhaven, and Beric will want to join us to Weeping Town."

"Beric? *We*?"

Barristan clasped Viserys's head in his hands. "If you think I'm letting a Targaryen out of my sight, you're dead wrong."

Viserys hugged him, and after his initial shock, Barristan returned the embrace. "I can't wait for you to meet everyone." He looked only slightly upward at Barristan. He wondered if he would be as tall as him. "They all know your story."

"I'm sure they do," Barristan responded, though he had started sweating.

Viserys would explain. Who remembered Maelys the Monstrous anyway?

Chapter Text

Bypassing Greenstone and Tyrosh were easy enough after the many inspectors of Weeping Town, and Viserys was the more thankful for the distance, finally closer to Braavos than he was the day before.

Word of Ser Barristan's 'crimes' had spread at first, as had House Selmy's orders to take control of the Cockleswhent from the Winged Knights, until the arrival of the brothers Baratheon, with Renly taking up permanent residence in Summerhall and lordship over King's Mountain. There were reports of a purple-eyed stranger with a broken arm, but tales of Barristan the Bold far outweighed those of an Essosi sellsword.

In Tyrosh, Viserys felt much the same, the city thick with enough Blackfyre claimants and proud bastards to make Barristan and Viserys both want to steer clear. They had both killed quite a few Tyroshi in their years as well, and the Archonate had cut all ties with the Golden Company since the joint Lysene-Andalosi conquest of Myr.

In Pentos however, they were practically begged to come trade. The captain happily unloaded his stores of amber and ape pelts for many times the market rate, leather from great orange beasts occupying the canopy of the Rainwood's interior selling high above market value to those desperate for better armour.

There were signs of battle beyond the walls, and fires on the docks, so as the men-at-arms and crew took a day to visit a few brothels, and Tycho Nestoris cowered in the bowels of their ship, Barristan and Viserys went to explore the city.

Barristan elbowed Viserys and indicated three bodies hanging over the Sunrise Gate, a train of beasts and men slogging into the city below them. It was the first thing of interest they saw, though Viserys had taken note of a labyrinthine slum and a sprawling market quarter with deceptively fine products.

Of the bodies, one man had a long black braid, red and gold tattoos along his upper chest and shoulders indicating his origins in the foothills of the Bone Mountains. "Dothraki." One was olive skinned, short with curly dark hair in brown, silver, and sea blue. "A Braavosi marine." Viserys darkened at the other three bodies, gold-armoured with seventy rings between them. One of them had rich red hair. "I knew him. Serjeant Jon Lothston."

The descendant of exiled Rivermen was covered in arrow wounds that were long worked over, crows clinging to his boots and shoulders as they pecked out his soft bits. "I'm sorry, lad."

"He taught me how to ride a horse, commanded me in my first battle..." There were posts extending down the road beyond the Sunrise Gate, alternating between a Dothraki horseman, a Braavosi marine, and a warrior of the Golden Company east down the road. "When is it?"

"The dockmaster said it is still spring, but summer is nearing."

"Summer again..." Viserys spoke to the Seven for Jon. He went to a nearby spearman with a Lannister gold, and indicated the dead serjeant. The Pentoshi spearman snorted, shrugged, then unwound the rope that Jon hung from.

Barristan helped him carry the body into an alleyway, where Viserys earned a few looks, but not many – he had heard of how depraved some of the city's magisters could be. He searched the body once, taking the arm rings and sword, as well as the bat necklace, before closing what remained of Jon's eyes and moving him to a passing corpse cart. "That was a fine thing to do, my prince. A very fine thing indeed."

They walked up to a market on a hill in the middle of the city, letting them look out on the surrounding countryside. "I've decided to return to the Golden Company, so I might join them against Pentos. But if the battle has already come and gone, I don't... What shall I do?"

"The word is that the fighting is ongoing." Barristan indicated the burned remnants of siege weapons on the hilltops beyond the city. "Those don't look like what you described."

Viserys blinked through the glaring sunlight and spring mist, searching the remains of a battle outside the city walls. "Those are Myrish. See how the limb hangs low? They can only throw rocks. Some Andal superstition." He looked farther south and east. "The fields are pale and the grasses worn white by the sun, but there, the fresh growth... The spring rains touched soft earth, not the packed steppe, that's why it's so green. Ground is only turned like that by a khalasar, but the catapults... The Myrish attacked the Dothraki?"

Barristan pointed west towards a small peninsula crowded with villas and manses for noble families. "There are no lights, and that south postern gate is quiet. See, those smokestacks?"

"Cold." They moved through the city well, and Viserys felt at home again, surrounded by people who saw his face yet did not know him from the next cutthroat, especially with his short crop of pale hair. Barristan was taken off guard by the foreign languages and faces, and perhaps the lack of deference to him as a noble knight, but he had known King's Landing like the back of his hand, and to know one city was to know them all, Lysono Maar had once told Viserys.

The south of the city nearest that gate was not deserted, but it was perilously calm. None of the city watch roamed there, and one in every five or six buildings was burned out, even fewer in use, while the gate was not a gate at all, but a pile of broken stone and dirt. "They made it through the gates, but the Dothraki were held behind the hills." Barristan indicated the tops of the square towers that sat to either side of each gate, and far taller throughout the city. "They learned from your ancestor's residence."

Viserys clutched Dark Sister's hilt. "Prince Daemon, aye. Could wildfire defeat a dragon? Could that powder they stole from King's Landing?"

"We can get more answers in Braavos. You said as much yourself."

***

The Braavosian Coastlands were not the pastoral colonies Viserys remembered, but militarized ports and islands surrounded by the cutters and galleys of a Braavosi armada. He even spied some ships he served on in the war against Lorath, as they docked so Tycho could vouch for them.

Barristan and Viserys accompanied the banker ashore to the office of the Second Sword, the Sealord's voice and lead defender of Braavos's colonies. The banker returned barely ten minutes after his entry, annoyed but still with his dignity. "Travel beyond Pentos has been difficult, and Braavos is feeling the pinch in the Narrow Sea with Tyrosh and Lys's fighting in the Stepstones. However, I have sent word ahead, and we are expected in Braavos."

Viserys rode a wave of excitement from that moment until their ship passed between the Titan's great legs. The Titan roared, an awesome, thundering blast that echoed across the lagoon and stilled Viserys's fears. He was home.

He never should have doubted the Golden Company, he supposed, a horde of gold-armoured men and boys clamouring over one another to be the first to greet him. "Nestoris told them you were coming," Viserys jested to Barristan. "I'll have to save your life, I suppose."

"We'll see who has to save who, princeling," he said with a wink.

As the Stormlanders tossed out lines and furled their sails, Viserys rushed off the deck and up the bowsprit. He drew Dark Sister and cried, "Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!" There was not a sound so grand as the Golden Company's answer, all from lowly cadet to high officer answering the war cry.

He swung down and was received as a hero, some comrade swiping Dark Sister out of his hands as the others grilled him on his travails in the wild west. He spied Lysono Maar, Blackheart, and Maegor in the back of the crowd – the Lyseni in his heavy scarlet hood atop glimmering gold mail and black leather, gave him a sly wink, and Viserys knew the blow of his resurrection had been eased. Blackheart looked older, withered and hunched, but his eyes were still steely, nodding firmly to Viserys as he did when he was a recruit. As he did to all his officers.

Maegor was something else entirely, in the motley gold and black armour of a high commander, with his beard freshly trimmed and his hair short as his namesake was often depicted, while Blackfyre hung openly on his hip.

He wore a black and red sash around his upper arm, and many of the Company men in the crowd had the same. The others were black and orange, and blue and green. Viserys wondered what they meant.

Marq and Tytus found him through the crowd, embracing as one, in pairs, and then together again. "You little..." Marq took him by the collar, looking up at him, red-eyed and bleary as if he might either cuff him or burst into tears. "You stick at my hip next time," he added with a firm shake.

Viserys nodded, wiping a few tears on Marq's shoulder then turning to Tytus as Dark Sister reached them. That was the story everyone wanted to hear. "I'm jealous, but we had our own luck." Tytus showed off a gold-veined Valyrian steel pommel of a lion's head with emerald eyes. The blade was large and Tytus was even stronger and more muscled than Viserys saw him last. He wore the blade well, and Tytus saw his awe. "Another pirate. The fleeing Ironborn brought many lost riches back east."

"And Brightroar was lost in the east." Viserys pulled Tytus away from the docks for the moment, the rest of the Company dismissed and ordered away as those Viserys desired made to return to the Blue Lantern. "Shall you return with me? You must, now."

"I had thought to, but in truth I needed... When we first had word from some Ibbenese smugglers about you in the North, I hoped we could still return together."

"And we will, one day." Viserys glanced down at Tytus's lack of arm band. Marq wore blue and green. "What's happening?"

"The Windblown. It's a bargain Lord Marshal Aerion made, to help them take Pentosfor great payments before and after. Their word is like wind, is what enemies and friends alike have said, so we will have to wait until after." Tytus shrugged. "I haven't decided."

"Good. Decide later." Tytus was drawn forward to the pack of officers swarming Barristan – Tytus had been knighted in the aftermath of the battle for the maze, and was eager to share his tale with the famed knight.

"You did well." Lysono fell in beside Viserys, though Maegor and Blackheart watched them from afar. "Someone in Oldtown thinks you are very special."

"There may well be a few... Maar, I hoped to ask..."

"Let us leave any questions for later, yes? There are things that you must know first. You have been, how do the Sunsetlanders say, out of the loop."

Their destination was the Blue Lantern, or rather the fair ground behind it that the Golden Company had purchased and developed into a guild house and training ground for the Golden Fleet. Braavos had run low on funds to pay sellswords, so Blackheart made a pair of Braavosi admirals of equal rank to the serjeants and requested their fleets as payment. It was that, or the three-thousand Golden Company living and training in Braavos and the Coastlands would have *taken* payment.

Five-hundred ships, and all the men they needed to sail them, the Golden Company had more than they knew what to do with. In the officer's common room of the Golden House, Blackheart opened the meeting only to cede the floor immediately. Viserys and Barristan were given seats at the table, while Tytus, a Company knight, was shown the door.

"The time to take Pentos is now. Their attacks on our Norvoshi settlements cannot be forgotten." Lady Danelle Lothston had lost her right eye to a great scar that ran down her face, and she wore more armour, along with an orange and black armband. Viserys was in the party that escorted her to Norvos after the siege of Myr, even danced at her wedding to a Norvoshi warlord. There was Lady Danelle and a horde of Norvoshi axemen, but no husband. "Khal Bharbo is with us as well. They killed his brother, and Drogo lived only by our medicine."

"Aye, we sweep them into the sea." Laswell Peake was more a lord every day, loyal to peace and his vassals and secure in his seat as Lord Paramount of the Dusklands and Warden of the Golden Fields. In the same slice as Lady Lothston. "It is well past time for the capitulation of Pentos. Braavos is with us, and they will besiege the ports and vassals of the magistrates by sea, as the remainder of the Golden Company marches north."

It was not hard for Viserys to understand that whatever factionalism was at play, they were all following Blackheart and Tytus's leads in not playing into it. "With four-thousand along our border with Myr, as a show of force," said Lorimas Mudd. He wore more plate and had grey in his hair, and a beard. The old guard was dying, and he was first up to replace Jon Lothston.

Viserys opened his mouth to ask about the Dothraki and Myrish – or Andalosi – fighting outside Pentos, but Black Balaq interrupted him. The aged archer was corded as ever, though his locs were entirely white and his back starting to hunch. This would be one of his last campaigns, not unlike Blackheart. "The walls are too damn high. We must work to get agents into the city."

"We tried that." Danelle unfurled a map and indicated Myr. "The Grand Septon will join us, in exchange for the first thousand ships captured in Pentos." There were mutters and angered sounds around the officers. "Let them throw themselves at the Seven Kingdoms."

"The North could not withstand so many," Viserys said. "The Stormlands and Crownlands have no quarrel with New Andalos, and the Vale may likely help them. You cannot."

"And how do you expect to take the wall? With spears and shields?" She did not back down because of his inexperience or age, but because she wanted an alternative as much as he did. "Dothraki are only good if we can get them into the city. The Myrish still have plenty of siege engines in supply."

"The Dothraki should handle the Pentoshi countryside." Viserys indicated Pentos's inland colonies. "It's fat pickings they have not raided in generations. They can take it as a taste of Pentos. Lord Peake, Ser Pykewood remains in the Dusklands?" The serjeant of siege engines nodded. "There are large trees here, in the headwaters of the River of Myrth. A text I came across in Widow's Watch and another in Griffin's Roost said as much."

In reality, Maegor had fed him the information years ago. When he was still Captain General, he had been the one to make the pact with the Tattered Prince to one day retake Pentos, not recently. He read it in his letters, but thought nothing of it at the time.

Why would he lie in his personal diary? "The Andalosi cannot be trusted. I have seen what the zealots of the Vale have done in the North, and it is truly terrible." A few of the Seven worshippers among the serjeants bristled, notably Tristan Rivers, Humfrey Stone, and the Strong brothers. "And can we so easily give away so many Pentoshi ships that the Windblown may claim? Do any of the magisters share the ends of the Tattered Prince?"

Lysono Maar leaned over to him. "Out of the loop, I said." Viserys sat back awkwardly as the meeting continued.

Blackheart leaned forward. "As it stands, we shall strangle Pentos, and I agree with Viserys. The Grand Septon is not a friend to us. He has not been since his grandfather held his position. This ecumenism with the Bearded Priests has also not helped."

"And a thousand ships is a steep price," agreed Ser Harry. "Serjeant Pykewood can build scorpions for the ships and Lord Laswell can begin on the trebuchets."

Barristan indicated a few fort pieces, which Harry handed him. "There are watchtowers atop gate forts here, here... here and here." He placed eight forts on the coast around the Bay of Pentos. "The southern gate is still fallen. Pentos has defenses, but no people. They will fall back and likely set the lower portions of the city ablaze. In an advance, we should-"

Tristan Rivers raised his hand for quiet. "Why are we entertaining this knight? Barristan the Bold is famous, but he killed Captain General Maelys, and has served both Targaryen and the would-be Usurper."

"Ser Barristan Selmy is an able knight, and an old acquaintance." Blackheart rose to his feet. "We should discuss his position."

Lord Laswell said, "We would be well-advised to take him as more than some common knight. A veteran of half a hundred battles, *slayer* of Maelys the Monstrous, to say nothing of the legitimacy it would bring our cause to have a Westerosi of his renown in our number."

Marq said, "All in favour of Serjeant Selmy, say aye."

"Aye!" They had the majority, but it was slim.

Barristan looked something between chuffed and horrified. Viserys asked, "What was it you said about frying pans and fires?"

Chapter Text

A cheer went up from the marines and Company men as Viserys and Marq joined them in the Blue Lantern. Barristan made to go with them, but Blackheart held him back.

"We thought you dead! Drowned and lost!" Tytus was near weeping as he pulled Viserys into a crowd of drinkers, Vaok and Kasté with him and plying Viserys with drinks. "You were... north of the Wall?"

They sat at a large table in the courtyard, enjoying the cool summer breeze. "Something in the maze, this white door... What happened to you two? You went up a ladder."

Tytus looked to Marq, who appeared sober for the first time in months and was suffering for it. "Tytus slipped and fell back down to me, and I called for you to wait, but the snow, the wind..." He clutched his head in his hands. "We mourned you, boy."

"I worked every day to return, ser. Truly. But my journey was dull by comparison. What of the war?"

"Won," said Gilberto, sitting with his wife on his lap and a hand on the babe in her arms. "Lorassyon fell a few days after, and Lorath proper another month after. We found work as, what was it?"

"Constables," Marq said. "Which is when I knighted the boy." He looked to Viserys. "You ready, squire?"

Viserys held himself back for a moment. "So suddenly?"

"Heh. You squired for me near three years, and another across the sea, fighting in your father's kingdom? I'd not call that sudden."

"I think... We are bound for Pentos next, yes?" There were nods of assent. "I would command there first. See a last contract through to the end."

"Aye, lad. Do that. But in my mind, you're already a 'ser'." He nodded behind at another guest to the celebration of his return.

Viserys however was too slow for the woman in an orange dress, tearing her from his chair and into a fierce hug. "Viserys!"

"Melara!" They embraced warmly, making Viserys much warmer as she held him to her and kissed his cheek where it met the corner of his mouth. She was far shorter than him than before, though she was not the flat-chested, pimple-faced, girl he knew before. Viserys went stupid just staring at her lips. "I thought you were still in Volantis."

"We were, then we were not. Lady Lothston brought us home to see our family, then here to aid in the talks or some such. They are sending an envoy, as are the Starks."

"The Starks?" Viserys knew the Blue Lantern as Melara did not, showing her to a quiet corner of the courtyard, and swiping a bottle of Dornish red and two glasses on the way. "They deserve the trade, and they've the ships for the volume to be worth the Triarchy's interest."

"Trade deals, politics... Not just about battle anymore, eh?" Melara sat easily, one leg draped over the other, the steel caps of her boots running against the inside of Viserys's knee. "They have interest in the North and the soon-to-be-declared Republic of Braavos, and the principalities of Norvos besides." She swirled her wine and stuck her nose in the glass. "Lemonwood. Notes of..."

"Lemon?"

Melara shrugged and took a sip. The wine seemed to make her lips redder. "Tell me of Westeros. What did you think?"

"Lady Lothston's kept you in the know?" Viserys tried thinking about what he tasted in the wine. "I get... sheep's cheese?"

"Ooh, very good." Melara sipped her wine and gazed out at the city below them, adjusting her dress as she did so and pulling down the front of the already sheer garment. "Westeros still looks more like southern Essos after the doom," she said. "The North though... it is secure?"

Viserys nodded. "Few creature comforts, but people do not starve or die of disease under the Starks. Or the wildfire clouds."

"We saw them even when visiting in... Viserys?" Melara's entire demeanour changed, squaring her shoulders and facing him again. Viserys wondered for a moment what Melara would look like if her neckline was a little lower. "Viserys, my eyes are up here." He averted his gaze and blushed, making Melara chuckle and finish her wine. "A familiar breed."

"You were in Dorne as well?" He indicated the double-bladed battle axe leaning on the back of her chair. "And Norvos?"

"My uncle hosted us. My mother is Norvoshi."

"I remember. Your father is Rhoynish, is he not?"

"Something like that." She tilted her head to one side as their quiet courtyard started filling with more of the evening crowd.  "You have a good memory."

Viserys smirked. "They're good memories."

Melara agreed, holding his gaze but remaining silent. He studied her nose, aquiline and elegant where it was round and misshapen before. Her blemishes were a thing of the past, and her makeup emphasized the pale scar across her face and the dark hue of her lips. "Viserys, I have heard about you, and I think it is only fair that I..."

"Nothing's changed of me, Melara. Not really."

"Except it has. You're a Targaryen."

Viserys shook his head, studying his wine and then looking back to her. "I never hid who I was. And who would care about a second son half a world away anyway? I thought at first to disappear. Now, I can... Wait. Only fair that you what?"

Melara tossed her hair and shivered in the Braavosi chill. "Viserys, I'm not Rhoynish. I am, but it's not *who* I am. I... am explaining this poorly." She pushed her hair off her face and neck. "Gods it's damp. I miss the heat."

Viserys looked her up and down again, then leaned in to look at her more closely. He remembered Cosimo and Joho, fully and half Rhoynish themselves. "You're Dornish."

She opened her mouth to deny it. "Yes, I'm Dornish," she admitted. Her voice was husky and low, fearful of any attention. Viserys leaned back, warm with his heart fluttering, forcing a smile to ease the tension. "But my name... My name isn't Melara."

"I don't care."

"You will."

Viserys tilted his head to one side, confused and a little taken aback. "You wouldn't be the first to have lied about how they came to the Golden Company."

Melara seemed nervous, wringing her hands and ensuring there were no eavesdroppers. "My lord father, seeing the state of Westeros when I was young, hoped I would... learn more than the politics he had mastered and the subterfuge that are the provenance of his brother. The Golden Company is no common horde of sellswords, but an army with no master. I learned what I needed and took a few lives before Lady Lothston took some of us into her service to teach us... Well, ladies like her don't take squires."

"No, but they could."

"Your outlook is positively Dornish. You could be a Dayne. Or Yronwood."

"Is that good for my chances?" She scoffed but ultimately smiled. He liked that even more than her lips. "We're talking about you, remember. Whatever your name is."

She smiled, grabbed him by the back of the neck, and kissed him. It was long and hard, her tongue tackling his and claiming his mouth. "Arianne. Arianne Martell."

Viserys broke the kiss harshly. Arianne frowned, not her typical girlish pout. "Well, I suppose Tyene was right. Sellswords and their brothers-in-arms." She stood but Viserys snatched her wrist. "Release me."

"Don't go. Please. I just... I know what that means." Arianne's offense gave way to confusion before she returned to her chair, watching as Viserys drained his cup and another, letting the swirling in his gut build his courage. "Arianne... Martell."

"Viserys, you're frightening me."

Viserys drew his hand from his halberd. "I was... Your uncle, he..." Domeric had caught him up on the lords and ladies of the North, Vale, and Riverlands, while Barristan did the same for the Stormlands, Reach, and Westerlands. But Ashara Dayne had taught him Dorne before his... sojourn north of the Wall. "Your father's name is Doran, and his brother is Oberyn, the Red Viper. A former Second Son. Half a maester, with expertise in metalwork, horse husbandry, and..."

"Poisons," Arianne finished. "How did- Did you know about me?

Viserys shook his head. “I found it odd that someone so obviously Rhoynish would have such a common name. Too inelegant, too plain.” Arianne blushed, though it wasn’t a compliment. “Then Ser Marq called you Mellario, and…”

“So he did know! Lothston said she told no one!” Viserys raised an eyebrow. “That’s my mother’s name.” She smiled at another layer of Viserys’s surprise, her previous offense forgotten.

Viserys sighed. He hated that he loved her nose, but that she shared it with her father. “The Princes of Dorne sat closer to me than you are now. As Oberyn poisoned our sworn sword and killed our men, your father… He said Dorne would support me. That I would be king after my father. Then they took her, and... Your family did that.”

"I was a girl, and I will not be blamed for what my family did in a time of..."

"He tried to kill me." Viserys unfastened his arming doublet and pulled down his tunic. It was just a pale line to the right of the middle of his chest, but it was there. "But the poison they fed me slowed my heart, so they thought me dead. So Lothston said."

"I thought..." She reached out to touch his chest. Her fingers were warm. "Daenerys came to us... so quietly. Then when I learned you are... you, I thought that you might have been stolen by Tywin and lost just like Aunt Elia. But she was old enough to figure out a way back." She dropped her hand and Viserys closed his doublet. "I'm sorry, Viserys. For my family, for... for everything."

Viserys felt heavy, wondering how far he could have gone if he knew where Daenerys was when he was in Westeros. "Daenerys... lives?" Arianne nodded.

A cord inside Viserys snapped. Tears poured out and sobs shook his body. He was the boy who lost his baby sister. He failed his mother and house by falling asleep at the feast with the Martells. He could not see, but he felt a weight wrap around him, Arianne softening his cries in the nape of her neck. “I’m so sorry, Viserys. I’m so sorry.”

“Your… your family, they… Where is she? What happened?”

Arianne looked around and shook her head. Before she could decline for fear of her privacy, Viserys took her by the hand and led her to one of the empty bedchambers. “Where is she now?”

She answered with no hesitation. “Driftmark, if your brother speaks true. He corresponds with Father.”

“Rhaegar... Ser Barristan did not know?”

"Selmy is here? I heard rumours... He serves the Storm King, Viserys. You cannot trust him." She glanced around the chamber, the silk and pillows, the flavoured oils and carved ivory implements. “Oh my.”

"How could you give her up? How could any of them let this happen! When did you learn who I was? Before everyone else? Speak, woman!"

Arianne slapped him across the face. “Do not speak to me like I’m some soldier!” He sank to the bed, cursing under his breath. “Daenerys was in Dorne for years. She was kept on the move, supposed to be taught to fight and ride as soon as she could walk. But now… Uncle Llewyn says she is... quite... entitled.” Arianne hesitated. “She is with Rhaegar, in many ways just another princess of the realm. Some believed he would marry her, but he has refused all marriage. Married some Lysene pillow girl, as I heard it, and she bore him a son. He has a few Crownlands bastards as well, if the rumours out of Duskendale are to be believed.” Viserys turned on her darkly. “He risks war each time. In Westeros, there is little joy beyond the castles and cities.”

“And Elia? Aegon and Rhaenys? I have some idea of where they are, but you... The Martells were family, Mad King or no.”

“My aunt is well. She remains safe at Starfall. Rhaenys is with her, but guarded by men loyal to my father and… Aegon. He sits as Aegon VI, the King in Oldtown." Arianne sat on the bed with him. "Dorne entered into an alliance for peace with the Lannisters at first, then the Starks as well for the Breaking of the Iron Islands."

Viserys laid back on the bed, exhausted all over again. He crossed half the world to get back, only to... where he would… where he could try and… “They all just… Rhaegar  kept…” He rolled over and roared into the pillow. "And then what happened? Baratheons seem to be the ones to fuck everything up these days. That's their Targaryen blood, no doubt."

“They say the fighting in the Reach shook Rhaegar." She lay down next to him, adding, "It was Mace Tyrell who has kept up some conquering, though Robert is no better in his hunt for your brother."

"I'm aware." Viserys had heard of the battling, and the last time wolf, falcon, trout, and stag fought together, and when the lion abandoned the rose. "The North repelling an invasion from the Vale, the Reach and Stormlands devoted to war, the Westerlands... ugh."

Arianne settled around him, pressing her chest into his side and kissing his neck. “I am sorry, Viserys. Truly. I had no idea.”

“I need to… I have to go. It's time. I cannot waste time on Pentos.”

Viserys tried to stand but Arianne held him down. “Not tonight you don’t. Unless you’re planning to sail back or find your way through a maze again.”

“Tytus told you.”

“Lady Lothston, in fact.” She released the last ties on his doublet, and pulled off his boots. Exhaustion was taking him, from his journey and his months, almost a year, away from Essos. “Word reached her when you docked in White Harbour.”

“I can’t just sit here... Arianne.” He had to remember not to use her fake name. She was the sun and spear, the future Princess of Dorne. The family of those who stole his sister. His anger started bubbling up again, the dragon trying to make him angry or sad or scared, but he breathed it out, shutting his eyes. “Alright. I’m fine. You can… you… can…”

He could not find the words when he saw Arianne, all of her, on his bed. Her boots and armour sat on top of the foot locker, and her dress and slip hung across the back of the desk chair. “Come to me.”

Viserys swallowed. His mouth was very dry. “Arianne, I… I- I don’t… I haven’t…”

She grabbed him boldly, twisting so she landed on top of him, her hair walling in their faces as she kissed him. “That’s okay. I have.”

“With who?” Something unfamiliar bubbled up through Viserys. Jealousy?

“Don’t be like that. I did it to get it over with. So I could enjoy this."

She kissed him again but something in him awoke. He lifted her up and turned, pinning her to the bed. "You planned this!" Arianne was slow to recovering from the shock of losing the advantage. "What? Expected it to be easy?"

Viserys tried to pull away, but before he was off the bed Arianne had her legs around him, trying to drag him back. "I learned you were a Targaryen. Now all the more reason." Like a spider monkey she worked her way around him, tugging at his breeches. He cursed and tossed caution to the wind, dropping his hand to her buttocks with a resounding smack. She moaned. "That was... Nym did not say it would be this hard."

"You liar!" Arianne reddened. "You've not done anything!"

"I have! I'm not a maiden anymore!"

Viserys scoffed. "From what? A saddle?"

"As if you are so experienced? Hm?"

"I spent two years in a brothel. One overhears... conversations."

Arianne playfully tilted her head. "Prove it."

Chapter Text

Viserys woke slowly the next morning. Arianne was still pressed into his side, soft and warm, and perfect to hold back Braavos's chilly summers. Flowers grew in the windowsill and the breeze filled the room with their sweet and earthy scent.

Simply lying in her embrace before she stirred as well, she crawled up him and locked one long arm around his neck. "Kiss me, Viserys Targaryen."

He did, tangling his hands in her hair and taking near as much pleasure in their skin pressed together from head to toe, and then just holding one another as the morning crept onward. "I need to..."

"So do I." They both dashed out of bed, streaking to the privy and bathing chambers. They lingered a bit together, the bathing facilities freshly cleaned in the earlier hours of the dawn, before returning to the room and dragging in their luggage. Rather, Viserys carried in his rucksack and shield, and five of Melara's six cases. "Seven hells!"

"What? What's the matter?" Viserys prepared to draw Dark Sister.

"I forgot my teal and saffron parasol!" Viserys raised an eyebrow. "These things are important, Viserys. Showing respect to the right houses and factions at court are core to appeasing the political aims of your allies and your enemies. You do that with colour."

"And this parasol? Teal and gold... that could be House Antaryon or one of the client Otherys clans."

"Oh, no. It's just a favourite. Goes with *everything*." He watched her try organising, her quarters in the Golden House not yet built. "Is there a larger chamber?"

Viserys pulled his foot locker out, and his travel chest from the *Spear of the Canals*. He missed the thrill of fighting at sea, and though he never craved war, some small part of him wished for the opportunity to show off those mariner's skills. "I can speak with Mistress Caterina about moving you to a cottage. A fair bit more expensive, but you'll have a maid as well."

"I've learned to manage on my own." Arianne exchanged one garment for another, and Viserys could not help but watch. "You're staring again."

"You're beautiful, Arianne." He met her gaze. "I will try to stare less, however."

"Good. Come." She indicated the tie on a dress, which he laced and pulled taut. "Tighter."

"It's quite tight already. Perhaps-"

"Tighter!"

He pulled only slightly tighter and secured them before she could respond, selecting the white silk chemise and matching skirt, with a dark amber-orange robe dress that exposed her arms. "Will you not burn in the sun?"

"Oh, my fair Valyrian boy." She patted his cheek, selecting the smallest of her cases, turning it upright, and unfolding it into half an apothecary's stock. She worked some oils into her hair, used a tool on her fingers and toenails, another for her teeth and gums, then a rich buttery substance for her skin, making it soft and glistening. "You could stand to trim those claws, Ser Dragon."

She indicated his toes, and he looked down. He supposed they were a bit mangled compared to her dainty red-painted toes. His feet still tended to slap when he walked. He had already grown out of the boots he bought in White Harbour. "Very well."

They left the room later than planned, Viserys dressing comfortably in what he had that was clean, amounting to a tunic and his spare arming doublet, and the same breeches he arrived in. "You need to use some of that loot."

"A few chests of silver is not enough to buy a new life."

"But it's a start. Coin makes the world go 'round, as uncle says."  The courtyard below was quiet, the cleaning still in progress as passed-out marines and whores were woken and kicked out or sent to their own beds. Viserys fixed one of the tables upright and they sat, though he thought better of it and went into the kitchen. "Viserys?"

"Come. You were taught the basics, I hope?" He tied an apron around his middle.

Unlike the rest of the Blue Lantern, the kitchen was empty and clean, and Viserys was stoking the stove and heating pans before he knew what he was doing. Melara found eggs and sausages, sacks of onion and potatoes, and herb-crusted ham. She grated the potatoes and onions first, adding salt and garlic, then some eggs and flour, which he started frying. He took some thick slices of ham and got it cooking, cracking the eggs in the grease after each piece of meat came off the skillets.

Arianne handled the fishmonger and baker's deliveries, while Viserys toasted bread, cooked beans, and gathered any jams and cheeses he could find, which Arianne organised onto massive platters. Marines and Company men, nurses and whores, started waking and lining up with plates, though Viserys knew better than to just give away the food, writing in chalk on a slate the price of a full breakfast.

"Three coppers! That's piracy!" wept the first marine. The man behind him paid and took the prepared plate, and the first man recovered before he lost out on eating.

Soon everyone was either fed or out the door, with Viserys gathering the coin and dropping it just inside Mistress Caterina's room. He could hear Marq snoring.

He wondered if he might still one day end up like Ser Marq Mandrake – knight, sellsword, and world traveler, visiting his paramour and their children when his whims suited him.

He watched Arianne from behind the counter, moving through the Golden Company as easily as himself or Tytus, and giving the men no quarter when they reached towards her to take a handful. She had her own arm rings, the six of them like bangles about her wrists.

Tyna – Tyene – was hanging off Tytus, barely able to eat from her closeness, while Arianne poked fun at them both after she and Viserys finally ate.

The Septa's bastard was beautiful in a different way, tall and lean like a cat given human form. Viserys wondered if he had trapped Arianne – or doomed her, as a few of Selmy's nieces thought – by getting her with child so she would always be his.

There was that envy again.

He ate and ignored the feeling, Aegor, Gilberto – even Drogo, years since he last heard from the Dothraki prince – having explained the ways of the fairer sex, and how one might saddle a maiden into a wife. Viserys did not care though, whether he he could be with Arianne for only another day or the rest of his life. For the moment, he would enjoy himself.

"You went to bed early," Tyene purred, stabbing a roast tomato and feeding it to Tytus.

Tytus squirmed to take it. "Why don't you go find Nym? I'm sure she will want to speak with you." Tyene found it a good idea, bouncing off Tytus's lap to go find her sister with Arianne dragged behind. Viserys chuckled as Tytus's head fell to his hands. Tytus said, "Brother, she is a succubus. All she wants to do is fuck or watch me train. Or that thing with her mouth."

"Her mouth? They use their mouths?" Tytus nodded, Viserys listening raptly as if he were a maester learning a new language. "But they have their..."

"I know."

"And their..."

"I know."

"And between her..."

"I know!"

***

For a month it seemed the entire Golden Company, all of Braavos from the Sealord down to the lowliest dock-scraper, took a breath – a collective sigh as the war with Lorath ended, and the war with Pentos neared.

Viserys at first wanted nothing more than to spend the whole time sleeping, eating, and generally not looking over his shoulder every day. After three days however, Viserys wanted to fall on his sword out of sheer boredom. Arianne was busy with her house and Lady Danelle's interests amidsts Braavos's negotiations, and Tytus and Vaok had duties preparing for the campaign among the Company knighthood and infantry, respectively.

he had a day at some old bookshops with Kasté, before the Summer Islander boarded a midnight vessel bound for Oldtown. "I hope to see you in Westeros, Comrade," he said.

So, in that boredom or to spite it, Viserys dressed in his new clothing, buckled Dark Sister around him, and donned his six gold arm rings, three on each arm. He crossed the Blue Lantern's courtyard and strolled around a hill just behind the den of pleasure, up into the rivers and hills to Braavos's south.

Golden House was aptly named, saffron yellow and gold-ochre banners and pennants hung from every eave and gable of a tiered, overgrown manse. As the Company within the city lived *within* the city, Golden House was intended only for those officers without formal residence, the rest of the Company forced into a sea of their yellow box tents that coated the hills and mountains like barnacles.

Viserys found that the factionalism moving through the Golden Company was worse there. Those in the city were Blues, who advocated for settlement in and around Braavos and its holdings across northeast Essos, but otherwise not change their sellsword way of life. It was the smallest faction, and the quietest for lack of a leader – though they clustered around Marq. As they also aimed to move the Company's base of power from the Dusklands, they were only really popular with the few Braavosi in the Company, and those Westerosi who found it easier to preserve their culture in and around Braavos.

Gilberto was the only one of them he could see, a well-regarded but typical captain – once infantry, now a rising star in the Golden Fleet. "What happened to bedding your way to an early grave?" Gilberto embraced Viserys, kissing him on both cheeks before playfully slapping his cheek. "Oh, how the Dornish sing."

"Fuck you." Viserys shoved him back, though the Braavosi fell in behind him as Viserys climbed up the manse. "Gorys has finally settled on joining the Yellows."

"The Paymaster's apprentice?" Viserys scoffed. "How can a pencil-pushing Volantene tip the scales?"

"Family inside the Black Walls." Gilberto indicated Laurana Lothston, Lady Danelle's younger sister, and Torman Peake. Both wore the orange-yellow armbands of the Yellows, Houses Lothston and Peake insisting the Dusklands and relations with Westeros were the future. Lady Danelle wanted more effort and campaigning put towards working with Norvos holding back Volantis's hegemony on the Rhoyne, Myr and the Grand Septon be damned, while Lord Laswell desired building up the Dusklands and rebuilding Ny Sar, Chroyane, or both.

"Volantene support for a Volantene withdrawal may work... They would never surrender Selhorys." Viserys kept walking and Gilberto kept following. "Why are you still with me?"

"Because he doesn't see anyone, and I'm curious." Gilberto twirled his roguish moustache just as they reached one of the manse's studies. It was not as large as a solar, but warmer and cozier than an airy castle chamber. "I thought your brother was the Red King?"

"Shut up." Viserys knocked on Maegor's door and waited. Aurane answered. "Good afternoon, Aurane. I was hoping to-"

The Velaryon bastard stepped aside quietly for Viserys, then stepped in the way again to keep Gilberto out. "Who are you, Blue?" Aurane's accent was more Westerosi than all in the Company but Barristan, and his long silver hair and teal and gold doublet made Viserys wish he had known him better as a cadet. "Go."

Viserys ignored the bastard for his cousin, Maegor at his letters behind a large desk carved with scenes of war. "The prodigal one returns," he said, not even looking up as he poured red wax and sealed a letter with a signet ring. "You saw none of our family?"

"Just one." Viserys was done with Maegor. He had not heard a kind word from him in years, and had not heard something kind in far longer. "What are your plans for the Reds?"

"Heh." Maegor sealed another letter then snuffed the torch beneath his wax pot. "Waters, you may go attend to your duties."

Aurane's heels clicked together as he said, "Sir," and strode from the room.

"Disciplined," Viserys said. "You kept him a cadet."

"I kept him disciplined. Why not the legion and the horse?" Maegor derived some sort of pleasure from Viserys's curious looks at the contents of his study, from the foreign armours and books written on bone, metal, or in knotted thread, to the maps and battle plans, to the shrine within the hearth built for Blackfyre, unsheathed, and three dragon eggs nestled among the coals. "From the Shadowlands beyond Asshai. The ages have turned them to stone, but they will always be beautiful."

There were various other fetishes of Valyrian steel within the flames, from a beast-man medallion to a helm and suit of half-plate. Viserys looked down at his dagger and Dark Sister, and the mazemaker's signet ring. He suddenly missed his vambrace, and his arm throbbed in pain as well. "Try it."

Maegor was not testing Viserys, he was *insisting* for the sake of it. Viserys reached towards the sword and the flames parted around him. The grip was thicker than Dark Sister's, but his hands were plenty large, and the blade was wider and longer. Heftier than Dark Sister, as any good bastard sword would be, but it was still lighter than an everyday longsword.

The Conqueror's sword itself felt like nothing he had ever felt before. In his hands, it glided through the air as if it was cutting the air, and faster passes it seemed to warm the air around it. Perhaps that was just the hearth. "How did you find it?"

"As I said. I looked to the war records of various companies and free cities to estimate where Bittersteel may have dropped Blackfyre when he died. I drew a grid and started digging. When I found it..." Maegor touched the scar on the side of his head. "It was a folly, searching for it. A white elephant, you could say. But as we held that patch of land on the shores of Torturer's Deep, I gave them a taste of what it felt like to fight for something more than gold."

Viserys recalled the story from Blackheart's perspective. It had worked, motivating those young sellswords and hedge knights that would become the last generation of serjeant. "Then now, what is it you and the Reds fight for?"

"A forge." Maegor stood, walking around the table and opening his hand. Viserys handed him Blackfyre. "Guarding land and love alone are fine things to pursue, but I find I need... more of a challenge. I seek neither a crown nor gold, nor favour with the gods. Oh, before I forget..." Maegor handed him three sealed letters – the pink of House Bolton, the pale grey of House Hightower, and the green of House Estermont. "You're popular. And on my future, I want only to finish what I have started with the Golden Company."

"A sellsword, when you could help Westeros or..."

Maegor met his gaze. Viserys sighed, resigned to their fates. "I thought about it. The ambitions of a restless man, Blackheart called it, when I... when I was married. What being a husband to a good woman can do to a man... Viserys, I could have sat the Iron Throne or Balerion the dread, and I could not feel how she made me feel."

"Who was she?"

Maegor sighed, sheathing Blackfyre. "I met her in a Lysene pleasure house during one of my forays searching for Blackfyre. I felt... drawn to her. Probably my own niece or sister considering my father's many forays. But, she was also a Blackfyre, and she made me swear that I would never... that I would turn the Company's eye east. And I did. And then I didn't." He thumbed Blackfyre's hilt.

"You had a daughter."

Maegor tilted his head to one side. "Daemon fell fighting the Norvoshi a year before I was voted out, Daenys passed on the birthing bed, and with her babe soon after. And Serra..." Maegor turned from Viserys, his broad shoulders casting a wide shadow as he stood over the blazing hearth. "What I sought to do to the man who took her from me..."

To himself, Viserys whispered, "A Lysene pleasure slave..." He stood, waking Maegor from the trance he was in as he watched the fire. "So you will fight on the Rhoyne for whomever can pay, as always?"

"What Lothston and Peake refuse to hear, is that I am not their enemy." Maegor wnt from the fire to his window, looking at the camp and Braavos beyond. "But the Company is stifled here. Too many friends, not enough enemies, and no challenges."

"The Windblown spent most of the last ten years in the east," Viserys observed. "Slaver's Bay? Qarth?"

"I figured I would sail to Asshai and make my way west overland. See the sights, and maybe finally do what our ancestors did not and finish off the Harpy."

Chapter Text

Viserys felt plenty secure in one of many assembly halls of the Sealord's Palace with Ser Barristan and Lysono Maar to his left and right, though he also felt exposed with nothing overhead but air and a distant stained-glass atrium. "It's not going to fall," Lysono mocked.

He tried focusing on Syrio Forel as the First Sword brought the meeting to order and introduced the envoys from Houses Manderly, Grafton, and Tarth. The Sealord received them first, followed by Syrio, the Second and Third Swords, and the major keyholders of the Iron Bank – including Tycho Nestoris, who had returned to work for a cushy promotion for signing House Lannister's colonies over to the Iron Bank. The leaders of the various houses, political parties and voting blocs greeted them next, though Viserys hardly paid any attention to their names when observing from afar. The Golden Company's duty was security.

To say nothing of the war he knew was coming. He should have ben training! Yet Lysono, Maegor and Lady Danelle all thought it prudent for him to sit in on the peace summit's final address after two months of free trade from most of eastern Westeros. From Tarth to Skagos, there'd not been an at-ease sailor in almost ten years of war – traffic in the Narrow Sea was almost non-existent, and the Sealord was taking most of the credit for bringing trade back from the brink.

As the Lord Father of Tarth gave his speech after, Ser Marlon Manderly, whom Viserys had met in the North but had not recognised Viserys, and Ser Marq Grafton, who was quite jumpy, shared some amiable exchange. The latter even laughed at some remark from his former enemy. "Surprised?" Lysono asked.

"Their families have killed each other."

"At war."

"How could Marlon..."

Barristan said, "We don't make peace with our friends, my prince."

Viserys cooled. He supposed that made sense.

Lysono said, "The North has two things any merchant can sell – furs and wood. Most everything else, they don't have the population to extract. The Vale has mouths to feed so, in exchange for ending hostilities and losing the Three Sisters, the Vale gets to keep Karhold, but all their settlers much transfer their allegiances to Northern lords. In a few generations, it'll be as if the Arryns never invaded."

"The North remembers," Viserys murmured.

"The Vale needed a bargaining chip so badly, they invaded the North?" Barristan scoffed. "So it's all just mad zeal?"

Lysono shrugged. "Of course. But there is always something *beneath*, is there not my good harvest knight? Dear princeling, you learned in Westeros about how kings and *smallfolk* fight, but what of how they make peace? How do they politic?" Lysono clutched his chest and made a sound like a swooning maiden. "Now, that is a thing to behold. You've not lived until you see a desperate Riverlord happily hand over his lands to a Lannister, convinced it was his idea."

Tarth's speech reached a crescendo, and it had most of the spectators on their feet cheering. Barristan and Lysono ended their conversation, joining in the clapping while Viserys languidly found the Company archers or saffron-scarved sentries among the crowd. Maybe the Baratheons would attack and he could forget about politics forever. Maybe he should take whatever men he could gather and offer them to Ned Stark, guided not by gold but the North's mission of justice.

Pondering Westeros and otherwise as the meeting gave way to a series of more private receptions – the Golden Company was politely dismissed – he settled on what he and anyone who followed him might do if he ever again managed to cross the Narrow Sea.

***

"Dorne, or the Reach?"

Tytus and Barristan shared a look. "You're Gerion's bastard."

It was a statement. Tytus indicated a cluster of castles and forts in the high mountains of the eastern Westerlands. "My uncle attainted a whole host of houses. My father says war is coming in the Northmarch, and these had many ties with Riverrun and Highgarden."

Barristan appraised Viserys's friend. "Who knighted you?"

"Jon Lothston." Barristan recalled the man he helped Viserys send off. "He fell soon after."

From the somber quiet, Viserys withdrew a few tokens. They met in a warm underground chamber of the Golden House – Viserys's quarters with room for a hearth and couch, table and chairs, and a narrow bed. Drawing a map of western Essos, together they arrayed the forces of the Golden Company's riven factions and who they might sway to join Viserys in Westeros – after Pentos was taken, of course.

Barristan whistled. "Thirty thousand men... what a force to divide."

"Better while we're still friends." Viserys moved the red tokens – Maegor's. "Ten-thousand will follow my cousin. Where, I do not know."

Tytus had a cluster of blue, green and white tokens – Company men of Braavos and the surrounding free cities freshly under the Sealord's purview. "Ser Marq and his from the Coastlands would join in fighting over the Stepstones. Less for Dorne than to taste Tyroshi blood, but still."

"And lands in the Marches that need defending. Securing as well, if frontier battle is what you desire." Barristan controlled yellow, black and orange tokens for the Peakes, Lothstons and Essosi Company membership. "Lady Danelle and Lord Laswell desire stability, but there are those under them that can be swayed with a show of strength. Or will."

Tytus guffawed. "You think us so shallow? Still looking down on us sellswords?"

"You misunderstand me, Ser." As Barristan moved tokens around the map, Viserys gave Tytus a chiding look. "Over the past fifteen years, the Golden Company has gained many new members, members who will not be satisfied with a loss of... the unity and identity of the Golden Company with its division. Men, and women, who joined up to be part of a legacy that will outlive them. If it ends just as they are reaching the height of their career, who knows what battle or conflict that desire for legacy might bring."

"Houses and settling the Dusklands-" Tytus began.

"Do not satisfy the Essosi. Knighthood is only a reward, truly, to boys raised on its stories."

"And some of us just like the feeling of belonging," Viserys finished. He urged both knights sit. "There are comrades who desire the Company continue?"

"In some form, skulls and all."

The former kingsguard's words hung heavy. If any knight was to understand the weight and importance of a legacy, even that of gold-greedy sellswords as he may truly believe, it was Ser Barristan Selmy. 

Viserys said, "In Westeros, whatever happens, we would be forced under a new liege. We would be playing by different rules, sellswords or no."

"I think you forget the rules have changed. A few times, in fact." Tytus reached over to wiggle Dark Sister's pommel. "You're a Targaryen, after all."

"If they don't hate my entire family already, they either hate my father or brother for this murder or that slight, all of which are real."

"The Reach." Barristan put a furry white finger on Highgarden. "Not only is Mace Tyrell custodian of your nephew, a fair enough target for title of 'one true king', the many lords of the Reach are by far the wealthiest and most likely to spend. They're all running low on everything but silver and grain, and they want as much land as possible from the Reach's neighbours before any sort of peace is struck."

"Trying your hand at some scheming, Ser?" Viserys asked.

"The Lord Commander Hightower might have sent a messenger." Tytus jawed as Barristan withdrew the white wax-tower-sealed letter from the White Bull.

"Plenty of work," Tytus said as he read the letter and whistled. "It's a fine offer. Something called a... 'residency'? Like we're artists! Truly Viserys, have we not been students in the art of war?"

"It is a time of great change and progress, not just in war. Once peace is made in Pentos, the Stormlands and Crownlords will be surrounded by peacemakers." Barristan rounded the table for some intimacy with his unofficial charge, leaving Tytus to examine the letter and compare almanacs. If Viserys was right, he would have their first three campaigns strategized before the week was out. "Your brother will be forced to make peace, my prince."

"You have more faith in him than I do. And it is misplaced, which I should not have to state."

"We cannot always fight... Let me knight you now, Viserys. Ser Marq said you wished you wait, but there is such... such wisdom that can be drawn from relishing in one's rewards. You have earned it, and the right to call yourself more than, yes, a common sellsword."

A childish hope tugged at Viserys as he wondered about a life with Daenerys and their mother. Of his brother's children but not Rhaegar himself. "Maybe." Moving more tokens around, Viserys declared, "Accounting for our Myrish and Norvoshi obligations, the Dothraki and the Windblown... a thousand men is what I can muster."

Barristan tutted. "A thousand men isn't nothing... Knights? Cavalry will be integral."

Tytus said, "Three hundred, but only half are mounted." He gave Viserys another eager look. "We can recruit more, sway some hearts and minds, get horses from Bharbo, and stay in the action all the way up to the breaking of the siege or the sack of the city. Dark Sister and Brightroar, think of the songs! The Golden Lion and the Pale Dragon!" He mussed Viserys's hair as he sang, and Viserys started dreaming again. "And we don't need thousands of men. Think of the veterans who we can pay a pittance they'll think a fortune, and the knights loyal to House Blackfyre."

"There are few to none secretly sewing black dragon banners," Barristan apprised. "We would do well not to bank on dreams and wishes. And yet..." Tytus's disappointment shifted back to excitement. "There should be an accounting of the sheer volume of fighting that's torn the Seven Kingdoms. While the Golden Company could seem and act like sellswords, with Viserys leading us mystique and legend will deliver interest."

"A cyvasse game with a secret dragon."

"Indeed. We will just have to ensure the dragon has teeth," Barristan said. Viserys consulted some of the scouts' reports to get an idea of what the Golden Company might face in Pentos – and walk away with. "Glory could double, maybe triple your forces, to say nothing of the importance of coin."

The Golden Company had made enemies in Viserys's tenure with them, from the Andalosi and Tyroshi to the Lorathi and plenty more from Slaver's Bay – Tytus's optimism was nice, but the battle had steep odds if the Pentoshi sought out any allies. The weight of such a grand strategy may not have been on him, but Viserys still felt responsible for the Crones, disparate as they'd become, and accountable for the bevy mistakes of his house. "Did Blackheart's last play work?"

Barristan wobbled his head noncommittally. "The Valemen liked the sound of coming to our aid for coin and glory, but the rewards are not enough. They want Andalos, and for the Sealord to recognize the illegitimacy of the Grand Septon, but the land is too good and Braavos wants the North as a friend more."

"Then we cannot count on them." Viserys drew a letter from Domeric Bolton, offering it to Barristan. "House Stark have taken the Company of the Rose into their service."

"They're half blooded veterans, half green boys chomping at the bit to prove themselves." Tytus snatched the letter to voraciously digest it. "Who's Gendry?"

"No one," Barristan said. "Not of your concern."

Viserys said, "Tytus, start spreading the word – after Pentos, I make for Westeros to keep up the work for which the Golden Company is famous. Make no mention of the offer from House Tyrell, and let them all assume I will coast upon my name only."

Barristan waited for Tytus to step out before he said, "What of what you saw beyond the Wall? Or the threat posed to Westeros by the Andalosi, Arryns, and Baratheons working together?"

"I cannot hope to win allies with stories of grumpkins and snarks – but I can send forewarning. Lord Stark and plenty of others will not want more players on the board. And even if some see me as such, all the better." It occurred to Viserys how much he might enjoy playing the entitled warrior prince. "Let them think me more Daeron the Young Dragon than the rogue prince or conqueror come again."

"In the company of sellswords and foreigners, Westeros will make its own assumptions. But airs put on will be smart. Speaking of companions though – you trust a Lannister bastard?"

Viserys gave the Stormlander knight a disgusted look. "Tytus is one of my oldest companions. We have fought together since we were children, and his qualities as a soldier and knight... No, I don't trust him. I sensed it the moment I saw Brightroar that he has changed, but what else do I have? Who do I have?"

"You have plenty, my prince. I meant nothing by it. Seven hells, if you aren't risking treachery by a Lannister, bastard or no, are you really playing the game of thrones?"

***

Viserys had things he wanted to say, both to the soldiers and comrades he would fight alongside at Pentos, and to Arianne.

The ships would depart Braavos tomorrow, other forces already marching there through the Hills of Norvos. Viserys observed Arianne with others trained beneath Lady Danelle far more settled in, only set to journey to Pentos if the siege broke – though some part of Viserys desired Arianne be safe, he knew in both his heart and mind that he could not hold her, nor would she bow to his desires or fears.

"You brood more than Rhaegar," she said as she slid into his armchair and pressed her body into his, feeding him a cup of wine as they observed their comrades losing their wits to drink. "At least according to my father and uncle."

"I'm not brooding. I'm... thinking." Arianne played with hair as he kept his focus on the room, smirking at Tytus and Tyene kissing in a corner of the room, spying half the officers of the Golden Company doing the same with their paramours or the fine courtesans in Mistress Caterina's employ. "Though I'm not sure of the difference."

"Come." She pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth, then his chin and his neck, making him shiver and cover his own laughter. "Are you ticklish?"

"Do not test me, Martell." She smirked and dragged him upright, drinking and dancing and teasing the night away. Viserys made plenty of fine memories between dusk and dawn, and yet thoughts of Pentos, Westeros and beyond still ran through his mind. He wondered most deeply if that was the price he must pay – for all the privilege and good in his life, and the suffering that had brought him salvation int he form of the Golden Company, was his worry over the future his punishment? Not blissful ignorance, but a curse of knowledge?

Arianne's soft curls and the scent of lemons in his nose was plenty blissful as he awoke, sun glancing in as it had many times before in that small room of the Blue Lantern. Moving her arms to the pillow, he crawled across the floor carpeted in their clothing to a loose brick in the wall. Working it free, he withdrew the somewhat moth-bitten blue scarf once of Mistress Caterina's, and his mother's crown.

Except for some dust, it was the same. Not since his return from the Dothraki Sea had he even acknowledged it, longer still since he held the crown in his hands. It was smaller than he remembered, and lighter but it no less made him sad to think about his mother and family, and what might have been.

When Arianne stirred he wrapped it again, and again in a strong wool shawl from the North, tucking the bundle into his main saddlebag. As the sun rose he dressed in new clothing and equipment as befitted a knight, and all in black with red and gold accents. Who was he, Viserys wondered – the virile knight, the adventuring sellsword, or the exiled prince? All three? None?

Arianne rolled over and he kissed her goodbye, taking one final look at his lover's curved form as many a knight before him had before going off to war. The halls were silent as the men pondered and ate, knowing the fighting was still weeks or months away but, for now before they took to the high seas, focus required quiet.

"Viserys?" Aurane gripped his shoulder, drawing him from where he waited in line to gather his gear from the quartermaster. "Lord Maegor desires to speak with you."

Viserys obliged and was led to the gondolas moving officers and supplies from the mainland out to the deepwater barges. Maegor was working from a ledger to which he had pinned and pasted various lists, muttering to himself as he often did yet looking all the stranger doing it in steel and leather and not his maester's robes – with Blackfyre on his hip at that. "Will you go to see your father and family?" Viserys asked Aurane before he was out of earshot.

The green-eyed bastard looked suspicious, then at ease as Maegor nodded his encouragement. "One day. Maybe. House Velaryon does not want me, nor do I desire to serve Prince Rhaegar. Not especially for wronging my master so horrid-"

"To your duties, Aurane." He clapped his heels and turned at Maegor's order, himself ignoring Viserys' look of suspicion. "Are you nervous? Afraid?"

Viserys said, "Impatient," as Maegor kicked a crate for him to pick up and move down a gangway.

"For the fighting or the revelry? The planning? I would hope you more strategic than Daeron, but tactics may be your vocation."

"I wait for it all to be over. It is... strange to be able to see the point in your life you know there is no turning back from." Viserys sat on the crate and picked at a splinter, awkwardly looking up at his elder cousin. "I am afraid to return to Westeros, but I know Essos is not for me. If I stay I will just fight and fight until I die."

"There is fighting in Westeros." Maegor sat beside him, the gondola setting off with the dawn sun breaking through the clouds. "But I see your point. Viserys, there are things I will tell you in the days and weeks to come that may put your fears into perspective. I see your survival through this fight, and rarely will such a fight leave you unchanged."

The early morning in Braavos was foggy and cool, just the lapping water of the canals and the low voices of the Golden Company. "Anything before... here – Braavos – is like a dream. I remember King's Landing and the Red Keep. Dragonstone and my parents and brother, but this, the Golden Company, the battles for Myr and Lorath, Tytus and you... that is what's real." As the gondola reached the harbour and started a choppier journey to the barges, Viserys cast his gaze beyond the Titan to the Narrow Sea. "Even in Westeros, I was still a sellsword. A foreign sellsword in an old straw hat, not a prince on a mission. I just wanted to get home, back here..."

"The Dusklands never quite felt like home. Comfortable. Safe. But not home. A good woman though, or our children – that was home." Maegor nudged Viserys. "I didn't have any brothers. None my father cared to introduce me to, anyway – but among the bitter steel I found true friends. Let that be what you carry forward, whatever Pentos brings."

Chapter Text

*Hear me roar*.

The words often echoed through Cersei's mind, a proclamation of her house's power and position. To her father, it was a promise that House Lannister – and Lord Tywin by extension – would never be forgotten. For her foolish brothers, it was to do his bidding in search of love that would never come, just so they might be counted as part of that proud legacy.

Cersei, however, learned long ago she was the sole cub of her litter capable of taking her fate in her own hands. Her father would not give her a sword, so she used what claws she had, begetting that black-haired brute that called herself her daughter. She would have a kingdom of her own, of the lion and from her loins, ruling from the shadows or otherwise. So she would suffer Robert when she needed, and take a bit of pleasure besides. It was all she could do.

Court at Storm's End and Casterly Rock was often exciting, and she had influence and respect in both, yet still Cersei felt stagnant and not a true queen. As if there was not just the usual cage that had always held back the women of the Seven Kingdoms, that let them see their sons and brothers thrive as they gave way to them over and over again. Even those ladies who found themselves warriors and leaders on the field of battle were stymied by knights and lords with less reputation.

Once they called her the Whore of Casterly Rock, the woman with the golden cunt, but the tactics of Queen Cersei Lannister – she insisted she keep her name but claim the title – had long progressed past her father's gold and what did or did not reside between her legs. The third time Robert raped her was the final nail in the coffin.

Since then she was not just a lion to Westeros, but a hunter, at first wielding her sworn sword and modest household like a catspaw's dagger to remove the many loyalists to Stannis Baratheon and his Estermont extended family scattered in and around Storm's End. Next had gone those loyal to her husband for his brutality – she was happy to be behind the brute and his warmongering, but only so far that it aided her family and guarded her children and what they would inherit. There were too many men like Meryn Trant and Balon Swann in his army.

Thus when Cersei first waded into war, when Robert took a poisoned arrow during the fighting in the Sea of Dorne and didn't wake for a month, she did so knowing she would suffer Robert's wroth. But men she appointed managed to purge Weeping Town and Cape Wrath of Dornish invaders, and they did her the service of assigning more of her husband's nearest companions to the front lines. The fools were always eager, and they rarely returned.

Cersei had a few bards make posthumous heroes of said dead thugs, and from those songs she drew in more smallfolk coming to Storm's End who wanted to join the effort rebuffing the invaders and avenging some dead northern whore Robert always spent plenty of time moaning about. Cersei however did not waste time equipping them like her father, his army not lions but bees, a swarm of obedient but unimaginative soldiers.

The strongest boys she saw trained into more brutes, the girls a personal guard to she and the other noble ladies of the Stormlands and Vale, while the smartest were made into knights loyal to her above all. There were not enough noble houses to sustain the kind of war Robert wanted, but once her first crop of peasant knights proved themselves, he stopped asking questions.

Cersei also started trying to enjoy herself when Robert rolled on top of her, though he had come to her bed but once since Tommen's birth.

She stood in her shift before a polished silver mirror in her bedchambers, poking at the marks below her navel and hips, at the sagging skin and discoloured lines. Three-and-twenty, and her husband was done with her. She might have moved to recommit herself to the path of the Warrior like ladies Redwyne and Stark – she was a lion, after all – but she was still a woman with needs, and every man or boy in Storm's End was either too loyal or related to her.

She thanked the Maiden for ivory.

Dressing in gold with red finishings, a functional dress with the layered mail and plated bodice as was the fashion for ladies of her rank, Cersei glided down the inner stair of Storm's End's Drum Tower to her children breaking their fast with the septa, knights, and nursemaids. The knights were loyal cousins besides – the bearded and rugged Daven Lannister, and the prim and graceful Lucion Lannister – whom she enjoyed keeping close as outlets for her frustration.

Cersei sat and breakfast was served, hoping to grill Myrcella on the business and lands of the houses assigned, though she thought some parenting was in order after the previous evening's wild carousing. She glanced down at her first son's elbow on the table as he shovelled food into his face.

"Elbows, Joffrey."

He stopped, looking at her with his green eyes curtained by a mop of sandy blond hair. The five-year-old shoved his elbows forward, pushing his plate into Myrcella and staining her dress. "You did that on purpose!" she cried.

"No! Mama I didn't!" Joffrey smiled and opened his eyes wide at her, glistening and pleading. Gods, he was so beautiful. Beautiful and perfect without a lick of Robert to him. All Lannister.

Cersei smacked him, hard enough to split his lip. "What have I told you! Your brothers' and father's roughhousing is not for the dining table!" He dashed off wailing before Cersei could finish her punishment, so she sent Lucion after him. "I want him hided! And don't let Edric take it for him this time."

"Yes, your grace." Lucion bowed out gracefully before breaking into a swift jog after Joffrey.

She sighed, gathering her composure and the broken plate as the maids fussed over Myrcella's dress. Cersei made eye contact with Daven and indicated the door, and the bearded young knight scooped up Tommen, blew a raspberry in his stomach, and carried him out over his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, sweetling," Cersei comforted as Myrcella sniffed against her sobs. "He struggles when father leaves."

"I miss him too! I don't hit and bite and ruin... ruin his clothes." Myrcella's dress had been her own work, alternating gold satin and brocade embroidered with saffron silk, over an armoured bodice of black-brushed mail. Few of Myrcella's companions from the Westerlands shared her round, soft shape, and fewer were as short and freckled with an ever-frizzing mane of black curls and round, perpetually red nose and cheeks not helped by the constant wind and rain of Durran's Point..

Cersei had hoped there might be more girls born among the nobility of the Stormlands who shared her daughter's affectations, but all the best young ladies and maidens sat on Greenstone in Lady Selyse's court were all tall and athletic if they were not small and bone-thin. Even Cersei knew that was not healthy, but Lady Selyse's queer adoption of Vale standards for ladies had led to spates of pallid and sickly maidens wondering why they can't carry a child longer than a moon.

"I made it for him, and he was too..." Myrcella sniffled as Cersei held her daughter, ignoring her mewling about the stains to Cersei's own dress. She had hundreds and would trade them all for sackcloth to heal her husband's injuries to their children, wailing brutes they may be. "The wine, and... and the septa..."

"I know, sweetling." She waved out the maids then Myrcella's septa, though Cersei indicated the door to her solar for the blue-eyed woman instead. The septa looked shocked but nodded obediently. "Think not of your father. This is beautiful work, and you should just be proud of it for your own sake."

"But I did it for him! I'm a fawn like he was! Why can't-" She wept and struggled to indicate the embroidered deer on her dress, dyed threads ruined by food stains, though it was just fruit and some eggs, so not a steep loss, though it all just made her cry more as she tried clawing at her chubby midsection and chin. "It's not fair! It's not it's not it's not!"

Cersei held Myrcella so tight she was afraid of breaking her as Robert's volcanic anger erupted from her in more wracking sobs, spinning arms battering her back and chest. "I know, sweetling. I know."

"Cersei? Cella?" Cersei looked up teary at her daughter's woes to her lady mother, who was crying already just to see them in an embrace. "What's this?"

Cersei could not quite hear her mother over her daughter, but she managed the important bits through Myrcella's moans. "Enough is enough. He can't keep doing this to her. To her and his... all of his children." Cersei looked behind Joanna Lannister at a pair of children clinging to her skirts – a girl Myrcella's age and a boy Joffrey's age.

"They saw Joffrey running, and..." Her mother sighed, holding her hands as the two bastards ran to comfort their sister. "I'm so sorry, sweetling." Cersei nodded and let her mother embrace her, moving the stain of spilled breakfast, though perhaps not as dark a stain, onto her mother's own dress of various reds with small gold finishings.

Age had not dulled Joanna Lannister's beauty, all the more refined even as her golden hair developed streaks of platinum and her eyes and mouth only the most elegant of wrinkles. Cersei found herself heartened that, though her husband had abandoned her bed, she need not fear the years ahead of her.

In truth, she was jealous of her mother. Tywin Lannister was many things, but a bad husband was not one of them.

"Was I a fool to run from Riverrun, Mother? Should I have beget red-haired fish?"

"Lions don't swim, sweetling." Joanna kissed Cersei's tears and moved her to a couch. She rang a bell and summoned a ladies' maid to start wrangling the children, though Edric knew to be gentle with his sisters and Bella moved Myrcella towards playing and not worrying about her appearance.

That was someone Cersei worried about, the whore's daughter already prettier and more graceful than her trueborn sister. "You knew what you did not want and seized what you did. No Lannister worth their gold ever did anything differently, and Robert was long on a path of destruction. Your father did manage to rein in his darker impulses."

"To the end of guarding his stolen gold."

Joanna sighed. "This world is chaos, Cersei. Your father understands that and has saved our family more than once with that wisdom."

"While running us afoul of half-" Cersei silenced herself. "I do not want to fight over politics."

"Smart." Joanna stood. "Edric, Bella." Both bastards stood from their play with Myrcella, trying to turn pillows and an iron poker into their father's war hammer. They were obedient, which still stunned Cersei. "We're to explore Durran's Town and the tradesmen. Bella, we'll be visiting your mother."

Cersei wanted to curse her mother for saying such a thing in front of Myrcella, as Lady Lannister strode from the room.

"Myrcella, would you like to read my letters with me?" Myrcella weakly shrugged as she wagged the iron poker. Too bad the Martells hated the Lannisters for stealing and trying to marry off Princess Elia, or she would send for a Dornish master-at-arms to train Myrcella.

She had seen how some giants of men moved on the battlefield, twirls and great leaps and feats of strength granted by the bloodlust, and how dancers moved in Lannisport and Myr. Their visit to the Grand Septon's greatest prize had been one of Cersei's most important lessons. Why could her daughter not be so talented, whatever her size? "Come, sweetling."

In her solar, Cersei worked diligently, first on the affairs of the castle and surrounding Stormlands, though that was more her parents' project since Weeping Town's loss to those loyal to Stannis, followed by responses to letters from other ladies and lords.

There were fewer from the Stormlands with each passing moon, her husband bleeding support and victories in his mission to eradicate House Targaryen – support Lady Selyse was ever-ready to snatch away for her husband.

The Iron Stag had turned Cape Wrath's southern coast into his domain, one of ships and dour faithful, with Selyse making overtures to make him Lord Paramount of the Rainwood, the Sea of Dorne or beyond, all while the man himself was off being useful fighting pirates and slaying Crownlords.

From her correspondence, Cersei confirmed that she was right about Stannis and likely his wife as well, manipulated by some septon Denys Arryn pawned off on them. She wrote to Lysa asking for details, the Lady of the Vale by far her closest confidant since her meteoric rise in influence. A letter from the trout the falcon caught said she was pregnant again within a month after birthing her second, which Cersei hoped improved Tommen's chances with Lysa's daughter if the Vale had two of the Tyrant's sons.

"How was your father's journey, Septa Alys?" Cersei looked up at the septa, who, standing frozen before her desk for almost three hours, started shaking. She was tall. Certainly a Stormlander. "You seem young."

Septa Alys's eyes shot back and forth, from Cersei to the door. Not Myrcella, and not the sharp dagger on Cersei's desk she used to open her letters. "Are you young for a septa, Alys?"

"My lady?"

Cersei studied her shaking shoulders. "Where are you from?"

"Haystack Hall." She answered far too quickly for Cersei's liking. Cersei tilted her head to one side, studying the 'septa' and her bone structure. Yes, she knew her father quite well. "My lady, I-"

"Milady. If you are going to pretend to be lowborn, you must sound like it." Cersei offered her a piece of parchment with a broken seal. "You can read and write, but your interests..." Cersei examined the list of books she had taken from the library. Cersei allowed all within Storm's End to do so, and she had even helped found a modest library in Durran's Town, but she always kept track of what people wanted to know or read. "All the books of every Grand Maester of note, the legal writings of Jaehaerys, and a text on Yi-Tish history written in High Valyrian."

Alys looked nervously from the list to Cersei to the door.

"Far beyond the liturgies and mad ravings of kiddie-fucker septons."

Cersei knew then she was right, because a real septa would decry her claim – 'Alys' feared Cersei more than the Seven, mouth wagging wordlessly. "Explain why you were recommended to me?"

The septa looked back and forth again. Cersei sighed and rung a bell, six knights entering through the various doors into her solar. They wore the Lannister lion, and as the eldest of her siblings she saw it as hers after her father. Her childless brothers were the new disappointment. "Lady Swann is a good friend of Renly Baratheon, is he not?" Alys nodded firmly. "Are you afraid right now?"

"V- Ver- Very much so, my queen."

"Are you armed?" She shook her head. "Any poisons? Maybe a garrotte?"

"No, my queen."

"Hm. That almost offends me." Cersei dismissed her cousin-knights and pulled Myrcella to her. "What is the septa, Cella?"

"A spy." Myrcella said it with a growl in her throat. Perhaps she was not *all* fawn. "Why are you so tall?"

She looked from Myrcella to Cersei, shaking and sweating through her habit and cowl. "The princess asked you a question."

"Ev- everyone in my family is tall, my princess." 'Alys' looked at Myrcella. "My sister is only a little older than you, but she's as tall as Queen Cersei." Alysanne straightened up and was four inches taller. As tall as the average man, but with broad shoulders and long arms. Even her habit was too short, white stockings and breeches over her legs. "I'm sorry, my queen. They made me."

"Your name, then. For posterity?" Cersei's smile was more a baring of her teeth.

"Alysanne. Alysanne of House Tarth."

"Does your father know?"

Alysanne shook her head firmly. "I'm doing this for him! For him and my house! Renly said- He threatened to hurt my sisters, Brienne and-"

"Enough." Alysanne quieted. "What was your assignment?"

"No! How were you going to tell Uncle Renly?" Cersei nodded approvingly at Myrcella.

"There's a... there's a man in the caves just beyond Durran's Point. He has ravens."

Cersei was intrigued. "And your assignment?"

"Right! Tell us!" Myrcella squealed.

Alysanne shook from the child's yelling. "To- to pull your focus west. To worry about- about the Northmen." Alysanne withdrew a letter sealed with the orange wax of House Royce. They had made the Iron Islands theirs through their service to the Starks, and with the other exiled Vale Houses had started turning it into something new.

Cersei was intrigued, so she broke the seal and read. The letter, forged to be from Lady Royce, claimed Lord Yohn Royce was senile and his sons were fighting, that she needed the Lannisters to send more men to the Iron Islands to calm the local smallfolk until House Royce was done dealing with its internal problems, and that House Stark was being overtaken by concerns of the Arryn invasion and the Wall.

Cersei thought it an interesting play. She would have just to mention it in passing to a cousin for it to get back to Joanna, then Tywin and all the rest of the Westerlands' high lords. They would gladly take the excuse to add more troops to counter Catelyn Stark's influence, but doing so would also draw more troops from the North and add more tension to Westeros.

Who knows what else Renly would have the poor girl do. "You're no use to me a septa. You'll dress well and in accordance with your station, Lady Alysanne Tarth."

"My lady? I took my vows, I am a wife to the Father. I could lead a motherhouse one day, and-"

"Nonsense. I know you didn't take your vows. I know you wanted to and you might have, had your mother not passed birthing your younger sister. I know your elder brother and sister wanted you married off, and that Lord Father Selwyn was going to build you a motherhouse to keep you close." Cersei stood to look up at Alysanne. She would not turn heads, but she was smart and had avoided all focus for months as Cersei watched her, never letting her get close to anything of note. "And I am your liege, besides. Here, you will be safe, and the bonds Renly hoped to shift between our houses will be preserved. Where is the pillow-biting stag, anyway?"

Myrcella giggled.

"The three peaks of King's Mountain, my queen. Between the Marches and Cape Wrath. It's rumoured he takes his orders from the Grand Septon."

Cersei glanced at the spot on a map behind Alysanne before meeting her eyes. They were too vibrantly blue. She should be doing better to avert her gaze. "Then we shall just have to let the king know, won't we?"

***

Cersei looked at one of her remaining letters of the day. It was from Lord Selwyn Tarth, who had gone to Braavos to speak on trade in the Narrow Sea. He was the consensus envoy, but Cersei had plans to make the recently-abdicated lord of the sapphire isle her man. Him and his son's many ships and tall, strapping blonde knights and maidens.

How could the letter have come so quickly, she wondered, having arrived just after sunset when Cersei was dressing for the evening meal. Maester Cressen had delivered it, and still waited at the end of her desk. "He put this in the messenger's hands himself?"

"And he rode hard from Duskendale under cover of night, my lady. I had to give him a tonic, he was too exhausted to even sleep." Cressen offered the second letter.

"How does he have it now?" Cersei watched Cressen closely and often, though she never had any inkling he was anything but loyal to the memory of Steffon Baratheon and his sons, rather than the men they had become. "And what of my offer to the Sealord?"

"The Sealord is interested, but he wants to host Lord Lannister, his grace King Robert, *and* King Rhaegar and Lord Tyrell together. This meeting he intended just for the North and Vale to broker peace was far more successful than intended."

"He wants to put Robert and Mace in a room?"

"And Prince Doran Martell, if my colleagues in Dorne are correct." Cressen fumbled with another letter. "Lord Tarth said an old friend of his from the last Marcher war put this in his hands."

"'A friend once in white.' What is that? Some sort of sage riddle?" Cersei scoffed. "Now he says there's a Targaryen with an army, preparing to cross the Narrow Sea?"

"It would seem as much, your grace."

*To all lords and noble ladies of Westeros*

*I, Viserys of House Targaryen, second son of King Aerys, the second of his name, ask you heed my greetings. A life in Essos among sellswords and strange folk from the far sides of the world have shown me the many ills of my father and family. I hope now to return home, not as another claimant to a lost throne, but a house's scion who believes there is more to the house of the dragon than fire and blood. I hope to bring my skills thus as a leader at war and a mediator for peace to the Seven Kingdoms, and the chaos left in the wake of my father's terror.*

*I bring as well warnings from beyond Westeros. Of monsters beyond the Wall and zealots here in Essos that would take advantage of the great divisions in Westeros. To all the lords and high ladies, I ask only your understanding, and to my family, my apologies that I could not return sooner.*

*Prepare your peacemakers and proposals, my lords. I am coming.*

*Prince Viserys Targaryen, knight of the Golden Company and Protector of the Realm*

Cersei scoffed. Cressen said, "King Robert will learn of this. If you do not tell him-"

"I'm not a complete fool, Maester." Cersei dropped the letters in the fire. "Selwyn saw him? The Targaryen prince? You're certain?"

"The messenger saw him."

Cersei waited for him to elaborate. The anticipation was killing her, like she was watching one of those Reach operas. "And?"

Cressen consulted a notebook, shuffling through pages while grumbling about typical Valyrian features. "He said he was tall... and he has pale hair."

"Tall? That's it?"

"With pale hair."

Cersei thought of Rhaegar, taller with pale rather than silver hair. She had not seen him since Harrenhal, but the idea of him often came to her. Mostly when she was alone with her ivory, imagining his sword piercing Robert's heart. "And he's in the Golden Company. Made friends with the Blackfyres, did he?"

Cressen's explanation took Cersei by surprise. In truth, she thought all the Targaryens were accounted for. "He has. The messenger says one thousand veterans and knights follow him, and that is before the glory he is certain to win in the Golden Company's siege of Pentos. For breaking their last contract, the captain general swore to sack the city."

One thousand men was a paltry sum, Cersei knew that much of war, but the Targaryens held on to power for longer without dragons than with them with fewer than half as many men. Reputation and convention alone had kept the dragons in power, and she knew many lords, from the Wall to the Stepstones, that missed the peace and quiet of the dragons.

All but the most vicious of the lords of Westeros were weary of war as well, and if Viserys's letters reached as many as Selwyn Tarth claimed, it would be the talk of the continent for the foreseeable future. And the vagaries only helped the exiled prince, lying about his experience or not.

Cersei hummed in thought before settling on her next course of action. "Send word. But send word that it is time for Massey's Hook as well. Lord Tyrell will not cross the Marches any time soon, and Pentos is nearest us and Viserys's own brother... The gall, declaring himself protector of the realm."

Maester Cressen hesitated to speak, though Cersei waved for him to do so. He was loyal, so Cersei counted him as not a threat. "Though there are claimants to the Iron Throne directly, even more for the title of lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm hs been... forgotten."

"A purse for a mine."

"Your grace?"

"The forest was lost to the trees, simply." Cersei smirked. She dismissed Cressen and looked out the Drum Tower's high window, at Shipbreaker Bay and Essos somewhere beyond. "Well played, Prince Viserys. To sweep the board and decide the game's new players is quite the advantage."

Cersei had been stifled in the Stormlands and Storm's End. Now, the whole of the Seven Kingdoms and the Free Cities were in play. This was not some common threat as Rhaegar and Mace often dispersed about vengeance, justice, or union for the sake of prophecy, but an offer of a solution to the longest war in living memory.

She tried to imagine Viserys in her mind. Cersei had a vague memory of a Valyrian princeling who had his cheeks pinched red by her mother and aunts, but little else. Rhaegar but tall, but also having spent eight years as a sellsword in Essos. He was scarred and weathered in her mind, with tangled platinum hair and a chiseled figure of scarred muscle.

And now he had laid a challenge to her. The Grand Septon had been a good ally, so the Stormlands would be expected to respond once Pentos was taken. Selyse had too many in her service, and Cape Wrath was hers – strength invites challenge. Cersei could only say the same about far fewer houses, but she had knights, squires, and her cunning young women in her service. It would have to be enough.

If only her idiot husband would just die to a Reach knight's lance, then all her problems would be solved.

She recalled how her Father would speak at her brothers, lecturing endlessly as Tyrion absorbed the words but not their meaning, and Jaime was too busy daydreaming to hear anything at all. It was after Jaime's appointment to the kingsguard, when Cersei thought her feelings for him that had always churned as a girl would bear out, but when his lips touched hers she felt nothing but disgust. He was not her other half, but the unrefined original, she the statue time had sculpted.

Their father insisted on accompanying him to King's Landing, and Cersei listened at Jaime's tent as Tywin lectured him. "Even as a kingsguard knight, you must not forget that you are a Lannister first."

But it was the last thing Tywin said before he stormed out that had stuck with Cersei always. It guided Cersei now as Prince Viserys resumed the great game begun with the Conqueror's peace.

"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die," Tywin had said. "There is no middle ground."

Chapter Text

The climate in Braavos was typical of summer in a northern part of the world, but the Narrow Sea was still periled by spring rains. The Andalosi coast was no better as Prince Viserys Targaryen marched at the head of two regiments, while the Lysene spymaster Lysono Maar led the ships of the Golden Fleet down the Narrow Sea.

They marched one hundred leagues along the Braavosian coastlands, dispatching any Pentoshi patrols on their way to the city proper. The magistrates of Pentos, in direct violation of their treaties with Braavos, had trained in secret an army, drawing officers from the landed freedmen and nobility and the bulk of their force from free-bond servants in exchange for coin or land guaranteed after thirty years of service. Most of the free-bonded, slaves in all but name, did not know that though, since few could even read the contracts they signed.

The force Targaryen led consisted of two thousand lockstep – his preferred military unit in the conquest of Pentos according to the diaries of Captain General Myles Toyne – and five hundred light cavalry. It was known among the Golden Company that the prince sought as efficient a force as possible, and had campaigned to assemble the very force he would bring with him onwards to Westeros*

Having scattered his allies from his time as a cadet and marine among various units of both the Company and the Golden Fleet, Targaryen's true ends with his force moving south towards Pentos, while unknown at the time, was assumed by his enemies to be an attempt to forge bonds of camaraderie among a force comfortable following his orders before the war he truly sought to use them in.

It should be noted here that, in the examination of Targaryen's experiences in Braavos and the Golden Company as a child, historians have broadly determined that the prince's worldview by this time had been greatly warped by the military efficiency of the Golden Company. Orders were followed based on rules of logic and mutual respect, and the knowledge that the man giving you orders was often where you were at your age promoted the discipline that delivered many of the Company's successes on and off the field of battle.

The same could not be said for the knights, lords and kings of Westeros, and the magisters of Pentos as Targaryen would soon learn. While social order and logistical efficiency would remain important parts of military cohesion in this period, testimony from literate peers of the prince prove that loyalty to him was not the source of the unity of his forces. Rather, it was the hitherto unconsidered, historiographical reality that is, that Prince Viserys still fought as a Targaryen – first in the fray, with promises of fire and blood on his lips.

—— —— from A Storm of Swords: War, Politics, and Society in early post-Targaryen Westeros and Essos, by Maegelle Lannett, Archmaester, second class, *University of Lannisport Press*.

***

Two weeks on horseback down the coastlands brought Viserys and his wedge of the Golden Company to the gates of a Pentoshi fort somewhere in Andalos. His second in command and a close follower of Blackheart's, Ser Lymond Pease, rode beside him, a silent and scarred man with a thick black beard that was often heavy with sweat. He still wore a thick red scarf around his neck despite the spring humidity, yet always had the gall to grumble about the heat when not yelling at his infantry.

Viserys simply wore his straw hat, mended, to keep his head and shoulders cool.

They stopped just beyond the range of the fort's scorpions, two javelin-sized bolts stuck in the ground ten feet from where VIserys stopped his horse.

He secured the white flag to a pike standard and raised it upright.

Lymond grunted, "White sullies the gold."

Viserys ignored him while removing his hat. "Good Pentoshi! We are the Golden Company!" Their spears slammed into the ground, echoing across the rocky hills. The ground was green and grassy, with wild sheep, horses and chickens aplenty. "Your masters have been found wanting, breaking their promises and lying to their friends and allies! The-" The gate trundled open for a party of ten on horseback.

The fort behind them was no Westerosi motte and bailey, but a castle with its yard divided into four wedges. As rumour told it, the fort housed free tradesmen, a few wealthy merchants on their way to being magisters, and plenty of Pentos's famed free-bond servants. The walls extended to cover the top of the ridge and the road beyond, while to either side beyond for hundreds of miles there was perilous cliffs and rushing rapids. The fort was their only way into Pentoshi territory, and Viserys was intent on some good capture between Braavos and the walls of Pentos itself.

The Pentoshi party was eight Second Sons, a freeborn officer, and a man with the bearing of a noble in pearl-enamelled armour. Viserys kept his gaze focused on the Pentoshi as a whole. The Second Sons might try and put themselves in the middle, but they were just sellswords. He needed to convince the Pentoshi.

"Your travel in these lands is illegal," said the freeborn officer. "Disperse or be destroyed."

The wind turned from the sea, and Viserys's nose caught the scent of wildfire. "To whom am I speaking?"

The officer straightened to speak, but the noble rode forward instead. He had powder-blushed olive skin and an oiled beard bleached pale red by something that smelled like it came out of a latrine. "I am Magister Ordello of the *free* city of Pentos. We have been choked by Braavos's greed and lust for power for centuries – but no more! Pentos's free people will never bow to bankers and assassins!"

A cheer went up from behind the walls of the fort. "What is your trade, Ordello?" Viserys asked. "I am but a young sellsword new to the ways of war, but as I recall my recent history..." He studied the point at the top of the pike, and made sure Ordello saw him. "Pease, what did the Golden Company do to Myr after they killed the Company men they hired and garrisoned?"

"We sacked it."

"Yes, we did. I was thirteen." Viserys carried the standard towards Ordello. He paid no mind to the Second Sons, who bristled at how close he came to their patron. "Their gates were Valyrian steel. What are these gates made of?" Ordello did not answer, but he looked to the freeborn officer then back to Viserys. Viserys looked down at Dark Sister until Ordello looked at it.

He looked to the officer. "Are you free-bond?"

"I was."

"Do you wish to be truly free?"

"Do not listen to him! Kill him!" Ordello scrambled for his sword, but the Second Sons held back.

"He has the white flag, Magister," said the lead Second Son. He was a small, stout man with clear signs of age but a full head of greying brown hair. He wore the mottled plate and leather of an older sellsword, and rode a chestnut gelding. "Our contract is to you, lord, not Pentos."

"Second Sons," Pease spat. "Ran from Myr with their tails covering their peckers."

The man in the lead bristled. "We paid our debts, and the Second Sons are not the company they were in Myr. We are stronger. More specialised and-"

"Enough," said the freeborn officer. "Our quarrel is not with the Golden Company." Ordello drew his sword and swung it madly at the officer, who parried and pulled him from his horse by the collar, pulling a key off his neck as he fell to the grass. "I have the key to the vault, Ser Garibald. I hold your contract. Arrest him."

Viserys looked at Pease with one eyebrow raised. Pease shrugged. "Folk fear the gold."

The gate opened. Viserys was hoping for some glory, but he would take a surrender. "We can offer you water and trade," said the freeborn officer, extending his hand to Viserys. "If you swear good conduct, sellsword."

"The Golden Company's word is as good as our gold. I swear on my arm rings, my men will cause no trouble."

Viserys moved his regiments and cavalry battalions through the first gate only after he had secured the mechanisms for opening and closing them. Just because he had promised good conduct, did not mean he trusted the Pentoshi. Looking at the first yard, it was clear it would be a hard-won fight if they threw themselves at the fort, especially with the walls hiding ballistae and mangonels.

The freeborn officer occupied a position somewhere between captain and military governor, though without the benefits and twice the paperwork. He and his fighters appeared healthy, but small – Viserys doubted any of them ever once in their lives had a full belly, and most were branded as former 'free-bond servants'. A few even still wore collars.

They had good training as well, some of the Essosi and former slaves in the Company milling with those with similar backgrounds, speaking in the local bastard Valyrian. "We will continue south. I will leave a garrison of one hundred men selected by random lot. There will certainly be Essosi, and I will open the door to each of you joining the Golden Company or moving north. They need settlers in Andalos. Good workers who want freedom and land."

Something twinkled in the officer's eye, but he shook it off as he removed his helmet. He was missing an ear and a chunk of his cheek, giving him a perpetual grimace. "We have people we want. Our children, our wives who may have been taken to Pentos."

Viserys had not put one thought towards reunifying families. "I may only speak for what I know of my orders and the Tattered Prince's aims, to take power and overturn the old order, and the promise of fair reward for a day's work – but I can send word."

"That much would be preferable. Ol' Tatters and his dreams are not long for this world though." Viserys dropped one of his saddlebags' contents on the equipment table before them. He had the regiment lay out fresh tools, weapons, and raw materiel as well, though it was all behind a contract. "What's this?" The man could not read.

"Have a man you trust read it. It will secure this land in the meanwhile until Pentos is secured, at which point the fort and its master, provisionally yourself, would become vassals of Pentos."

"That's a lot of words. And words are wind."

Viserys had the grain and cattle brought in last, along with three hundred Pentoshi exiles from the Braavosian Coastlands looking to resettle in their motherland.

They agreed to confer later, but Viserys's shock-and-awe-with-rewards tactic had borne out, though he also made sure his garrison controlled every coin and berry of grain that passed through the fort. The land beyond the fort was just as overgrown and covered in green grass, though not as unused, so the few herds of goats and horses were easily displaced by cattle. Ser Harry had bred hardy Norvoshi yaks with stout Braavosi cows, making for a beast that, while slow and placid, was powerfully strong and could subsist entirely on grazing.

After a short day and night of celebration – the whores among the camp followers were falling over trying to carry all their silver – before Viserys led his remaining forces southward. He sent scouts to the coast to signal the Golden Fleet, word from Lysono Maar returning that they were to continue moving towards Pentos.

The northern Flatlands beyond Pentos were busy with canyons and cliffs grown with small, dry trees warped into fluid shapes by strong winds. They recalled the Dornish Marches in the Stormlands, and Viserys supposed that they may have once been the same land.

Through gulleys and soggy riverbeds, one hundred leagues of pastures and terraced farms rolled by, interspersed with abandoned estates. Viserys rode at the head of the Golden Company towards a coastal fort, the farms mostly abandoned but quickly overwhelmed by the freeborn or escaped Pentoshi recruited along their journey. He gathered coin and loot from the fields and villas with each passing day, and though going west for his high-minded ideals was not in their interest, Viserys's promise of land in a realm devoid of slavery was appealing to many Essosi.

His scouts returned with a guard of Company cavalry from the fort, Lysono having taken the fort with slightly more blood. Its inhabitants were mostly landowners and freeborn Pentoshi, and a much tougher nut to crack, though the spymaster found a way.

***

The campaign proceeded as expected, the Golden Company and their allies approaching Pentos much as in their assault on Myr. The main difference to Viserys was that he was an officer and not a cadet, though like most of his influence he took a turn with a latrine shovel every few nights. It never hurt to keep his calluses thick, and sparring with a sword was a difficult thing, most infantry not trained with a longsword.

Tytus and the knights, Robar's cavalry, and Young Bear's infantry proved more of a challenge – Viserys was far from the best swordsman, in fact, and he felt he spent as long proving himself with veterans and cadets he did not know on the way to Pentos as he had as a recruit and cadet.

Viserys and Lysono linked up with the other serjeants who had come overland from the Dusklands two months after their departure from Braavos. Spies were of great concern to the Golden Company's spymaster, but as they filed into the war camp, they learned that spies were unlikely to be of any concern with a Dothraki khal as their host.

"Viserys!" Like all Dothraki, Rakharo had grown into a swarthy and muscled man. He was wider than Viserys but shorter, with thicker limbs and the drooping black mustachios of a much older man. He engulfed Viserys in a hug, lifting him off his feet. "Khal Bharbo is anxious to meet the dragon in gold!"

"Bharbo is here?" Lysono started sweating, Rakharo twisting his head at a funny angle in confusion. "Since when? What of Ko Cohollo?"

Rakharo dropped to one knee to smear dirt on his hands and forehead, muttering in his mother tongue. Viserys heard blessings on Cohollo's ride in the Night Lands. "Dead. Serpents in his court in Qohor." The Dothraki spat then waved them in. "The Golden Company is encamped to the south. Go around to the east to avoid the Pentoshi scorpions."

More than Drogo, Rakharo had adapted to the Company's Sunsetlander ways, wearing bits of captured mail and plate in addition to his scattered horsehide armour, with one of Black Balaq's four-limbed longbows hanging from his saddle. He even had a helmet with a hole cut for his braid. "Drogo has come as well?"

"Come? He led the way. In truth, though he nor his father will say it, the Slavers make gains, seizing the Lhazar and courting alliance with Qarth." Warmly, Rakharo greeted some stout men of the east. They had vaguely Dothraki features, though fairer skin with cone-shaped heads and small, striped horses. They uniformly wore orange, red, and yellow broadcloth, with massive wood-bead necklaces and waving steel greatswords. "The Jogos Nhai. Bharbo's ways have made the Dothraki stronger than ever."

Viserys observed the Dothraki in camp. He recalled the sprawling khalasars beyond the Forest of Qohor he had seen in his first year as a squire, but in the years between they had added all manner of eastern people to their number, from one thousand heavy infantry from Yi Ti in lacquered leather and steel scale armour with massive glaives and curved bastard swords, to many a Qohorik freedman who, in adopting the Dothraki ways of horse, arakh, and bow, and paying extra taxes, were freed to follow the Black Goat where its greatest relics lay in new temples in Vaes Dothrak.

As Rakharo rode ahead to make their ingress easier, the knights that travelled with them encircled Viserys and Lysono on his order. "What's the matter?" Viserys asked. "Why wait until now to oppose the Company's alliance with Khal Bharbo and the Dothraki?"

"It is that he is here, which means he brings the whole circus with him. His... retainers. His advisors." The war council tent was more a circus tent indeed, Robar and Tytus at his hips as Barristan led the way.

Inside was massive, striped blue and white, every rod and beam decorated with thousands of captured banners, pennants, flags, and tabards. Around them was the bacchanal typical of sellsword camps, whores and wine flowing endlessly.

The Dothraki's famed carousing did not calm things either, though Baqarro and his like kept the peace – every claimant to the title of Great Khal of the Dothraki before Bharbo seemed to have forgotten their many half-breed bastards left around Essos, and they served as some of Bharbo's most valued envoys in his new order. "Though not all of them are so bad. Be quick. You are wanted."

"Yes, sir." Viserys curtly bowed then greeted Baqarro, the giant well over seven-feet tall with his own thick hair bound in locs, which in turn hung in a four thick rope braids, two over each shoulder. They hugged, and both sighed in relief before they broke the embrace, inspecting one another from arm's length. "Talal died. A Pentoshi fort to the south. He fell in the siege."

"Kasté has left the Company for your Citadel." Viserys sent Barristan and the others to disperse and start spreading word of his arrival, while Lysono moved towards the high meeting. Years of history hung between Baqarro and Viserys, but there was no tension. "The Sunset Lands? You will go as well? Chaos, I have hard. More like the Disputed Lands."

Viserys said, "More fighting. Peace is for the east now."

Baqarro looked across at one of the Dothraki... ladies? They wore more silk than horsehide, but they were just as wild as their male counterparts, though Baqarro was the exception, ever stoic. "Bharbo needs loyal men near Vaes Dothrak. Away from the fighting. I will go."

"I understand." They embraced again before Viserys ducked through some hanging carpets. Muffling the music and lewd behaviour beyond, the high officers of five... it felt odd to call three of them sellsword companies, but that is what Blackheart, Lord Parcival, and the Tattered Prince were.

Viserys sat cross-legged behind Blackheart. There was no room to hide, with just Maegor, Lysono, Lady Danelle, and Lord Laswell with Captain General Myles Toyne. Ser Roberon Reyne sat uncomfortably on the ground, still wearing most of his armour, behind Lord Parcival, who was resting on his knees with his sword laid peaceably before him.

The Great Khal, as he had been known since his successful – the first ever – *dozh khal* that named him leader of all Dothraki, closely resembled Drogo in bearing, facial features, and voice, with the same thick braid, but longer and streaked with grey and white, though the bottom two thirds were black as pitch. He had darker skin from more years in the sun and wind, and was more than a head shorter, emphasized by his thicker legs, arms, torso, and neck, complete with a long beard bound with with gold and silver bells, his hair too crowded with them to fit any more. His gut was more impressive than all of that, round but sculpted with muscle.

The Braavosi party was only just filing in when Drogo dragged Viserys to his feet, holding him by the arms then pressing a firm, hairy kiss to his cheeks, forehead, and lips. "I have missed you!" He said it in perfect High Valyrian. "Did I not promise you? I forced a Mereenese master to teach me before eating his tongue! Hah!"

Viserys laughed awkwardly before Drogo dragged him before his father. Just in his presence and the deference paid by his four bloodriders and two advisors – a Jogos Nhai priest in red and yellow, and a Ghiscari woman past seventy with silver hair and piercing green eyes. She wore a green shawl-like garment clasped tautly at the waist by both her hands, and she followed Viserys with her eyes as he knelt before Bharbo and bowed his head.

Bharbo belched, clearing his throat and spitting in a basin with expert aim. He smirked and stood with nary a grunt, embracing Viserys tightly. "First of my sons to be this thin. What are they feeding you, these pale faces?" He waved dismissively at the Golden Company, pulling Viserys under his arm towards his portion of the meeting area. "There is good war against the Harpy, and my vice regent has a daughter perfect for you."

"Not for Drogo?"

"Bah! Drogo thinks only of war. Already he has three wives heavy with child, and he cares not for them. Explain that!"

"Ridiculous," Viserys comforted.

"You understand my pain better than many." Bharbo shot a foul look at a random bloodrider, who was suddenly the focus of his colleagues' ire. "Tell me of the seven kings in the sunset lands. What of this wall of snow and a stag that eats pillows?"

Viserys snorted but covered it with a mouthful of wine.

"It recalls Essos in the Century of Blood." Viserys said as much sombrely, the words in Dothraki insisting on quiet reflection. The Dothraki held great respect for the Valyrian Freehold, many believing that the horselords could not have ascended without the extinction of the dragonlords.

Bharbo was taken aback, and nodded thoughtfully. In Drogo's eyes and face, there was only eagerness and bloodlust – the Golden Company had made him more tactical, but he was still a born Dothraki – but in Bharbo, Viserys saw a generational thinker. Had he been born a lord of Westeros, he would be no lesser than Jaehaerys the Conciliator.

"We should speak on such things. I much desire the blood of the dragon to join with that of the horse." Bharbo sent him back to his place, Viserys watching the great khal take the advice of another counselor before he sat again – they wore a voluminous hooded black robe with layered golden necklaces and bracelets, and a mask of dark red lacquered wood. Though he could tell no features about them, Viserys still felt drawn to them, some magnetic nature pulling him in.

The feeling passed as quickly as it came when the meeting came to order, though Viserys had to unwrap his fingers from Dark Sister as the leader of the Windblown brought the meeting to order.

"To all, I say thank you, both for answering the call, and for not doing me the dishonour of declining these gifts." Sellswords of the Windblown, each with their own modest cloak of tatters like their leader, carried in chests and crates of gold and silver. "From my successes in the east. It would have just been plundered by dear Bharbo anyway."

Bharbo spoke in Dothraki, and Drogo translated in summary – Viserys translated more accurately for the benefit of his fellows in the Golden Company near enough to hear. "For the love of our khal, Lord of Ribbons, my khalasar would have ridden across the poison salt."

"All would see your destiny done, Tattered One." Syrio Forel led the Braavosi delegation, and he seemed excited.

Lysono mouthed, "This will be Forel's last campaign. Likely to retire with the sealord."

"A shame. He has been an ally," said Blackheart. "And the Golden Company keeps its word, Tatters, though I was not Captain General when such bonds were forged." He glanced at Maegor, who nodded.

The Ragged Standard followed suit, with fewer bonds to the Windblown but with their own reasons for respecting the Tattered Prince's mission. They were exiles centuries removed, so perhaps more than the Golden Company they respected the quest of the Tattered Prince. "Then let us cut to the purpose of our meeting, and plan how to take back my city."

Chapter Text

If the Essosi mercenary remembered only as the Tattered Prince was anything, he was well-travelled. For all complaints about the man from his peers and the records of his service in Ghiscari Essos and Yi Ti, he possessed knowledge of warfare and weapons technology unmatched for his time. Assembled entirely towards the purpose of capturing Pentos, it was expected that the Tattered Prince also sought to settle old enmities within Pentoshi politics and institutions, generations of which he claimed were responsible for the conspiracy that forced his abdication.

Prince Viserys's role, despite his high position in the minds of most modern historians, occupied something between contractor and adviser. He had yet to be knighted himself, but it was widely accepted that success in Pentos would deliver him personal rewards, all in addition to a knighthood gifted with the proper ceremony.

Having faced enough in Andalos to cement his hold on a spectrum of friends and loyal followers, the prince personally commanded almost one thousand of his comrades. He was worthy to be called a captain, in point of fact.

In all, the Golden Company was forty-five thousand men and the plurality of the force, with thirty-thousand of Khal Bharbo's screamers and easterners, ten-thousand Braavosi marines, and five-thousand warriors each from Norvos, the Ragged Standard, and the Windblown.

Though official muster numbers from Daughters' wars and Triarchy conflicts fought amongst the southern free cities put their battles at this time larger in bloodshed alone than the Battle of Pentos, all evidence points to the contrary. Dating of ink reveals many records in Tyrosh, Lys, and Myr were doctored after the conclusion of the fall of Pentos in a bid to lower the effective reputation of the Golden Company and their strong alliances across northern and central Essos.

Thus, those official numbers would show the largest muster of a single fighting force since before the doom of Valyria – one-hundred-thousand men was a larger army than any ever built in in the known world, only displaced by the Dothraki force under Khal Drogo that sacked Mereen five years later.

—— —— An excerpt from Between Dragons and Horses: The Wars on the Narrow Sea following the destruction of King's Landing before the rise of Dothraki hegemony in Essos, by Ser Humphrey Hightower, Order of Westeros, third-class, Gulltown Press.

***

The grand strategy of the Tattered Prince was decades in the making and had hundreds of permutations laid out in maps, charts, secret messages, blueprints, and aid offered by his agents within the city.

After the meeting's end some hours later, Viserys found himself still with the officers, most of whom drank and whored twice as raucously as their men. From aloof and deposed prince, Viserys was quick to see a new side, a truer side, to Old Tatters.

"Oi! Elephant man!" Tatters pointed out Strickland where he was trying to whisper to Blackheart and Maegor. Ser Harry was just closing his ledgers and making himself scarce when a woman with less nose than emotions tossed him into the middle of the ring.

Balding and a little portly from the easy life, Ser Harry still had his charms as the raiser of elephants and the sculptor of the minds of young cadets. "Lord of tusks! How taste their milk?" Bharbo shoved a mug of mare's milk into Harry's hands, who took a whiff and cringed. A dry Norvoshi red, it was not.

"Drink!" Tatters tipped the cup and Ser Harry cringed but forced it down. "Hah! Another!" He poured wine into the milky cup. "Drink!"

Ser Harry looked to Blackheart like a son pleading with his father. Blackheart's eyes shifted to the mug. Harry looked at the chunky contents and it could not be said he was not a quick thinker, downing it before Bharbo was insulted. He turned a strange shade of yellow. "Sweeter... than I imagined."

The paymaster tried to turn and the Windblown held him that time, filling his cup and sitting him before their leader. "Another!" cried Caggo Corpsekiller, holding Strickland to the pillow.

Lysono rose to pull them off his comrade, Harry partway through his fourth cup and turning pale as Tatters laughed and hooted in his face. Even Bharbo's mood had been turned to boredom, moving to engage with Parcival and Syrio with the aid of a translator.

"Enough of this." Maegor downed his drink and stood, unbuckling Blackfyre and handing it to Ser Barristan, though it was so long Viserys took the tip. "Watch and learn, gentlemen."

Viserys sat as his cousin raised his goblet of red wine to Tatters. "Oh Prince! What of the rewards the gem of the Narrow Sea will bestow upon us?"

Rags looked to Maegor. A peer, but not an equal, he might have thought from the shadows in his eyes. "Back from plowing little boys in Lys, eh? Peake! Where's your fat sow brother?" Laswell snorted wine while Torman looked ready to fight for his uncle Pykewood's honour. "Aye, *Aerion*, you shall be rewarded. All of us shall!" He seized Bharbo in a headlock. "Magister's daughters for my dear Dothraki!"

Drogo and his father's bloodriders whooped. Viserys knew Bharbo wanted scorpions and administrators, not more concubines. "To the Braavosi, the ports. If they want to waste their time on trade and banking while the real men do the fighting. First sword? Narrow sword." Tatters wiggled his pinky at Syrio then patted the top of his bald head, who in turn was kept from killing the deposed prince by his second in command.

Tatters kept going around the room as Viserys pulled Maegor out of the tent and into the chill. "I see now, but what of these games?"

"So you can see how business gets done."

"And what made you make a deal with him?" Barristan and Lysono slipped out with them, four walking across the camp to the secure and familiar environs of the Company's yellow tents. The Windblown were a rough and scarred lot, and more than once they had to scare one their men off their cadets or squires.

"Three knights and half-a-hundred infantry have died in duels over matters of honour in the last three hours," Lysono said. "It was your stratagems-"

"He excuses it as their eastern weathering." Maegor sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose. "He was different before, and our word must remain as good as our gold."

"The fight changes all men," Barristan advised. "None live and command that long having always been the hero. His story is a fine one, but just that."

***

After a few long days of preparation, and plenty of late mornings sleeping off late nights with Drogo, Viserys marched two thousand infantry to the coast, embarking on ships that ferried them up to the Bay of Pentos to join the blockade. As expected, three chains, each larger than the last, prevented entry into the bay, strung between lighthouses on either side of the strait.

Villas and palatial estates dotted the peninsula to the south, while a line of forts guarded the bay from attack to the north. High cliffs and Pentos's massive walls guarded the city elsewise, leaving Viserys with the sole option of an amphibious invasion – if he could take the Bay of Pentos... well, no one had threatened it since an ancestor of his on dragonback.

With Serjeant Brendel Byrne behind him, Viserys swam out in the dead of night towards the first of the chains, pulling himself up and scurrying along to make space for the next man. He had been limited to a leather bladder of air on his swim, and his lungs cried out in relief as they tasted the cool night air.

The chain was slick from rain, but the jagged molluscs and coral made it easy enough to climb. A few of their smaller number might have tried to stand had the officers not made it abundantly clear the importance of remaining unseen.

Fifty fighting men and women followed him up, Another fifty would be along shortly, as the same numbers crawled up the other end of their chain and the ends of the chain behind them and in front of them.

There was a sentry looking out to sea from the hole where the chain extended, and as he turned Viserys drew Dark sister and thrust, passing through the back of his half helm into his head and out his eye. In the night the blood shone like rubies, dripping down to the sea.

The Valyrian steel passed through bone and brain, and metal, as if it were air.

The Pentoshi were lightly armed, but they made up for their lacking equipment with sheer numbers. There were said to be fifty-thousand defenders in Pentos. Cornered as they were, they were even more dangerous, but Brendel's tactic of swarming each defending Pentoshi, through the tower and, hopefully beyond, until another lighthouse's alarm bell rang.

With reinforcements trying to push their way up and in, Viserys maintained discipline while throwing caution to the wind. He blew the horn to summon the infantry waiting beyond the far side of the Pentoshi fortifications next, spying their lit torches through the lighthouse's tallest platform.

To the west the city was alight as it was alerted, and the waiting trebuchets started throwing while agents within the city set fires and other sabotage. The siege engines beyond Pentos's western wall lobbed pieces of villa, Andal ruin, and flaming balls of wood. The Pentoshi had expected siege mainly from their west and south, but Khal Bharbo and Lysono Maar had put their heads together and built a sort of winching bridge to cross a ravine to the north. It had taken a few more days, but that only gave their forces more time to plan and prepare.

At the same moment, the fort's alarm rang, the grind and flick of the engines echoing across the water and a volley of burning arrows flew up towards the sky from the Golden Fleet, snuffed by the rain but providing a flash long enough to signal.

"Release the chain!" Viserys bellowed.

"Release the chain!" Brendel echoed, joining him to watch as the winches were released and the chains went plummeting into the water of they bay. "Now we must hold them, and take the next one."

Viserys sheathed his sword for a stolen Pentoshi spear and shield, moving down to the front of his force. Fifty experienced squires, infantry, and a handful of knights assigned to him. Ten were Ser Barristan and nine of his Selmy men-at-arms, since knighted and inducted into the Company under Viserys's reference. Marcher knights were the best sixteenth name-day present a deposed Targaryen princeling could ask for.

"Only one part of our mission is done, comrades." Viserys observed the shaking door, the fort's defenders trying to retake the tower keep that housed the chain's winch. The rest of the fort was garrisoned with the rest of three hundred men. "We hold them here. In the Golden Company, our word is gold, and Lord Aerion has taken the gold of the Tattered Prince. Will we fail Lord Aerion?"

"No!"

"Old Tatters has asked his cousins, us, the heirs to the Bittersteel, to reclaim what is rightfully his. In the name of honour, and in the name of justice. Will we betray our word now?"

"No!" the squadron resounded.

"Will we let Pentos grow fat and gluttonous, where it would return slavery to Myr or threaten Braavos's holy freedom?"

"No!"

"Will we betray our word?"

"No!"

"What is it?"

"Good as gold!"

They rose in a cheer that died when the doors shuddered again.

Viserys thought he might lose them as Tytus pulled himself from the crowd, drawing Brightroar. It was gold and steel. "Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!"

Viserys shoved on his helmet and buckled it tight. "Beneath the gold!" Tytus belted.

"The bitter steel!" they answered.

Viserys raised his spear and shield, Tytus stood just behind him, one hand on his shoulder, one hand on his sword. "Blackwood!" shouted Brendel. The shields locked tight as the doors shook again, splinters flying. They were in a hemisphere around the only door in our out, with fallbacks of furniture barricades and the defenders' crossbows and scorpions at the ready.

"Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!"

The hinges burst, sending bolts and nails bouncing off shields and helmets. The Company men were not well-armoured either, nothing heavier than ringmail for the sake of the swim. But in their helmets and shields, spears before them, they needed nothing else. The First Men had not, nor had the Ghiscari.

"Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!"

The door fell and chaos came with it, a swarm of sellswords, freedmen militia, and true soldiers of Pentos trained by Volantene tigers. Viserys stabbed an irregular through the belly while Tytus took the heads of three men behind him with one cut. "Valyrian steel!" Viserys twisted, pulled, and thrust the spear again, losing half an inch of ground with each recovery.

Few men died in that initial defense, Viserys and Tytus holding the right stair while Brendel and Ser Barristan held the left. Brendel fought like some badger or rabid mutt, axe in one hand and mace in the other, throwing elbows and kicks whenever his weapons became stuck in corpses. Ser Barristan, on the other hand...

He was just like all the stories. No, Viserys observed. Barristan the Bold was better than all the stories, because words could not do the man justice. He was a dancer, and his sword was his partner, just another half of the greater whole of his talents as a warrior. Bold, he would bound up railings and vault sword first towards the Pentoshi, every swipe of his blade a cut, thrust, or parry. No movement was wasted and no effort put towards anything other than killing the enemy.

Combat against the Pentoshi in general, Viserys had the time to observe, was like watching a hrakkar chase a very fat, very large elephant. The Golden Company, after that first defense, changed tactics, advancing out of the tower keep and trapping the Pentoshi between their spears and Company mangonels easily throwing over the fort's walls, but they would just hold, sacrifice a few dozen men, and shift position or tactics, knowing better than to be pinned down.

They offered no quarter and the Company asked for none, and within the hour, their hair still damp with seawater, Viserys was cleaning his spear and opening the gates for his comrades, down to thirty-three men.

The few living defenders on the walls started trying to escape, making a mad dash for the open doors of the tower keep. Five Pentoshi managed to get past Company archers, and two of their infantry died defending the chain as the Pentoshi raised it again just as a ship was moving into the bay. Viserys gave chase, Lymond Pease and Robar Osgrey taking the Pentoshi on as he ran to the chain.

The Pentoshi turned to him on a suicide mission, one throwing his axe into the grinding cogs. Viserys cursed, killing the Pentoshi with Dark Sister and, golden marines dying in the strait as ships crashed into each other, he cut the chain with two swipes of his sword.

A cry went up when the chain dropped and he stepped out to cheers, hefting the massive broken link overhead.

"Saving the chain was part of our contract," chastised Brendel. "A good assault, Viserys." Viserys snorted at the grizzled serjeant, wiping Dark Sister clean and sheathing it again. It was a truly beautiful weapon, and Viserys was proud to wield a weapon of his house.

"We could try breaking the winch and signal our comrades on the other side to pull it up?" Tytus said. "Our run down for a daring rescue ourselves, eh?"

Viserys made sure the watchtower was locked down as the rain worsened with the dawn. Thunder rumbled with the trebuchets and lightning crashed down on the city, assaulted from above as well as their sides and adding the fires. In the strait below them, the charnel of two brigs and a few small cogs was abandoned and broken up by the siege barges throwing stones to break up the wrecks. "The damage is done. Let's reinforce and return to work."

As Viserys strode away to break up a fight between a few Norvoshi and Dothraki, he overheard Tytus say, "Westeros made him very serious."

***

Pentos was extensively fortified to the south and east, relying on the Velvet Hills and broken canyons of Andalos to the north for protection from other directions. For centuries they were prevented from building up their seaward side to fulfill peace treaties with Braavos, keeping them open to constant attack, but with Volantis's titanic forges churning out weapons, armour, and officers ready to command whatever freedmen battalions Pentos could assemble, they were more than ready to rebuff attack with use of their purses alone, let alone the city's great value otherwise.

Viserys was still dealing with the superfluous crew from ships broken on the chain stuck in a mire of old anchors and wildfire dust-filled barrels that destroyed a ship for every ten that passed. He chose to focus on seizing the forts on the northern coast, three in all, leaving capture of the bay and peninsula to the Braavosi.

Braavos had spent most of the centuries since the Doom of Valyria plotting against Pentos, limping back from a handful of wars during the Century of Blood and just before the Dance of the Dragons before rising to extract harsh terms against the Pentoshi. For ninety years Pentos had mocked those levies with their free-bond servants and strong sellsword associations, and trade that made Braavos plenty rich.

They never needed a real empire, Viserys supposed. And it was why they were losing.

It was a week or so after seizing the third fort and pushing his own siege lines up to one of Pentos's postern gates that Viserys received new orders. He was confident he could leave the forts without him for a few days. Maybe a week if it Pentos stayed quiet. The city within that easternmost gate of Pentos was a lower ward, the homes of freedmen and slaves smartly pushed out.

Promises of holy freedom from Braavos had won the Golden Fleet a handful of sieges against Lorath and Norvos, and on the walls Viserys saw only merchant-princes and sellsword captains. He walked around in the open, his silver-white hair doing all the work of a standard.

Leaving the lines under Tytus and Brendel, Viserys and Barristan rode to Blackheart and his entourage atop a hill, watching the Tattered Prince at the head of the Windblown take on a Pentoshi attack from one of the main gates. Two thousand mounted warriors in peaked helms, them and their horses in heavy scale mail and plate, each bearing a long, barbed pikes and a superfluously large scimitar.

"They can hardly move!" Barristan nudged Blackheart as if they were pages. "Did they pick their arms out of a mummer's play?"

"You would be surprised. Volantene armourers are some of the best in the world, and Pentos's stores of steel and gold go deep. Reinforced shields and trenches, deadfalls full of spikes smeared with black grime..." Blackheart looked down at Tatters arraying one thousand of his Windblown, with five hundred in supply. "He must always be *so* daring. Juvenile."

Viserys held back laughter at Blackheart's tone. "Veterans of how many wars?" he looked back on Blackheart's three thousand heavy cavalry, ready and waiting to cut off the Pentoshi from escape. It would put them in trebuchet range, but the Pentoshi were already there. Would they throw on their own men?

"My men are sick," Blackheart said as the Pentoshi started walking their horses forward. They followed officers in various bright colours symbolising guilds and noble houses, the wind catching their pennants as they rode faster and faster, moving in a block formation aiming to hammer the Windblown. "Pykewood?"

"Yes, Captain General?" The morbidly obese serjeant waddled forward, dropping his fidgety piece of rope and some clockwork into a pouch. hung from his gut.

"The trebuchets? Will they throw soon or shall we wait until next winter??"

"Oh, they will. In... three... two..."

The lines of Windblown opened and four trebuchets on shortened arms lobbed four great clouds of sharp stones, each no larger than a melon, no smaller than a peach stone. The Pentoshi were roundly flattened, and fewer than five hundred limped back behind the gates.

Blackheart sighed as the Windblown whooped. Viserys and the Company knights, who would no longer be charging, looked on as Tatters led his men looting the armour and weapons. "It's called professionalism," Pykewood insisted, knowing rightly that all that plunder was for him and his engineers. "Captain General, we-"

"I know, Peake. Dammit, I know. Targaryen, Selmy, with me. The rest of you... try not to end the siege too quickly." The three rode down the hill parallel with the trebuchets, with Viserys spying Torman close to drawing his sword on the Windblown trying to steal, torch, or otherwise vandalise his creations in the name of a good time. "Fucking- Corpsekiller! I'll eat your heart if your men don't stand down!"

Viserys said, "Is illness of such high concern?"

They rode into camp just as a latrine went up in green flames. "Yes."

Viserys moved in on foot, he and Ser Barristan both knowing that acrid scent well and keeping their horses back. The latrine tents burned quick, leaving the man inside without his eyebrows or trousers but otherwise unharmed. Save the green-brown liquids running down his leg. Blackheart said, "Now, you see. They're dumping it upriver."

"That would poison their own wells and cisterns beneath the city." Barristan looked on confused. "To what end?"

Viserys tried resisting inspecting a fluorescent green chunk in a pool of syrupy green liquid in one of the latrine holes. "Stand back!" Viserys picked up a glowing chunk of wood and tossed it in the hole, a green flume going up that burned for a few seconds then went out. It was bright and the tip of his nose was uncomfortably warm, but the ground was not even singed. "Fascinating."

"I've sent for Maegor, but you were closest." Blackheart needed a cane to roam camp, indicating some leaking barrels. "We started mixing the piss with the dust from upriver, and we have some men dedicated to still drink the water."

"Ser, it could kill them. The dust from King's Landing-"

"They're Pentoshi. They earned it, far as I care." Blackheart tapped some smaller barrels of dust from King's Crater with the tip of his cane. "Make something useful. Use Pykewood."

"And your sick men?" Viserys asked.

"*Our* sick men. Learn to lie to them." Blackheart moved off, snapping orders and getting in the face of men young enough to be his grandsons. Given what Maegor had told Viserys of Blackheart's exploits with the fairer sex as a young knight and then silver-fox-serjeant, that was likely the case. Indeed, their were plenty of jug-eared, large-nosed men and women in the Company that shared Blackheart's lack of allegiances.

"He has his own plans by now, last war or not." Viserys and Barristan looked over what they had to work with, the materials for siege weapons and all the various permutations of not-wildfire the Pentoshi and their digestive tracts had given them. Aside from the risk of explosion, Viserys could imagine he was working with elephant dung again, at least to manage the smell.

"One would think... These Dusklands are safe?"

"It was a good place to grow up, for the time I was there." Viserys recalled his barracks in the Forge, Maegor's tower and Lady Danelle's study. And his first kiss. "He would return?"

"Well, Lord *Aerion* wants to go completely nomadic with some influence in Pentos as in Braavos and Norvos, and the Peakes are focusing on the Golden fields and building on the ruins on Rhoyne's tributaries." Viserys knew of the plan he spoke. The Peakes would not have three *castles*, but three cities – Ghoyan Drohe, Ny Sar, and Ar Noy.

"Grand undertakings indeed."

Viserys tried assembling a few materials in a rough configurations. A fuse here, a sack of nails there, not connecting anything but trying to put the pieces together in his own mind. "He could do well with Ser Harry. Building the Forge into... a real place of learning." Viserys tugged on his hair, the white just past his shoulders again. "Perhaps with less traumatic hair cutting."

"We can't all be blessed with such beauty, my prince. Hand me that spring." Barristan's hair when he was a boy was styled and blonde, the tousled hair of a knight in his prime. In Harvest Hall, his hair and beard were long, like some mountain hermit. Now, he was a military man, with a military caesar trim and a clean shave just like Blackheart.

Viserys enjoyed working with him, and wondered if the once-kingsguard had been as encouraging to his brother. Viserys didn't have the heart to ask, but the confidence that filled him when Barristan trusted him was like no other.

***

Viserys struck his tent atop a hill somewhere in Andalos. He could barely see Pentos unless he climbed some perilous cliffs, and took it as a sign to put the current conflict from his mind as he looked out on some mountains connecting land and sea. He built his tent and a cot from some saplings all on his own – it was like the Golden Fields was yesterday.

He hoped Joho's father found someone to read his handwriting.

With Blackheart's men, and Barristan, thinking he went back to the forts and his own men who thought he was with Blackheart, Viserys had maneuvered himself some freedom until dusk the day after, when Maegor would arrive with some alchemically-inclined comrades. All alone, Viserys could be a hedge knight. Were there snow and he shorter, he might be somewhere north of the Wall again.

"Too much solitude for too long," he said to himself. Yet after the chaos of the previous months, he needed now, taking the time to properly whet his weapons, then out of curiosity drawing Dark Sister. He ran the whetstone down without even a whisper of steel. He even scratched the stone.

"I cut mine in half." Viserys knew Tytus's steps, doing him the courtesy of crossing up hill through the bracken, dropping his horse's reins and patting the beast's neck. Both his and Viserys's horses were stallions gifted by Bharbo, whom they had both broken as colts in Vaes Dothrak almost two years before, now raised strong on the Dothraki Sea. "Might a fellow wandering knight beg share your fire?"

"Not a knight." Tytus sat and drew Brightroar, comparing the greatsword to the shorter and thinner Dark Sister.

"They'll write songs about us."

Viserys chuckled, sheathing Dark Sister and checking the edges on his other weapons. "The Pentoshi are impatient."

"Too many mouths to feed." Tytus struck his tent and from his saddlebags, content with the hard ground. "The Jogos Nhai are supposed to have something for the cold, hard ground. Some sort of hammock on stakes."

"You don't seem to be aware of how vast Essos is. Ancient and historic, mysterious and magical, but in Westeros everyone is practically on top of each other."

"Aye, and this stream or that cluster of stones has been fought over for a hundred generations over this or that slight. Tell me something I don't know."

Viserys leaned in to prepare a meal of some dried soup. He saw someone else poking through in Tytus's jest at Westeros's history. Had he changed so much since the maze? "Now you're cynical?"

"It is possible my true feelings have yet to reveal themselves. I wouldn't say I hold any particular disdain for my father's countrymen, but I... mislike the inability of most every lord and peasant in the Seven Kingdoms. to take a wider view." Tytus wore more gold than Viserys, from his helm's accents to a new cuirass and pauldrons. He had almost a full suit like some of the veteran knights. It surprised Viserys as well, Marq having taught them to eschew such wastes of resources. "A longer view of history, if that makes sense?"

That resonated with Viserys. Even if the current state of the Seven Kingdoms was the fault of his family – there had been great works, and they were all gone. Fire and blood. Viserys supposed that Tytus was entirely in character, wearing gold and carrying the hope that he would be remembered as a great knight. He wanted his roar to be heard, bastard or no. "But that is the Seven Kingdoms. The people may be foolish, but they do not fear their children being stolen, and many still, rightfully, trust their lords to dispense justice."

Tytus tutted, "Exceptions, not the rule."

"No, Tytus." Viserys looked him in the eye. "I have seen it. Thenns, Starks, Selmys. Their presence is the rule. Peace is possible in Westeros *because* things are messy. This stream and that cluster of stones may hold great significance, but we cannot hope to win the hearts and minds of anyone if we spit on their history and beliefs. Rather, we must find what we have in common."

Tytus shrugged, which deflated Viserys. He knew too many intelligent men that never took that next step in their thoughts. Viserys supposed that was why Ned Stark was so dour all the time. "I suppose. But things you can see and hold are what keep people loyal. Gold. Steel and bread." As Tytus removed his boots to massage his feet, Viserys's eyes flicked to the gold ring on Tytus's finger. A lion signet. "We learned in Lorath that some battles are won with swords, others with ravens."

Viserys focused on the colour of the Narrow Sea as the sun set, feeling the heat and gladly soaking up the red and gold light. "Whenever my cheeks crack and freckle, I think of crossing the Golden Fields."

"I think of the same. And the humidity in the Dusklands."

"Ugh, those damn flies." Tytus shivered. "That damp made sure I never complained about the cold again." They laughed and then quieted, a calm overtaking them as they cleaned their armour and weapons. Tytus had neither the means nor the desire to take on a squire yet, and Viserys felt no need.

Tytus poured them each a goblet of Pentoshi wine from his own stock of plunder. "I'll be leading some of the Company of the Rose. They wanted in despite their low numbers, but apparently the Manderlys brought us a few thousand Northern pups in need of seasoning before facing the Valemen. It will be good, for when we face the Andalosi." They were both aware of Grand Septon Ferdinand, though neither knew much about the ancient cleric even though he had a fast-growing army and plenty of coin after a successful war with Selhorys. "How do they fight in the North?"

"The Northmen?" Viserys conjured Ned and Domeric in his mind. "The Northmen fight like... it's not fearlessness, it's a... a fullness. Something admirable. A commitment to the cause out of honour, but duty and love as well." He thought of those deposed Valemen, still fighting the enemy while fighting for their new lord. He thought of how honour and duty came before gold and power in the North, and thought it a fine ideal.

"What was it like? Westeros?" As night grew and they built the fire, just their tents at the top of the hill, it was like they were boys again. "Ned Stark, Barristan the Bold... Bloodraven? Wow."

"I could not be sure, even after I had the sword, but Maegor confirmed it." He examined the hilt of Dark Sister. The handle was longer than a typical longsword's, but still so light.

Tytus nodded at first, then twisted his head and made a face. "Who's Maegor?"

"Hm? Who?" Viserys looked at Tytus funny, having told on his cousin. He sighed. "Lord Marshal Aerion. He is not a bastard of a bastard of Aerion Brightflame and a Blackfyre, but Aerion's trueborn son, Maegor Targaryen."

Viserys had Tytus's rapt attention as he told him what he knew of his own family history and that of the late Crown Prince's wing of the family, his younger brother Viserys's ancestor Aegon the fifth of his name. Viserys felt the weight of his similarities with Maegor as he explained the history to Tytus. Both were the sons of the greatest scions of Targaryen madness, and neither would ever have the chance to be king.

At least not by inheriting it.

"Is all that why he is doing this? To conquer?" Tytus looked out on the camp. "The knights of our cohort do not see Blackheart as one of us. But someone like you, if you were an officer under someone like the Lord Marshal..."

"I don't know. I know he loves Toyne like a brother. Closer, I think, from Lysono's... euphemisms." Tytus gave him another funny look. "Like marines."

"Ah. Some swords do not need sheaths, but other swords." They shared a look and averted their gaze. The two had never been *that* cold. "Anyone else strange?"

"Just typical Westerosi. There were these settlers in the North, from the Vale, who would scar their faces with the star of the Seven."

Viserys spent the evening and most of the following morning regaling Tytus with his adventures in Westeros, going on tangents with the rumours they had heard of the Seven Kingdoms and the renewed fighting between Rhaegar, Robert, and the infamous King of Thorns.

Chapter Text

"CRROOOONNESSS!" Cosimo smashed Viserys and Vaok in a bare and sculpted arm each, then climbed his way up Baqarro to tackle Drogo from above. "Honorary Crone!" He kissed Robar on the mouth and left the young knight catatonic.

From his garb he was lockstep infantry and not even a captain – Viserys supposed not everyone ended up a knight or officer, but it had made Cosimo all the more himself, with that Rhoynish lust for life and ecstatic to see his old comrades. "Hale and hearty! And you!" He turned back on Viserys. "Don't go exploring mazes again!"

Viserys embraced the short sellsword again. "And you exploring the Red Wastes was a part of the plan?"

"Hah! Too true. Drogo and I showed those slavers what for, eh Drogo?" The Dothraki looked up from the bosom of a whore, confused. "Idiot."

The Crones and their friends were under a sun shade waiting on the negotiations of their betters, enjoying the delights paid for by the Pentoshi in the meanwhile – anything to delay more siege, a party of one-thousand of the city's finest whores and vintners had been gifted to the attackers.

Viserys wondered how his unit had made it so high by comparison to others, but then again, he figured it much more likely Blackheart, Bharbo and Tywin Lannister had orchestrated it for them all to end up together.

That, or it was a coincidence.

Viserys waved away the woman who tried sitting on his lap. "You want a boy? Maybe a big strong man?" She said it with that voice only whores had, and she was very serious.

He held up his hand in the universal sign of 'no thanks,' but so as not to offend her – she was a beautiful woman, local, with dark hair dyed in orange streaks and pale olive skin – and he tucked a gold coin into her cleavage. "Do you have someone?" Baqarro asked.

He, Robar and Viserys all sat together, preferring a quiet goblet over the raucous singing of their companions. "I don't rightly know. I know I don't want to bed a whore the Pentoshi sent."

Robar made an itching motion against his crotch. "Smart. I for one will await the deliverance of a lady wife."

"Are your prospects so fair?" Baqarro asked. As a man with his friends, he was talkative, and just to be near the gentle giant put Viserys at ease. "I thought your mother's family exiled her."

"They did, but I'm no bastard and my father was a landless knight's *trueborn* son. I've a small keep and a bond to House Osgrey waiting for me. They've done well in the Northmarch against the Red King and the Lannisters, meaning no offense to your brother, of course."

"No, you should mean offense. The *most* offense. It's the least he deserves." Viserys laughed, though his unit-mates did not. "Truly. He's beyond an enigma to me. A stranger who left me with nothing before Marq found me." Viserys drank more wine. It warmed him. "And what would a man need with enemies when he has blood like that, eh? A man who does nothing as his mother is raped and his baby sister stolen from the crib, his brother poisoned, stabbed and left for dead? Who does something like that!"

"Viserys." Robar said. The one-eared knight looked at him firmly. "You are not among strangers."

Viserys sighed. Baqarro patted his back. "I loathe my desire to understand him. To throttle him and tell him I miss him. It makes me ill to imagine all the things that could have happened to me, that may have happened to his wife or daughter. And our sister. I want to look him in the eye and..."

The horns blew and they all stood. The whores got tips and a few final kisses, Viserys even claiming one from the madam old enough to be his grandmother, if nothing to surprise him into sobriety. Age brought experience, he supposed.

Mounted and cantering to the main tent, they were in the fifth rank when the Volantene generals fled on their chariots and the Pentoshi returned to their litters and palanquins. They hid behind through the Sunrise Gate, the largest into the city.

Blackheart came out of the meeting tent to stand before his men, looking particularly sober as the Tattered Prince stormed out and mounted. "Windblown!"

"Hoo-Ah!" Five thousand sellswords answered with a bassy cry, from Westerosi knights and Rhoynish pit fighters to half-trained Unsullied and Yi-Tish fire lancers.

"Prepare for battle! Prepare for death!"

"Hoo-Ah!" They rode, yipping and yowling and screaming various battle cries as they arrayed themselves at the front of any charge. Five thousand mixed cavalry was no force to blink at.

Blackheart looked across at his men, who stayed quiet and still before him. They only took commands from serjeants, and serjeants only took commands from the captain general, who stood among his dearest officers and advisors.

Blackheart hobbled forward, discarding his cane and straightening his back as his old hip injury was forgotten. He had been only a boy before, so Viserys had forgotten how broad and tall Myles Toyne truly was. "Comrades, today we fight our greatest battle. Yet we are not the ragtag sellswords and exiles that served the legacy of House Blackfyre, but the Golden Company. We were made here, in Essos, and Pentos will be a prize as good as any coin. For beneath the gold..."

"The bitter steel!"

"That's right." With a wave four long tables were arrayed around him, laid with maps and ledgers. "What of the wildfire?"

Viserys strode forward. "We have something. But it needs to happen before the Windblown charge."

Maegor said, "You let me worry about the Windblown." He mounted a black stallion and drew Blackfyre. "Golden knights! With me!"

Blackheart pointed out the dual leaders of the Ragged Standard. "Whitehand, I need you here."

Parcival Whitehand nodded, turning to Roberon Reyne. "Ride with Lord Aerion." The ginger knight grinned, leading the Ragged Standard after Maegor.

"Speak," Blackheart said.

Viserys said, "They will be thrown from trebuchets."

***

*While the Battle of Pentos was not the first use of incendiary weaponry in the post-Targaryen period, it is considered a landmark point in proliferating its use in western and central Essos. Nor the first historical use of such weapons, having been employed in Yi Ti and Leng for almost two centuries by 289, successes in the conquest of Pentos would define warfare for decades after as the free companies and free cities began experimenting with firearms in wars at home and abroad.*

*The role Prince Viserys played in this period is largely unclear. It is known that he developed an intellectual interest in Wildfire in a bid to solve the ills left behind by his father, though he was also closely associated with the exploits of his polymath elder cousin, Captain General Maegor Targaryen, who then still posed as Lord Marshal Aerion Brightfyre, and his experiments with wildfire, which began when he was an acolyte at the Citadel.*

*This was due in large part to Prince Viserys first hand experience with Pentos's use of 'wild-dust', acclaimed in the personal diary of the second Lord of the Narrow, Maric Seaworth, Lord of the Rainwood. Seaworth was serving as a deck boy and rower aboard his father's ship, Black Betha, when Prince Viserys fought to defend the ship from his own brother's hired sellswords. Lord Maric wrote "He knew how fast it burned and to sweep the fire as if we were mopping the deck. Others went up in flames, but the Betha was only a little blacker."*

— — *Dragon, Titan, Horse: The Rise and Fall of the Great Empires of Essos*, by Dr. Daenys Brightwater, Order of Westeros, First Class. Gulltown University Press.

***

Viserys rode with the light cavalry on one of the wings. Bharbo held his screamers back until all the free companies were arranged, sending the Dothraki up among the armoured Westerosi and folk of the Free Cities and starting to rile everyone up. Some screamers carried drums, a few had flutes, and all had their throats. They could scream, but they could also sing.

A calm rose in Viserys as the song filled Drogo and Baqarro, the bells in their hair ringing as their horses started tearing up the earth.

"The smell," Ser Barristan said flatly. "We didn't warn anyone about the smell."

"I am not cutting my hair again."

The Pentoshi scorpions loosed a volley that fell short, though their tower trebuchets did not. In one throw, two thousand sellswords were dead or dying.

"What are they waiting for?" Off to Viserys' right he heard the reel-thwack of a trebuchet, and a burning barrel he'd built fell from the sky towards the Sunrise Gate.

The green was already seeping through the wood, dripping out and catching fire as it tasted air, some landing on the Windblown. It burned faster than wildfire, but slower than before.

Four trebuchets lobbed four barrels each – half of everything. Less the bowels of prisoners and more just urine, Viserys managed to wash most of the dust and ash from the barrels of dust, calling on the wisdom of, well, wisdoms, and their writings that Maegor long had in his possession. "Seven hells, Viserys," Barristan said.

"My namesake created their guild. Of course I learned how to make wildfire."

The Sunrise Gate was so named both for its eastern-facing direction and its appearance – polished bronze, copper, and brass riveted over polished iron and stone. When the sunrise hit it, it glowed.

And when the wildfire hit it, it burned.

Melted, rather.

It burned fast, and shock and awe bore out as the gate hinges rather than the gates themselves melted, while the weight of the dripping slag pulled the gates down and out.

Viserys did not take long relishing in an exploit that he had a part in, having designed the inner mechanism that lit the wildfire. He had bound the barrels in rope for transport, only an impact that could break the barrel enough for a spark.

They had mixed a few with lamp oil and the last of the unrefined dust as well, and it made for a series of popping explosions and sustained burns atop the battlements and towers nearest the gate towers. The Windblown cared little, charging into the city through the melting gates and past the garrisons of Volantene tigers and Unsullied.

The slave soldiers filed out to face them, and the real fighting started then in the fire and melting stone, when Khal Bharbo led his screamers in a rematch in honour Khal Temmo. He led fewer screamers against more Unsullied, but he did not do so alone, the swarm of cavalry like a pack of wolves tearing at the Unsullied one bite at a time, as the heavy cavalry of the Ragged Standard pierced them from the flank.

Viserys had seen such a tactic at Myr, joining Maegor's charge against the sallying Pentoshi lancers aiming for Roberon's flank. "With me, brother!" Maegor roared with Blackfyre high, Viserys doing the same with Dark Sister. "Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!" They smashed into the Pentoshi a hammer on black iron. The lancers cracked under the slightest pressure, yet they fled in no discernible formation other than panic.

Maegor called a retreat for the heavy infantry and sent in the lockstep. Viserys spied Cosimo by Tytus beside him, Brightroar still held high. The Pentoshi were easily cleaned up by a swarming sea snake formation, and done with the full force of twenty thousand shields and spears. It was the stuff of Ghiscari legend.

As the Dothraki and Ragged Standard moved to fighting in the city, the Volantenes giving chase, it was left to the Golden Company to face the Unsullied.

Viserys found Maegor watching with Blackheart. He had modelled the lockstep after Unsullied, and he would see them face to face. "Pull back to match their numbers. I would not slaughter slaves."

Blackheart agreed and Marq next to him bellowed through cracking voice, "Regiments! Fall back!"

It was four thousand to four thousand all done. Maegor was not giving orders, but the formations changed as he said the words, his training doctrine, his forms, every aspect from the length of the spear and the weight of the shield to the bend in the knee of a proper kneeling position when in a blackwood formation his design laid bare on the field.

"Company left, forward turn, advance." The regiments had formed into unmoving blocks each a hundred men wide and five men deep. The Unsullied moved in three arrowhead shapes, their commanders on chariots in the middle of them. "Sharpshooters."

Arrows were already flying from the spearmen, the desired effect as entrenchment on the Unsullied's part shifted to defending their commanders, which in turn moved the battle away from the Sunrise Gate. "Marq, the cavalry. Viserys, the infantry."

Viserys dismounted to be sure, donning his Thenn shield and raising Dark Sister while taking a red-plumed Golden Company full helm. The other serjeants took their men as Viserys assembled his. If only he could convince his own three thousand to come with him to unite the sunset kings.

He needed no time to rile them, calling an advance at a march, shields raised to defend from arrows. Neither gate tower had been taken, the Windblown too focused on the prince's palace, the Dothraki on looting, and everyone else on securing magisters, the ports, and great prizes of a city's sack.

He split his force into units of five that fought from room to hallway to door up the keeps to the trebuchets and the walls beyond. Viserys fought at the front, sword a blur of red and grey as he parried, cut, thrust, slashed in anger or raised his shield in fear. Instinct had to make up for lacking skill, but he was strong and fast as well. He was reminded his skills often did not deliver him, just that he had longer reach and a sharper blade than most, and he took a spear on his shield arm that agitated the healed break he earned in the Stormlands.

Retreating behind a few lines of men, he nearly lost his breakfast at the bloody, pointy piece of white sticking through the underside of his forearm when he averted his gaze and alerted the half-maester that followed him.

As the battle raged ahead, he snapped a few orders as the break was set. "It is fractured, my prince."

"Viserys."

"It is fractured, Vis-"

"Blackwood!" he roared, the medic raising his own tower shield. The back side was half apothecary. "How long?"

He offered a leather-wrapped rod and Viserys bit down. With a crack of pain that showed him black stars in his eyes, his arm was splinted and wrapped soon after. "Wine, at least."

"Water. And bread with olive oil." Viserys had the towers and what remained of the gate keeps below, ordering bucket brigades of dirt and sand to contain the fire from what appeared to be an upper ward of the city as the maester fashioned a strap so he could use his shield arm without moving his elbow or wrist. "Coin and finery only! If you need two men to carry it, it stays!"

Ordering a recovery once cadets and squires arrives to relieve them, Viserys moved into the city, down the streets to start clearing houses. Militiamen and sellswords who threw down their arms were tied up and logged away for later, while any true soldiers or officers were executed or put aside for ransom, while the Unsullied remanded to Maegor. "You will need stitches," he said as they gathered their bearings and looked at the medics work. "And should hold back, sword arm still intact."

"Unsullied fight to the death. It would be honourable-"

"I laugh on honour. Victory is about who wins, boy." His cousin patted his good arm and returned to his stallion and the battle with the Unsullied. He hoped Maegor could help the Unsullied, but not while the battle still raged.

Through that outer district of tall townhouses and professional storefronts, Viserys's regiments progressed into something between market and tenement. It was a hive in truth, a city within a city built among the slums atop a cliff overhanging the bay's eastern edge. Viserys examined the entrance like the maw of a beast, looking at his Windblown guide beside him.

He was some ancient veteran that looked like a knight while insisting he was not from Westeros. "What am I looking at?"

"The Upper Slums. Torch it, I say." Viserys shook his head and looked at Cosimo. "Keep an eye on him."

"With pleasure."

"Let's do like Mace Tyrell, eh?" Tytus said.

Viserys agreed. "Wildflower! Wildflower! Thorns, advance!" Viserys trotted in, hit by a stench and humidity the moment he entered. The walls were mainly fabric, fishnets and old packing crates, the floor much the same and creaking perilously.

Viserys made a few turns, keeping his eyes forward and using Dark Sister like a machete in the jungle. He held back as three children rushed by, Cosimo cuffing a man who reached for one of them.

It was slow going, but the deeper they went, the larger the passages became, cleaner and even with stable flooring. There were brick walls and proper wood framing, though everything still had an endlessly labyrinthine way to it, the lines between two buildings or even two rooms always vague.

Viserys took a wrong turn he did not know where, turning back to find neither Cosimo nor Tytus. He heard combat and running overhead and behind him, but saw nothing and no one. The fighting to seize the slum was staggering, echoing like the cacophony at the gates of Myr. He advanced towards the sounds of combat, cutting down a Pentoshi and helping up a Company man half fallen through the floor.

"Seven hells, captain," she groaned. "Thorns usually works."

"I didn't account for terrain." Viserys listened to the battle. "Stay with me. Company! To me! Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!"

Viserys looked back at the infantry. "Your name?"

"Forget me so easily?" Viserys found the light and saw Nym under the gilded helm. "Surprised?"

"I thought Arianne was off shore."

"She is, the coward." She pulled up her helmet, kissed Viserys, and started moving again.

He cursed her and followed, taking back the lead and saying, "We need to reassemble. We should have secured the perimeter and left it for Tatters."

Nym guffawed. "Obviously. If only you were as smart as you are pretty."

She winked and dashed away, linking them up with more company. They turned a corner to see three Company men grappling with a large group of Pentoshi irregulars, fifteen or twenty of them. Viserys was charging them when he saw Brightroar. "Shields!"

Nym was on his right as they advanced. "Tytus!" Rushing into the Pentoshi to cut down three as Nym took two, the formation handled the rest.

He turned and found Brightroar in the hands of a dead Pentoshi. "Tytus?" Viserys looked over the bodies, Company men hacked to pieces by the Valyrian steel greatsword in the hands of the enemy. "Tytus!"

Nym shrugged and reached for the sword, though Viserys ordered it belted to his back instead. He kept moving, certain of an explanation, though not prepared for the truth and ignoring the scream of pain in his arm.

He advanced up a ladder, losing Nym but not the Company. "No! NO! PLEASE!"

It was a woman's voice wailing in bastard Valyrian, the pleas clear enough. Viserys rushed in just as the woman, her dress torn and exposing her breasts, stabbed a Company man in the neck with a kitchen knife. Viserys saw his breeches and armour around his knees and a bare buttocks, hot blood spurting out of his neck as the woman stabbed him over and over again.

"Run! Go!" she cried.

Two small children dodged around Viserys as the woman threw herself at him. He reacted on instinct, shield battering away the knife and sword sinking into her up to the hilt. Her panic faded as her children ran into the arms of Company nurses, and he hoped she died at peace.

Viserys looked down the Company man, then at Nym closing the door behind him.

Tytus clawed at his neck, one side all the way up to his ear and eye an endless bleeding gash. Pink oozed from his ear and blood poured from his wound. "Vis-" His other hand reached for Viserys, though his hand tapped more than it grabbed, pawing at his boot. "Vis-" Viserys stepped backwards, away from him.

Viserys looked down at the hole in the floor, where Brightroar had dropped through. His heart pounded in his ears. His eyes and tongue were dry staring at Tytus.

Tytus had removed his helmet, resting on the hovel's excuse for a dining table. His scabbard and belt were on the floor.

He was still reaching for Viserys, crawling, his armour and breeches dragged down to his ankles. "Vis- Vis-"

His eyes pleaded with Viserys. Viserys drew Brightroar and swung.

Chapter Text

Viserys tested his arm, rotating his and flexing his hand. "Better. Thank you, my ladies."

"It was a simple enough potion," Lady Danelle Lothston said, smacking his bad arm. "Don't fuck up like that again."

"Anything for you, Viserys." Ashara Dayne smiled, and he could have melted. "The break healed well. Who set it?"

"A medic."

"The first one?"

"Oh. A maester."

"Ah, so the tales of your exploits haven't been exaggerated?"

Viserys tried to shrug, but his mood was not bright enough. He had found Ashara after his regiments were reabsorbed by Blackheart's rear advance, the last of the army filing into the city. He was somewhere in a middle ward, sprawling glass gardens and public fruit groves for use by the cities 'free' people. He still carried Brightroar on his back, along with Tytus's signet and arm rings so the message was clear, but he said nothing, and nor was he asked. "If I had known you would be with the Standard, I'd have sought you out."

"I wanted some quiet, is that so wrong? Now – what of this letter, *protector of the realm*?"

Viserys blushed. "I was convinced to be bold. Though in hindsight I see that it might have been... too bold." Viserys got his head right and stood, pulling on his shield and tightening the straps to hold his arm together. "Where are the lines now?"

Ashara sighed but helped him along anyway. "Around the Prince's Palace. It's a melee with no end in sight since the Unsullied retreat." She held him from egress, and he winced as she touched a bruise. "You have fought enough. Stay. Rest."

"Cosimo's there. Vaok, Robar. Drogo, even. They need me." Viserys turned into Ser Barristan, who gently but firmly returned him to a cot.

"My prince, please rest. Thank you, nurse. I'll take it from here." He turned back and started wiping the grime from a cut on Viserys's chin, before he stopped suddenly. He turned back to the nurse. His eyes were aflutter, blinking at Ashara.

"Hello, Ser Barristan." She curtsied like the perfect young lady, and, probably by design from her smirk, Barristan collapsed next to Viserys, still staring.

"I'm sorry."

"What for?"

He shook his head. "How?"

"I survived. Found a way to... go on after everything changed."

Barristan shook his head, waking from the stupor. "I will not act... entitled, but after we're done here will you... perhaps drink a goblet of wine with me?"

Ashara smiled. "I believe I would enjoy that, Ser."

Viserys looked between them. That was history. His boyish infatuation with Ashara was nothing compared to *that*.

He found his feet thanks to the both of them, having Ashara knot a splint to his right ankle over his boot but under his armour, as Barristan stitched up his chin. "Be thankful for your youth now, boy. You can't push yourself like this forever."

Viserys hooked his helmet to his belt and then offered Brightroar to the one-time white cloak. "Aye, but I will while I can."

Barristan was strong and tall enough for a mundane greatsword – with something as light as Valyrian steel, he was sure to be a terror. "Be careful at war," Ashara said, pulling a favour from each sleeve. White, scented of something, she handed to Barristan, lavender coloured scented with lemon for Viserys. "And then we shalll sail home together."

***

Viserys found Cosimo and Vaok advancing towards the prince's palace. While the Dothraki kept up their pillaging the fighting for everyone but the Tattered Prince's inner circle was street by street, house by house.

It was hard going as they advanced, fighting until they were ankle deep in gore and broken architecture, retreating for a few hours to rest only to throw themselves back at the Pentoshi for a few more hours. Night and day passed a few times, the air getting hotter and muggier and filled with flies as days without a bath and the dead piled up.

Since no one was alive or around to to fill and light the street lamps, when night came they fought in the dark. All they could see was what the moon illuminated, reflecting either off the sea or a heap of reddened steel that passed for the front lines.

Fighting in the dark indoors was a sort of horror similar to the frigid solitude of the Lands of Always Winter, in that Viserys never wanted to experience it ever again. As he cut through one man, he felt his blood soak his armour to the skin, then the hot breath of two men, a comrade on his neck and an enemy on his face. It was a bog of bodies, a mire of death they had sworn to capture.

He pushed Tytus from his mind as Vaok and Cosimo fought back to back closer than brothers. Perhaps Viserys never knew the quiet half-Myrish bastard that once refused to give him his name.

Barristan wielded Brightroar well. A knight was not inducted into the kingsguard for no reason, and Cosimo took particular heart watching the hero of legend in a whorl of shimmering dragonsteel.

Cosimo hurled his spear at a man charging Barristan from behind and swiped Dark Sister from Viserys with the medics holding him down again, the Rhoynar hurrying to fight with the knight in gold and white.

Cosimo grinned as he cleaved through one spear and the man behind it, hacking and slashing like a gleeful child. "Well done, comrade!" Barristan shouted to be heard over the din, with a twirl taking a head, parrying and cutting the arm off another Pentoshi.

Cosimo's swordplay was brutal and efficient, and Viserys doubted he had ever seen a straighter thrust or steadier cut.

Yet that predictability, with his daring, was Cosimo's downfall.

The Pentoshi lines thickened as the fight wore on, and as Viserys cried, "Shields! Blackwood! Blackwood!" and Barristan and the others retreated, Cosimo stayed where the fray was thickest.

He had his shield, and Viserys turned his back for only a moment, but when he faced the enemy, there were only Pentoshi soldiers.

***

Vaok limped to Viserys's side, managing with just one crutch while indicating the great patch of gauze over the right side of his face. "I'll keep my eye." He pulled up the corner to reveal a stinking burn over part of the spider tattoo. "A curse on your father."

"I should sell seats." Viserys put himself under the tattooed Essosi to take the weight off his injury, before looking down at where Vaok's left foot should have been. "Seven hells."

Dawn broke through the windows, illuminating the bodies of Tytus and Cosimo in the room with them. Someone had pulled up Tytus's breeches and armour, and cleaned and stitched his wounds. "The night is dark and full of terrors."

Dark Sister was embedded through Cosimo's torso, and with a tug Viserys released it and covered the wound with the Rhoynar's cloak. "From Mother Rhoyne's waters we are born, to them we shall return."

The house around them shook as Drogo and Baqarro came barrelling up the stairs. Baqarro froze and simply lowered his hands to Vaok and Viserys's shoulders, but Drogo roared. He roared and wailed and destroyed the room. "I will find them! I will take these moustache men and merchants and I will rape their daughters and geld their sons! I will stamp out their line and- and-" Drogo slowed to look at Cosimo, face and limbs bruised and swollen from being trampled underfoot.

Viserys's hand found Dark Sister's grip. The fighting was so thick, the weapon's finishings had been destroyed again, weirwood and wildling leather needing to be replaced.

"I'm bound for the Dusklands." The others turned to Vaok. "The port is taken and I can no longer fight. I'm to be a smith, and the Forge needs real Essosi. It can't all be Valyrians and Sunsetlanders."

"Stay for the handover at least, brother," Drogo said, smearing mucus into his beard as he wiped his nose, then filled his mouth with mare's milk. "May we ride in the Nightlands together."

Vaok shook his head. "I thought I could stay. Fight forever. But I don't want to die young. Like Tytus or Cosimo. I want to live for my dead. Have a family, and make sure our brothers are remembered."

"Coward! You-" Baqarro rose before Drogo, mouth in a line and black eyes hard.

Drogo burst into tears and buried his face in Baqarro's shoulder.

Vaok said, in High Valyrian as when they were children, "There is peace in the Dusklands," as they walked from the room down to the manse's courtyard. Viserys wrapped his arm around Vaok to half carry, half limp him down the stairs. "Nym's a bastard. If you asked her, she would... Though quiet's not your idea of peace, is it?"

"You know it isn't." It felt good to speak his mother tongue. "I have family that needs me. Though they may have forgotten me, I have not forgotten them." He offered Vaok his arm again as they descended steps from the manse's estate to the street, Pentos all hills and cliffs and overhanging wards of slums and workhouses, the Pentoshi within the Windblown already appointing themselves street captains and city lords of the new order. "And everyone who fought with me is either dead or bound for other wars. Or this 'peace' you speak of."

Vaok snorted as they turned up a street to join the queuing infantrymen. Despite injuries, they would all be paid, and with Vaok's indication at his lack of foot, he earned a hefty sack of coin he swiftly exchanged for a parcel of land. "I'll take six moons I think, at least until summer sets in properly, before I do anything of note again. Maybe raise sheep until then. Would you mind... putting in a good word for me with Lord Peake?"

"Of course, comrade." Viserys hefted his own sack of gold. He'd prefer Cosimo.

Or Vaok's foot.

Viserys promised Vaok he would join the remaining Crones for an evening of disreputable behaviour after he was done, climbing the city's hills towards the prince's palace.

Pentos was too old and too important for a true sack, but the free companies and the Dothraki had all taken their fill. Houses and slums were smoking or burning, manses were plundered with their windows smashed, and four of every five magisters had their entire household and lineage attainted and struck from Pentos's histories, the sons gelded or slayed and the daughters all given to the Dothraki.

Viserys had more than just a bag of gold as well, claiming some lesser magister's modest fleet of cogs and the horses of some Dothraki Drogo gave him command of – all but a few of their riders were dead, and those who lived had been reabsorbed into Bharbo's force – not even Baqarro was willing to cross the poison water with him.

The sight below the prince's palace, however, was a grisly one, the massive gold and blue banner of Pentos still flying high overhead as soldiers defended the sealed doors of the palace proper, the ground around long since ruined by fighting. The Windblown and Golden Company still threw themselves at the doors. Boiling oil, wild-dust sand heated in great brass pots, and an endless supply of crossbow bolts pouring down on them. Company shields kept the worst off, but the Windblown were dwindling fast under injury and exhaustion.

The Tattered Prince fought at their front, standard held high, and while his eyes were red with battle fury, he and his people were still hacking at solid stone and iron.

The courtyard between Viserys and the last line of battle was no better, a depressed amphitheatre for meetings of sprawling noble classes organised upon lines Viserys had little interest in learning. Sellswords waded up to their waists in blood and gore, looting or searching for their friends where they would occasionally dive in. The second time a man nearly drowned, it was cordoned off.

"Population's already turning," a Ragged knight said. A crowd of Ragged Standard, Company of the Rose, and Golden Company knights and officers clustered around a meeting tent, trying to hear what was going on while on guard duty.

"'Ent most of 'em slaves?" a younger Northman from the Company of the Rose responded. "Jut tell 'em you'll whip 'em."

"They're all free now. Lord Reyne promised as much." The Northman's superior – Viserys swore he recognised Smalljon Umber, but he could not be sure – cuffed the youngster. "No slaves anymore, cousin. Remember?"

Viserys waded through the knights and officers to Ser Barristan at Blackheart's hip, who stood and gave him his chair. The tent smelled like cheese. "You're supposed to be resting."

"I wasn't going to miss this."

"The Prince has been quite clear with his concessions. Quite *forgiving* with his concessions." The magister negotiating for Pentos was a rotund, yellow-blonde man who seemed to be the source of the smell, as he was the only man or woman about whom Viserys did not know.

"You're lucky we're giving you this much." Maegor led the negotiations, though he had Parcival Whitehand at his hip. "To say nothing of the people and coin, but think of the blood. How many soldiers still reside in the prince's palace?"

"Plenty of coin, plenty of people. Soldiers... slaves." The magister shrugged. "They knew what they were signing."

"They did not, actually." Lysono Maar snapped his fingers and pulled forward a trio of Company boys. A recruit, a cadet, and a squire from their ages, each with the olive skin and red-blonde hair of a Pentoshi. "Not one of their fathers is literate, yet they signed."

The magister studied his crystal goblet. "Serra lives, Lord Aerion." He smirked and drank again as Maegor turned to approach around the table. It took Roberon, Bharbo and half his bloodriders to keep Maegor back. "Withdraw from the city without the Windblown, or I will have your daughter thrown from the battlements in pieces. You have extracted your price, Golden Company, and the rest have what they sought, no?"

Denzo D'han was the sole Windblown in the meeting. He said nothing. "Man's too old to stand," Barristan muttered.

Aurane Waters had to help Denzo to his feet from where he sat behind Maegor. "The Prince seeks justice still, Illyrio. You know as well as I he will not stop until he gets it."

"Yes, but-"

*CRAAAACK*

With a groan and snap, the palace doors burst open, the Windblown and Golden Company spilling through. "Hold ranks, dammit!" Blackheart roared, climbing up to the top of an elephant so the army could at least see him through the cacophany.

The Magister Illyrio dashed off, Maegor took off like a shot after him, and Viserys groaned as he gave chase. He was exhausted, sore all over, and in need of a bath – and possibly an evening weeping in a whore's arms – but still he ran, dropping his pack, donning his helmet, and drawing Dark Sister. "Prince Viserys!"

"Follow me, Ser Barristan!"

Barristan overtook him in three strides, and with Brightroar in hand carved an army as only Valyrian steel could. "Make way for the prince!" Viserys wanted to knock the knight on the head for that, worse because it quieted the Windblown as well as they broke into the palace

They rushed after Maegor, who had lost ground to the obese magister, spry enough to duel the former captain general as they danced deeper into the prince's palace. Illyrio wielded just a simple bravo's rapier, but not even Blackfyre could pass his twirling guard and flicking blade. Maegor already had cuts and oozing wounds on his face, and he was forced to slow to survive following from a distance.

"Enough of this!" Viserys caught up to Maegor and held him upright, the magister looking down at them from another stairway. Maegor roared, "You die today, cheesemonger!"

"If you want her to live, you will follow me no more." Illyrio burst through a door and the Targaryens followed as he threw himself at a women looking out a window, wrapping her up in his fat, flabby strength and holding the rapier to her neck.

She was perhaps five-and-twenty, in a gossamer dress and gold jewellery. Such finery marked her as a concubine, especially considering the furnishings. Silk, orchids, love cards and little else.

"Lower your sword." Barristan came up behind them and levelled Brightroar at the magister's chest as Viserys and Maegor approached from the sides.

"Papa?" the concubine mewed.

"It will be alright," Maegor said.

"Silence!" The cheesemonger pressed the blade to her neck, a bead of red running down her neck and staining her dress. She screamed at that nick of pain. "I lost it all before, I can rebuild it all again!" he roared.

"Not this time, Vaegon." Maegor raised Blackfyre. "It's alright, Serra. Papa's here."

Viserys advanced on the magister's sword arm, seeking some twitch or weakness in his grip. Vaegon or Illyrio held the blade as only a practiced hand could, his rotundity not diminishing his skills and only adding to his strength. "Come, Selmy. Would you not want to serve your old friend Rhaegar again? Perhaps have a taste?" Illyrio dragged his tongue up the side of Serra's face, making her shiver and squirm.

Viserys lunged, dropping his sword and breaking his shield arm again on the magister's bulk. The fat man tipped backwards to avoid him as Viserys reached for Serra, only for all three of them to go crashing through the window.

"Papa!"

"Serra!" Maegor threw himself forward, tackling Serra as Illyrio caught both her and Viserys in his paws, pulling all four of them through the window.

With a thrust and lunge, Barristan staked Brightroar to the stone floor and grabbed Maegor, trying to haul him up as he slipped and barely held his boots to the window frame.

Viserys meanwhile was driving his fist into the magister's face, as Serra kicked and punched like an ape in Bharbo's menagerie and the magister's great bulk threatened to tear Viserys's broken arm apart. "This is not how House Blackfyre dies! My blood lives!"

"No!" Serra wept. "No! It wasn't yours!"

The magister lost half his will but his rage doubled, pulling at Maegor and Serra's hair. Viserys drew the Valyrian steel dagger, its curved, claw-like blade glinting silver in the morning sun. He drove the dagger downward and then across, taking the magister's eye and then the brain behind it.

His great weight released, and he fell with a crash, dying on the pikes of the Golden Company.

Chapter Text

Vaok's singing was what Viserys would always remember.

When sung in chorus, High Valyrian spoke to the soul, telling of another time and another world, when fire reigned and dragons danced – when men roamed the world as gods.

The molten gold baked his skin, and it warmed the golden rings on his bare arms. Levering his weight down, Viserys, with Aurane on the other side, pulled the hook and its load from a glowing crucible. They let the excess gold off the skull before it was passed to Vaok's gloved hands, though while wearing the stole and hood of a priest of R'hllor. "Captain General Myles Toyne, the Blackheart, served the Golden Company faithfully for twenty-eight years," Vaok said. "Now, his service is ended."

"Now, his service is ended."

Myles stepped forward, exchanging his arm rings for a chain of golden links Maegor draped around his neck.

"Illyrio's skull?" muttered Viserys.

"Aye. A fair trade, to recognize Blackheart's service," Aurane said.

Blackheart stood to cheers, Marq and Barristan chief among them. "As the new Lord Marshal, I would nominate Ser Maegor Targaryen, to follow me as Captain General!" Maegor blushed at the praise, as the company cheered. "I see no reason for us to continue with charades of debate. All those who disagree, simper and whine. All those who agree, stomp and shout aye!"

"Aye!"

"Beneath the gold!"

"The bitter steel!"

Men young enough to be his grandchildren raised Maegor to their shoulders, carrying him around the crowd and back to the dais. They were encamped beyond the city with only the stars above, and from there it was as if the siege had never happened, save the scent of smoke in the air.

"I thank you, comrades, friends – and family." Maegor raised his hands for quiet, taking the Company standard with its new skull in his hand, butt planted on his heel like a spearman. "I have news, first and foremost. Denzo?"

The Windblown captain wobbled up the dais, eyes red as if he had been weeping. From a sack, he withdrew the bloody cloak of the Tattered Prince. "The gates, such bloodshed. My friends are all dead and gone. Like dust in the wind."

A heavy silence hung over the Golden Company, Ragged Standard, and Dothraki. Save a few concubines, Denzo D'han was all that remained of the Windblown. "Thank you, Denzo, for that auspicious... poem," Maegor said, guiding the bard to some waiting squires. "Any Windblown who remain will be given peace and land in Pentos, as the Tattered prince would have wanted."

There were grumbled nods of assent as the Windblown came to an end. "The Golden Company was bound for change. This, we all knew." Maegor's voice carried as only a general's could, and the camp fell still so that all the many thousands of warriors could hear him. The bloodiest battle in Essos since Khal Temmo's Dothraki fell to the three-thousand of Qohor, if the scribes told it true. "In recent days, I have been... changed. Changed more than I could have ever known."

Viserys's eyes flicked to Serra, between Ser Barristan and Nymeria, the Dornish Bastard having found Viserys soon after the battle was ended and assigning herself to Maegor's long-lost daughter. "The Company will stay. We will bring peace to Pentos and raise up new magisters and ways of thinking. With Braavos's aid, and Khal Bharbo as our ally, Pentos may truly become the bastion of enlightenment and prosperity it has long claimed to be."

The Company growled and hissed somewhat at the idea of becoming glorified city watchmen. "It is not adventure on the far side of the world, but it *is* peace. It is land for your daughters and a trade for your sons. Our trade has been war for generations, but all to the end of seating the rightful heir to the House of the Dragon on the Iron Throne. But what if there is no Iron Throne to sit? No Seven Kingdoms to rightfully inherit?"

Maegor spoke to the very heart of the Golden Company's philosophy, that one day they could have peace and land for their houses in the Seven Kingdoms, all in the name of attainted ancestors that had followed a lost bloodline. "The dream of the Bittersteel is no longer possible, comrades. But we can bring our way of life here. There is good land from Andalos to the River of Myrth, all up and down the Rhoyne and amongst the Hills of Norvos."

"And the Golden Fields!" a comrade shouted.

The men sounded more excited at that. For many, it was land they knew well after serving Pentos before their treachery. "And who are you, Targaryen? Whose name has been false for decades!" Lord Laswell pointed an accusatory finger at Maegor, but to Viserys the mummery was clear – now was the chance for Maegor to prove himself all over again.

"I was born betwixt Blackfyre rebellions, Lord Peake, and raised to hate them besides. I joined after the death of Maelys the Monstrous to save the Golden Company, to make it something better. I could not do that as a Targaryen. But as another bastard, I could show, nay, prove, that anyone, Brightkfyre or bastard, slave or sellsword – anyone can rise high through his strength at arms and the strength of his character in the Golden Company."

"Or *her* character!" Lady Lothston limped forward, one of her stepsons-turned-lieutenants helping her along. She'd lost one arm at the shoulder and the opposite leg at the knee, but she lived. "You're a half-mad old man, Maegor... but you have yet to lead us astray."

"I pray I do not have to come out of retirement and pull you from power," Blackheart murmured, those nearby chuckling with him. "To the Captain General!"

Maegor drew Blackfyre, and everyone followed with their swords and spears. "To the Golden Company! Beneath the Gold!"

"The bitter steel!"

***

With a thunk, Maegor dropped the sack of coin before Viserys. The Lord General, as he was now known, had gathered Viserys, Aurane, and Lysono in his solar – with Lysono over Viserys's shoulder and Aurane behind Maegor, they were like some mummer's mirror of each other. "I need you, cousin."

"You are ready, comrade." Lysono patted Viserys on the back and strolled to a chaise. The chamber was opulent, with velvet curtains and fine leather furnishing in some high room of the prince's palace. He sipped from a goblet and smacked his lips. "And the easy life is ready for me."

Maegor rolled his eyes. "Maar, escort Waters to the docks. Waters, show Maar to the slavers."

Some cadets entered, picking up the opulent furniture and removing the curtains and carpets. "To be auctioned off or hidden away in a vault for now."

Aurane smirked and Lysono followed with a groan.

Viserys looked at his cousin. "The slavers? Punish them swiftly."

Maegor shrugged. "New punishments of Aurane's design. I had to direct his cruelty somewhere, why not the slavers and pirates?"

"Put together a real legal code. And actually write it down, unlike our ancestors." Viserys opened up the sack. Each was a weighted gold dragon from the Seven Kingdoms' most prosperous years – Aegon the unlikely's, from the narrow face stamped into one side, a single dragon head on the other. "This is a fortune, cousin."

"Then you can certainly keep Serra safe." Viserys dropped the coin to the floor, looking between it and Maegor. "I said I need you."

"Aye, to take more men off your hands! Not..." Maegor's gaze fell to his desk. "You said yourself, you thought her taken from you."

"What she's seen... all she's known for... for years. I thought I had stamped them all out, just boys like Bear and Maar all that was left of the Bittersteel and the Blackfyres. Boys I could mould. But those along the Narrow Sea, after the Monstrous fell... All were left listless. Idle. A few were offended, and... I ran afoul of them. My ambition was the cause of so much pain."

"Tell her this, cousin. She knew your face! What does torturing yourself serve?" Viserys indicated Blackfyre. "You truly believe she won't be safe here, while you build your own damn kingdom?"

"No! But Serra is my daughter. How long until princes and knights come calling for her hand? Assassins or spies or men to steal her away again?"

Viserys thought of the silver-haired woman. He knew her not, just that she had Maegor's straight nose, inherited from his Dornish grandmother, and that her complexion favoured textiles in cool colours – Nym said so, at least. "She bore my brother a son, Maegor. They were married." Viserys lifted a stack of letters he had assembled from the apartments and manse of Illyrio Mopatis, and evidence of correspondence between five of the greatest of the Lords of the Narrow Sea, Rhaegar having styled himself king as such after promises of winning Pentos himself. "Bar Emmon, Massey, Celtigar, Rykker, and Velaryon. You reached Lord Velaryon?"

Maegor said, "Aye, and he will bring our entreaties to your brother. But Serra will not be safe in Essos. I fear not for our comrades and know they will be loyal, but we are simply the plurality now. The Norvoshi and Braavosi want their share, Volantis looks up the Rhoyne, and Khal Bharbo has only agreed to a seven year memorandum on tribute as he goes off to conquer Slaver's Bay. With some cunning I can stretch that to ten, but I will be even older, and the Andalosi..."

"We could them to Yi-Ti or the Thousand Isles?"

"Heh. Which one? Those he hopes to leave for Drogo." Maegor rose to examine a map of Essos being painted over one wall of the office, high ceilings more than accommodating for the artists. There was not much detail yet, but the outline of the Narrow Sea and the Doom was clear, as was the Wall and River Rhoyne.

"The Dothraki may have Qohor, but with the Peakes and Norvoshi you will have the upper Rhoyne. The Dusklands..."

"What I wouldn't give for a wall."

"Forts. With signal fires, like in Yi Ti." Viserys swiped some charcoal from a palette. "Set the Norvoshi to the task. They want you to defend them, they must defend you." He marked some ruins at the top of the Rhoyne near Ar Noy, and another on an island he knew was on Dagger Lake, then three more in the Golden Fields. "And keep closing the gap. The cities will empty now that you need settlers, and the Heel is some of the best farmland in Essos. Maybe take the forest of Qohor as well. Trade for all the wood you can so as not to deplete the Norvoshi forests. Say you will give safe haven to slaves that free the southern free cities, and make them defenders on the frontier."

"Now I may ask you to stay." Maegor tugged Viserys into a fierce hug, the painters looking on awkwardly. "But you're no longer one of us, are you?"

"I can't be. Not here." Viserys ran his hand up the blank outline of Westeros. "You made peace out of endless war, cousin. Now I must do the same. I doubt Robert Baratheon lets me get close to his side of the Narrow Sea. Or to bring possible aid to Rhaegar."

"Nor do you plan to, I'm certain. He has... changed, according to an old friend in his court. Serra's not seen him since she bore Aegon."

"Named his son for his son?"

"Maar says he's not convinced that-" There was a quick knock and a Golden Knight leaned in. "The First Sword?"

"Yes, Lord General."

Maegor nodded curtly and turned his back. Puffing his chest and lifting his chin, he strode gladly to meet Syrio Forel, exchanging two kisses on each cheek before inquiring about some topic of high culture. Music, Viserys thought. "Ah, Prince Viserys." The bald-headed Braavosi looked up at him keenly. "The First Sword hears your plan to go west like Aegon. Stay. The Second Sword will follow the First Sword, soon for retirement, and the Third Sword him." He reached down and wobbled Dark Sister's new plain, gold-brushed steel pommel and cross-guard, though the pommel had seven sides. "A third sword of Valyrian steel will be a second sword before long, given the Second Sword's duelling tendencies."

Maegor looked on proudly, though Viserys needed to clear his throat and deny the offer. "I feel my time as a marine has passed for now, Forel. Know that the Titan – and your sword – have helped me far more than you know."

"Ah, but such a blade as yours should not be stuck in the barbarian Sunsetlands. Alas, Braavosi such as the Syrio Forel do prefer the more civilized parts of the world. If ever you bring some order to the Seven Kingdoms, you will tell Syrio Forel so he might come and see." He snapped his heels and bowed as his aide offered Viserys a package. "A gift from the Sealord. One should not show off such injuries."

Viserys looked at his left arm, upper and lower sections in splints, while his shoulder, elbow, and wrist were in tight braces, the whole limb strapped close to his side. "I'm no cripple like my grandfather, fret not. In a moon or two, I will be fighting fit."

"In any case." Syrio opened the box, unfurling with a snap a duelling cape of the sort worn only by the greatest of bravos. It was red, the richest Norvoshi wool money could, dyed with Volantene crimson and trimmed in black ermine with a one-headed gold dragon. "You have a personal sigil now. It has been written into the histories."

Viserys was more than grateful, though it was far too fine to touch his blood-stained, muddy, soot- and wildfire-caked armour. "Perhaps later." He took the box under his arm and set another meeting with Maegor for later, journeying out of the palace and down to the docks, picking up Barristan, Robar, and Bear along the way, and only a little because he needed people to carry all of his loot – they volunteered and he happily gave up most of it, save Barristan, who set about gathering Viserys' officer share. "We'll be bringing a guest. Where's Nym and Serra?"

"They will be departing to your manse later today, my prince," Barristan said promptly.

Viserys wished he hadn't said that. "'My prince'?" Robar scoffed. "Oh, would you like your silk slippers, my liege?"

"Fuck me," Viserys groaned.

Bear said, "None of that, Robar." Viserys breathed a sigh of relief. "Not until after his massage and milk bath."

They kept up their ribbing while Barristan followed and forgot it was his duty to defend him, to a seaside manse with an adjacent warehouse Viserys' friends had claimed in his name. Once they returned, Robar seeing to the cavalry and Bear to the infantry – they had not even given him the chance to ask they join him  – Barristan pulled him aside as he took ownership of some ledgers. "I need a scribe of Strickland's quality. Any freedmen?"

"The Lord General claimed all the best for his new government, but I can put the word out."

"Good. I want five. One to assist me, the others for the duties of a maester. The wits of one as well."

"A tall ask... And this?" Barristan indicated Brightroar. Due to its size, Barristan, as Tytus had, kept it sheathed on his back most of the time, his longsword still on his hip. There was still skirmishing in the city and Barristan could not risk the seconds between unslinging a scabbard from his back to draw the massive greatsword. "It's not preferred."

"Then do not wear it."

"But... I thought..."

"It wasn't an order – but you must admit, Valyrian steel is a marvel."

"Aye, it is. But... it is too easy. I was given a try with Lady Forlorn once, many years ago. Now that was a sword, but there's no art to ease. No challenge."

"Dragons do not enjoy being challenged." Barristan nodded sagely at Viserys's words. "I could stand to train more as well, but I still want you wielding it when we're in battle. From what I've heard, it's not a weapon we want falling into Lannister hands."

"Not for free, at least. You will need allies in Westeros."

"You would start with the Lannisters?" Viserys sat at his desk, trying not to settle in. He wanted to be gone before the end of the year, as soon as the rain was done filling the Narrow Sea. Summer was close.

"Allies is what I hoped we could discuss, my prince."

"You only call me that when you want something, *Ser* Barristan." He studied Barristan's combined worry and confusion. The man was wise and cunning in his own way, but he was not one for jests or sarcasm. "Yes. What is it?"

"Your plans. The Company's changes has many hoping you will go west soon to join King Robert or Lord Tywin. Some even talk of Sothoryos to fight off Tywin and take the fight against slavery right to Volantis on the sea. You have favour with the Braavosi, others say. Or the Northmen. Or the Dornish." Barristan eyed the collection of Essosi spirits Viserys had collected in fine crystal decanters. That and his carved cyvasse set were the first *things* he called his that weren't for war.

Viserys prepared himself a drink. "I've not kept my plans close to the chest for no reason. I could not, I can not, trust anyone. I have no spies, no allies beyond this city, and more than a few enemies waiting for me in the Seven Kingdoms. What of my letter?"

"Accepted about as well as you would expect. Tumbleton's rebuild has been in the works, while the Tullys migrate many disparate smallfolk towards Maidenpool and Harrenhal. And in the meantime, Mace Tyrell has conquered almost to Duskendale's walls, while the Vale lost Cracklaw Point back to your brother. Ned Stark made a deal with him for Velaryon ships, and they are being rebuffed as we speak."

"You're well connected."

"The men are. I listen to the men." Barristan shrugged generously, which made Viserys smile. "So, your plan?"

Viserys tapped his foot. He took a small sip of his drink and sighed. "What *else* do the men say about Mace Tyrell?"

***

Viserys and Barristan were stopped before a manse door guarded by two red-headed Lothston women bearing the battle-axes of Norvoshi infantry. "I'm here to see Lady Serra."

"*Princess* Serra." Arianne strode from the door and poked him in his uninjured hip, which made him tilt down in pain as her lips crashed into his. "I heard about Cosimo and Tytus. I'm sorry."

"They died quickly. I can be thankful for that much."

Arianne frowned and tried to put her arm through Viserys', but he was already walking through the door to Lady Danelle's manse. Nym and Tyene were within, sparring in the garden, along with a brute of a woman watching from the shadow of a woman's statue with bat's wings.

Reposed on a veranda – but rising to meet him at the head of a gaggle of girls – was a tall slip of a lady, older than all the others. All seemed Dornish in colour and manner, though Nym stood out as Essosi, and one of the children as a Summer Islander.

Viserys had seen women before, but all of them staring at him in still silence was new as they arrayed before him. More like trapped him.

With a clack-clack Lady Danelle walked out, sturdy but in need of her cane, using it to direct Viserys from her to the Dornish, as Arianne returned to the manse's deeper reaches. "Good morning, my ladies," Viserys said. "Lady Ellaria Sand, was it?"

Ellaria approached, offering her hand, but before Viserys could take it his guards dragged him backwards and Barristan rushed forward, sword extended towards a man with a dagger in each hand creeping up behind the Sand Snakes. Lady Danelle's guards had already accosted him, though his dagger lashed out and cut one of them, and they broke down into screams as a small wound on their leg blistered and swelled.

Barristan duelled the man in orange and brown leather with brassy scales, but Viserys chose the table of food under the veranda. "Move them." His guards moved the Lothstons so he could work, first removing his sword belt and securing it around his leg just below the knee, just above the cut. He then washed the area with vinegar and drowning it in good Rhoynish olive oil. He then pressed his lips to the wound and sucked, spitting it out and making the guard faint. "Antiserum, Lady Lothston?"

Lady Danelle had not moved from her position at the head of the greeting party, while Barristan and more of Lothston's guards had cornered the poisoner. "Take him to my solar." She snapped her fingers but Viserys replaced the guards, helping her down the stairs and across her new estate towards the would-be assassin. "I knew you would not be the cause of any trouble. I tried to explain that to Lady Dayne." She palmed a small vial to him from her sleeve. He was feeling a bit light-headed, but the vial's contents cured him.

Ashara was there as well, making a bee-line for the assassin and leaving Serra to cower in Arianne's arms, only for Ellaria and the Sand Snakes to get in her way. "I'll turn your daughter's skin to boots! Out of my way!"

"Enough!" Barristan spoke firmly, rotating to keep himself in front of Viserys as he approached. "You should go, my prince. Back to the manse."

Viserys looked past the tall knight to the assassin in orange with his eyes on him. They were wild and angry, but as Viserys examined him with his own simmering anger, the assassin's grew more enraged. "A pretender! With a traitor's-"

"We are many things, Prince Oberyn," Barristan said. "'Traitors' are not among them."

***

Serra offered her hand, in a grander wing of the palatial Lothston manse. Serra was like the room, decorated to hide what lay beneath the surface. Viserys barely kissed her knuckles before she withdrew. "You are quite the young knight, aren't you?"

He turned to glare at Arianne for not disposing of Ellaria. The Sand Snakes save Nym, who was still tethered to Serra, were off assailing the prince's palace since word of Oberyn's presence reached Maegor and he was taken into custody. "I am not a knight yet, my lady. My master has not seen fit to so reward me."

"Why not?" Viserys looked across at Serra, who had fled to a corner of the room on a couch.

Lady Danelle poked Viserys in the backside with her cane, thrice to herd him to the seat across from Serra. The rest sat as well and as tea was served, Viserys felt a strange air. Serra returned to a book.

Arianne said, "Ser Marq can be... fickle. Though often it seems he will only make a decision when faced with violent consequence. At least, that is what his paramour tells me."

Ellaria and Danelle laughed politely, though Serra hardly noticed. Viserys said, "Your... highness?" Danelle nodded. "Your message said you worried about... security? Your father-"

"Can you use that?" Serra pointed to Dark Sister. "Your arm is crippled."

He needed to quash this. "I was injured in battle. I took hardy blows and chose to use my shield rather than retreat..." Arianne cleared her throat. "But perhaps one too many times." Serra's gaze narrowed slightly. Viserys sensed a sort of intelligence, a strength... but he was no fool either. He knew of the horrors she likely faced. "But if you would rather another, perhaps a knight, take charge of your-"

"Princess Serra meant nothing by her question, *Prince* Viserys." Danelle's tone was firm as always with one of her boys, but a glance towards Serra and she was shifting in her seat under Danelle's gaze. "Your plans?"

All eyes turned to Viserys, and Serra's look became a touch more... expectant? He struggled to read her. Arianne and Nym, even Mistress Caterina, were always so straightforward. "Yes, my lady. Princess, We will not embark within the next four moons, and sail for Oldtown. I will offer my services, and those of a few other officers, to my nephew King Aegon and Lord Tyrell so we might serve the realm directly, and reap the rewards as well."

"Father has done great things with the Tyrells since King's Landing," Arianne said. "There may not be much you can offer Highgarden."

"It is not to Lord Tyrell I want to give my service. And plans... there are things that I... I do not wish to be impolite, but I have plans of my own, *Princess* Arianne."

"Oh, you have secrets now?" Arianne neared incredulity, but Ellaria led her from the room in a state of shocked silence before she could say anything. Nym winked coyly at Viserys and slinked from the room before the door closed behind her and Danelle.

"Apologies, your highness." Serra was momentarily miffed. "Serra is fine. My father is neither king nor magister. And lady of what?"

"Technically, your father is Prince of Summerhall. And you may call me Viserys." He tried to be formal yet at ease, pouring the tea before moving to his chair, though Serra indicated the couch beside her.

"We are cousins, I was told."

It was a statement. He sensed Serra was... he couldn't tell. Her poise was perfection, her diction clear, but the woman beneath was an enigma – there was no light in her eyes and a hollowness to her voice. "Your father says he would like me to bring you with me to Westeros, where you might be safer from his enemies or those that would work against him." She stared at him. "Is that what you want?"

Serra's head wagged from side to side. Perhaps she was not so hollow, but drained. Exhausted. "He has not come to me often. He seems... afraid. I do not know the words... cousin."

Was it Viserys's place to say? His father would never know the pain he caused his family, but maybe Maegor would know, and maybe do more to make it up to his last living offspring, and his grandson wherever he was. "He is... ashamed. He blames himself." He set his teacup down, wincing at his singed fingertips.

"I understand." Serra closed her book and reached for her own tea, sipping quietly and turning her head to listen to the wind and the waves beyond the window. The breeze turned, carrying the smell of smoke and salt, of sweet fruit and turned dirt from inland. Serra did not seem interested or calmed, simply indifferent to her new surroundings. Her eyes settled on the prince's palace in the distance.

Viserys looked at the book. "High Valyrian poetry?"

"I just love the high classics. What's your favourite?" Serra's voice was suddenly husky and she looked at him wide-eyed and enamoured.

"I've... not read much. Not had much time, with... the siege." He spied the sand snakes sparring with Ser Barristan outside and felt quite envious. "How are you feeling?"

Serra looked at him blankly for another moment, as he gave her his most intense look of interest and focus, sliding back into the couch and crossing one leg over the other. "I've been... finding the smell is... unpleasant. Like vinegar and... burned butter." She looked away from him to answer. Perhaps she was thinking about the poetry and what it meant, not just the sounds made by the words on the page. "It was not... My father does not need to feel ashamed. Illyrio said he always planned to take one of my mother's daughters. He knew she would have them. She was too beautiful to not have children. Someone would want to keep her, whether she liked it or not, he said. Someone else would never want me, he said."

He opened his mouth to respond but Danelle opened the door. "Princess Serra, would you like to help plan the dinner menu? There will be quail, I hear."

"I would like that very much, Lady Lothston. Thank you." She rose, curtsied to Viserys, and drifted away with two new guards behind her.

"Nothing you could have said after that would have been the right thing to say." Danelle lowered herself to the couch, groaning as the weight came off her leg. She pulled up her skirt and tapped the steel and spring contraption on the other with her cane. "Needs more padding."

"Norvoshi wool, and a cradle of ivory or bone." Viserys looked at his shoulder cape. He had donned fresh armour and clothes, though they were far from fine enough as he looked around. "I need armour and clothing, if this is what's expected of me."

"You could wait for the first wave of merchants to arrive from the Crownlands, but I say you should save your gold for Oldtown. Patronage will buy you favour." The dark-clothed lady looked more like a witch with every campaign, though the scar on her cheek, courtesy of Ser Vardis Egen's gauntlet-fisted punch, still stood out among the rest. "You can't save her. That's what they all expect, and you won't be able to do it. Not even if she laughs again, because then she just goes from one cage to another."

Viserys tried to think of the words, but he could still smell Serra. It wasn't just that she was beautiful, but something else. Something that made him want her like a bird needed to fly or a wolf needed to hunt. "Of all the Free Cities..." His head fell to his good hand, exhausted in every sense of the word.

Danelle's hand patted his back. "Part of being a good man will be remembering this feeling. I'd rather you end up like Ned Stark than Robert Baratheon when it comes to romance."

"I'm a man now, am I? Just yesterday, Joho was braiding flowers in my hair along the Lhorulu." Viserys wanted to find Serra. Why? Did she remind him of Daenerys and his mother? He wanted something a man should not rightly want from his mother or sister, or cousin, but he was not most men. "I will keep her safe. Oldtown, Highgarden or Summerhall – I'll find a place for our house."

"Perhaps. I may even trust you to know what that means. But what of using your mind and not your cock?" He made a disgusted look but she pushed through. "I am not as blind as a man, and I have not come so far so easily." He understood. Of course he did. He had not slept without thinking about Tytus. Or his own father. "Will you do right by her?"

"We are cousins trying to rebuild our house into something new." Danelle cocked her head and narrowed her gaze. "I'm not... blind. Seven hells I'll be fighting off suitors the second we make landfall, but I will do everything to ensure Serra... heals. As I did." He thought of Oberyn Martell and his brother, and that faint tightness he felt in his chest when he was sad or angry. Or afraid. "I had you all, she..."

Danelle offered cold comfort, standing and pulling him up with her, then using him to hold up her weight on the walk to luncheon. "You have the right attitude, and that counts. I'll send word ahead to some old friends and acquaintances, and you will to take this time of rehabilitation to learn about the Seven Kingdoms and their intricacies. War is more banner-waving and chest-puffing in Westeros than most will admit." She sat at the head of the table and put Viserys on her right and Serra on her left. "You must each have a short list of people you trust completely, and if family is your guiding light, you must trust your family."

"Family?" Serra said.

"House Targaryen, of course. Red on black, three headed dragon." Danelle popped a stuffed mushroom in her mouth. "Personal sigils aside, you will continue that legacy through your clans, Summerhall and as the son of a king and brother to another. And protector of the realm for a third, of course."

"How many times must I explain, I was told to be bold, and-"

"I am merely ribbing, my prince. Fret not. And Serra?" She looked up from her wine. "Ladies of Westeros are not what they were, and those like you are fewer and farther between, at least where you will find friends. You will be out of your depth, and I cannot be there to handhold you."

"Lady Danelle-" Viserys failed to interject.

"No, she must hear this." Danelle steepled her fingers and met Serra's gaze, no longer placid but full of fear. "Women kill in Westeros now. Over slights, men, with poison or a blade it matters not. You were vaunted here, you will not be there. Viserys will see you guarded by men he trusts, good men, but you must keep both eyes open. Given your son-"

"I understand." Serra was firm but quiet, silencing Danelle to other topics.

"You may now have the courtesy of patience. But do not forget perhaps marrying for duty, my prince." She drew slips of coloured, folded paper from her sleeves. One orange, one blue, and one white. "You have offers. There will be more, but these should be considered first."

Chapter Text

"This is all very much," Viserys said, tugging on his collar – so stiff it cut into his neck – and trying to surreptitiously pull out the crotch of his trousers. It was all black and far too new. "You could have gone in my stead."

Ashara, whom he was escorting, scoffed. Barristan, walking just behind them up the stairs to the prince's palace, said, "A landless knight is poor escort for one of Lady Ashara Dayne's station." Freshly cleaned and shaved, Barristan and Viserys both, like the stairs, appeared not to have seen a drop of blood ever in their history, rather than the sea they'd crossed to enter the palace weeks before.

Blue and yellow flowers fluttered through the hall alongside blessings of sea and fields, from gull feathers and pieces of bread, to pearl necklaces and fine bottles of wine – most smashed into fountains which flowed red and pink.

"Reputation can more than make up for a lack of pedigree, Ser Barristan." Ashara on his arm, Viserys did feel particularly powerful, and spying Vaok and Marq in the crowd did help his mood, but as he smiled Viserys wondered if this was all. Fight, get paid, get rewarded, and go take a moon of rest before it started again.

At the end of the hall, the gifts getting finer and more presumptive – daughters to marry, sons to teach the ways of war, and mounds upon mounds of gold – he had a moment of peace and said, "I would rather ships."

"Gold can buy ships," Ashara said, curling herself against him to whisper behind Barristan. "Just remember what Mina and I discussed in Lorath. Smile, dance, and play the dumb sellsword." Viserys sighed before the grand hall doors, and the lady of House Dayne would not order them opened until he stood up straight. "Shoulders. Chest up. Up!"

He puffed his chest and stepped forward, the doors opening to more applause, nobles and magisters in chains days before now free, led by Maegor resplendent in the badges of office of Captain General, Prince of Pentos, and a Targaryen – a gold brocade robe with an excessively-tall collar and wide, pointed shoulders atop a mantle of hammered steel, a sash of blue and red across his chest with Blackfyre hanging from his hip. "My dukes and dames, my lords and ladies, my dearest cousin, Prince Viserys!" He kept his clapping before breaking to embrace Viserys in a truly crushing and warm embrace.

"'Fuck's a duke?"

"'Essosi landed knight' didn't quite roll off the tongue, nor do they like the sound of 'landed knight.'" They had a moment to look each other in the eye before returning to the throng. They kept position for a moment as artists' apprentices took notes, while Maegor walked him to the frame of what would be a life-sized portrait. "I'll be showing it in Volantis next summer. The Triarchy wishes for words before any action along the Rhoyne. Perhaps we might hold off the Dothraki together."

"A neo-Valyrian are you?" Maegor shrugged. Viserys forced a smile at some passing magister, and laughed awkwardly when he offered him the night with his wife. "Shall you press Myr for peace?"

"I think I shall. The Grand Septon is proving to be... an able opponent rather than bloody enemy. Works like this..." He indicated the painting. "Are the start of... what did you call it, my lady?"

Lady Danelle hobbled forward. She seemed ever-present in Viserys's life, save his foray to Westeros. "Now is the war of words, so we might sway their slaves and free people. They will do the same here. All might prosper, and the Golden Company will grow."

Maegor nodded firmly. "Today, more than any other day, is when peace reigns in the Free Cities." He raised his cup just for them. "For the first time since the Freehold."

"With but two dragons." With a final toast they drank, Danelle returning to the politics while Maegor was dragged away just the same. Viserys sought escape but saw the only ones he knew in attendance were the Martell party, their head in search of his, and Ashara, who had since moved to the dance floor.

As he searched the crowd, always pretending to mingle, he saw a shade of blue familiar to a tabard among his trophies. "One does not often see an Arryn on this side of the Narrow Sea." Viserys tapped on the shoulder of one of the three members of a party of Valemen, the others a lady in Arryn regalia and jewellery but the habit of a septa, the third a man with the bearing of a knight – and a Valyrian steel sword on his hip. "Ser Lyn Corbray?" Ser Lyn turned to face him, shock quickly dropping to indignation. "Lady Forlorn is known to me. I saw its entry in the *Book of Blood and Steel* in Qohor."

"And I know the sons of men you killed with Dark Sister. A Targaryen *and* a trumped-up brigand. Who else would serve a *Bolton*?"

Viserys bristled and felt his face darken. "Words are wind. But this is not conversation for such an occasion." He turned to the Arryn septa. "House Arryn of Gulltown?"

The Vale lordling stepped between him and the septa, the a rising red sun on his cape quivering a little bit. He was thin – it was a miracle he didn't collapse under the weight of his velvet. "Don't speak to him," Lyn said. "We are here for compensation. Unlawfully, you partook in a conflict not-"

"I signed a contract with, and was a sellsword in service to, House Bolton. Lord Domeric himself was my master." Viserys held up his finger to quiet the Andal knight. "What did you believe would happen here?"

Ser Lyn straightened. "I, Ser Lyn of House Corbray, do challenge you, Viserys of the House Targaryen, to a trial of-"

"Seize him!" Barristan bellowed, emerging from just out of sight, guards in gold seizing the Valemen and dragging them from the room – though the holy woman was treated far more gently by the superstitious sellswords. "I have a few questions for Ser Lyn, if you don't mind, my prince. Some things from the Marches."

Viserys dismissed the knight, and turned to the crowd with a wink and a smirk. A few laughed, others asked questions, but Viserys shifted the celebrants focus as he tapped on Ellaria Sand's shoulder and asked her to dance. She looked back at Prince Oberyn, but Viserys said, "It's not as if you're married, my lady," as he kissed her hand, and she followed while smirking back at her paramour.

It was barely half a turn when Ellaria stopped and Ashara pulled Viserys out of the dance. "Must you provoke him!"

"He tried to kill me. Twice." Barristan had returned and was ready to draw his sword on Oberyn again, whom none trusted to have not smuggled in a blade, or taken it from someone else. Viserys pulled Ashara in a little closer and, relishing her scent, breathed. "He's a madman and lucky I don't kill him myself."

Ashara tried making excuses, but Viserys had neither the need nor desire to listen even as he kept her in the dance before she shoved from his grip. Before he could lose any face from being alone in the dance, he drank some passing wine before another lady's hip found his hand, the other up out towards the horizon.

She drew his gaze back, a woman with Volantene-pale skin and a long black braid. "Nym you fool." She grabbed his loser back and pulled his waist to hers, continuing the dance as the music slowed with the setting sun. Nymeria Sand simply looked up at him, though he found the bulk of the Dornish party leaving, including Arianne. She didn't even look back. "Are you drunk?"

"Not as much as you. My cousin is gone, off to marry a Tyrell. He has much better prospects than you, but mine..." Nym cast her gaze to her father, drunkenly dancing with his wife and the two wives of two spectating lords. "They forget he's a second son." She saw him trying to figure her out. "For a bit of fun. Or could you not bear a woman in your bed and fighting at your side?"

Life seemed too short, and everyone else too carefree, so Viserys simply kissed Nym and let her hips move them through the dancing and then down some hallway to a golden-lit hallway. "Maybe a regiment of spears?" he muttered, nibbling her ear and kissing her neck, shifting down her dress to taste the dew on her chest.

Nym had her skirts up and wore neither underskirts nor smallclothes, just a garter for her tights. She was lean and all limbs, clambering over to knead and pinch, then pulling his hair and shifting his head up to suck a bruise into his neck, as her other hand fished him out and put him inside her.

There was comfort with Arianne Martell, but Nymeria Sand was a hungrier sort of woman, not desperate but competitive. Her cries continued to grow, her eyes pools of black ink Viserys could drown in. He tried clamping a hand over her mouth, but he had to shift it to her hip as she bore down with nails on his neck, tearing open his shirt to claw at chest.

"Be quiet!" Through gritted teeth Viserys tore off her garter and shoved it in her mouth, using his now free hand to join his cock between them below a strip of black hair. Nym flexed something and smirked through her smallclothes as Viserys cursed, the sudden tightness taking him by surprise. Pleasure and then embarrassment crashed through him, followed by a muffled shriek and Nym's ;egs and hands holding him in by the buttocks. "You... mad... bastard."

She pulled the damp garter from her mouth, bending the clasp back to shape with sharp white-painted nails even as her ankles stayed crossed on his lower back. "Fix that, will you?"

Viserys had to blink hard and then use his teeth, consulting the small bit of metal to- "Fuck!" Nym sniggered at her flexing around him, and he swept his thumb against her button to get something similar from her, grinding inside of her. "That your plan? Get a bastard out of me?"

"You think awfully high of yourself, *Lord Protector*." She shoved him back and pulled his collar off him, using it to sop up their tryst.

Nym tried pushing it into his hand, but he simply took it and the garter, backing her back into the alcove and the window. He made her sit, pulled the garter back up her legs, and gave her a long, cleansing lick and a kiss before tidying her dress and kissing her again. "Yes, I do. Moon tea. You'll drink it tomorrow before the officer's meeting, or you'll be sent to some far off posting in Norvos."

Nym looked aghast, then intrigued. "Where was this?" She tried draping herself over him, but Viserys took her neck in his hand and kiss her again. "I like this."

"Life is... short. After Tytus, now Pentos with Maegor... I want Westeros tom be an adventure. I want to do good for all, but I... I want to enjoy it as well. I am done fighting the wars of other men. Of lesser men."

"You sound so very Targaryen, my prince."

"Viserys, please." He kissed her, hugged her, then took a generous handful of her backside as she did the same, only to lean down, clean him with her mouth and tuck him back away. "This can't last."

"Who says it has to?" She pressed her fingers to another of the four bruises on his neck and chest before sending him back to the party first

Loose collared but sobered by his own behaviour, Viserys fixed his hair, smudged the red kisses to look like the flush of alcohol, and tried looking more drunk than he was as he returned to the party.

Night was a different affair, a feast he actually managed to eat at followed by more cocktails, dancing and pleasure-watching. There were rooms for serious politics, however, and despite Maegor's offers and the insistences of his comrades, Viserys chose politics over pleasure.

Within a windowless room with just a few smoke- and incense-blurred skylights, pits of pillows and cushions, fruit and softer drink, pipes of poppy's tears and hemp or just flavoured smoke. He found a quiet corner and sat, taking in the room, the air, and then himself. Had Nym seduced him?

Did she just look enough like Ashara?

He popped a grape and sighed. A few people watched him and whispered, but none approached, Ser Lyn included with deposed lords from Qohor and Myr.

Viserys grunted. Let them think he was some drunken puppet then. Nym saw that he would be great, seduce him or not, and Viserys knew his intentions were pure whatever perks their friendship might deliver.

He unhooked Dark Sister's scabbard, laying it before him, only to stagger to his feet as Mina Redwyne and companions approached. "Lady Redwyne!" Viserys dropped his goblet – it was not the first broken glass of the evening, the festivities nearing their sixth hour. "I had hoped to dance with you again."

She blushed somewhat, and Viserys wondered why. Mina was a lovely dancer. Perhaps, not only Nym... "Ah, my prince, you of course know Serra, but this is-"

She practically shoved Mina and Serra aside, a statuesque woman in a dress of cold grey and silver, but with verdant inner skirts and emerald jewellery. Viserys liked her shoulders – like an archer's. "Lady Malora Hightower. Daughter of Lord Leyton Hightower." She extended her hand. She had long arms as well. Strong arms. And she was taller than any woman living, though Viserys would later blame the drink for turning him into a slack-jawed fool before her, not that he was not struck by her beauty. "Lady Redwyne was telling me of your interest in serving under Lord Tyrell, but I have just recently learned that you also have dealings with House Dayne?"

Beautiful *and* intelligent? Perhaps Arianne was not as rare a woman as she had led Viserys to believe. "Why yes, the dealings were quite entwined at their earliest conception. Neither of you had any idea I'd been in Westeros?" Viserys nodded across the room towards Ashara, whom was using her sobriety to entertain some freshly-widowed ladies wondering how she ran her lands without a husband.

"How could we have known?" Mina said, referencing the Reach while also herding Serra between her and Viserys as they sat. "The kingdoms are not as entwined as they were, and the North and Stormlands have been a distant non-enemy, and a hated villain, to the Reach for most of the past ten years."

"I suppose... that makes sense." Viserys cleared his throat to cover a belch, though some other delight was trotted out and he was hidden by the sudden tasting by the ladies and even Serra, who probed the tart with her tongue then did not know what to do but chew and take another in each hand. "What's that?"

"Rosewater and... brie." She groaned then covered her mouth, embarrassed then at ease. "I did not eat like this. The cheesemonger had me on a strict regime."

"I cannot imagine." Seven hells his life was complicated. "Have you given thought to our journey?"

Serra ate another tart to give her time to answer. "I always wanted to see the Seven Kingdoms... Was I not queen for a time?" Serra consulted her empty goblet, and Viserys poured as she took the water pipe and filled her mouth with smoke for a calming sigh. "Thank you. I don't want my son to be a bastard, but I also don't want him to be used."

Malora said, "Aegon... foolish of Rhaegar to name him as much. His grace is just ten, but he shows wisdom beyond his years."

Viserys doubted it at first, though Mina discouraged his disbelief with a look. Serra said, "What will it take... for my son to come back to me?"

She posed the question to Viserys, who desired nothing more than to be honest about the efforts he was willing to undergo, but unable to find the words through his intoxicated mind. Malora's initiative saved him. "Oh, as soon as Duskendale is taken there will be nothing holding us back from going about it the old fashioned way. Taking the city is a matter of time for the Reach. That your son has been caught in the middle will motivate us more. His grace's brother? I would take heart, princess."

Serra was going through many different emotions, while Viserys was half distracted the freckles on Mina's shoulders. "Prince Viserys? What do you think?"

"Hm? I-" Viserys tried focusing. "The wine is reaching my mind, I'm afraid. Being lady of the Arbor, I am sure you can empathize."

She snickered. "You are young still. The liver will strengthen if you let it. I had... hoped for..." Mina's eyes moved to Serra's following a local magister. "Princess?"

Viserys saw the magister's eyes dilate at Serra before he moved to another corner of the room nearer the door. He was fit for his age, brown hair dyed blonde and red like many Pentoshi. "Cousin? Serra, who is he?"

Serra had gone from reposed to crouched, hiding between Viserys and Malora. "He... Illyrio would... I remember him."

Drink could have held back Viserys' thoughts, but it inflamed him instead as he dragged Dark Sister from its scabbard as he rose to his feet, waving to the guards then offering his other hand to Serra. "Stay here, cousin."

His work was done for him, Viserys not halfway across the room when the magister found his feet and stood, not just running but scrambling to be free. He was watching Viserys, and he bounced off golden shields and fell to the ground. "It was another time! Politics! She was a-"

Viserys simply looked to Serra for approval. Maegor had entered from another passage and was watching with Lysono Maar and Aurane Waters, but Viserys was looking at his daughter.

She nodded, and before her head finished moving, the magister's head was on the floor. "Any others?" She shook her head, and he returned to their seating arrangements, servants fetching the body and sopping up the blood as Viserys flicked Dark Sister clean.

"Nicely done, Lord Protector." Malora offered the scabbard, slipping it onto the Valyrian steel. "Efficient."

Serra had run to her father, and they were disappearing down the halls. "My family is important to me, Lady Hightower."

"Malora, please."

"Then I mustn't be lord protector, but Viserys. I remain a prince in name alone as it is."

Mina tutted. "Such titles are important. For your namesake, it bore out."

"I do not at all wish to replicate the circumstances of his ascent." He cast his eyes back to where he last saw Serra. "Targaryens are all extremes, you know. Fire and blood."

"Hah! You've not known much of Oldtown then. History that precedes your house's power by some time."

"Indeed. Powers I am very glad support his grace my nephew King Aegon the sixth of his name – and all the rest of it, snow and storm kings aside." Malora indicated his sword. "You've heard that story, of course."

"You somehow found it beyond the Wall, yes. Too bad Northmen and Lady Arryn consider you a friend and me... well, not a friend." She drank more and made space as Serra returned with red eyes and flushed cheeks, which she made no attempt to hide. "What's this?"

"Father is being... impossible. Dragonstone is right there!" Serra huffed and drank more wine. "Politics. I spit on politics."

***

It had been a night to remember, and Viserys recalled most of it. There had been more wine and food, and then he smoked something and someone else gave him some dried mushroom to chew, and then it was just a rush of heaving flesh and very imaginable sights.

In turn, that was swiftly followed by excruciating pain, for Viserys at least, as he opened his eyes into the sun rising. He had one person over his lap and another under his head. He didn't see anyone he knew, at least he didn't think so – he remembered someone laughing at how his hair was white *everywhere*, but he recalled nothing else.

As he found himself, and everything but his shirt, Viserys crept from the room and sighed. "Good morning, my prince!"

Viserys cursed at Barristan. "Seven hells! Fuck! Fuck." Viserys growled some more as Barristan handed him some chunky, cold brew. "What is it?"

"Breakfast. Drink."

Viserys did so, and he at least felt good with his stomach filled, though disgusted at the taste. "Onions and... beef tallow. What news? I lost sight of you last night."

"I was abed. It was late, and you had more sober guards." Barristan sipped a mug of some steaming, dark liquid. It smelled good. "Lady Hightower is quite pleasant, is she not?"

"As is Lady Ashara." Barristan coughed and Viserys laughed. "Come. We have much to prepare. I want to depart within a week."

Barristan nearly dropped his mug trying to keep up with Viserys's lengthening strides. "A week! My prince, a week is far too short! We were planning at least three *moons* to prepare!"

"Timelines do not matter. We have the gold for it, and I'm bored with waiting." They reached the doors to the city beyond. "Trust me, Ser Barristan." He strode down towards the city, crying, "My mind is clear!"

***

Viserys needed two days to gather his allies, all while planning the journey by ship without ever telling anyone where they were going or why they were leaving so soon. The rumour mill lit a fire under the common infantry – the clear majority of his forces – which forced those captains and knights not yet swayed by Robar and Bear to do Viserys' bidding. That had the effect of easing pressure on the grand strategy, but then he started losing sleep on the minutiae.

That and Nym.

Coordinating for the weather and tides, he did have to tell his lead navigator in the Golden Fleet – supplemented with more ships of Viserys's purchase and Maegor and Pentos's gifts – that they would be going south towards the Stepstones to start. He swore on the ruby eyes of the lord of light that he would tell the pilot more once Pentos was behind them. He dreaded how Serra might take the news that she would be much farther from her son.

When Viserys was finally alone with his councillors and comrades that would come with him, he told them his plan.

"You have no other friends in Lady Lothston's camp?" Oscar muttered as they waited for the meeting to get underway, wine and light conversation flowing in a subtle warm-up for a possible political discussion.

"We can trust Nymeria, she is of her own mind and not her father's. And Myrielle Lothston will join us from Braavos."

"Myrielle?"

"Another cousin of Danelle, apparently." Viserys brought the meeting to order with the tap of his maze ring. He met each person's eyes in turn – most as young as him, but far from inexperienced. "I could not speak on where we were going for the simple fact that there was a spy in our ranks. All of the information lost was from before the conquest of Pentos, however, and I am now certain... that Tytus was the spy."

Barristan was surprised, though others were more offended. "A bastard lion is still a lion," Nymeria stated flatly, though her eyes were misty like Bear's, as Viserys had been once Barristan made him certain. "How were you certain?"

"I believe he was contacted by his father, Gerion Lannister, who on behalf of his brother Lord Tywin, attempted to sow discord into the Company and those who sought to go west."

"I exchanged letters with my former colleague in the Westerlands." Ser Barristan cleared his throat to soften the surprise. "Jaime was never a traitor. Not in any way that matters now with King's Landing a smoking pit. Some letters of Tytus' confirmed that he was sharing information, and though we can never be certain, I have been made aware he was smart enough to know what he was doing."

It was all too simple, after Barristan asked around and found a company man who'd bedded a whore that complained of some itch Tytus gave her. Barristan tracked the source of the itch to another whore who passed some letters for Lord Lannister – she had come to Tytus as a camp follower, then fled into the city after the siege broke.

Lothston had taken her off their hands and put her in the stream of settlers moving towards the hinterlands. Tytus had tormented her enough, apparently, recolouring all his years fighting with Brightroar's first Lannister-blood wielder in centuries.

The confession hit all of them even hard. "The only gold the lion would allow in Westeros, is Lannister gold." Nymeria spoke with expertise on the matter, but in truth, Dornish or not, she was just as much a part of their cohort as Tytus.

Viserys wondered where the lies began. Had he not lost his way in a maze, would Tytus have shown himself sooner, or had Viserys' absence lulled the bastard into a false sense of-

Oscar cleared his throat. "His death won't stop the Lannisters, but only break the chain for a time. Pentos will have to open to trade with Westeros, as will the rest of the Free Cities after years of war, if they are to rebuild. If we can help take Duskendale, why don't we?" He pointed out the three Peake castles on a map of the Dornish Marches. "It's not our time, but in a few years, we need to go, if not to beat the Grand Septon there, then to maybe poke Robert Baratheon in the rear for you. I will be taking five thousand men at first to address some Pentoshi rebels, but I hope to follow you west before next year."

"Indeed... Oldtown is out destination. I believe that in the direct service of the king, I can affirm my claim on the title of lord protector, and perhaps disrupt whatever balance the Seven Kingdoms find themselves in." He dug into his teeth, but he also trusted his comrades. "I want peace. Peace and justice. A chance to build, but our home, not Pentos."

"Hear hear," Robar said with a slap of the table..

"Future home," Bear rumbled. "I would like to see my mother's home in the North, however."

Nymeria offered facts in the face of fancy ideas. "House Tyrell has finally inspired the loyalty oaths they long had to demand, but with that new support comes expectations. Highgarden's banners desire repayment, from vengeance to land to the heads of other Lannisters." She smirked and met Viserys' gaze. "And House Hightower until recently was an important accessory to the Lannister missions to Sothoryos and the Disputed Lands... though that would not explain why Lady Hightower attempted to seduce you."

The others save Barristan chuckled while Viserys reddened,. "Thank you for that, Nym."

"What? I can't blame her, and I'm speaking from experience." The room broke into raucous laughter, and even Barristan smirked and chuckled at the prince's expense. "And the sun and rose are soon to be entwined as it is. Mace'd not enter an alliance with the Lannisters and risk losing all of Dorne."

"So long as we are players and not pieces," Viserys said. "But could we become allies to House Tyrell?"

Tilting her head from side to side, Nym needed to think. She turned to Ashara, quiet until then, imperious in a chair in the shadows. They waved in a confused Robar for some final piece of the puzzle. "House Tyrell, perhaps. The king of thorns, I do not rightly know. My uncle will recognize you, history unforgotten, if you can sway the Starks and Vale."

Robar said, "Summerhall is *in* the Stormlands. The Reach will want to join you carving out a domain from Robert's. You would be attacking House Baratheon just by setting foot there with only Lord Tyrell's consent. With Ned Stark and the Tyrant of the Vale..."

"But if I remain neutral while declaring for Aegon, we will simply be smashed by whichever army gets to us first. Lord Tyrell might not want or need us. We have to pick the side that is winning, or the side that is most likely to win, and then make ourselves indispensable. I go with barely three thousand comrades, servants, freedmen and freeborn, and less than half are battle ready." He looked to his assembled comrades. His friends. "Well?"

"You are the lord of this council, cousin," Aurane Waters said, his soft voice just over Viserys' shoulder. "Princess Serra has a powerful claim on Summerhall and a son on Dragonstone. You, a sister and brother. There are many things that can be done."

"You have a brother and nephew."

"Indeed. And thanks to the Lord General, the Reach castles of his Fossoway uncles are Serra's."

"Unless you want to run to White Harbour or declare for your brother," Barristan said. "It is a choice, though I would not like it, it might offer a peaceful answer to Duskendale's conquest. Force him to abdicate and take the black."

It seemed only Viserys was against such an idea. "Perhaps there was a time, but now..." The option was clear. "Oldtown is our destination. If we deal with anyone else, we'll be nothing more than sellswords, so the kin is who we wish to see, and he is who we will serve, and I... as the head of House Targaryen of Summerhall. Or co-head with Serra. Semantics. Our mission is thus peace and lands to call home, as our company has long sought, with the knowledge that gold will only purchase so much. For beneath the gold..."

"The bitter steel," his comrades returned.

"Yes. No Blackfyres to raise up, but supporting my nephew. And, the Golden Company's greatest strength has been in the collective experience of its members, not simply the trappings of an army unbound by loyalty. We are loyal to one another, and we can set an example for the Seven Kingdoms."

Barristan said, "And as you wage politics in Oldtown, Robar and House Selmy and I shall carve out a kingdom for you. Lord Beric Dondarrion and the Knights of King's Mountain have offered their aid, in exchange for your protection from House Baratheon."

"Not a kingdom, just lands. My nephew is the king." There were some chuckles, but Viserys knew he wasn't joking even if they all thought he was going to conquer. Close friends or not, why would they not believe he wanted to be the power behind the throne – it was safer and often far more comfortable. "If that's all?"

The meeting broke and they all filed out, save Nym and Barristan, though Viserys sent out the knight. "Leaving just as the spring planting starts is smart. You force the Seven Kingdoms to embrace peace, or risk angering their smallfolk with a muster to answer."

"You know your father's homeland well." She rolled her eyes. "Hopefully they smell ambition but no intelligence."

"They already call you a warlord." Nym walked her fingers along the maps. She was no longer in a dress, but sleek travel leathers with an copper-orange surcoat and gold pauldron and bracers, her arm rings worn clasped around her biceps. A pair of short scimitars were across her hips, with all manner of daggers and throwing knives besides. "You could be a prince."

"Dorne has princes. What are they like?" He snatched her waist and kissed her jaw then her silken red lips, though she was uninterested. "What? I knew they would say such things, and I do not care."

She scoffed and kissed him hard, holding him by the ears. "Viserys, it is dangerous. What if some less honest maiden decides to crawl into your bed like Cersei did Robert? Or an angry husband?"

"You speak as if I am like a more lustful relation."

"Ashara?" Viserys rolled his eyes. "I'm sure that is how it started for Tytus as well. A smell, a dance, a jest."

"You did not see- Fine." He would not ask Nym to choose between the Golden Company and her father, but the thought crossed his mind. "You haven't changed your mind?"

Nym snorted as she opened the laces of both their breeches, armour held out of the way as he speared her. "Good thrust, soldier."

Chapter Text

"Nine-hundred and forty-three infantry, four-hundred knights and cavalry, and three-hundred marines; not counting retired craftsmen and cadets." Barristan offered a clipboard Viserys hardly passed his eyes over, unable to look away from the horizon. "Five-hundred Pentoshi sailors and freedmen came running. Forel gave them the once-over and other than a few slavers trying to run off... Well, it is more than the bare thousand you thought. You should be more optimistic, my prince."

Viserys stood at the end of the docks, mind ragged. "Is Westeros the right choice? Should we go east to Slaver's Bay and try and do to the Dothraki what we did here? Maybe White Harbour? Does my other nephew need me more?"

Barristan grumbled in thought, looking up at the masts then west with his charge. "Bharbo is a conqueror. He knows the value of exchanging brutality for mercy, but still a conqueror. We stop him, the Dothraki Sea doesn't grow for a generation or two."

"And White Harbour?"

Barristan sucked his teeth. "Lord Stark could use you, but does he need you? What's in the North? Will your Essosi army make it through a summer snow?"

Viserys thought about Drogo, and if he could kill his old friend, then Ned Stark and Domeric Bolton. They were good, honourable and powerful men surrounded by leal advisors. If someone needed Viserys' ilk, it was not them. "I am afraid, Ser Barristan. For my family, for the Company... for myself and more fighting. I feel every time I sheathe my sword it will be my last, for I must drop to my knees one day and beg the gods to let it all end. But somehow I find a way to... carry on."

"I know." Barristan furrowed his brow then visibly relaxed, Viserys mirroring him and feeling the tension drain from his face and neck. "You can win all the wars, slay the dragons and bring home the treasure, but if you are seen as faltering, your enemies will pounce. I learned that the hard way with your brother."

"So... lie?"

Barristan hummed, stroking his whitening beard looking into the sun. "Westeros is a land of contradictions, my prince. To some you will be a foreign rogue, Maelys the Monstrous or Bittersteel reborn, and with all the chaos he brought last time. Or, you may be Aegon the Unlikely, a great king in the shape of an inexperienced lord. It is up to you to decide what they see."

"And not share the fate of the Monstrous, or lead my comrades to such a doom." Sadness crashed through his chest, thoughts not just of Tytus but of Cosimo and Talal, of Joho and Zadjet. Of his mother, and his sister wherever she was.

"I am sure that will not happen. I was wrong about your brother, but I will not be wrong twice."

Barristan moved off the ship to help with the last of the crates, most still waiting on the bay, though he exchanged places with Maegor after a fraternal handshake. "Today's the day?"

"The end of an age." Viserys looked back on Pentos, the gardens and estates within the city, and the great pastures and villas beyond the walls. The Sunrise Gate was replaced, the bay was twinkling and full of trade, and new works in stone were already taking shape on the peninsula across the water. The world spun on. "I thought more of my friends would make it."

"I know. Blackheart is the only man living who knew me before I was Aerion Brightfyre. But the difference is, it's not twenty or more years between your exile and return home. And the world is smaller now. It will get easier." Maegor beckoned him forward, hugging him paternally then holding him at arm's length, shorter but broader and not at all the crooked old wizard Viserys met years ago. "You may not go as a conqueror, but the temptation will be there. Once or twice you may allow yourself to be better or smarter, use your wit or beauty or their expectations to win a little more. Use your sword to kill a few more of the enemy. One more mistress, one more sack of gold, maybe a lord's fealty, the promise of a daughter or the fear of losing a son. But you must never lose sight of why the men in our family are called west. The Seven Kingdoms are where we live best, and that desire may never fade."

"From Braavos's streets, nearly drowning in a winter storm, to saving a princess from a black dragon in a palace's highest room at the dawn of a golden summer." He embraced his cousin again. "My family is being torn apart, used as puppets by the lords of the Seven kingdoms. I care for peace, but only so I might keep them safe. So we might... have some legacy other than fire and blood."

Maegor released him, kissing his cheeks and then pulling him down to kiss his brow. "I know you will do it. You will not come out unscathed, but you will do it not as a scion of our house, but as your own man." Maegor offered a stack of sealed letters, having signed over various titles and properties their family had collected over three centuries, from small keeps in far off corners of Dorne to abandoned plots of land in the heart of the North. It was not much, but if they could be sold off in Oldtown, they offered a comfortable nest egg. "Last of all..." Maegor removed Blackfyre from his waist. "I won't say you're collecting them, but you should take it. Bear it yourself and pass Dark Sister to one of our family, or the reverse. Perhaps to the king to improve his claim, or cement your own. But here, they are wasted. In Westeros, they are a powerful symbol of legitimacy."

"You would give it up? You said it was hard won."

Maegor shrugged, looking across at Serra farther up the docks with the ladies maids – Company daughters all – joining her, though all were similarly guarded behind an array of golden shields. "I have the city and the Golden Company, and I will know that which was hardest won is safe across the Narrow Sea. There are no slavers or Blackfyres across the Narrow Sea."

Viserys thought Serra neither miffed nor saddened by her situation, but simply bored. "Did you speak?"

He had pressed Maegor over the weeks since the breaking of the siege, and last night, the rumour mill said, he had spoken to his daughter. The screaming between the two of them was likely heard across the Narrow Sea, but Serra had still climbed on deck and seemed amiable with her father at breakfast that morning.

"And, if you two-"

"I am not some sort of-"

"I'm serious, Viserys. I know how our kind can be. I was drawn to her mother, a Blackfyre cousin, so it is not an impossibility you or she finds yourselves... well, in any case, I would welcome you as a son." They hugged again. "Goodbye, comrade."

Maegor strode off the ship, though not before Serra tackled him from the side and they hugged properly.

As Viserys strode down the dock to his flagship, Barristan had to extend his strides to catch up and match pace. "I want triple watches on horse boats, and our supplies well-distributed. Rains aren't fully done, and a storm is always possible."

Barristan had found two freedmen scribes and a magister's concubine who was a witch with numbers, and they pulled Viserys into a meeting, muttering at him in High Valyrian. "Next, pay. We're going to Westeros for work, so just as in the Company, beyond the most basic of supplies, you pay for it yourself. Spread the word. Any rewards their adventurism brings in the Seven Kingdoms, the Company is owed two of three coins. Half from knights or ten or more comrades signed on, since land, keeps or a marriage are likelier rewards."

Viserys moved on to contracts and then the speech Lady Lothston had helped him write, which Barristan helped him finesse and then put off for once they were on the sea. And he still had to start a rumour about gelding with fire if necessary. "Say I learned it in Lorath."

Viserys was finally about to climb the gangway when a voice rang out. "Squire!" Marq Mandrake's voice turned him around, the scar-faced knight spitting out a gob of ink-dyed mucus. "Fuck're you going?"

"Ser Marq?" Viserys strode to the sellsword, standing about a foot taller than him. "I'll miss you."

Marq rolled his eyes. "Kneel already, unless you want that ponce kingsguard to knight you. Probably, with his white cloak and Valyrian steel sword and-" Viserys dropped gladly, to both knees as was Company tradition. Marq grunted and drew his sword. "Viserys of the House Targaryen, do you swear before the eyes of gods and men to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to protect all women and children, to obey your captains, your liege lord, and your king, whomever they may be, to fight bravely and do such other tasks laid upon you, however hard or humble or dangerous they may be, while keeping to the values and teachings of the Golden Company and the legacy of the Bittersteel?"

"I do."

Marq lowered his sword to Viserys's right shoulder, then left, then right again. "Then rise, Ser Viserys, a knight of the Golden Company."

Viserys stood to just Marq, Maegor, and Barristan, and they were truly all he needed. "Thank you, Marq. For everything."

Marq nodded and sniffled. "Aye. Now fuck off before *Lord* *Maegor* sells you for some wildfire."

"Mandrake, I told you, my real name *is* Maegor. Aerion was a disguise. We met before and-"

"Thirty years ago? Hah! I'll believe it when I see proof."

Barristan escorted Viserys on deck as the old sellswords bickered like hens, the ship moving under oars until it was deep in the bay. His flagship, *Golden Shield*, was a round-bottomed war galleon of Braavosi make, and one of the gifts from the Sealord. Viserys had it and almost fifty others, some larger deepwater barges for the animals, twenty war galleys with four scorpions apiece, and a flock of cogs and brigs the Pentoshi shipwrights promised were river capable.

Viserys tried getting to know some of the men he did not in the interim, freedmen and Pentoshi mostly, but he was quickly discouraged by his councillors, chiefly Nymeria and Bear insisting he remain aloof. "And why's that?" he asked after their first week at sea. They caught good wind and swifter scouting vessels said they had clear waters, so they passed the Crownlands without issue, leaving them in the neutral waters between the Stormlands and Myr.

"They think you're hardened," Bear said. "That you're going to Westeros to write peace treaties in the blood of the Sunsetlanders."

"Nonsense," Nym said. "Just keep your distance; there is no need to be overly familiar with the rabble. They know your experience goes from Westeros to all across Essos. Many joined the company when it was quite stationary, in the years before and after you were a cadet. They *expect* a journey and the sights between. Just be their captain."

"They do expect an adventure," Serra muttered, in the corner but having pushed into the meeting. He and Nym practically had to whisper when she visited, Serra's cabin just next door.

Nym said "They know Viserys can give that to them. Oldtown offers work in the city, and work for the King of Thorns directly or indirectly. With him as our patron we can be a bur on the hide of lion, wolf and stag alike."

Barristan cleared his throat. "I'd not be so flippant about facing down the lords of Westeros. Robert's gains on Massey's Hook will only inflame him, and the old lion's lost colonies have left him more men than gold to pay them."

"The wolf is a friend," Viserys clarified, giving his... whatever she was a firm look until she nodded. He was bored with her flirtations in open and needed a killer men did not expect – from his tone, she knew as much.

Viserys had heard the rumours on the docks over the days preceding their departure from Pentos. Ned Stark's end of the deal had delivered the five thousand new Northern veterans of the Company of the Rose, via Velaryon ships, to the Crownlands in service of Rhaegar. With House Stark's aid – and in exchange for more naval support against the Vale – Rhaegar rebuffed the Valemen from Cracklaw Point and captured ships out of Gulltown and even Baratheon vessels around Massey's Hook that had once been his vassals before Robert.

Barristan added more tokens to the Baratheon pile, indicating what they had won. "King's Mountain, Selmy, Dondarrion... The Lannisters have their own interests, but not in the lands Summerhall claims, just the lands nearer Durran's Point and north. Between is hard hit by war with the Reach. They will keep the peace."

Viserys was decided on a plan, and the meeting continued, first with his directing everyone to be on the lookout for comrades with officer potential, old or young, man or woman, then a discussion weighing the merits of stopping to trade in Myr – they decided against it. The fleet thus crossed the Sea of Myrth soon after, bypassing Tyrosh, Bloodstone, and every other port of call left for them in Essos.

Many made their grievances known, sellswords desiring in their bones to spend their plunder from Pentos, but by sowing fear of spies and stowaways Viserys was insulated from their opinions. The tactic paid off, and the only change in the fleet's population was a veteran whose heart stopped during his night watch, and a pair of escaped slaves they found on a tidal island in the Stepstones that would be washed away in the next storm. There were enough languages floating around the Golden Company to speak with them; a brother and sister from the Basilisk Isles.

They spoke a rough creole of Old Ghiscari and a Summer Islander tongue, and they appeared young enough to be absorbed into Viserys's burgeoning class of cadets, or perhaps one of the families of freedmen. "It's a problem for someone else," Barristan said, pouring them wine in Viserys's cabin somewhere south of Dorne. "These intricacies will bog you down."

"I suppose I am to delegate endlessly?"

"My prince, being any sort of leader means undertaking the responsibilities of leadership. That means though you can order someone helped, it must be left to another to..."

"Handle the intricacies." Viserys sighed. "I suppose I can make broad policy. Units of cadets are fine if there are plenty of both, but in ones and twos... I shall mandate some sort of adoption. Responsibility should be shared. They are still children."

Barristan appeared to think it was a good idea. "Monthly bonus of... five silver?"

"I was thinking ten and we pass on all the costs."

***

It was two months of travel that brought them around Dorne and through the Redwyne Straits, while a modest escort of the Arbor's most imposing warships let Viserys know that though he was a player, he was a small one. If he ran afoul of Mina Redwyne, Malora Hightower, or their houses, he might as well say goodbye to any hope of working for Mace Tyrell.

Alliance, Viserys told himself. As if they were equals.

In needing to spread out those he trusted, Barristan included, Viserys was forced to keep his own counsel, Nym being good for his ambitions and lusts but not much else in private. He had no peers he could trust beyond Bear, who was too simple, and Robar, who cared not for politics but logistics, and so the nearer they were to the Reach the more distant Viserys became.

Viserys took to writing a diary, using a combination of bastard Valyrians and Dothraki out of fear his words might be discovered, though it was a stream of consciousness and rarely contained anything of note.

It did help him to improve his handwriting, which Barristan had pressed him on. *A knight's grace should make him master of pen as well as sword, my prince.*

Writing alone however was too new, and he did not want to always rely on a scribe.

He found Serra in her cabin just before midday, just a few days' from Oldtown and having delayed a longer conversation with her as he busied himself with plans. Her guards were of Lothston's brood, but as he entered and they all filed out, he had the distinct sense she had been in the same position as him; everyone was dutiful and kind, many almost to a fault, but there was no one with which she could be herself.

Viserys was hopeful for their family connection, as she encouraged him to sit and he chatted with her about the poetry book at her bedside as she worked with a needle and thread in her lap. She passed silver thread through ruffles of a royal purple linen, outlining black dragons swimming in the folds.

A lull came, and after sipping his tea, Viserys asked, "Have you... sewn most of your dresses?"

As usual, Serra's smile was polite but impassive. "The finest modistes were grappled to please Illyrio, but no, only recently."

"The trials of recent months in Pentos must have been harrying for all." She met his gaze, the end of one eyebrow just a little higher. "Harrying in different- I mean not different, but worse. Not worse, but-"

"Did you *want* something?" she sneered.

Viserys felt his eyes seek an escape as she looked at him, less blankly than before, but seeming less bored. Annoyed at more small talk? "I hoped we might discuss the weeks and months ahead. Indeed, our entire purpose in Westeros. We should trust each other."

Uncaring, perhaps, is what she seemed, deflating at his statement of the obvious. "If father has his way, we would share the seat of Summerhall." That was true, and he nodded.

She said nothing else, watching him again. "And do you... agree?"

Serra sighed and made a show of inhaling to speak and putting down her embroidery, though instead she simply deflated again. "I am... not very knowledgable. I don't know." She looked around and down, then through her silver eyebrows at him. "I do. Not. Care. About. Politics."

"We'll have to learn together. I need a lady, and though I could get married-"

"No, would not want to rush into that."

"Are you merely either sharp or sad?"

Serra pursed her lips at him. "Nymeria? I am not an idiot."

"Do you have a problem with it because she guards you?"

"I have a problem being treated like a stranger and not *family*."

Viserys searched her face. "You're not looking for a brother, and I a sister. I have both, and they are my concern. The children of one, and then my sister, wherever she lies-"

"You wish to save her from a fate like mine, I suppose?" He shook his head at her, for nothing so mean-spirited had even entered his mind. "Could we... nevermind."

Her eyes went to the door then the porthole. "Would you take the air with me, cousin?" Viserys stood and Serra did quickly. "Your silver threading reminded me of some merlings I saw on a tapestry in Qohor."

Her violet eyes blinked at him quizzically. "A... a what?"

"Merling. Children of the sea. Or was it water..." She scoffed and laughed a little, wiping. "Perhaps we could... take the air together."

On deck It was a cool summer morning, the sky cloudy but the sun passing by with bright rays that filled the sails with light. On the deck of the *Golden Shield*, Ser Barristan sparred with a few Essosi freedmen too old to be cadets and too proud to be squires, while marines cast lines to supplement their rations. "We'll be passing the Isle of Pigs, and we're upwind. I'm told the hills and castles are quite the sight."

Serra was still enraptured by the flicking sails – or perhaps the rigging monkey, a copper-skinned Braavosi woman in naught but a scarf over her chest and some men's breeches that hugged an athletic figure. "I would enjoy that." Serra flattened down the front of her dress as the wind caught it and the sailor gave her a leer, though Serra was already looking at the sea and horizon, breathing easier and putting her mind towards other things.

"If it is all too much for you, we can go back in-"

"No!" Serra went tight then softened again, which Viserys used to move her hands from him to the railing of the ship. "The air is so... fresh. There!" She made a choked chirping sound and pointed, a silvery glimmer in the water giving way to a dolphin, then five and fifty swarming a school of fish. Once they had their fill and dashed away, prancing like deer through the sea foam, fishermen moved in to scoop up the rest of the fish.

"Not merlings, but..." Serra sighed and looked from the sea to Viserys and back in a double take. "Perhaps we could learn lord and ladyship together? I may even want a husband one... day. Are you well, cousin?"

Viserys snorted and wiped at his eyes, seeing Aegor and Braavos and the war in Lorath when he fought with Tytus back to back in the sea. "Yes. No. I don't know." He drew the air into his mouth and nose, tasting the sea as if it were wine. Good earth, salt fish... and grapes. "I never spent much time in Pentos. Was the city quite stale?"

Sighing, eyes shut again, Serra let the wind cover her. It pulled strands of hair from her neat basket bun, silver or gold depending on how they danced in the sunlight. "I did not often leave the manse, even when allowed. The city was so large, and Illyrio made it seem like the world was out to get us both. Save until the siege moved us to the prince's palace, I could see only the bay from my window, and only if the sails were not in the way. I still learned, like many women do, of... the truth of my circumstances, but before that day when you and my father- and Ser Barristan, of course, saved me... It was not real. None of it was real until that moment." She daubed the tears running down her cheeks, cursing at the black makeup in her hands. "But you asked about the air."

She watched Viserys for a reaction, but he was still listening to her. Studying, almost. He wondered what he now remembered of his mother was coloured by Serra, or if Daenerys looked more like her or him. Where his hair was dry and broken at the ends and his skin darkened, freckled and scarred, Serra was fair as porcelain. Sheer and hollow but not by choice, the sun and wind filling her as only they could with more time.

"I like it out here. It is peaceful." Viserys leaned over the railing beside her, sighing in the calm of the surf and soaking up the sun's warmth. "Perhaps Westeros can be a new start for us both. I, the roguish sellsword whose word is as good as gold, and you the... mysterious foreign beauty."

"Who keeps her own counsel. Who likes... likes to ride horses in wide open spaces."

"You ride horses?"

"No, but I can learn. Right?" Viserys nodded earnestly. "I *will* learn... I will... You think I'm beautiful?"

He looked out to sea. "Of course." He gave her his best smirk. "You look like me."

She laughed again, and he cursed himself. "Lady Danelle gave the impression you would be... different."

"Different how?"

"Just different."

"She's the nearest thing I have to a mother. She and Ma Cate."

"Ma Cate?"

"Mistress Caterina? Ser Marq's... paramour."

Serra nodded knowingly. "And your mother?" Serra's mouth screwed up and she looked almost awkward, blushing before she asked. "The queen?"

He nodded. "She's dead. For some years now. When I left Dragonstone..." He felt the rain on his face, and the storm raging as his sister was born. The grief was not merely fresh, it was raw. Angry. "I lit her pyre on this... this overlook that's been used by our house for centuries for just such a purpose. It looks southeast, and when the wind catches the smoke and ashes, it's almost as if the fire... as if the fire is bearing them home to Mother Valyria."

Serra's voice took on a lyrical tone as she looked out across the sea and the Arbor. "'East and west and south and north, the conquerors may fly. And tower and town and cottage, have heard the dragon's cry. Shame on the false Valyrian, who lingers on his throne, when Aurion of Qohor is on the march for home.'" She looked up at the sky, then to the horizon. "I do like some poetry, just not the... the Pentoshi classics. They were all he wanted to hear. All anyone wanted them to hear. Men more obsessed with their own histories and the deeds of their ancestors than what possibilities were before their own eyes."

"*A Lay Made About the Year of the Conquest*. When I mentioned poetry..." Viserys said, trailing off. "I am sorry. If I had known-"

"I know, Viserys. I know." He had something far more pressing to ask her, but he struggled to find the words, even as she found them for him. "Papa- Ahem. *Father* told me that my... my marriage to your brother might- might be of- of-" Serra turned from him and covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook and her nose sniffled, but she did not flee from him.

"Serra?"

"I'm alright." He thought he heard her swear under her breath as she drew a handkerchief while straightening her back, turning to the sea again while daubing at the corners of her eyes again. "It just... it comes over me. The sadness. The... the fear." The wind filled her again, and she was calm, only to curse herself upon noticing the eyeliner she smeared. It was the sort of mistake one would only notice if it was pointed out to them, but to Serra it seemed far larger. Not really knowing how to respond, Viserys just stood there, occasionally looking out to sea while Serra kept trying to speak but was held back each time.

He still watched her, and she found him watching. "Where- where is Nymeria?"

Viserys cleared his throat. "On one of the other ships. She is a comrade." She managed to clear her throat when they saw the dolphins again, dancing in clear water with one another, chasing and swimming among the fleet.

"Lady Malora has many sisters and good-sisters that would make you a fine instructor in the ways of running a great house. You shall have never seen a greener place than the Reach, Princess. Pentos's fields and gardens are nothing compared to the endless tracts and groves, and the wild forests and untamed fields in between." He found her face, her violet eyes brighter, not a rich purple like his but gemlike and shimmering. "I read about it, at least."

"You do not do Pentos justice, but in truth I knew little beyond my bedchamber and the adjoining rooms. The wide open... is new, though I am anxious to leave my cabin behind."

"Aye, we'll have fine furnishings to be sure." Viserys risked a look beside him. Her eyes were reddened. "Do not feel... I do not want you to tell me what you do not want to, but my brother is not some part of me I love. He confuses and angers me, even if I could not explain why I *do* love him."

"He is your brother, is why." She tittered softly. "I had a brother. And a sister. I understand that much."

"Daemon? Daemon and..."

"Daenys," she said with a smile. "She was so beautiful, Viserys. She said my shoulders were wide as palm fronds." Serra had shoulders only because she had other parts, and a waist and hips as well. She had been eating well the past moons since the siege, and Viserys did glance at her figure. "I would like to tell you more about them. They were your family too, after all."

He nodded in agreement. "I would like that, Serra. I would like that very much."

"What about you?" Serra took a large look at him, leaning back carefully but then fully against the railing. "It seems all we ever do is talk about me. What about... you? The Golden Company at ten, was it?"

Viserys thought about Tytus, the last person to whom he told his tale. "There's not much beyond the obvious. Prince exiled and left for dead when the realm found itself at war. Golden Company took me in, you can assemble the rest." He wished for some wine and a dark room all of a sudden. "What of your mother?"

"Tell me your tale." She held his gaze, large eyes drawing him in. She had her own powers of persuasion. "Is it so much more terrible than mine?"

Viserys couldn't look Serra in the eye as he conjured those days in his mind. He looked at the sea instead. "I was... eight. It was early in the year, at the tail-end of the false spring. Winter was back. The Hand, he... he conspired with the kingsguard to secure my mother and good-sister and I, and my brothers children, on Dragonstone. Rhaegar had ordered as much, but my father, the Mad King, ordered the opposite. As kingsguard, they were forced to obey, but soon my father, he found himself... witless. In one of his spells, there was an opening, and Martell and Lannister stole us. Both were working for their families though, or some say, and we were separated from my brother's wife and children. My mother, she-" Viserys needed to pause to wet his swallow. He felt his throat and chest tightening, and his eyes face getting warm. "The queen gave birth, but passed from her labours. We went to Braavos, Daenerys was stolen, the Martells tried and failed to kill me, Marq saved me from the street but a day later. The rest, I was a sellsword. Use your imagination."

He stood walked thinking and back to his cabin, avoiding the marines playing a dice game and shutting himself away in some quiet. Unbuttoning his collar and feeling the warm interior air spray, Viserys found himself again by calming the fearful dragon within. Afraid, a dragon would lash out. He breathed as if he were releasing the fire rather than burning someone.

Barristan had delivered to him copies of many of the same texts Rhaegar learned from, in a bid to help them both understand the decisions made by the former crown prince. In all the stories, dragons were distilled to nothing more than beasts of wrath and gluttony driven by base instinct. In such moments of emotional turmoil, Viserys felt like a beast, some lowly thing weak to their urges, without any of the discipline or training he wore in his arm rings. He wondered if that fire and thirst was what he must blame, must remedy, to halt the downfall of his house before it was too late. The Targaryen madness or greatness was neither of those things – it was all just lust for power masked behind causes of peace and prosperity, and whatever foul things were made from so much incest.

Looking back at his cabin door, Viserys saw Serra watching him. Unbuttoning his collar a little more and folding it down more neatly, he went to his wine.

Serra shut the door. "It's like a fog of panic."

"It was more an attack than some foul mist." Viserys poured and drank some lesser wine, moving to the couch where he could sit in peace. "That time was... frightening. My entire world crashing down around me like so much rain, and..." He went to his footlocker, digging past his heavier plate armour, his own cloak of tattered trophies, more books, and finally Mistress Caterina's vibrant blue scarf, a touch faded but intact. He cleared the table somewhat to lay it between them, unwrapped to reveal the Valyrian steel, ruby, and onyx crown of his mother. "I can hardly recall whom it belonged to before my mother. But it's everything, Serra. Westeros has been a dream all this time, and we are about to arrive, yet I feel farther than ever from it all. From Daenerys and helping you and your son, to Aegon, Princesses Elia and Rhaenys, or Aemon in the North."

He drank more wine as Serra sat beside him, sipping some herself with steelier nerves. "You... you would bring my Aegon back to me?"

He turned to her slowly. Viserys felt it was so obvious, but he nodded still. "I had always planned to do my utmost. Both are my nephews, and though one is the only king most all the lords of the Seven Kingdoms agree upon, Aegon the younger... Maegor your father is dear to me, and you are dear to him. Do you... love your son?"

"Of course I do, but what about you? This crown is a..." She lifted it from the table carefully, even though only one sword in the fleet could even scratch it. "It is a reminder of your love for your mother. And hers for you, I am certain. She gave it to you for a reason." She offered it to him, and he took it, consulting the three dragons' eyes. "Why lock it away when it has sustained you, as a dream of the Sunset kingdoms or not?"

Viserys had no answer but to look at the crown. He tried to rise but was distracted grabbing the scarf and sat again. "I should... pack it up."

She took his hand and then the scarf, folding it neatly. "I would quite like to copy the colour and design? Aegon... Aegon did ever so love the colour blue."

Viserys agreed. "So long as you promise to wear it, princess?"

She cocked her head and leaned over to him, almost climbing up the couch until her face was an inch in front of his. She held his gaze, but his eyes flicked to her lips anyway. "Princess? Cous-"

Her kiss was tender and not at all out of place, but she sat back after a moment. "I'm sorry." He shook his head, dumbfounded as Serra calmly rose and moved to the door, looking back at him when he asked her question.

"Did you ever meet Daenerys?" He rose and met her in the time it took her to turn around, needing answers and desiring her within his sight.

"I did. Not often, but... enough. Truthfully, Daenerys..." Serra looked forlorn. "In truth, Daenerys has been... mostly forgotten by your brother." Viserys shuddered to hear it. Rhaegar was his brother. He would always be his brother. The man who had married this woman, forced a child on her, then sold her off to a life of torment and kept her from her child had *forgotten* their sister?

Serra seemed to read the fear and anger on his face "She is cared for, do not misunderstand, just not often unconsidered. Rhaegar is hale, and there are far too many left to vie for her future hand." She cupped his cheek and lifted his head to look her in the eye. "Do not fear, Viserys. She won't suffer my fate." She tried to turn again but he caught her hand, knowing well what it looked like to the crew watching them outside his cabin, yet not caring at all except that he knew Serra wanted, *deserved*, far more than to just go from one man's bed to another, even if Viserys now fostered the hope for just that and so much more.

"My lady, despite all you have seen, that you can still draw upon kindness. Dream about... about home and family and... and love." Her fingers relaxed into his, at least in agreement with how she still saw the world. "If Daenerys were half the woman you are, I would be a very proud brother. A very proud brother indeed."

She watched his face for only a momen before nodding curtly and turning out the door.

Chapter Text

9th moon, 290 AC

Whispering Sound was bright blue sea bordered by white cliffs, the same stone made into the Hightower. Looming overhead, Mace wondered what it would take to topple it – he rued the day he lost one of his most important allies, but he supposed it would be mutually assured destruction.

The ships that docked had white, purple, and yellow sails, some striped black or patched with blue diamonds, though they all had black and red pennants fluttering about, and the flagship carried a banner of a red field and golden dragon with a single head.

"I could be in Tumbleton right now," grumbled Willas. "My presence is not necessary when courting... common sellswords. Like a merchant. Or a Lannister." He spat the word 'Lannister,' though he sensed Mace's bristling and tightened up.

They wore their best greens, Mace with his Knights of the Order of the Golden Rose carrying his banner, and Willas flanked by two of his travelling companions – the tall and rash Ser Emmon Cuy, and the stout, stalwart – and foreign – leader of the Unsullied. Mace did not know his name, but then he did not make it his business to learn the names of those who could not father children or offer more than blind obedience.

Such a belief was why he was not about to kill Viserys Targaryen the moment he stepped onto his land.

It had been a prayer of a move to proclaim himself protector of the realm while warning of some threats Mace knew of and others he did not. All had been worthy of consideration, but until they were a threat he was not going to worry when he had wars on his doorstep.

Mace would admit to some curiosity as well, that for all possible lies, why would someone claim to be the forgotten second son of Mad Aerys, unless he was telling the truth and in some strange way warning Westeros of his own madness.

The ships docked, men bearing uniform shields and spears filing off, like Unsullied in heavier armour. Each was tall and thick with muscle, hale and hearty whether Westerosi, Essosi, or those from beyond. Mace even caught the scent of olive soap – the best variety from Dorne.

Were those Norvoshi axes? Dothraki arakhs?

Behind the lockstep and then a rabble of accented warriors came knights, men and horses in armour, some with all manner of strange and foreign banner on their pikes, most with castle-forged longswords and heater shields with plentiful heraldry from living houses and those Mace thought extinct.

The sight of Ashara Dayne made a few of the nobles whisper, while Barristan Selmy caused Lord Commander Gerold Hightower to nearly faint while the smallfolk shouted with glee. Willas hissed in a low voice, "And if we lose the peasants? Father, what then?"

"Where is he, Lord Mace?" Mace glared daggers at his son but softened before King Aegon, though the silver-haired boy with sun-kissed olive skin was still basking in his uncle's arrival.

The king had filled out from a rotund and twig-limbed toddler into a robust boy, nine next moon and set to squire for the White Bull in his name-day tourney . "You said he resembled Maekar, and I studied the tapestries in the Starry Sept. I do not see him!"

"Patience, my king. Look to the ship, see there?"

"A Lyseni! With blue hair!"

"Part Tyroshi and all bastard, I'm told," Willas murmured.

"Seven hells," gasped Ser Emmon. "*That* is a woman."

Mace thought it interesting, the Valyrian princess's selection of lime and gold brocade on silver and black damask. Vaguely Tyrell or Hightower colours, or foreign enough to not offend, while the woman herself was so objectively beautiful to distract from any offense, real or imagined. She recalled Princess Rhaella – before her marriage, that is – and stories his mother told of the Targaryens at their height.

No wonder his son was frustrated.

Prince Viserys emerged from behind her with a proud chest and a straight white smile, yet more foreigner than Targaryen. He was weathered and freckled, not like a Dornishman but a ghiscari, save around his right eye, which was slightly darker and speckled with white scars – Mace recalled some unlucky acolyte's burns after an accident with black powder. Or wildfire. He had wavy and crimped hair that hung almost to his belt, which did not match his scabbard, cape strap or boots, with a few braids, some with bells. It was all bedraggled and tangled just enough to keep him plenty roguish while still resembling a knight – with two swords on his hip, at that.

When he pulled a string from his wrist and tied the hair off his face, Mace *heard* his sister swoon. "You're worse than Malora," he said.

"He took my advice, at least," Mina purred, smiling almost too wide, chest full of too much air. "What will it take for him to help me hunt the Greyjoys? I wonder..."

Mace grunted. "Offer him a pile of gold and to pay for the whores yourself."

"I hear he is a man of... more refined tastes." Mina laughed at her brother's discomfort, both their gazes finding the Hightower sailors that had accompanied the Prince since he entered Reach waters. "They will claim this if we are not careful. Let my marines get to know their peers in gold."

Smallfolk crowded the wharf beyond the dock, while House Hightower had opened the lower third of their home, its windows and balconies stuffed with lesser nobility and those smallfolk and merchants who knew the right people.

Mace tutted. "They fight with themselves still." How many stories would circulate in taverns of Oldtown that evening, Mace wondered. How long until there were ravens from Winterfell and Sunspear asking questions about Targaryens and sellswords he could not answer?

Viserys came to stand before his nephew, looking firm but genial as a princeling. The red cape, golden arm rings and two swords of Valyrian steel would only add to the tales told in taverns that evening. "You are welcome here, Prince Viserys Targaryen, brother of my father." King Aegon's voice was calm and clear, Whispering Sound and the people of Oldtown in quiet submission to their king. "If you would, my lord, you have come with an army and curious intentions, but just seeing you now..." Aegon's rehearsed speech wavered as he took in his uncle, as tall as the White Bull, that bright cape that could challenge any Lannister, and Blackfyre and Dark Sister at his side. Completely impractical yet entirely effective. "Where... How did..."

To Mace's despair, the boy looked behind at Ser Gerold for direction, who gave him a firm nod. Despite his house, the former lord commander of the Kingsguard was an ally to neither House Tyrell or House Hightower. "You are the king, your grace," Viserys said. "You may simply ask, and I will tell you." His accent was strange. Almost like a Valeman's, but more rough and alto. Like a sellsword.

Mace held back Willas as the king and his uncle's parties began to merge, first with Barristan and Ashara, then Mina and Leyton on his cane. Randyll Tarly found Ashara first, cornering her with the harbour water to her back, their guards mixing perilously. With her return, Tarly would lose an ally in the Darkstar as Ashara took back the regency of Starfall.

"We *will* lose the Marches at this rate," Willas grumbled.

The Unsullied gripped his short sword. "I shall kill the dragon for you, Lord of Thorns."

"Leash your pet." Mace tightened his grip on his son's arm.

"No, Grey Worm." Mace released him as they lost all three Targaryens to a crowd of nobles. "How dare Uncle Gerold."

"Aegon needed a protector." Mace took his son under his arm, indicating a troupe of the Golden Company's officers. "I see the chequy lion of Osgrey. He's a peer of the prince. He is *the prince* now, understand? Not the sellsword, not the pretender. The prince. Do not give fuel to your own fears."

Willas nodded, he and Ser Emmon moving towards Viserys's captains and knights, though Grey Worm continued watching the prince himself. Mace saw no reason not to keep it that way.

Mace's movement through the reception farther down the docks found him standing amongst a crowd of the other nobility watching the Osgrey knight juggle crystal goblets. "Ser Robar Osgrey. He has strong claims on Standfast and Coldmoat." Mace nodded his thanks to his cousin Medwick, a maester of the Citadel and a voice on his shoulder between him and his guards. "Lord Rowan has-"

"I will handle Matthis."

Ser Robar was fairer than Viserys, common in appearance with muddy brown hair and a round, freckled nose. Mace detected poor breeding, but given the state of House Osgrey, Mace imagined a cousin exiled to Essos had more interesting pedigree, even if lesser. "Lord Tyrell! Apologies." The knight in gold and green caught the five goblets one after the other to the scattered applause of the spectators.

"Interesting talent." Mace picked up one of the goblets, testing its weight. "To what end would you learn such a skill?"

He jawed for a moment before answering. "It- it was an uncle of mine. He was a mummer in Volantis before joining the Company."

"'The Company'. How quaint," Mace muttered. "Ser Robar... Osgrey, was it?" Robar's eyes widened. He nodded. "I shall be watching your career with great interest." Mace turned from the other nobility, spying some knights from House Dustin he hoped to speak with. He sought Medwick for their names, but his cousin had found the wine and was at the bottom of a bottle already. Cursing, he nodded to a half-maester and sent one of his knights, who escorted the young man to him. "Those Barrow knights. I wish to speak with them."

The half-maester was not a tall man, but he was obedient enough to crane his neck and spy whom Mace indicated. "That would be... Mark Ryswell. Good-cousin to Lord William Dustin. He is nephew to Lord Rodrik Ryswell, and uncle and former regent to Lord Bolton." The half-maester was being forced to follow, but he stopped and his knights might have drawn on him had Mace not been so taken aback by what he said next. "My lord, my deepest apologies I am not... I was invited here as well. As a guest. I am sure it was a mere miscommunication that you-"

Mace wondered who invited a Summer Islander acolyte. The politics did not require their presence at such- "Kasté!" Prince Viserys embraced the half-maester boldly, spinning him around and kissing him on the lips like some... well, Summer Islander. "I had hoped Lady Malora would pass my letter to you. The ravens in Essos are still so unreliable." He looked across to Mace, then offered worry. "Have I interrupted? Are you working, comrade?"

Mace found one of the arch-maesters – how had four of *them* been invited? – and pointed to the problem before him. It was Ryam, whose link was gold – of course his best financial mind had found his way in. "My lord, Kasté is a special case. His tenure with us was always on a timeline, and he is to return to Essos to serve in his mother's house sooner than-"

"Nonsense," Mace stated even as Viserys put the acolyte behind him. "The stipend offered to the Citadel to cover the cost of such an education are a *pittance* compared to the true investment in the mind of this young man. I will not allow the resources of the Reach to be so exported."

Ryam stuttered, "My lord, it is hardly a pittance to-"

"How much?" Viserys's voice was clearer and stronger than the archmaester. "Shall we count coppers like merchants, Lord Tyrell?"

"Count coppers?" Mace's eye twitched. "You dare to-"

"Let us focus on getting to know one another. Prince Viserys, I am told you enjoy the three-step?" Leyton walked between them, hooked his cane over his arm and clapped, the band picking up a jaunty tune. "As host of this occasion, I believe that is fair enough for me to ask?"

Mace was still processing Viserys' challenge, more of a challenge than Mace had ever faced before, but he forced himself to nod, he and the prince turning away at the same time.

Viserys removed his cape and swords before taking Malora to the dance floor, while Leyton reined-in Mace, dragging him to a muffled antechamber. "You rise to such common insults? I lose more ground to her and Baelor every day, and now..." Leyton calmed himself. "This is what they do. The dragons press and prod and insult and sow chaos, and we play right into their claws. Do not lose sight of the bigger picture, my lord."

The antechamber was a salon, so there was wine and food for Mace to fill his mouth, though he resisted at the last moment. Seeing the state of Doran Martell's gout at the last betrothal negotiation had him resisting decadent foodstuffs more and more. "Everything I built is under threat. Every safeguard, every convention... by the fucking Targaryens. Again!"

"We know little still, son." Leyton rested one liver-spotted hand on his. "Do not let the woe shade your eyes. Loras comes out of his shell, Alerie shows improvement, and we have the chance to hold another piece of the great game. And Aegon has not turned away from you yet."

"I do not expect him to be another pawn, father, but Aegon is not my concern. Not yet, anyway." He did not call Leyton 'father' lightly, but both his parents were dead and Leyton's children... well, they did not often heed his advice. "I do not need a partner or an ally. I need people who can command other people when I command them."

Leyton listened closely, standing over Mace as he sat to think and drink some watered wine. Leaning on his cane, in his long white and grey robes, he was the image of the wizard as many believed him to be. Age had begun to weigh him down, however, and his journeys beyond the Hightower were fewer and further between. "You are not a commander still, and the prince's steel is honed. He needs direction."

"I'm not his father."

"You said so about the king." Leyton shrugged. "We shall learn what they want in short enough course. In the meanwhile, we can... thin the herd, as it were, and deal with a few of our own problems in the meanwhile by taking up the sellswords on their offer. If he can take Summerhall and Ser Barristan delivers House Selmy, the Dornish can do the same with the Dondarrions and Carons. Felwood and the Kingswood could fall in weeks after that. Things may move quickly from there. Duskendale is still there."

Mace disagreed. "It is summer. Planting has begun and the people are tired of war, smallfolk to highborn. And we've problems on our doorstep – the Greyjoys and the Lannisters are not answered easily with just a thousand sellswords, Golden Company or no." He rose to wash his face in a basin, refreshing his mind as well. "And before we can think of the Kingswood and Duskendale, we must make peace with the Riverlands and Vale."

"You let me worry about the Tullys and the Arryns – while Lord Tywin flails to play the game again, he needs your gold and my wheat to do it. The Eyrie just wants access, but you will need to speak with the High Septon – the North is a factor now, and he may choose to side with Winterfell if it means travelling septons are allowed through the Neck."

Mace groaned. "The Most Devout conspire, and the old man hangs on to life..."

"Wait. I have an idea? My younger brother – you might know him as Most Devout Uthor?"

Mace fought a shiver. "Is he a friend?"

Leyton's fingers curled around the emerald atop his cane. "He is close to my children, but he is also close to your son. He is a good man, a wise one, and he is... optimistic about the Essosi faith. The North will fall out of sight with him in the high seat." Mace wondered when his life became such backroom dealings, or if it was fated by so much war. "It could be a great move, and he may live for thirty years as an ally to you, to Willas and to *Queen* Margaery. The Vale? The Northern... protesting faith? The Essosi? Let all bow to the rose. The Green Men, even." Leyton whistled as he found the wine. savouring it masterfully. "But there are things that, if discovered, I will need your seal to navigate if Uthor is to succeed."

Mace supposed the master of the Citadel could be a master of all disciplines. And in those circles trafficked by mages and warlocks, the Old Man of the Hightower had something of a reputation. "My seal... What is the worst thing that could happen?"

Leyton looked confused and then impressed. "Most Devout Ellery is a conservative reformer from the Westerlands, an agent of Tywin Lannister and about as ambitious as he is hungry for what Maesters call 'flesh of the long pig.'"

"Well, that is quite awful... And he would be among those who will need my... approval?"

"Exactly, my lord." Mace nodded and Leyton tapped his cane twice. "Very good. Now, shall we return to the party?"

"Good luck with that. I must speak with... with Alerie and the children. What can I do if the prince attempts to propose marriage to Malora?"

Leyton waved him off. "I will worry about that as well. She and Baelor may want my seat, but they are still my children." Leyton pointed his cane at the door. "Now go be the rose lord, not the thorn king, and in fifty years no one will remember a gold dragon from a red or a black one."

***

After much feasting and an extended market fair, House Hightower finally ran out of ways to drain the purses of the Golden Company – Oldtown's coffers were up almost one-hundred-thousand gold – but Mace couldn't help but wonder if the celebrations had taken too much from his own people as well.

Prince Viserys had a poor handle on his knights, and close to a hundred of them had married some noble's third daughter or younger sister – or brother – and took ownership of keeps and tracts in the Reach and beyond. They all paid Mace and the king fealty and departed the Golden Company, of course, but they all had gold in their new sigils and the ear of 'the new dragon' as they took to calling Aegon. First in jest, then with genuine loyalty when they saw his performance in the squire's melee, his will and physical strength – despite lacking in speed, talent or victory.

Mace thought on tempering his ward, but he needed neither humility nor cunning – simply time. Time to age, time to be married and father heirs, and perhaps time to even be the king he wanted himself.

The lord of Highgarden broke his fast the morning after with his son and some peers, their words a mumble as he mused and dreamed. "Steel begets gold, one way or another." Randyll served himself from the platter before them, he, Matthis Rowan, and Willas eating breakfast on one of the Hightower's many courtyard-sized balconies. The summer sun filtered through silk awnings above them, and a cool sea breeze caressed their backs. "They spend it, we give it back to them so they don't kill us all. The cycle is simply unfamiliar in the Seven Kingdoms. Best we learn it the easy way. Better them then our men."

"I will not lose Coldmoat to some foreign peasant." Mace knew the Lord of Goldengrove felt cut out of the progress of the Reach since the war began, the gains he was promised in the Northmarch and Westerlands yet to bear out – but in hard power alone, horses, coin and bent knees, Matthis would be famous for centuries. "I want that Osgrey dead."

"Prince Viserys does seem eager to spread out his friends," Willas observed. "But one of them has Mormont blood, and they are not the house they were before the war. To say nothing of the worried letters I keep getting from Lord Peake."

"Lord Peake has as many uses as coins – I say let them take those castles. Three Harrenhals of the Marches." Randyll guffawed. "And I'll fret about *Mormonts* when Tywin Lannister finds his lands to the west." He laid down his utensils and turned to his lord, ignoring Willas and Matthis. "Prince Viserys has the trust of the Daynes and Dondarrions, and just this week Lords Stark, Bolton and Manderly voiced their support for King Aegon's position *because* of the prince's involvement. And the equality of their king, but I will care when I must." He shrugged, picking up his knife and fork again to cut through some fried Northern ham as his fellow lords looked at him frustrated. The cooks preferred it, it travelled well and it could sit in their larders for years longer. "Rowan and your heir seem to have forgotten that the prince is one that lion, wolf, falcon and stag will fret over. Robert may kill them all and all our worries could become moot, but that will clear the board too much. The Reach can just put the Golden Company in front and then claim sellsword if we are discovered."

Mace enjoyed this new level-headed side to his friend. He needed to reward him some more. "Aye, let's not worry them yet. Mina has need of the Golden Company's ships, and the rest we can put to work."

"Work, father?" Mace looked coolly at his heir. "They will recruit from us as well."

"You overestimate the appeal of being a sellsword," Rowan added.

"You *underestimate* the differences between a King's Landing cutthroat and a disciplined regiment of spears from Essos." Mace hoped his look conveyed trust – Willas was not wrong. Let Aunt Mina be the judge. If they can't slay a few thousand Ironborn, then what use are they?"

Chapter Text

9th Moon, 290 AC

With his nephew's name-day tourney approaching and rumours swirling of a contract in the Marches or the Redwyne Straits, Viserys maneuvered himself a free afternoon, evading both his comrades and the lords and ladies seeking his attention. Oldtown was the oldest city in the land, the city where Aegon was crowned and different than any free city Viserys had seen, so of course he needed to explore it for himself.

Like Pentos, Oldtown had a strong, high heart of palatial temples and ancient towers, from the Starry Sept and the Citadel to the Hightower and ancient castles of Gardener and Whisper kings now ruled by branches of other great houses of the Reach. Like Braavos, around the stately core was the sprawling and compacted heart of the city, trade flowing along streets and canals that wound from the Honeywine to the docks. Unlike braavos though, the sky was ever clear and blue, with predictable rains and oil lamps that lit up the night while still allowing the stars to shine.

Anything one could imagine for purchase from across the world could be found in Oldtown's markets, and every language Viserys had ever heard and a few he had not crossed sea and storm from Asshai to White Harbor for the patronage and protection of House Hightower. He drank coffee in a Summer Islander-owned public house, ate Ghiscari bread with Norvoshi cheese and Rhoynish olive oil at a street stall, and even swung a massage and needling treatment from a Lyseni master that could have been Maegor's grandfather from his shrivelled Valyrian look. He did not know Viserys from the Warrior, or he did not care.

By the afternoon, Viserys had made his way to the orderly farms and manor estates of the lesser nobility – or the increasingly-common landowning smallfolk, who rejected the label – beyond the city proper, taking in the greatest work of House Hightower since their eponymous fortress. Beyond foundries that equipped the Reach's armies and farms that served the family directly, a wall – the New Wall, they called it.

The stones were megalithic, laid and set under a warren of maesters and various powders and solvents, sealing the stones together as they were constructed higher and thicker. The wall itself extended beyond the horizon, extending around the city and the Honeywine around the entirety of the city as well as untracked lands beyond it.

Viserys ate his luncheon on the ivied patio of an inn on a hill, watching the construction from there. There was a castle fort every five miles built into the wall itself, only one standing yet and with a grey and brown limestone miniature of the Hightower above. It extended another hundred feet above the three-hundred foot wall, burning gold and yellow.

Barring the Black Walls of Volantis, it would be a work worthy of comparison to the Wall – It was smaller than *the* Wall, but likely only the Hightowers and Maesters stayed aware of that.

"When will we learn to build like that again?" Viserys began his journey back into the city, falling in behind a maester guiding a class of acolytes on a tour of the city.

"When indeed, young Alleras," the maester proclaimed. He was a furry man with round, red cheeks and a cherubic mop of hair. "But before we ask how, we must know why!" He indicated the burning flame at the top of the Hightower. "A monument to the kings of the First Men who called these lands home, or a testament to their ego? We must consider the logic, that such a thing could not be accomplished today due to simple facts of access to materials and labour. Society is more complex now, but we must not forget that for as long as men have built, they have destroyed. Such works may rise again, in time." He gestured back at a finished section of the New Wall, a two-hundred foot-high monument in pale grey stone, and did not move on until the class was done with their notes and sketches.

Viserys sidled up to the maester as the acolytes set about taking rubbings in a nearby cemetery, covering his arm rings just to be sure. He had managed to get a few of his smarter cadets into the Citadel before they caught on, but so far the Reachmen were keeping their best and brightest close at their sides. "Maester, I'm fresh in the city and hoped I might... ask a question? If it's not too much trouble?"

The maester looked up at a sun-beaten Lyseni, in an old straw hat with a rusted sword on his waist. "Very well. But be quick about it."

"I've been lucky in my travels, and had heard of a smith who can rework dragonsteel that resides in Oldtown." Viserys tried reaching for the Valyrian steel link on the maester's chain, just as a curious sellsword might. "I've come into... a bit of prize, you could say."

The maester looked more concerned with his class's safety than the needs of a greedy foreigner as he indicated a wealthier market deeper in the city. "You should find Tobho Mott's shop. He set stakes not two years ago." The maester looked Viserys up and down again. "You should know, such works are costly. And Oldtown has a *robust* legal system."

"Why do you think I am here, maester?" Viserys tipped his hat and flicked him a stamped gold piece, one of his best with Aegon V's profile.

Viserys had tried asking around for Tobho Mott's shop over the preceding days, but he had little desire to connect those two parts of his life just yet. He found the bald Qohorik hunched over an anvil in a fine shop of lacquered wood under the protection of the lord of light, a shiny new temple to the red god dominating a quarter of the city home to mostly Essosi. There were a shrine to the Black Goat off to one side of the main room, and with a smaller reliquary to R'hllor on the wall beside it. Through some small doors, he found the master smith.

"I knew it was you!" Gendry, a bull of a boy, slammed into Viserys, his head as tall as Viserys' chin with big shoulders, long arms, and large hands callused from the hammer. "Master Mott! It's Prince Vis- Leopold!"

Viserys rolled Gendry into a headlock and dragged him back to Tobho, who turned and looked at him surprised. "You have hair! And scars. Wildfire." He tutted, inspecting the side of his face before patting Viserys on the cheek and pulling him down into a hug and set of Essosi kisses. "I should have known. No common Lyseni would have found Dark Sister."

He led him into the back of the shop, sending Gendry and his other apprentices away. "Men are talking! Gendry's a good lad but he's overeager. Big for his age and thinks he's a man ready for war." He sighed. "But it's a better life than wandering like nomads, and he's made friends with the baker's boy and my other apprentices. Two of them Hightower bastards the Old Man wants learning the sacred art."

*That was easy,* Viserys thought. "My hope was to speak about just that. Just him, rather. The Old Man."

The Qohorik moved to a small wooden table, a square in the middle of a mound of pillows on the carpeted floor furnished just as many an interior in northern Essos. "Leyton Hightower is not a man worth crossing. I say old man, but he is younger than me, and his renown and influence are surpassed only by his genius and his resources." Tobho prepared them tea, bringing the water barely to a boil before dropping in the softened leaves, then dumping all the water to steep the leaves again. "There have been pressures of late, from the distant wings of his family that won gold and glory serving House Tyrell in the warring since the destruction of King's Landing. They are loyal to Lord Leyton first, House Hightower second. He hopes to secure the legacy of the Reach overall, the ideal that it can extend from sea to sea, and could include all the upper Crownlands if they play the game well. These distant wings of family would be his pathway to that. But Leyton's eldest children, Baelor and Malora, value Hightower influence greater than the rebirth of the Kingdom of the Reach."

Tobho shrugged as he poured the tea and Viserys drank. It reminded him of Essos; of the road and Ser Marq, sparring with Tytus and Drogo and feeling the cool wind bouncing off the Rhoyne and tousling his hair. "I missed these lands less than I thought. There is... a familiarity with peace in Westeros not known in the Free Cities, however, which I do enjoy. Folk here do not scramble for opportunity and advantage. No clawing, at least. Just politics."

"An apt description. I hope it bears out for you that way in the years to come." Tobho drank the tea and sighed, lounging in his pillows. "My good hope was you would bring me riches to rework."

"I could not bear losing Dark Sister, and Blackfyre must go to Aegon. But I will see to it you get a fine look." Viserys leaned over the table. "But what of Tyrell? Does he share that vision, or does Lord Leyton lead the way and the king of thorns is just his tool?"

"That would be some thing, and even possible, but it is far simpler. Mace Tyrell desires revenge."

Viserys cursed under his breath, sipping the tea and seeking clarity. It eluded him. He removed the maze signet ring. "Could you rework this into a dragon? One head, for... for my personal sigil, wherever I land?"

The smith nodded. "I could do that. And one better." He stood for a chest across the room, withdrawing the Valyrian steel vambrace. "I used this as collateral with the Bank of Oldtown, and repaired Vigilance. It did not take me long to pay back the loan after that given all the scrap floating around the Citadel and coming from the Iron Islands."

His jaw wagging as he was handed the armour with new gold finishings and carmine-stained leather, the Valyrian steel black as pitch but swirling when the light hit it just right. Viserys managed a "thank you" as he slipped the armour on under his ratty cloak. "Thank you very much, Master Mott."

The smith inclined his head. "I will hope you use it well. And that your knights commission me first?"

"And myself. Here, the pomp is what matters."

"Pageantry, my dear man. Pageantry!"

The thought did occur to Viserys, though as he glanced around the shop, he said, "I have five-hundred knights and over one thousand infantry now with recruitment being up, and I hope to grow. Do you have the capacity?"

Suddenly, Mott was all business. "You let me handle such worries. Or does the gold atop the steel not spend as well as everyone else?" He drew a ledger. "Since the first overture from the Grand Septon to the Mad- to your father, I have believed the free companies and their cultures may migrate to Westeros. The stage was set for such mummers to play, and the Seven Kingdoms had many players already." He indicated the liens. Viserys read raw materials in massive amounts, more than his contingent of the Company could afford, let alone make use of – for all their freedmen, in total they were still fewer than fifteen-hundred proper company sellswords. "We can start with... two-thousand short-swords, spears, shields, and full helms?"

Viserys could not accept, until he saw the prices. "Seven bless locally produced steel."

"What say you to... fifty-thousand gold dragons, and exclusive rights to equipping the Golden Company for the next... six years."

Viserys said, "Forty thousand, and I give you a district of Duskendale after I take it. And ten years."

Mott chuckled at first, though when it appeared Viserys was serious, he said, "You believe you would gain such a keystone of the Tyrell vision for Westeros?"

"Everyone has a vision." Viserys laid out his Iron Bank-approved writ of funds. "Money is not my reason. I want to do this the right way, and I believe I can take Duskendale with minimal bloodshed where Willas stomps and Robert wails about what's fair. I hope to have allies in any case, and your name still quiets halls in the Crownlands. And I have friends in Pentos and Braavos."

The idea of returning to Essos, even if it was not Qohor, filled the master smith's eyes with fire. "Oh, flattery will get you everywhere, my prince." Mott sipped his tea then set down his cup, drumming his fingers on the low table. "Another dive thousand dragons, and suits of armour for you and your officers."

"Then we have a deal. Now, you spent time in Duskendale, did you not?" Viserys poured them more tea. "Tell me about the city."

***

Viserys made his goodbyes after another crushing hug from Gendry and the promise to bring Dark Sister and Blackfyre next time, before making haste back to the Hightower and revealing himself at the front door, where he was swiftly escorted to the object of his curiosity.

While he had first expected a man like Maegor or perhaps Khal Bharbo, Leyton Hightower was more like Lysono Maar, a man who enjoyed knowing far more than ally and enemy alike, and who guarded his emotions zealously. "Tobho Mott?"

Viserys did not find him particularly old, pale blonde hair and white and grey clothing merely adding to the lord's appearance of wisdom. His eyes were quick, and his hand calmly grasped the plum-sized emerald at the head of his cane. "I helped him find his way to Oldtown. By way of Dondarrion and Dayne."

"The Marches are a dangerous place."

"So is Essos. Yet here I stand."

They met in Leyton's solar up a chain-pulled lift on the highest floor of the Hightower, large windows offering generous views of the city and Whispering Sound below, and Reach and Sunset Sea beyond. "You fought alongside Stane, Bolton, *and* Stark?" He levered himself from his chair, cane tap-tapping as he approached. "You are an educated man, despite your manner." Leyton lifted his chin, assessing Viserys. Lord Hightower had been tall once, though his back was as hunched as a maester's. "A brutal life you lived though, I think. Did a brutal life make you a brute, Prince Viserys?"

"I have plans with the king, Lord Hightower." Viserys turned for the door, feigning offense.

Leyton lifted his cane, blocking escape. "There's no need for that – Protector of the realm, eh? Think you're cunning? You've fewer men and ships than your brother, what makes you think you can tip the scales?"

"I'm here speaking with you, aren't I?"

"Hm. Indeed..."

"My lord, I have seen things. Strange things in stranger places amid all the brutality. And they taught me the importance of facing the future with strength. Strength and unity. As much of both as we can gather."

"The Grand Septon. Slavers might have frightened the smallfolk and made some of Lannister's allies have trouble sleeping – but you wanted us looking east." Leyton went to a small collection of armchairs and a sofa by the hearth. "These Andalosi are knights and smallfolk, same as Westeros?"

"More... refined. Limited, you could say. It recalls some of the... the ideals described in the Seven-Pointed star's take on the Kingdom of the Sarnor, but they neglect larger siege weapons, and their lands are not appropriate for chariots. Many lords grapple, none are powerful alone, but alliance and allegiance and Sword of Hugor's influence are what sway it all." Leyton seemed to be reassessing his "brute" comment. "They have few friends, but successes against Tyrosh and Lys are providing momentum. If they don't take Volon Therys, or even Tyrosh before the end of next year, I predict they will look west rather than risk Volantis or the Dothraki. Some in Lys speak of capitulation now to keep their way of life."

"To hold on to their way of life and seats of power, the Lyseni will certainly capitulate."

"Which will disrupt trade here. Lys and Volantis are vital to the journey from the far parts of the Essos to Oldtown, is it not?"

"Yes. And I imagine the Lyseni way of life may clash with those of a religious variety, compared to... Are you religious, Viserys?"

"As I've said, I have seen things." Leyton was unsatisfied. "I think a little support from beyond this earth might behove everyone, but I do not plan for it."

"Perhaps this Great Khal will wash over them?" Leyton indicated a horse carving on his mantle. "Vaes Dothrak, original."

Viserys unwound a bell from his hair and rang it. "From Bharbo's own braid. Essos is large, but I had nine years to explore it."

"Yes, you've come into quite the reputation." Leyton looked at him looking into the fire. Viserys did not study it, but he did use it to quiet his mind, the dancing tendrils offering a strange peace to the tumult of the dragon within. "Will you marry my daughter?"

Viserys tried not to look too awkward, though his tan was fading already and he could hardly cover his blush. "I do not think so, my lord. I did give her honest consideration, and her intentions were... evident." Leyton grunted. "I know I must marry, but it would bind me here, and I do not know if that is what is needed for the kingdoms and my nephew."

"Yes, you are so very selfless... Very well. If you're intent on supporting his grace my future good-grandson, I shall inform my good-son the Lord of Highgarden that he can trust you. I seek stability, which is different from peace." Leyton led Viserys out of his solar towards where Aegon awaited him, past tapestries and carvings of past lords, and kings, of the Hightower. "The Gardeners were building something before the dragons came along. In a generation, they'd have won the Westerlands by marriage and the Stormlands through conquest. River and Isle would have followed. My ancestor in my seat at the time hoped to build on the work of the First Men who embraced Andal ways, as in Dorne and the North. From the Reach, they might have made something... made something new of Westeros. Something more than the dynasties that ruled it."

Leyton contained multitudes, as all great men did, but Viserys sensed more behind him. Maegor had spent most of the time they knew each other lying about their blood ties and his plans, so Viserys nursed a healthy suspicion of old men who claimed to reject power. "My vision is securing my family and a place to call our own. Summerhall, unless you plan to make Oldtown the capital?"

Guards opened the doors to reveal Aegon sparring with Ser Gerold Hightower. "Oldtown is Oldtown, my prince. It needs not be any 'capital.' Aegon's city was also Aegon's folly."

The king pulled off his padded training helm to join his uncle, but Gerold held him back and moved him to the faster and more nimble Ser Barristan to continue his lesson. The lord commander nodded to his fellow Hightower. "My lord, my prince, good day. The king hoped to discuss the... tourney plans?"

Leyton said, "A bit less silk than the last name-day celebrations, I imagine?"

"His grace needs protectors," Gerold proclaimed. "And glimmering armour on flowery knights does not meet the mark of the white cloaks in this day and age."

"No, just gilded by Tobho Mott." Leyton winked at Viserys and turned on a heel. He hardly needed his cane. "Good luck against those villainous lions or krakens, Lord Protector. If you return, perhaps we shall discuss cities again."

Once he was out of sight and Gerold had caught his breath, he and Viserys sat watching Aegon and Barristan. "Selmy mentioned you wish to speak."

"We have spoken before, Lord Commander," Viserys stated flatly.

Unassuaged, Gerold nodded to Aegon and said, "You were smaller than Egg at his age."

"Which Egg?" Aegon won a point against Barristan, beaming up at Gerold. "You were tall in my eyes, no doubt in his as well. We played Dunk and Egg, and I struck your shin to bring you down to size."

Gerold's eyes softened. "I saw you coming off that ship, and... You remember that?"

"I remember playing Dunk and Egg, aye." Viserys needed to sit as more memories came back to him. "What happened? How? Why? Elia, Aegon and Rhaenys... Daenerys. What happened, Lord Commander?"

Ser Gerold noted Barristan with Aegon, along with a few men of Bear's personal assignment, a strange half-Valyrian, half-Tyroshi crowd of relations descended from the female line of House Blackfyre. "If there is anyone worthy of knowing all that I do from those days, it is you... You would not recall that despite your father's reputation, his spells of madness were only short episodes at first, and our... failure to protect your mother introduced fractures to the white order. To one end was Ser Arthur Dayne, whose loyalty to Rhaegar was first in all things, then Ser Barristan, Ser Jonothor, Prince Lewyn who loved Elia but not her husband, myself, Ser Oswell, who was loyal to the order, and Ser Jaime, loyal to... the cloak I think. Or the idea of it."

"Word came of a muster at Ashemark, through Grand Maester Pycelle who had slipped up around the Queen after Ser Jaime received a letter from Ser Addam Marbrand. Your mother always had a way with words, even in her most tired state, but she never had the... Until ordered, I could not do more than make plans. But I could make them without the king's input. Little did I know that Rhaegar, after we were summoned back to King's Landing by the king, but before we could depart Dragonstone, had summoned what guards remained in the city. We had to follow his orders, my prince. He was the king, and we never believed he would actually..."

"In that time, through Tywin Lannister's schemes I believed, Barristan took Ser Jaime's place guarding the king, and Jaime joined Prince Lewyn and I on Dragonstone, with you, your mother, and Elia and the children. Then Selmy and Darry were to change places."

"I do not know how the king ended up without protection. Selmy says he was summoned away by Darry and Dayne, who met him as he joined Rhaegar, but only the wisdoms, the pyromancers, advised him then, and when the Lannisters arrived so much sooner... The sack began, and the city was destroyed soon after. I have met the other kingsguard only once before, upon the Gods' Eye, and Dayne insists Darry went alone to the city, and died there. Selmy believe's Darry died in battle, and Rhaegar meant for the king to end up without guards."

"And us?" Viserys finally asked. "Why did Ser Willem take us to Braavos? Why was I... why did they try to kill me?"

"A letter? Martell scheming? Lannisters? I know not, but that Prince Lewyn told someone my plan to secure the royal family, and upon departure Ser Jaime and a small fleet of ships came to Dragonstone. He managed to escape with the princesses and I gave chase, while Prince Llewyn and I remained with the Queen and Aegon. From there, I assume he sent for a ship, but Ser Willem heard and Lewyn changed course to Braavos and his relations. Jaime and Lewyn each thought the other would go back to the king, which each maintains to this day. Jaime's the one some call Kingstealer, though the name never quite caught on."

Viserys sighed. "Mother dies giving birth, and Prince Lewyn goes to the mainland to lead the Dornish forces himself, but he trusts Ser Willem to take us to Braavos and you with Aegon. He should not have trusted his own house. A boy has less value, not with Rhaegar and his sons ahead of me, bastard of the North or not."

"I think threat or no, it no longer matters. You are alive, and for that I am happy." Opening his hands with nothing else to offer, Gerold said, "I can give nothing but the truth, my prince. I am sorry."

"I will not ask you think nothing of it, just that you should know I have been through much more since then. More than..." Viserys held his chest, inhaling despite the sharp pain. "More than hating the Martells alone. What about the Princess Elia and Rhaenys?"

"It was Aegon and I on the sea, and I left him in Oldtown once word came of the wildfire. I worked to infiltrate the Westerlands, only for the Princess to... Find her own way out. War capitulations forced Tywin to surrender Rhaenys a few weeks after, and both still reside at Starfall at the middle of their own bloc within Dorne. Lady Dayne may be of aid in reaching them." Gerold stood, indicating another playful duel between two local hedge knights – both had some variation of a tower on their personal coats-of-arms, and from their features both were Hightower bastards. "Both will be coming to Highgarden for the wedding, so you will see them then, if not before."

Though it angered Viserys at first to know Ashara had kept information about his family from him, Elia and Rhaenys would be of great value to anyone, himself included. If anything it showed that Ashara still saw Viserys as an ambitious Targaryen herself, which he would have to use to his advantage as well.

Viserys missed Essos more. Life seemed so much simpler dealing with seven cities.

Gerold put a cautious hand to his shoulder, but for it Viserys was thankful. "Gods you're tall." He held out his large liver-spotted hand. "I held you in one hand. Two of us, all the time, and four when you nursed."

Viserys made them both stand, and he hugged the surprised kingsguard to a giggle from the king and a satisfied grunt from Ser Barristan. "We both have our own guards, Uncle Viserys!"

"Aye, we do. Now, sword up."