A/N: Joffery is just a growing boy. Don't blame him too much.
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Year 299 AC/8 ABY
The Greenfork, The Riverlands
Beskha had been muttering for the better part of an hour. Daenerys had stopped trying to follow word-by-word. The grumble had become part of the rain.
"... could have stayed at the Twins. The Twins had a roof. Full of holes, but a roof nonetheless."
Asher Forrester rode on Daenerys's right, his grin visible even through the drizzle that had been falling since dawn. "Even if the men are in cells, Beskha, the women are not. I would trust no keep that houses Freys."
"Fine, not the Twins. White Harbor, then. White Harbor had walls, clean streets and those delicious clams..."
"Beskha."
"... and now we are riding through the rain because someone — someone — has decided the queen rides personally to her own war. The queen and her shields, personally, in the rain."
"Beskha."
"I am not naming names, Forrester. I would never blame the queen."
Daenerys's mouth moved before she could stop it as she guided her grey mare around a fallen branch half-buried in mud. She was grateful for the distraction their bickering provided from the ache in her thighs and the cold that had seeped through her riding leathers hours ago. Viserys had promised her something else. Her brother had made the South sound impossibly green, lush as the gardens of Pentos, but weeks of rain and the passage of armies had beaten the greenery to a muddy waste.
"Mummer's Ford," she said, testing the words again. The 'r' kept slipping, coming out too soft, sounding too Essosi. "Mum-mer's Ford."
Asher seized on it immediately, repeating in an exaggerated Northern burr that made the words sound like stones grinding together. "Moomer's Fohrd."
"That's not how you say it either," Daenerys protested, though laughter crept into her voice despite herself. "I have an excuse, but as a native, what's yours?"
"I plead six years in Essos, Your Grace."
"You both sound like idiots," Beskha said, watching the tree line where the forest pressed close to the road.
Surrounding them on all sides were thousands of Northern soldiers, stretched in a column that wound through the low hills like something alive. Morghaes ranged somewhere ahead, his shadow passing over the column every few minutes and making horses shy despite weeks of growing accustomed to the presence of dragons. Rhaegal and Viserion paced alongside Daenerys's mare, Rhaegal chirping at birds in the distance, Viserion's tail nearly brushing her stirrup with each step.
Daenerys glanced back at Jorah, rigid and quiet, with one hand resting on his sword belt. He hadn't joined Asher and Beskha's bickering, though once he would have. When Asher said something that made her laugh, Jorah turned his head toward the tree line.
Galbart Glover appeared on the road ahead. Before he could finish his approach, Beskha had shifted her horse forward, her hand settling on the pommel of her curved blade. Glover's eyes flicked to the blade and back.
"Your Grace," Glover said, inclining his head. "Lord Stark asks if the halt tonight should be at the elder grove or if you'd prefer to push another mile to where the river bends. The ground's softer there, but it's away from the trees."
"The grove will serve," Daenerys said, keeping her voice level and queenly despite how much she wanted to ask if they could stop now instead of riding another three hours. "My thanks for asking, my lord."
Glover withdrew with another nod, already turning his horse back toward the front of the column where Lord Stark rode with his bannermen.
"You don't have to do that every time," Daenerys said when Glover had passed out of earshot.
Beskha was already watching the tree line again. "Do what?"
Daenerys rolled her eyes and let it pass.
A rider came from the southwest at half a gallop, his cloak sodden, his face grey with exhaustion. He reined in beside Lord Stark at the column's head.
Daenerys guided her mare closer, and Beskha, Asher, and Jorah followed.
"My lord," the rider said, his voice carrying despite its roughness. "The vanguard has crossed the Trident. Lord Greatjon's host is encamped in the woods near the Mummer's Ford. As we speak, Lord Bolton and Lady Maege are burning Lannister supply trains before they can reach Riverrun. The Kingslayer is turning his gaze east to deal with them."
Lord Stark nodded once. The bait had been taken.
Asher let out a low whistle. "The Greatjon and the She-Bear burning supply trains? Together? Now, what I wouldn't give to see that." The grin lasted until he said Bolton's name.
Beskha leaned forward in her saddle, addressing Lord Stark directly. "How long before this 'Kingslayer' works out the real army isn't at the Ford?"
"Weeks, if we're lucky," Lord Stark said, his grey eyes steady and honest in a way that still surprised her. "Days, if we're not."
Jorah urged his horse closer, speaking quietly enough that only those immediately around him could hear. "Bolton is capable, my lord. But he's also ambitious. Be sure the leash holds."
Lord Stark nodded stiffly and conferred with Glover and Ser Wylis Manderly about the pace of march. Daenerys caught fragments, just provisions, the mud slowing the baggage train, the Green Fork. Every hour dragging supply wagons through the muck was an hour gifted to Tywin.
The column moved again, and Daenerys settled back into the rhythm of the march.
They rode for another hour before the halt came. Lord Stark's hand went up, the signal passing back through the column in a wave of called commands and shifting formations. Daenerys dismounted with relief, her legs stiff and protesting.
That's when it started, a prickling that began at the base of her skull and crawled down her neck. Sharper than the weather. Sharper than the prickle of marching through hostile country. She turned south before she knew she was turning.
Something pressed against the back of her skull. A strange sensation, like the air before a storm broke. She looked at the southern horizon, at the trees and the low hills blocking her view, and her feet carried her a half-step backward.
Morghaes lifted his head from where he'd been tearing into a deer carcass. His nostrils flared once, twice, and then his neck stretched south with his wings half-spreading in a posture Daenerys had only seen when a pack of wild dogs had gotten too close to Viserion in White Harbor.
Rhaegal and Viserion pressed against her legs hard enough to make her stagger, their scales burning through her leathers. The low rumble building in Viserion's chest was a warning sound.
"What is it, little dragon?" Beskha already had her blade half-drawn.
Daenerys tried to find the words. "South. Something, the air is wrong. Thick. Like before a storm breaks, but there's no wind." She shook her head; the comparison fell short.
Jorah stepped between her and the southern tree line, hand on his sword hilt. Asher had gone still beside her, weight forward on his horse, looking for a direction to ride.
It passed. Not all at once, just the pressure behind her eyes dulling by degrees, enough that she could breathe again. Morghaes lowered his head and went back to his meal, though his tail kept twitching.
Beskha's hand left her blade. "Storm coming, maybe."
"Maybe," Daenerys said. She didn't think so, and neither did Beskha, from the look of her.
The second rider came from the southeast, appearing through the trees on a road that intersected the Kingsroad a quarter-mile ahead. He went straight to Lord Stark, and Daenerys watched from across the clearing as the Warden of the North took a sealed parchment and broke the wax with his thumb.
She was too far to read his face, but she saw his back go rigid under his cloak before he turned and walked toward the command tents with the parchment still in his hand.
Instead of sharing the news with the column, Lord Stark gestured for Daenerys to follow him into the tent, still half-raised. Jorah followed inside while Beskha took position outside the flap, and Asher was already gone, checking the perimeter the way he did at every halt.
Lord Stark handed her the parchment without preamble. The writing was neat, measured, the hand of someone who'd taken time with their words, not a battlefield dispatch but a political letter, dressed in courtesy.
Lord Eddard,
I write to you in good faith as one who has always admired your honesty in a court that had precious little of it. Your son rides south with me as my honored guest. He is a fine young man, and you should be proud of the company he keeps. Skywalker and his companions remain at his side.
My brother Stannis has seen fit to press his claim through force of arms rather than reason. I ride to remind him that the Stormlands answer to me, not to him, and I expect the matter will be settled swiftly. Storm's End has endured worse than a middle brother's tantrum.
I hope to have the pleasure of meeting you in person once Stannis has bent the knee. There is much to discuss between men of honor, and I believe our interests may be more aligned than either of us yet realizes.
Until then, know that your son is well and in good company.
Renly Baratheon, King of the Seven Kingdoms
Daenerys read it twice, the courtesy thick enough to taste. Your son. Not bastard. Not Snow. Renly had chosen that word with care.
She looked up; Jorah stood near the tent's entrance, his hand resting on his sword belt, waiting.
"Ser Jorah," Daenerys said. "Would you give us a moment?"
Jorah glanced from her to Lord Stark and back. "Of course, Your Grace." He inclined his head and stepped outside. She heard him speak briefly to Beskha, then the sound of his boots on wet ground, moving away.
When they were alone, Daenerys set the parchment on the map table.
"They were supposed to go to the Citadel," she said.
"Aye." Lord Stark's voice was flat. He hadn't moved since she'd started reading. "Luke wanted to study the maesters' records about the Long Night. They were to go to Oldtown and come back." His hand pressed flat on the table. "How they ended up riding south with Renly Baratheon is beyond me."
"As I recall, Highgarden is not so far from Oldtown." Daenerys turned the parchment over in her hands, as if the back might hold answers the front didn't. "Do you think they kidnapped Daemon?"
"Jon wouldn't have chosen to ride toward a war between two Baratheon brothers." Lord Stark's certainty on that point was absolute, since he knew the boy he'd raised. "And no, them being kidnapped is out of the question. Not with Luke there, or we would have heard the ruckus."
"Yet Renly writes like a man doing you a favor," Daenerys said. "Telling you how fine your son is. How good his company is. How well he's being looked after. He is writing to remind you what he has."
Lord Stark said nothing. He was thinking what she was thinking.
"Daemon is a hostage," Daenerys said. "Renly is too polished to use the word. But that's what this letter is."
Lord Stark exhaled through his nose. "Renly isn't cruel. He's vain, ambitious, charming when it suits him. But he doesn't hurt children to make a point." He paused. "Not like Tywin Lannister. Renly plays a softer game."
"A softer game with our blood as the stake." Daenerys could see the shape of the trap, even if she couldn't see all its edges. Renly had Daemon. He wanted the North's support, and he was holding Ned's son to get it. Stannis had landed in the Stormlands with a fleet. Jon was riding toward a siege between two brothers who both wanted crowns. "What do we do?"
Lord Stark leaned both hands on the map table, his weight settling forward like a man bracing against something only he could feel, and stared at the lines marking roads and rivers without seeming to see them. "Stannis has the fleet. Every warship Robert had, cleaned out of the harbor before anyone knew to stop him. If he's landed in the Stormlands, he means to take Storm's End before Renly can get there." He straightened slightly. "And Renly is marching to meet him with Jon in tow."
The tent canvas snapped in a gust of wind. Outside, soldiers called to each other as the camp took shape around them. Mundane sounds. An army settling in for the night while two people stood over a map and tried to reach a boy who was beyond their reach.
"Can we send a raven?" Daenerys asked.
"To where? Renly is marching. A raven reaches a castle, not a column on the road." He shook his head. "And anything I write, Renly reads. I can't tell Jon to leave without showing my hand."
Daenerys folded her arms. She thought about the boy from her visions. Rhaegar's son, though the world knew him as Ned Stark's bastard. Walking between two stags with targets on every side and no idea how much his real name was worth.
"You trust Luke," she said.
Lord Stark looked at her properly for the first time since she'd entered the tent. His face had changed, not softer but steadier. A decision made, or close to one.
"I watched him teach my children," Lord Stark said. "Bran, Arya, Jon, Robb. He taught them something I couldn't." He glanced down at his hand, flexing it, as if remembering something. "And with that sword…" He met her eyes. "Whatever Renly thinks he's holding, Luke Skywalker is standing next to it. And he does not answer to would-be-kings."
"Then we do what we came here to do," Daenerys said. "We deal with Tywin. We win the Riverlands. And we make ourselves strong enough that when Renly finishes with Stannis, he comes to us. Not the other way around."
Lord Stark gave a slow, deliberate nod.
"So on to the matter at hand," Daenerys said. "Your scouts to the south. Two parties sent, and only one came back with losses."
"Aye." Lord Stark's mouth thinned. "Tywin's outriders are aggressive. We can't get close enough to count his banners without losing men, and I'll not waste Northerners to satisfy curiosity when their blood is needed for the real fighting."
Daenerys looked through the tent's open flap at Morghaes. The black dragon had settled near the command area, his bulk making soldiers give him a wide berth. His wings were folded now, but she'd watched them grow over the past weeks, the membrane stretching faster than his body could keep pace. He'd been snapping at the sky during rest halts, beating his wings hard enough to send dust swirling. And he'd been letting her sit on his back. Brief experiments that had started as impulse and become routine.
They hadn't flown. But they'd been getting ready.
"Let me scout," Daenerys said.
"No." Lord Stark's answer was immediate. "Absolutely not. The dragons have been growing unnaturally fast, but they're still too young for you to ride."
Daenerys turned back to Lord Stark. "No horse-borne scout can do what a dragon does in one flight, my lord. If Jaime's host is within a day's march, we need to know today, before we commit to a route that walks us into his vanguard." She gestured toward the maps. "Thirty minutes in the air. I stay high enough that no archer can reach me. One pass over the territory to the southwest and back."
Lord Stark's mouth opened and closed, and then he looked at Morghaes through the tent flap, measuring.
"Stay high," he said at last, the words coming out like orders. "Stay fast. Come back. Alive."
Daenerys inclined her head. "I will, my lord."
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Half the column stopped what they were doing to watch. Soldiers who'd been checking horse hooves or sharpening weapons drifted toward the eastern edge of camp, and Daenerys could feel their attention on her back. Morghaes had settled onto a clear patch of ground, watching her with an intelligence that still sent shivers through her.
She placed her hands on the spines along his neck, felt the heat living beneath his scales, and pulled herself up with a scrambling lack of grace. The dragonlords of old, she suspected, had managed it better. Her legs found his shoulders, clamping tight.
"It's time Morghaes," Daenerys whispered. "It's time to finally fly together. Sōvēs."
Morghaes shifted beneath her, with subtle adjustments of weight and muscle as he compensated for her presence. His neck dipped, then straightened, testing.
Then he launched into the air.
The ground fell away so fast her mind couldn't process it. Three heartbeats ago she'd been standing in mud and now she was higher than the tallest trees with the wind hitting her face like a fist of ice. Her stomach was in her throat. Her vision whited at the edges. She was screaming. The realization came distant, her voice torn away by wind that was trying to pry her off his back through sheer force.
Morghaes banked hard left and her grip nearly failed. Her thighs clenched, her fingers digging into the base of his neck spines until her joints ached. He climbed in a spiraling arc, each wingbeat a concussion she felt through her whole body, vibrating in her teeth and squeezing her lungs where the air kept getting thinner. The heat rising from his scales was the only warmth left. Everything else was cold and wind and the deafening rush of air whistling over his wing membranes.
Her eyes streamed. She blinked, and the world clarified in pieces, with the camp shrinking below, upturned faces reduced to pale dots, Rhaegal and Viserion craning skyward with their mouths open in shrieks she couldn't hear over the wind.
Then Morghaes leveled out, and the Riverlands spread beneath her.
Green and brown patchwork where fields had been planted and then abandoned. The silver thread of the Trident cutting south and west. Smoke rose in thin columns from where the Mountain's raiders had put villages to the torch, and even from this height she could see the black scars on the earth where homes had stood before Gregor Clegane's men arrived.
The Northern column was a grey-brown snake winding through the hills, so long she couldn't see both ends at once. Thousands of men, hundreds of horses, supply wagons churning the road, all of it small from up here and all of it fragile.
And to the southwest, distant and hazy through the drizzle, a smudge of organized movement.
Tents in ordered rows, and the glint of afternoon light on mail and pike points. She couldn't read the banners from this distance, but the red and gold carried far enough.
Jaime's host, maybe a day and a half's march. Closer than they'd feared.
Daenerys pressed her face against Morghaes's neck, feeling the flex of muscle beneath scales, and committed every detail to memory. The tent layout. The way the Lannister camp was positioned with the river to their west. The outrider dots on patrol routes.
The landing was nothing like the launch. Morghaes overshot the camp by half a mile, his judgment of distance still calibrated for a creature without a rider on his back. He circled twice while Daenerys's arms shook and her thighs burned, and when he finally came down he hit the earth hard enough to jar every bone in her body.
She slid off Morghaes's side and her legs gave out immediately. Her knees hit mud, her palms following, and she knelt there gasping while the world spun.
Jorah was there in the next heartbeat, hauling her upright, his face bone-white. "Never again. Do you understand? Not without a harness, not without proper..."
He stopped — because she was laughing.
The sound came from somewhere deep in her chest, wild and probably half-mad, and she couldn't stop it. Morghaes was almost singing, that deep thrumming purr that rattled the air, and Rhaegal and Viserion had converged on them with their tails lashing and wings mantling. Jorah stared at her, mouth open, and then he was laughing too, or trying to, holding her upright while she shook and the adrenaline burned off as laughter.
When Jorah let go, Beskha pressed a waterskin into her hands, nodded once, and walked away.
Asher appeared through the crowd of soldiers. "How was it?"
"There are no words," Daenerys said, her voice coming out hoarse. "In any language I know."
"That good?"
"Better. I have never felt such… freedom in my life."
Lord Stark cut through the camp, heading straight for her. He stopped a few paces from Daenerys and looked up at Morghaes, who was still thrumming that low purr that still made Daenerys's heart hammer, then back at her.
"Well flown, Your Grace." he said. Quiet, the way he said most things that mattered.
Daenerys wiped mud from her palms onto her riding leathers. Her hands were still shaking. "Thank you, Lord Stark."
Lord Stark's gaze moved from Daenerys to the horizon, then back. The warmth left his face. "The enemy camp," he said. "What did you see?"
Daenerys gave her report while Morghaes coiled around them. "They're camped to the southwest, maybe a hard day's march. Well-organized, with rows of tents, supply wagons, horse lines stretching from the main position. I couldn't read the banners clearly, but the colors were Lannister red and gold. River to their west."
Lord Stark called for Lord Glover and Wylis Manderly immediately, spreading the maps on a camp table two soldiers dragged into position. His finger traced a new route. East, hugging the river, using the terrain to screen their approach. The intelligence changed the calculus, the timing, how aggressively they could push south.
Daenerys stood beside the table. Glover asked her a question about the outrider positions, her, not Lord Stark. Wylis also turned to her to ask her a follow-up question but Beskha appeared at her elbow. Without asking for permission, she just steering her away from the command tent with a hand on her shoulder. The camp was now filled with a restless energy of men who knew they would be killing soon.
"Eat," Beskha said, shoving a heel of hard bread and a strip of dried beef into her hands. "Then sleep. You did good, little dragon. But tomorrow the real work starts."
Daenerys didn't argue. She chewed the tough meat without tasting it, watching the dark shape of Morghaes curled near the perimeter, his scales blacker than the night. When the dreams came, she flew higher.
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Kings Landing, The Crownlands
Tyrion waddled through corridors heading toward a meeting with what remained of the small council. The prospect filled him with the same enthusiasm one might feel about visiting a plague house.
He cut through the White Sword Tower out of habit, the shortcut saving him two flights of stairs that his legs would protest. The round chamber stood empty save for one occupant. Ser Barristan Selmy sat at the table where the White Book lay open, his weathered hands resting on either side of the ancient tome. The old knight stared at the pages with the expression of a man communing with ghosts.
Tyrion paused in the doorway, his first instinct to slip past unnoticed, but curiosity proved stronger than wisdom.
He crossed the chamber, his boots scuffing against stone but Barristan was so engrossed, he didn't look up. Tyrion stopped at the table's edge and glanced down at the open page. The script was careful and elegant, the hand of someone trained to precision. The name at the top read Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.
Below, the record of his life in careful, sparse strokes. Named to the Kingsguard by King Aerys II, defeated the Kingswood Brotherhood, and wielded the greatsword Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. And at the end, a single line: died at a tower in the Red Mountains of Dorne, alongside the Lord Commander, Ser Gerold Hightower, and Ser Oswell Whent.
That last entry was a masterwork of evasion. Three Kingsguard at a tower in the middle of the Dornish mountains. No mention of why they were there or what they'd been protecting. The whole business reduced to a line of ink that said nothing while implying everything.
"The Sword of the Morning." Tyrion broke the silence. "There's a lesson to be learned in this book, isn't there? Ser Arthur Dayne could have been the greatest knight who ever lived, yet instead he died at a backwater tower in Dorne, guarding a secret that Rhaegar Targaryen took to the grave at the Trident. Him, Hightower, and Whent. Three of the finest swords in the realm. All spent on whatever Rhaegar decided mattered more than his wife and children in King's Landing."
Barristan's hands pressed flat against the table, knuckles whitening, but he just kept reading Arthur Dayne's page.
"Arthur served his prince." Barristan's voice came out hollow. "They all did. There are oaths that outlast the men who swear them."
"I don't doubt it." Tyrion studied the old knight's profile. "I'm only wondering what oath keeps three Kingsguard at a tower in the middle of nowhere while the dynasty they served burned to ash around them. Robert's army marching south, Rhaegar dead in the river, and Dayne, Hightower, and Whent still standing guard at a door. What was behind that door, Ser Barristan? What could have been worth all three of them?"
Barristan swallowed once, a dry click, and his hand settled flat over Arthur Dayne's name.
"Some oaths outlast the men who swear them," he said again, quieter this time as if his wall went up again.
Tyrion recognized a door closing when he heard one. But there was another thread dangling loose, one that had nagged at him since the Small Council meeting where Varys had reported the Oakenshield incident, and Barristan had spoken up unbidden to mention offering Jon Snow a squire's position.
"Speaking of oaths and Ned Stark," Tyrion said, shifting his weight against the table, "our latest reports have his bastard riding south with Renly Baratheon. Jon Snow, of all people, in the middle of a Baratheon succession crisis. The boy you wanted as a squire, tangled up in a war that has nothing to do with him."
The change in Barristan was immediate, his hand stilling on the page, and he mastered himself quickly, but not quickly enough.
Tyrion noted the flinch when he said Jon Snow's name, and the return of Barristan's eyes to Arthur Dayne's entry. He could not yet see how they fit but Jon Snow was a part of this puzzle somehow.
"You should close that book, Ser Barristan." Tyrion made his tone light, a deliberate retreat. "If Joffrey sees you reading about dead men who served better kings, he'll take it as criticism. And my dear nephew takes criticism poorly these days."
Barristan's pale blue eyes lifted to meet his. The old knight had gathered himself. For a breath, before the armor closed, Tyrion saw what was there.
The book closed with a soft thump.
Tyrion nodded and continued on his way toward the council chamber.
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The small council chamber reeked of desperation masquerading as governance.
Tyrion settled into his chair at the table's far end, noting the empty seats that should have held Varys and Littlefinger. The Spider dead by Joffrey's hand, the Master of Coin dispatched to the Vale on an errand that would likely prove as fruitless as it was humiliating. What remained was barely a council at all. Grand Maester Pycelle dozed in his chair, his beard rising and falling with each breath. The rest were functionaries and yes-men whose names Tyrion couldn't be bothered to remember.
The reports lay spread across the table like cards in a losing hand.
Tyrion reached for the nearest parchment, scanning the raven-scrawled intelligence. Lord Eddard Stark marches south with the Northern host. That much they'd expected, but the rest, the rest made his wine taste like vinegar.
Three dragons. Confirmed sightings from multiple sources. Described as large as horses and still growing.
He set down the parchment very carefully. Dragons, living and breathing fire made flesh, allied with the man Joffrey had declared a traitor and assassin.
Oh, how if circumstances were not so, I would have been able to gaze upon real magic.
The other reports painted an equally grim picture. Renly's host had marched from Highgarden to Storm's End, eighty thousand swords or more, the largest army assembled since Aegon's Conquest. Jon Snow and that mysterious traveler Skywalker rode with them, for reasons Tyrion couldn't fathom. Stannis had landed in the Stormlands with his fleet and whatever grim determination animated that joyless man. And in the Riverlands, Jaime bled slowly, his supply lines chewed to pieces by Northern raiders who struck from terrain they knew better than any Lannister scout and vanished before pursuit could form.
The Tyrells had closed the Roseroad. Food flowed into King's Landing at a trickle. Bread that had cost a copper now cost two silvers. The smallfolk rioted daily. Gold Cloaks beat women for stealing turnips.
Tyrion poured himself wine from the council's flagon. It was better than what he kept in his chambers, at least, just small comforts when the world burned.
"The Lannister position," he said to the mostly-empty room, "is collapsing from every direction. We're running out of allies, gold, and time."
Pycelle startled awake, blinking rheumy eyes. "My lord Hand?"
"Merely thinking aloud." Tyrion stood and moved to the great map mounted on the eastern wall. Westeros spread before him in painted detail, with red for Lannister holdings, shrinking by the day; blue for the Starks, growing; green for the Tyrells, thrown behind Renly's cause. The whole kingdom fragmenting, piece by piece.
The real question was how badly they'd lose. Tyrion turned the problem over like a coin he'd found in the gutter.
The Tyrell blockade had merchants hoarding grain and speculators buying up what little reached the markets while prices climbed past what working men could afford, and the Riverlands, fighting back harder than anyone had anticipated, ensured the Lannisters couldn't feed King's Landing from a war zone.
Food prices had tripled, but true famine was still months off. What they had was worse, four crises feeding each other in an ugly spiral.
Hunger alone could never have set the city boiling. Joffrey had done that.
The boy king's cruelty had accomplished what hunger could not. Without Tywin's restraining presence, with a Kingsguard whose quality had plummeted since Barristan Selmy stopped mattering, the boy king had spent weeks with no one to answer to, a cruel child with a crown and thugs in white cloaks. The Gold Cloaks were keeping fear now. They beat women for stealing bread and hanged men for muttering Renly's name where the wrong ear could catch it.
Every act of casual cruelty made another enemy. Kevan's soldiers had been torn from their saddles by a mob, and that was the arithmetic Joffrey could not do. Fear cowed people temporarily. Terror turned them into something that killed with its bare hands.
Two other currents ran beneath the violence, harder to see.
Renly's ravens had spread his incest accusations across the realm, into markets, alehouses, brothels, every place where men gathered over drink or trade now whispered the same question: were the king's children truly the king's? The smallfolk had no way to know, but down in the streets, the King's legitimacy was openly questioned. Truth and rumor were mixing until no one could separate them.
The Ned question fed the same uncertainty. The smallfolk knew Eddard Stark's reputation, his honor and his justice. The official narrative, that this man had sent assassins to murder his oldest friend, rang false to anyone who'd encountered the quiet wolf. Other stories moved through alehouses and market stalls, not as anything organized but as a growing conviction that the boy on the throne was lying.
And over it all, the dragon terror.
Word had spread that Ned Stark commanded real dragons. Fire powerful enough that could melt castles. Harrenhal still wore the proof, a lifetime later. King's Landing had been built by dragonlords and every child in the city grew up hearing those tales, the cautionary stories of what happened to those who defied the Targaryens. Now the dragons had returned, allied with the man Joffrey had declared an enemy, and the boy king was telling the smallfolk everything was fine while his Gold Cloaks beat them for stealing bread.
The riots weren't about starvation. They were about everything falling apart at once while the people who should have been protecting the smallfolk made it worse.
The doors crashed open hard enough to rattle the hinges, and Tyrion turned from the map.
Joffrey strode in with his crown sitting askew on golden curls and two Kingsguard following, one of them carrying a torch still trailing smoke. Mid-morning, and they were carrying torches.
"I need pyromancers," Joffrey announced, as if resuming a conversation no one else had started. He dropped into a chair and slapped both palms on the table. "The Guild. Whatever's left of them. I want them found and brought to me by tomorrow morning."
Tyrion's wine paused halfway to his lips. "Pyromancers, Your Grace?"
"Don't make me repeat myself, Uncle. You're supposed to be clever."
Tyrion set the cup down and examined his nephew. Tunnel dust in the golden hair. A torch at mid-morning. The boy had been crawling around beneath the castle, and now he wanted alchemists.
"Your Grace," he said, "have you been beneath the Red Keep?"
Joffrey's face split into a grin. "I've been exploring, Uncle, to places father never allowed me to. Those old tunnels that nobody uses anymore, in case those Dragons come. And do you know what I found?"
"Wildfire," Joffrey said, before Tyrion could answer. The word left him like a lover's name. "Jars and jars of it. Enough to burn the whole city if we wanted. That's why I need the pyromancers. They'll know how to use it."
Tyrion's gaze dropped to the boy's sleeve, where the greenish smear he'd dismissed as tunnel grime had a name now.
"The Mad King's caches." He kept his voice level through effort alone. "I thought those had been cleared after the Sack."
"Some were." Joffrey waved dismissively. "But there are more. So many more. The pyromancers kept terrible records, and most of them died during the Sack. The ones who survived probably forgot."
Pycelle had woken fully now, his face the color of the parchment he'd been reading, and the functionaries exchanged glances.
"Your Grace," Tyrion began, "those caches are extremely dangerous. Wildfire is unpredictable. It shouldn't be disturbed, much less handled by whatever's left of the Guild. Half of them are charlatans and the other half are dead."
"I don't want them to handle it." Joffrey stood and paced with a manic energy. He had not stopped grinning since he came in. "I want them to arm it. For the dragons!"
He spun on Tyrion. "Everyone's so frightened of Stark's dragons. The dragon girl. Let them come! Let the wolf and the dragon girl march their army right up to our gates. When they breach the walls, we light the fires. The whole city burns. And the dragons burn with it!"
"Your Grace, if you ignite the wildfire caches, you don't just burn the enemy. You burn King's Landing. The city you're supposed to rule. And more importantly, half a million people."
"They're mine!" Joffrey's voice climbed to a shriek. "My city! My people! If they won't fight for me, they can burn with me!"
If they won't fight for me, they can burn with me.
Aerys's line. Tyrion had read it in the histories, where Rickard Stark burned alive in his own armor, the Mad King laughing while the son strangled himself trying to reach him. Joffrey shared no Targaryen blood and had arrived at the same sentence.
You burn it.
Tyrion looked toward the windows. Cersei stood there with her wine cup, and she'd heard everything. The cup rose, paused, rose again, and her face gave away nothing.
Tyrion's hands clenched beneath the table.
"Your Grace." He forced himself to smile, forced his voice to carry enthusiasm rather than horror. "What a bold plan. Truly inspired. The kind of decisive action the realm needs."
Joffrey's suspicious glare softened. Praise worked on him the way meat worked on dogs.
"And you're right to want pyromancers," Tyrion continued, leaning into the demand rather than away from it. "But think. The ones who survived are the dregs of the Guild. Apprentices and frauds. If you hand them your weapon, they'll botch it. Spill half the jars. Blow themselves up in a tunnel and take a city block with them. And then you've lost your advantage before the dragons even arrive."
Joffrey's brow furrowed. That was the trick with the boy. Give him a target for his contempt that wasn't you. Incompetent pyromancers. That he could believe in.
"What you need is someone who will catalogue every cache. Map every tunnel. Secure every jar so that when the moment comes, you deploy the weapon exactly where and when you choose. Not some half-trained alchemist fumbling in the dark. A mind. A strategy. Wildfire used like pieces on a cyvasse board."
"You," Joffrey said. Not a question.
"With Your Grace's permission. I'll find what remains of the Guild's records. Commission maps. Put Bronn and a hand-picked crew in the tunnels to inventory every last jar. And when the enemy comes to your gates, you'll have a weapon no one expects, aimed precisely where it hurts most."
The manic glow in Joffrey's eyes dimmed to something more like calculation. For a brief moment, Tyrion glimpsed the ghost of Tywin behind the boy's face. The cold weighing of advantage. Then it passed, and Joffrey was a child again, bored with details.
"Fine. Do it. But I want reports. Daily. And the pyromancers stay available. I may still have use for them."
"Of course, Your Grace."
Joffrey was already moving toward the door. "I'm going to watch the training yard. Maybe I'll have them execute that pickpocket the Gold Cloaks caught yesterday. Right there in the yard. Good practice for the men."
The door slammed behind him and the council chamber gave a collective exhale.
Tyrion reached for the wine flagon and poured until his cup overflowed, his hands shaking. The good news was he'd bought time. The bad news was he was now personally responsible for preventing the annihilation of half a million people.
"Grand Maester," he said, "I'll need access to the pyromancers' records. Everything that survived the Sack. Maps, inventories, correspondence."
"My lord, those documents are fragmentary at best." Pycelle's jowls quivered. "The guild was nearly destroyed. Most of their knowledge died with them."
"Then we'll work with what survived." Tyrion drained half his cup. "And send word to Bronn. Tell him I need men who can keep their mouths shut and aren't afraid of dark places. We're going hunting in the tunnels."
The mapping would serve a different purpose than the one he'd sold Joffrey. Every cache found was a cache that could be drained, moved, or bricked up before the boy king could put a torch to it.
A fine mess, and half of it his own making, since he was the one who'd suggested using Balon Greyjoy as a weapon in the first place.
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The afternoon light slanted through the high windows. Tyrion reached for parchment and quill, his hand moving across the page, the scratching of the nib the only sound in the chamber.
The first letter was practical, just short, clipped sentences addressed to Harrenhal but truly, to wherever Jaime was. The city deteriorates. Joffrey escalates. I'm managing, barely. Watch yourself, stay away from the dragons. — T.
The second letter was longer, addressed to no one.
What does it look like when we lose?
Not if. When.
Ned Stark takes the city. The dragons burn through our defenses like parchment. Joffrey dies, probably badly. Cersei dies, certainly badly. Jaime... Jaime might survive if he yields. The Kingslayer has a talent for bending when the moment requires it.
And me?
That's the question, isn't it? Can the twisted little demon survive in a world where the Targaryens rule and the dragons fly? Do I bend the knee to the new order? Do I flee across the Narrow Sea with whatever gold I can carry? Do I take my chances in Dorne, where the Martells might appreciate a Lannister willing to betray his own?
Or do I stay and face whatever justice Eddard Stark brings to King's Landing?
His quill paused. He stared at the words, seeing his own cowardice laid bare in ink. His father would call it weakness. Pragmatism, Tyrion preferred. The difference between the two often came down to who was writing the history.
He folded the second letter and held it over the nearest candle. The parchment caught, edges curling inward like fingers closing on a secret. Ash drifted to the floor.
The letter to Jaime he sealed and set aside for the morning ravens.
Tyrion sat alone in the cooling chamber, watching the last light fade from the windows. Wildfire beneath his feet, dragons on the march, and a mad boy on the throne who'd discovered the worst weapon in King's Landing and thought it was a gift.
He drained the last of his wine and stood. The wildfire needed handling, and for that he needed men he could trust. The list was short enough to be depressing. Bronn, who was loyal to gold. Pycelle, who was loyal to whoever held his leash. And Ser Barristan, who was loyal to something Tyrion hadn't quite figured out yet.
He found a steward in the corridor outside the council chamber. "Find Ser Barristan Selmy. Tell him I need a word."
The steward shifted his weight. "My lord, Ser Barristan left the castle some hours ago. Took a horse from the stables before midday."
Tyrion blinked. "Left the castle."
"Yes, my lord."
"And the king?"
"His Grace is in the training yard, my lord. Watching the men spar."
Tyrion stood very still in the corridor. A Kingsguard did not leave the castle without his king. A Kingsguard certainly did not take a horse and ride out alone in the middle of a city that was rioting in the streets. Not unless he had somewhere to be that mattered more than his oath.
Or unless he wasn't planning to come back.
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