The weeks that followed the small council meeting passed in a blur of recovery and routine and the slow rebuilding of a city that had nearly been taken.
Arthur's body healed faster than the maester had predicted, which the old man attributed to a strong constitution and good fortune, and which Arthur privately attributed to the nightly sessions of Hamon breathing he performed in his chambers.
Within a fortnight the grinding pain in his ribs had dulled to a ache that only flared when he moved too quickly or laughed too hard, and within three weeks the maester had cleared him to resume light training on the condition that he stop immediately if the pain worsened.
Arthur had agreed to this, and had then gone directly to the yard with Llewyn and spent two hours working through forms until the Dornish prince had threatened to drag him back to bed by the ear.
It was good to have a partner again.
Llewyn had changed since the night on the beach. The nervous energy that had defined the young prince before the battle had not vanished entirely, but it had been tempered by something harder. The two of them had fallen into an easy rhythm of morning sparring and afternoon drills that had become the spine of Arthur's days, and he found himself grateful for the Dornishman's company in a way he had not expected.
Mira and Cassie had recovered as well, though more slowly, and when they did recover the children went everywhere with them. Wherever Mira walked, Mordred and Morgana went in a sling at her chest, and wherever Cassie walked, Percival went with her. The two women had begun to venture further from their chambers as the days went on, first to the small garden that adjoined the holdfast and then to the kitchens and eventually to the broader corridors of the keep itself, all for the sake of giving the children new places to see.
Arthur would not have traded those weeks for anything in the world.
But the world was not particularly interested in what Arthur would have traded for.
The bad news had arrived on a morning three weeks after the attack, carried by a ship from Driftmark bearing the Velaryon seahorse on its mainsail and a sealed letter in Lord Daemon Velaryon's own hand.
Dragonstone had fallen.
Lord Velaryon's scouts had approached the island under cover of a moonless night and found the harbour occupied by foreign vessels flying the same black bannerless flags that had been seen at King's Landing. The fortress itself was intact. The walls were whole. The gates were closed. The signal fires on the heights were dark, and the men walking the battlements were not wearing Targaryen colours.
Someone had taken the island without breaking a single stone.
Whether the fall had come through treachery from within or through some other means, Lord Velaryon's could not confirm. What he could confirm was that the garrison appeared to have been replaced entirely, that the enemy had fortified the harbour with chains and scorpions, and that the captured Targaryen fleet at anchor in the harbour had been repainted and reflagged and was now patrolling the approaches to the Blackwater Bay effectively sealing the Narrow Sea to any vessel attempting to reach King's Landing from the east or south.
The implications were as expected enormous
King's Landing survived on trade and while a great majority of the grain that fed the city came overland from the Reach, the luxury goods and the foreign imports and the fish that supplemented the common diet arrived by sea through the Blackwater, and that route was now closed. The price of items had already begun to creep upward in the markets. The price of salt fish had doubled. The merchants who made their livings from the eastern trade were loudly and publicly panicking, and the common folk of the city, who had been rattled badly by the attack itself, were beginning to whisper about whether a second strike was coming.
Even if the fleet problem could be solved, even if enough ships could be gathered and enough men assembled and enough courage mustered to break the enemy's hold on the bay, there remained the fact that the enemy now held Dragonstone.
Dragonstone, which was built into the rock of a volcanic island.
Dragonstone, one of the most defensible fortresses in the entirety of Westeros.
Dragonstone, where a garrison of a hundred determined men could hold off ten times their number from the walls, where the stores in the vaults beneath the keep were rumoured to hold enough grain and salt meat and fresh water to sustain a garrison for two full years or more.
Taking it back would cost a fleet, an army, and a great many lives, and even then success was not guaranteed. The fortress had never fallen by assault in its entire history.
Prince Duncan had responded to the crisis eith the best decision he could and had ravens dispatched to every corner of the realm that possessed a fleet. The Redwynes of the Arbor had answered immediately, their great fleet already being prepared for departure. The Lannisters of Lannisport had answered as well, with a promise of thirty warships and supply vessels to be sent around the southern coast within the month. The Greyjoys of Pyke had not answered at all, which surprised exactly no one at the small council table.
Lord Dagon Greyjoy had never forgiven King Aegon for the humiliation the crown had visited upon the Iron Islands twenty years ago.
Soon there would be a huge naval battle that would decide the fate of the Blackwater.
But Arthur tried not to think about any of that.
He tried to focus on his family and when he wasn't with them on training.
The Royal Swordsmanship that the Pendragon bloodline had given him had proven to be genuinely remarkable. The style was nothing like anything he or Llewyn had encountered before, and the Dornish prince had said as much during one of their afternoon sessions, his eyebrows climbing his forehead after Arthur had put him on his back for the third time in a row using a parry technique the prince simply had no answer for.
The art emphasised a connection between the wielder's will and the blade itself, a kind of channelling that Arthur could not fully explain to anyone who asked about it, but which made his sword move in ways that felt less like combat and more like an extension of his own intention.
So he spent as much time as he could training and getting used to it. So he spent most of his days in the Godswood which was where he was today.
He had been coming here every morning for weeks now. He had tried, in the early days of his recovery, to make some headway with the [Shining]. The encounter inside the wyvern's mind had shaken him badly. The pale man's face still appeared behind his eyelids when he closed them at night, that smooth hairless head and those small dark eyes that had looked at him not with anger or with hatred but with hunger.
He needed to understand what the Shining could do. He needed to control it. He needed to be able to reach for it willingly rather than waiting for it to surface on its own in moments of extreme trauma or chance.
But the Shining would not come when called.
He had sat cross-legged in this clearing for hours at a time, emptying his mind, and nothing had happened.
The Shining remained stubbornly beyond his reach.
Hamon, on the other hand, had responded to every hour of training he had put into it.
Arthur stood in the clearing with his feet planted shoulder-width apart and his breathing settled into the rhythmic pattern that had become as natural to him as his own heartbeat. The golden current that moved in his blood vibrated through his body with each breath, and he reached down without looking and picked up a single broad leaf from the forest floor.
He held the leaf between his thumb and forefinger and channelled Hamon into it.
The energy flowed from his fingertips into the soft green tissue of the leaf, and the leaf changed. It stiffened and hardened. The veins that ran through it began to glow with a faint golden lightning.
Arthur flicked his wrist.
The leaf left his fingers in a spinning arc that crossed the clearing in less than a second, and buried itself in the trunk of an oak tree on the far side with a solid thwack that embedded it a full inch into the bark. It stood there quivering like a throwing knife, the golden glow already fading from its surface.
Arthur smiled as he looked at it. Weeks ago, at the apprentice tier, the most he had been able to do was push a thin pulse of energy through his fist on contact. Now the Hamon responded to direction. He could project it into objects and sustain it there long enough for those objects to become weapons. He could channel it through a piece of cloth and make it rigid enough to stop a blade. He could push it into his boots and gain traction on surfaces that should have been too smooth to grip.
It was amazing.
He turned to the fallen trunk that lay along the far edge of the clearing. Arthur walked to it and crouched and slid his right hand beneath the bark until his fingers found a grip.
He drew a deep breath and the Hamon surged through his body in a golden pulse that lit up his arms and his shoulders and the broad muscles of his back, and he lifted.
The trunk came up off the forest floor with a groan, rising smoothly into the air at the end of his single outstretched arm as though it weighed no more than a practice sword. He held it there for a long count of five, his arm perfectly still, and then he set it back down gently and let the breath go.
Without the Hamon, the trunk would have been a struggle with both arms. With it, he could hold it aloft with one hand and still have energy left over. The amplification was not unlimited and it was not without cost, he could feel the fatigue building in the muscles even as the technique compensated for it, and he knew from experience that pushing too hard for too long would leave him shaking and weak for hours afterward, but within the bounds of what was reasonable the strength enhancement was extraordinary.
He turned back to the centre of the clearing and drew Sunset from the scabbard at his hip. He settled his grip on the hilt and channelled Hamon into the blade, the same way he had channelled it into the leaf and into his own body, and the sword responded with an eagerness that took him by surprise every single time he did it.
The golden energy did not simply flow into the steel. It leapt into it, racing along the blade and out to the edge as though the metal were actively drawing it in.
He swung the blade at the oak tree beside him and the edge passed through the first six inches of bark and heartwood as though they were not there. The wood simply parted around the edge, and when Arthur pulled the sword back the cut face was as smooth and clean as if it had been planed by a master carpenter.
No other weapon he had tested did this.
He had tried channelling Hamon into daggers, into practice swords, into the steel blade he carried as a sidearm, into an axe he had borrowed from the armoury. All of them accepted the energy to some degree. All of them became somewhat harder and somewhat sharper. But none of them responded the way Sunset did. It was as though the metal itself had been forged with the express purpose of conducting exactly this kind of energy.
He suspected it was the material. Sunset was made of a falling star metal. If any metal in the world would resonate with Hamon, it made sense that it would be steel that came from the sky like the sun did.
He sheathed the sword and was about to begin another round of breathing exercises when the sound of footsteps on the forest path broke his concentration.
He turned to see a young servant in Targaryen livery stepping carefully through the undergrowth at the edge of the clearing. "Ser Arthur," the boy called as soon as he spotted him. "Forgive me for the interruption, Ser. The King's procession has been sighted coming up Aegon's High Hill. They will be at the gates within the hour."
Arthur wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and nodded. "Thank you, lad. I will be there shortly."
The boy bowed quickly and retreated back up the path, clearly grateful for an excuse to leave.
Arthur took one more breath, and let the last of the Hamon settle back into a resting state within his blood, and turned toward the keep.
...
Arthur had washed quickly and changed into the best clothing he owned, a clean dark tunic over fresh breeches and his good boots, with Sunset belted at his hip and his hair pushed back and tied with a leather cord. He found Mira and Cassie already waiting near the edge of the formal assembly, both of them dressed in the simple but well-made gowns that Rhaella had arranged for them.
Mira held Mordred and Morgana against her in a double sling, one twin on each side of her chest, while Cassie held Percival in her arms. Rhaella stood beside them in a gown of deep Targaryen red, her hands clasped in front of her.
Arthur took his place beside his wives and looked out across the courtyard. The Gold Cloaks had formed two lines running from the gate to the steps of the keep. The lords and ladies of the court, those who had remained in the city through the crisis, were arranged along the flanks in order of precedence.
Prince Duncan stood at the foot of the steps in his capacity as Hand, Llewyn beside him, Ser Gerold behind them.
A horn sounded from the wall above the gate.
The great doors swung open.
The procession that entered the courtyard moved inside quickly. Outriders came first, knights in armour with Targaryen banners snapping above their heads. Then the household guard in their red and black, marching four abreast. Then the wheelhouses, three of them, each drawn by matched teams of horses with gilded tack, their curtains drawn against the late morning sun.
The first wheelhouse came to a halt at the foot of the steps and a footman hurried to open the door and lower the steps.
A moment later King Aegon V stepped out into the light. Queen Betha followed him out a moment later.
Prince Jaehaerys emerged from the second wheelhouse with Saera at his side, and behind them came Prince Aerys.
Every person in the courtyard dropped to one knee.
Arthur lowered himself carefully, mindful of the lingering stiffness in his ribs, and beside him Mira and Cassie performed careful half-curtseys that were as deep as they could manage while holding infants. The babies, characteristically, were unimpressed by the proceedings. Mordred made a small grumbling sound against Mira's chest that Arthur sincerely hoped no one else had heard.
"Rise," the king saidb loudly enough for all of them to hear. "All of you. Please."
They rose.
Duncan stepped forward and knelt before his father . "Your Grace. It's good to see you home safely, Kings Landing is yours."
Aegon regarded his son for a moment with an expression that was equal parts pride and exhaustion, and then he reached down and placed both hands on Duncan's shoulders and drew him up to his feet.
"You have served well in my absence, my son. Better than I had any right to ask of you." Aegon pulled Duncan into an embrace.
After he was done Aegon moved through the formal greetings with everyone else. He embraced Rhaella and kissed her brow and shook hands with Prince Llewyn. He acknowledged Lord Celtigar and Lord Massey and Lord Redwyne in turn with the appropriate courtesies.
Then his eyes found Arthur.
The king crossed the last few feet of courtyard and came to a stop in front of him, and Arthur bowed deeply from the waist. "Your Grace."
"Ser Arthur Pendragon." Aegon's eyes studied him with an intensity that Arthur found quietly unsettling. "Rise, Ser. I have heard a great deal about you over the past month. Enough that I find it inappropriate for you to bow so low to me." His gaze moved briefly to Mira and Cassie and the children they held, and a genuine smile softened the hard lines around his mouth. "I congratulate you on your knighthood. My son tells me it was well earned. I also congratulate you on your children. I also hear one of them is my great grandson, I'd be glad to meet him at a more appropriate place. The gods have been generous with you, Ser Arthur."
"They have, Your Grace. More generous than I deserve. Thank you."
"Do not undersell yourself, my boy. From what I have been told, you have earned every bit of what you have received and then some."
Aegon held his gaze for a moment longer, then the king turned back to the broader courtyard and raised his voice to address the assembly. "My lords and my ladies. Forgive us, but the road has been long and my family is tired. We must rest before we can attend to the business of the realm. I ask for your patience and your understanding, and I thank you all for the warmth of your welcome."
There was a bit of muttering but a Kings command was just that, a command, and so the courtyard began to disperse at his order. Meanwhile Aegon and Betha moved toward the steps of the keep with their household staff and their Kingsguard falling in around them. Jaehaerys and Shaera followed, while Aerys walked a few paces behind his parents with a slightly bored expression, though one that soured the moment he looked at Arthur.
The court broke apart into small clusters of conversation whiling mkving, lords and ladies drifting toward the corridors and the halls and their own quarters, and the Gold Cloaks began to relax their formation.
One figure remained standing near the steps.
He was very large.
Ser Duncan the Tall had been standing at the back of the royal party throughout the formal greetings, his great height making him visible above every other head in the courtyard. He waited until the rest of the court had thinned enough to give him room, and then he crossed the courtyard toward Arthur.
Arthur grinned.
The big knight grinned back.
Arthur met him halfway and clasped his forearm in the warrior's grip, and Ser Duncan's hand closed around his arm. "It is good to see you, Dunk."
"And you, lad." The big man's eyes crinkled warmly at the corners, he held the grip for a long moment before releasing it. He stepped back half a pace and looked Arthur over from head to foot. "So. A knight." Ser Duncan shook his head slowly, but the smile never left his face. "When I first heard the news I thought my nephew had lost his mind entirely. I told myself it was too soon. That you had potential, yes, more potential than any squire I had trained in twenty years, but that you were not ready." He paused. "Then the rest of the report came through. Stormimg an enemy ship at the harbour. Retrieving stolen Targaryen eggs. Saving the twin Velaryon girls from their kidnappers."
He clapped Arthur on the shoulder hard enough to stagger a weaker man. "After that I could not think of anything you deserved more. You have done me proud, Arthur. Prouder than you know."
Arthur felt the warmth of those words settle in his chest. That means a great deal to me, Ser. More than I can say. I was worried, truth be told, about what you would think. Whether you would feel I had taken a shortcut, or that the ceremony should have been yours to perform."
"Bah." Ser Duncan waved the concern away with one enormous hand. "I would have knighted you with a stick in a ditch if that was what was called for. The ceremony is words. What matters is the man who knelt and the man who rises, and the man who rose that night earned his spurs ten times over. I would have been honoured to do it, yes. But I am equally honoured that Prince Duncan did. He chose well."
The big knight's eyes then shifted past Arthur's shoulder to where Mira and Cassie stood a few paces back, both of them watching the reunion respectfully.
Ser Duncan's face softened even further. "And the children. Arthur. Gods, lad. Look at them. Three of them."
"Three of them," Arthur confirmed, and the grin came back despite his best efforts at composure.
He turned and beckoned Mira and Cassie forward, and both women came to join them. Mira shifted the sling slightly to give Ser Duncan a better view of the twins nestled against her chest, and Cassie tilted Percival in her arms so that the silver-haired boy's face caught the afternoon light.
"Ser Duncan," Mira said with a warm smile. "It is good to see you again."
"And you, my lady. You look well. Motherhood suits you."
"It suits us both," Cassie added.
Ser Duncan leaned down to look at the children more closely, his enormous frame bending at the waist to bring his face level with the three small bundles and studied each one in turn. "What are their names?"
"The girl is Morgana. The boy beside her is Mordred. They are Mira's twins." He nodded toward Cassie. "And that little fellow with the silver hair is Percival. He is Cassie's son."
"Mordred, Morgana, and Percival." Ser Duncan repeated the names slowly, testing each one on his tongue, and then he nodded with a satisfied grunt. "Strong names. Good names. They will serve them well." He straightened up and looked at Arthur again. "You have built something good here, lad. Do not take that lightly."
"I do not, Ser. I promise you that."
The big knight held his gaze for a moment and then his expression shifted slightly. "Speaking of promises and duties. You and I need to head in soon, I am afraid."
"Head in. What for."
"The King wished to speak with you, Arthur. You received the message through the Prince, I believe."
"I did. He said the King wanted to speak with me once he arrived. I assumed that meant in a day or two, after His Grace had rested and settled."
Ser Duncan sighed. "The King has not been getting much rest these past few months, Arthur. Not much at all. And when Aegon says he wishes to speak with someone, he means now." He paused. "I would not keep him waiting if I were you, lad."
Arthur glanced back at Mira and Cassie. Both of them had heard the exchange and both of them were wearing the same expression. "Go, my love," Mira said.
"We will be fine," Cassie added. "We always are."
Arthur leaned in and kissed Mira on the temple and then Cassie on the cheek, and he laid a hand briefly on each of his children's heads.
Ser Duncan turned to the two women and offered his arm. "My ladies. Might I escort you inside. It has been a long journey and I find myself in need of the company of people who do not smell like horses."
Cassie laughed outright and Mira took his offered arm with a smile that made the big knight look enormously pleased with himself, and the three of them turned and walked toward the steps of the keep with the babies safely between them.
Arthur watched them go with a small smile. Then he drew a breath, adjusted Sunset at his hip, and walked toward the great hall.
When he arrived he saw the throne room was empty.
Arthur had expected guards, maybe some other lords who wished to speak with the king, or at the very least a servant or two standing at the doors to announce him. Instead the vast chamber was deserted, the Iron Throne sat at the far end of the hall on its raised platform.
Arthur's boots echoed on the stone as he walked the length of the hall.
The throne drew his eye despite himself, the enormous tangled mass of swords fused together by dragonfire into something that was less a chair and more a piece of art, he stopped a respectful distance from the base of the platform and looked up at it. He wondered how many people had died because of this chair... how many people's lives had it ruined.
"It is more uncomfortable than it looks, if you can believe it."
Arthur jumped and then turned, his hand went instinctively to the hilt of Sunset before his eyes adjusted to the dhadows and found the source.
King Aegon V stood leaning against the pillar with his arms folded across his chest and a faintly amused expression on his face. He had changed out of his travelling clothes and into a simple dark tunic and trousers.
Without the crown and the formal outfit he had shown in the courtyard he looked, suddenly, like what he actually was, a tired man in his middle years who didn't sleep nearly enough.
Arthur dropped immediately to one knee. "Your Grace. Forgive me, I did not see you."
"That was rather the point. Rise, Arthur. Please. I have had quite enough kneeling for one day."
Arthur stood.
Aegon pushed himself off the pillar and walked forward slowly, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes drifting back to the Iron Throne as he came. He stopped beside Arthur and the two of them stood there for a moment looking up at the massive twisted thing together.
"Balerion forged it from the blades of Aegon's enemies," the king said quietly. "A thousand swords, or so the stories say. My ancestor sat on them as a reminder that a king should never sit easy on his throne." He was silent for a moment. "I have often wondered whether anyone who has ever sat on that throne has truly understood what it costs until after the crown was on their head. How many men do you think have dreamed of sitting there, Arthur. How many have fought and bled and betrayed and murdered for the chance to climb those steps and lower themselves onto all that ugly iron. And how many of them, when they finally got there, discovered that the dream was hollow. That the throne was just metal. That the power they had imagined was just a different kind of cage."
The king's voice was quiet and far away.
"I have considered melting the thing down," Aegon said, almost to himself. "Casting it into the sea. Let the crabs have it. They would do as much good with it as most of the men who have sat upon it."
Arthur opened his mouth to respond and then closed it again. He had no idea what to say to that. The King of the Seven Kingdoms was standing beside him in an empty throne room speaking about destroying the most powerful symbol of his own authority with the casual weariness of a man discussing whether to throw out an old chair. There was no version of that statement that Arthur felt equipped to answer.
Aegon seemed to sense this, because after a moment his expression cleared and he turned his attention to Arthur. "Do you know why I wished to speak with you, Arthur?"
Arthur met his gaze. "I assumed it was on account of the battle, Your Grace."
"In part. Yes. In part." Aegon turned away from the throne and walked slowly to the stone steps that led up to the platform, and then, he sat down on the second step from the bottom. Not on the throne.
He rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands in front of him and looked up at Arthur from below like a man speaking to an equal rather than a subject. "But there is more we need to discuss. A great deal more."
"I have been informed, in considerable detail, of what my reckless and well-meaning son chose to do regarding my granddaughter Cassandra." A wry smile crossed the king's face. "Both in legitimising her as a Targaryen and in announcing her marriage to you before the assembled court, invoking Valyrian marriage customs that have not been used since Maegor the Cruel sat on that throne behind me." The smile broadened slightly. "He even managed to get punched in the face for it, which I am told you were responsible for."
"I was, Your Grace."
"Good. He deserved it."
A startled laugh escaped Arthur before he could contain it, and Aegon's smile turned genuine.
"I congratulate you, Arthur. Two wives. You are the first man to invoke that particular tradition in nearly two hundred years. Most men find one wife more than sufficient challenge."
"I am beginning to understand why, Your Grace."
Aegon chuckled and then his expression gradually sobered. "I will be honest with you, Arthur. I do not agree with how my son handled the matter. The announcement should have been made privately. The legitimisation should have been discussed with Cassandra and myself first. The Valyrian marriage custom should have been raised with the council before being declared in a great hall full of half-drunk lords and ladies. Duncan acted on impulse and on fear, and he caused a great deal of pain to people who did not deserve it."
He paused.
"But I agree with what he did. The substance of it, if not the execution."
Arthur said nothing.
"A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing."
"She was not alone, Your Grace," Arthur said firmly. "She was never alone. She has not been alone since the day I met her. She would not have been alone without the legitimisation, and she would not have been alone without the Targaryen name. She had me. She had Mira. She had the children of the orphanage who loved her. She was not a Targaryen adrift in the world. She was a woman with a family."
Aegon looked at him for a long moment. Then the king nodded slowly. "Of course not. You are right. I did not mean to diminish what you have given her. I only meant that the realm does not know what you and I know, and in the eyes of the realm a Targaryen without a name is a target. The legitimisation gives her a shield. Whether she wished for that shield or not, it is there now, and it cannot be taken back."
Arthur held the king's gaze, and after a moment he inclined his head in acceptance.
There was a pause. The light in the throne room had shifted slightly as a cloud passed across the sun outside, then after a while Aegon let out a breath. "Arthur. What do you know of dragon dreams."
Arthur's eyes widened slightly at the question but he schooled his features. "I know they are visions that come to those of Valyrian blood," Arthur said carefully. "I know they are said to carry truth, though the truth is rarely clear and often comes wrapped in symbols that can be read a dozen different ways. I know that some men have been driven mad by them, and that others have used them to avert catastrophe. And I know that your brother Daeron and Daemon Blackfyre both claimed to have them, and that neither man's dreams served him well in the end."
"That is well said." Aegon's voice had gone quieter. "A blessing and a curse. That is what our family has always called them, and both words are accurate. The trouble, Arthur, is that when you are having them, when you are inside one, you cannot tell which it is. The blessing and the curse feel identical. And the compulsion to act on what you have seen is just as strong whether the dream is prophecy or madness."
He paused, and the look in his eyes was very far away.
"I have been having dragon dreams, Arthur. For months now. The same dream, recurring, with variations that change the details but never the core. I have told no one about this except my wife, the woods witch that Jenny brought to court, and now you."
Arthur felt a cold prickling sensation at the back of his neck. "In the dream I see King's Landing burning. I see a great beast, a dragon with black scales, descending on the city and setting everything alight. Sometimes there are many dragons. Sometimes there is only one. But the city always burns, and my family always dies, and I stand on the walls of the Red Keep and watch it happen."
Aegon's hands had tightened around one another in his lap. "But in some of the dreams, Arthur, the ending is different. In some of them a second dragon appears. A great white dragon, enormous, with purple eyes that shine like stars. It comes down from the sky and it meets the black dragon above the city, and it fights, and it wins. It drives the black dragon away and it saves my family and it saves King's Landing."
Arthur did not speak.
"I know what you are going to say," Aegon continued. "You are going to tell me not to trust dreams. That dreams are sometimes just dreams and that acting on them has brought ruin to better men than me."
"I was going to say exactly that, Your Grace."
"And you would be right to say it. But look at what has happened, Arthur. The city was attacked. Not by a dragon, no, but by a creature from the same family. A wyvern. A great beast brought on a barge from across the sea, loosed upon the beach, responsible for hundreds of deaths. The dream spoke of a monster coming for King's Landing, and a monster came."
"A wyvern is not a dragon, Your Grace."
"No. But the dream was not always precise about what the black beast looked like. What was precise, every single time, was what came to stop it. A great white dragon with purple eyes." Aegon looked directly at him as he said that.
"Where was the white dragon, then, Your Grace?" Arthur asked. "If the dream was prophecy then where was the creature that was supposed to save the city, as far as I'm aware I killed the wyvern and I am not a dragon."
"No," Aegon said. "You are not a dragon. But you have Valyrian blood. Your eyes are the proof of it. Purple, Arthur. The same purple that the dream gave the dragon. White is also the colour of the outcast or perhaps a child born outside the main line."
"This could be interpreted in many ways. But what I believe is this. The white dragon was not a literal dragon. The white dragon was you. A man of Valyrian blood, born outside the Targaryen line, connected to my family through a marriage that should never have been possible, who stood on a field of fire and killed the beast that came for my city. Through my granddaughter, by the laws of men, you are my grandson by marriage. Your son Percival carries Targaryen blood. These are not coincidences, Arthur. They cannot be."
Arthur drew a long breath. "Your Grace. With the greatest possible respect. That is speculation. You are taking a dream and fitting the details of reality around it after the fact. Any man could look at what happened at the Blackwater and construct a story that matched a vision he had been having for months."
"Perhaps."
"I am not a dragon, Your Grace. I am a man from a farm in the Crownlands who has had more luck than he deserves and has been too stubborn to die when he should have."
"Perhaps," Aegon said again.
Then Aegon shifted on the steps and his expression changed, "But what is not speculation, Arthur, is this. A war has begun. And it is going to get worse. Much worse. Before it gets better."
"Dragonstone is in enemy hands. The Blackwater is blockaded. The realm does not yet know the full extent of what we are facing, but it will, and when it does the consequences will be severe. And in that war, Arthur, my family will be targeted. All of them. Including your son Percival."
Arthur's jaw tightened and he tightened his fists so much they turned white.
"Yes. I thought that would get your attention." The king nodded slowly. "Duncan abdicated his claim to the throne years ago when he married Jenny. But the line of succession is not so neatly severed as people believe. If Jaehaerys were to die, and if Aerys were to die after him, the claim would revert, and the realm would look for the closest living Targaryen with a legitimate connection to the crown. That would be Duncan's line. That would be Cassandra. And through Cassandra, that would be your son."
"That is not going to happen, Your Grace."
"I pray it does not. But I am a king, and kings must plan for what might happen, not only for what should. Your family is now part of the succession whether any of us wished it or not. And that means your family is a target whether any of us wished it or not."
Arthur stood there in the empty throne room with his hands curling slowly into fists at his sides.
Aegon looked at him with something that was almost tender. "I know what you want, Arthur. You want a quiet life with your wives and your children. You want a home with a hearth. You want to raise your children in peace and grow old watching them become whatever they are going to become. I know this because it is what every good man wants, and you are a good man. Possibly the best I have met in a very long time."
The king paused. "Which is why I am going to make you a deal rather than give you an order."
Arthur looked up in confusion.
"I believe you are special, Arthur. I do not know how and I do not entirely know why. But for a peasant farmer to go from where you began to where you are standing now, before the King of the Seven Kingdoms in his own throne room, in just over two years, that is something that most men would call impossible. But you achieved it. And you achieved it honestly, which is rarer still. You did not lie, you did not cheat, you did not betray, you did not climb over the bodies of better men to reach the top. You simply did what was right, over and over again, and the world moved around you."
"I will need you in the war to come. I know this as certainly as I know anything. But I also know that conscripting a man like you, forcing you into service, would be a mistake. You are the kind of man who gives everything he has when he chooses to give it, and gives nothing at all when the choice is taken from him. So I will not take the choice from you."
"Instead I am going to give you what you want."
"There is an island in the Blackwater Bay. Brightwater Isle. It sits roughly ten miles off the shore, between the coast and Driftmark, well south of Dragonstone. Three fishing villages, a handful of small farms, a natural harbour, and good fresh water. It is a quiet place, Arthur. Peaceful. I do not think I have received a single report of trouble from Brightwater in the entire time I have worn this crown."
"It sounds like a fine place to settle, Your Grace."
"It would be. Except I am not offering you a place to settle, Arthur." Aegon stood up from the steps and drew himself to his full height. "I am offering you lordship. I am making you the Lord of Brightwater Isle."
Arthur stared at him in shock. "Lord..."
"Lord."
"Your Grace. I was made a knight one month ago."
"And now you are a Lord. None will question it, Ser Arthur. Consider it the crown's reward for slaying a wyvern and saving the capital. Lesser men have been given greater titles for lesser deeds." A faint smile crossed Aegon's face. "Besides. You will need a proper seat if you are to raise three children with two wives. A knight's quarters in the White Sword Tower will not suffice."
Arthur felt as though the floor had shifted slightly beneath his feet.
"Dragonstone is in enemy hands," Aegon continued, and his voice grew quieter and more serious. "We are assembling a fleet to challenge their hold on the bay, and once that fleet is ready we will move to blockade the island and cut them off from resupply. The stores inside Dragonstone are deep, Arthur. The maesters estimate that a well-provisioned garrison could hold out for two years, possibly longer, before hunger forces their hand."
"Two years. That is how long you will have. Two years to settle on your island, to build your home, to raise your children, to do whatever it is you wish to do with the peace I am giving you. Train. Build. Rest. Enjoy the life you have earned. For two years no one will ask anything of you."
"And after two years."
"After two years the siege of Dragonstone will likely reach its conclusion, one way or another, and the war that has been simmering will begin in earnest. When that happens I will call on you, Arthur. I will ask you to fight. Not as a conscript. Not as a pawn. As a lord of the realm, answering his king's call, of his own free will."
The throne room was very quiet and after a moment Aegon stood up and approached Arthur. "Do we have a deal Arthur Pendragon." He reached his hand out and held it in front of him.
Arthur drew a breath, and then he looked the King of the Seven Kingdoms in the eye and nodded.
"We have a deal, Your Grace."
He reached out and shook the kings hand.
And just like that Ser Arthur Pendragon.
Became Lord Arthur Pendragon.
(AN: So anyone expect this happening? I mean come on he had to have gotten a reward equal to the deed and slaying a wyvern is no easy task. Also for those who wonder where Brightwater isle is I made it up. I just wanted to give him his own private space he can start experimenting with alchemy. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)
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