Chapter 30: Rhaegar the Egg-Collector
Jon Stone believed Prince Rhaegar's fascination with dragons was little more than a boy's wonder. He never suspected that the prince's ambitions ran far deeper.
Rhaegar intended to build something entirely new—an intelligence network loyal to him alone. Sharp eyes and quicker blades would be needed to recover dragon eggs scattered across the world, whether lost in the perilous Mountains of the Moon or hidden in the distant Free Cities of Essos.
Ser Barristan Selmy was no cutpurse, and the Braavosi bravo Sersa Wul, for all his skill with a blade, was ill-suited to quiet theft and whispered secrets. Rhaegar's small circle would soon require a master of shadows. Such work demanded men willing to soil their hands.
A great map of the Known World hung upon the wall of Rhaegar's bedchamber, marked with discreet sigils where he suspected dragon eggs might lie.
With the extinction of the dragons, hatching one required two things: dragon eggs and the blood of the dragon. Neither alone was enough.
Dragonseed still lingered in Westeros and Essos alike. On Dragonstone, among old Valyrian houses, and across the Narrow Sea, the blood survived in scattered veins.
One such vein traced back to Princess Saera Targaryen, the wayward daughter of King Jaehaerys I, who had fled Westeros and lived as a courtesan in the Free Cities. She left behind many children, some of whom surely carried the dragon's blood still.
So too did the descendants of Aegon IV Targaryen, called the Unworthy. No king had scattered his seed more recklessly. In Braavos, the famed Black Pearl, foremost among courtesans, was widely believed to descend from Aegon IV himself. Not from Daemon Blackfyre, but from the same tainted source that birthed him.
Eggs, however, were rarer still.
In ancient days, House Targaryen guarded dragon eggs more fiercely than gold. Yet war and folly had scattered them. One lady of Dragonstone had once sold three eggs to the Sealord of Braavos in exchange for a ship. During the Dance of the Dragons, more eggs vanished amid fire and chaos. Worst of all was Aegon IV, who had gifted dragon eggs to his mistresses as though they were trinkets.
Beyond the eggs still held by the royal line, others lay lost to time.
Three eggs in Essos, Rhaegar thought. They should lie in Braavos or Pentos still.
And near the bones of Sheepstealer, high in the Mountains of the Moon, there may yet be traces.
Prince Daemon Targaryen had been generous to a fault. No gift was dearer than a dragon egg.
The dragons of old had possessed the greatest hoard the world had ever known, yet Rhaegar meant to gather the scattered remnants as well—especially the three Essosi eggs, eggs that fate itself seemed to preserve.
Some would later claim those eggs came from Asshai, but Rhaegar doubted such tales. More likely they had slipped from a Sealord's vault. Braavosi pride, and fear of offending the Iron Throne, would ensure the truth was never spoken aloud.
The Sealord's office was not hereditary. Fortunes rose and fell swiftly in Braavos, and emptied treasuries were nothing new. Daemon Targaryen himself had once slain the son of a Sealord over Laena Velaryon, daughter of Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake. Braavos remembered such insults for generations.
I need men, Rhaegar thought. Men to listen, to steal, to lie.
And a spymaster to command them.
As these thoughts churned in his mind, King Jaehaerys II dismissed the envoy of Lord Jon Arryn and beckoned his grandson closer.
The king unfolded his great wooden map of Westeros, its carved pieces still standing where last they had been set.
Explaining the balance of the realm was one of Jaehaerys II's quiet pleasures.
"Knowledge should be prized above wine," the king said softly. "Your father never learned that lesson. He loved pleasure too well. At times I wonder if the crown ought to have passed to Prince Duncan instead."
It was the lament of a father whose sons had disappointed him. Westerosi law was rigid; primogeniture spared the realm succession wars, yet it also crowned men unfit to rule and left abler brothers in the shadows.
Yet Rhaegar was different.
His grandson listened, understood, and remembered.
"Our rule now rests upon balance," Jaehaerys continued, shifting the carved pieces. "We must bind the great houses to us so none outweighs the Iron Throne. Once balance fails, the dynasty follows."
With the dragons gone, their blood no longer ruled by fear alone. Jaehaerys II understood this better than any man alive.
Rhaegar nodded. Beside the indulgent Prince Aerys, his grandfather was the true dragon of their age—no great warrior, plain of face, but sharp of mind and relentless in purpose.
"A king must know whom to trust," Jaehaerys said. "Those who draw steel must be crushed. Those who kneel must be spared. Justice is balance."
"House Tully and House Tyrell owe their rise to us. House Baratheon shares our blood. The others were once kings—the Starks, the Arryns, the Lannisters. Proud houses, slow to bend. Dorne was the same, until marriage made them kin."
He gestured to the edges of the map.
"The outer realms first: the Iron Islands, Dorne, the North, the Vale. Each is strong at defense, weak at conquest. The Ironborn are reavers, few in number. The North is vast but thinly peopled, divided by faith and winter. Dorne is fierce but insular. And the Vale—ringed by the Mountains of the Moon—is rich and stubborn, its lords as immovable as stone."
Jaehaerys's finger rested there.
"They seldom play at court," he said. "Which makes them dangerous, in their own way."
Rhaegar committed every word to memory.
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