Logar's plan was crystal clear.
First, get close to Corlys Velaryon — the Sea Snake. Use him as the stepping stone to slip into the Blacks and swear loyalty to Queen Rhaenyra.
He wasn't planning to show up with his three hundred pirates as cheap cannon fodder. The Blacks wouldn't even blink at that many men.
His real target was something far bigger.
Dragons.
Real dragons — the ones that flew and breathed fire.
Dragons were the heart of Targaryen power and the ultimate weapon of this age.
Becoming a dragonrider, soaring through the sky on living flame, was every warrior's ultimate dream.
Only those with Targaryen blood could claim and ride them.
Strictly speaking, in this world of ice and fire, only the blood of the old Valyrian dragonlords could produce a true dragonrider.
And Logar? He carried that blood himself — a bastard son of House Targaryen.
Who his father was, his whore mother had never said. On her deathbed she'd pressed a worn yellow ribbon into his hand, but that had been lost years ago.
He had never told a soul.
His silver-white hair and violet eyes were common enough in Essos — plenty of Valyrian blood flowed through the Free Cities.
Bastards were beneath notice anyway. No one would ever connect a Stepstones pirate to the royal Targaryens of Westeros.
Logar knew the timeline cold.
Soon the Blacks and Greens would go to full war. The Blacks would start losing and call every Targaryen bastard in the realm to Dragonstone to try taming the dragons and swell their ranks.
That was the opening he had been waiting for.
He wasn't sure he could actually bond with a dragon. In the stories, thousands had tried and only a handful succeeded. The rest ended up charred bones or torn apart in dragon jaws.
But not trying? That had never been Logar's style.
The prize — power, gold, land, a name that would echo through history — was worth the risk.
He didn't breathe a word of the dragon plan to his men.
He simply told them they were shifting from pirates to sellswords.
It got them out of Dorne's coming revenge, gave them steady pay, and left the door open to return later and squeeze tolls from the Stepstones again. Win-win-win.
Femon and the others shrugged. Money was money. Pirate or mercenary, what difference did it make?
Switching sides like this was common enough anyway. Plenty of cutthroats had hung up the black flag and taken a lord's coin.
The real question was how to make the Sea Snake actually accept them.
Logar already had that part figured out. He sent the shipwright Kendel Waters back to Driftmark with a handful of his most trusted men to lay the groundwork.
One night later the bonfires were cold ash and Kendel's ship had vanished over the horizon.
Logar doubled the watch and sent scouts to Grey Gallows.
The report came back fast: the island was a smoking ruin. Heads of the pirates who hadn't fled in time decorated the beach. Triarchy ships were already patrolling nearby waters.
"The Three Daughters spotted what happened on Grey Gallows," Logar muttered, eyes narrowing. "Question is whether they'll come looking for us…"
The Triarchy — Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh — had always claimed the Stepstones as their birthright. Many of his own men came from those cities. And if history held, they would soon side with the Greens and ambush Black fleets.
Right now they were stronger. Logar's crew was still small.
Time to stay low and hug the Blacks' leg until he grew teeth.
He ordered extra sentries and had everyone quietly pack the ships, ready to sail at a moment's notice.
Days passed. Surprisingly, neither the Triarchy nor Dorne came knocking.
Instead, word of Logar's raid spread like wildfire. Stray pirate crews from across the Stepstones started showing up, begging to join the man who had gutted a Dornish outpost with almost nothing.
By the time the dust settled, his force had swelled from one hundred and fifty to over three hundred men — enough to fully crew all five ships.
Perfect timing. He was about to cross the Narrow Sea and meet Lord Corlys. Three hundred fighting men would make the right kind of impression.
The days blurred into weapons drills and ship repairs. To let the men blow off steam, Logar allowed two Tyroshi merchant ships carrying whores to anchor for a night.
The purple-haired Tyroshi traders trembled the whole time, eyes on the deck, desperate to sell their goods and get the hell away from the infamous Throat-Cutter.
Logar let them leave unmolested.
Then the letter arrived from Kendel Waters.
It contained fresh news from Driftmark, plus the exact routes and sailing times of Velaryon merchant ships crossing the Narrow Sea.
"Good man," Logar smiled, genuinely pleased. Kendel hadn't run. The bastard name "Waters" meant the shipwright came from the same low-born gutter as him. Useful.
No more waiting.
He gave the order. Men scrambled aboard. Sails rose. The five ships slipped out of the bay, every pirate buzzing with excitement. They'd been eating well, but they were itching for the sea again.
They dreamed of another fat prize.
But the moment the fleet cleared the headland, sails appeared on the horizon — big ones.
Triarchy banners snapped in the wind.
"It's Sharako Lohar!" a sharp-eyed lookout screamed. "The Triarchy's admiral! His whole damn fleet!"
Sharako Lohar — the Lysene corsair turned admiral — commanded more than thirty warships and had slaughtered countless pirate crews over the years.
His ships were already turning toward them.
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