[Kill The Boy] Chapter 83: The Business of Survival (Patreon)

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and all rights for character, plots and settings belong to GRRM. I have no ownership.

A/N: Hope you enjoy the chapter and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!! :D

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Year 300 AC

Moat Cailin, The Riverlands

For days Jaime had woken to the sound of hammers and saws, and when he went to bed fresh crews were still at work by torchlight.

He stood on the timber platform bolted across the cracked black basalt of the Gatehouse Tower, while the masons below drove iron cramps into the parapet. Half a mile up the ribbon of grey stone, three heavy farm carts were coming out of the mist behind a dozen Winterfell outriders.

Beside him, Daven spat over the rail and squinted through his tangle of sandy beard. "More mouths, coz. I thought Manderly's cogs and the Ironborn ships were taking the last of the northern folk down the Saltspear."

"Ships only help if you live near the water," Jaime said, watching the lead rider.

The horse was a big bay mare and the rider sitting her high saddle topped the Stark guardsmen by half a head. Even through the sleet, Jaime knew the set of those broad shoulders in the tarnished mail, and the way her cloak blew back from the red-and-blue rippled scabbard at her left hip.

"Come down," Jaime told Daven, already turning for the outer stair. "Those carts have children in them."

By the time he reached the packed gravel inside the northern arch, the outriders were reining in beside the braziers. Jaime walked out from under the gatehouse vault without his cloak, letting the sleet prickle across his cropped hair.

She vaulted down off the bay mare with her helmet clamped under her left arm, her freckled cheeks whipped red by the raw wind on either side of that crooked nose. When she turned from looping the mare's reins and saw him standing there, she stopped dead.

Those blue eyes went wide for a breath, taking him in from his face down to the plain steel hilt at his right hip and up again to see for herself that the dragon king had left him in one piece.

"Ser Jaime," she said.

"You're late, my lady," Jaime said, stopping before her and letting a smile touch his mouth. "I've been hauling timber with my cousin for a sennight. Another two days and Daven would have had me mixing mortar."

The stiffness went out of her shoulders all at once. Color crept up her neck that did not belong entirely to the wind, though her mouth twitched at the corner. "You look ill-suited to masonry, ser."

"I am," Jaime said. "Worse at carpentry. Who have you brought me?"

"Northern folk from the inland holdings who could not get aboard the ships," Brienne said, glancing back as the first cart rumbled through, its floorboards packed with bundled children and old women clutching wool sacks. "If you can spare a dry floor and a hearth tonight, I will take them south below the Neck at first light."

"And after you've seen them to saftey?" Jaime asked.

Brienne met his eyes directly. "I am riding back here. Lady Sansa said the Neck would have more need of another sword than her household guard."

"She's a wiser sister than I was a brother," Jaime said, pleased enough by the answer that he did not bother hiding it. "Get your horses under the western shed. We'll have hot broth and bread for your people."

Before Brienne could answer, a heavy rush of wind beat down through the low cloud above the northern reed beds. Every horse in the yard threw up its head and laid its ears flat. Brienne's hand dropped toward the pommel of Oathkeeper, checking the motion only as the great black shape broke through the mist above the Children's Tower.

Aemon came down out of the grey sky with his wings spread wide to check his descent, carrying the last river barge in the grip of his massive black claws. The timber hull creaked under the strain, crowded with dark cloaks and huddled figures. With two tremendous downstrokes that drove most folks onto the ground, the dragon lowered the craft into the channel by the water-gate until the flat keel took the water in a rolling wash of foam.

"Clear the lower hall of the Gatehouse Tower," Jaime ordered Daven. "Have our men help the smallsfolks and guide them to the hearth in the lower hall. There also seems to be some wounded, get the maesters out here."

"Endless work," Daven grunted, though he was already motioning the sergeants toward the door.

"We are facing the end of the world," Jaime said. "It's good for moral to keep busy."

Within two minutes a file of Lannister men-at-arms was trooping up the outer stone stairs with their bedrolls slung over their shoulders. Jaime turned to Brienne. "Get your people settled, I have a King to meet."

Walking to the barge that just landed, he noticed a tall Brother of the Watch who could only be Eddison Tollett, his black cloak crusted with mud and a dragonglass spear in his fist.

"I'm guessing you're the Lord Commander?" Jaime said, stepping aside as two northern spearmen carried a strecher into the keep. "Many people have been arriving daily but we've cleared enough space for your people."

Edd pulled off his wet sheepskin gloves and looked past him into the firelight, where men were already ladling broth into wooden bowls. "I used to complain about the draughts in the Shieldhall," he said, some of the grim pinch easing around his mouth. "It's a comfort to know I've traded one damp cellar to another. That'll do well enough, Lannister."

Daven stepped up beside the door, shaking sleet from his beard. "Lord Commander. We didn't see my aunt's husband when the earlier barges came in. Did Emmon Frey come down with your rear guard?"

Edd's expression sobered. He tucked his wet gloves into his belt and glanced at the men being taken in strechers before meeting Jaime's eyes.

"Lord Emmon didn't make it," Edd said quietly. "The dead hit us twice on the road north of Queenscrown. The first lot we drove off, and the second came on while we were trying to get to safety. They caught him before we could form the line. I didn't see him fall but one of his own kinsmen brought his body into the village after the King dropped down and burned the road clear for us."

Daven let out a low breath through his teeth. "Damn."

"We bruned his body, like the rest of our dead," Edd said.

Jaime looked out into the grey mist hanging over the water. It took little effort to call Emmon Frey to mind, that fretful, twitching little man gripping his royal parchment outside Riverrun, frightened of siege stones, frightened of Genna, frightened of his own shadow. A fool raised high for wedding his aunt, only to perish in the frozen North at the hands of the risen dead. He knew Tyrion would find a bitter irony in such an end.

"What of the things that attacked you?" Jaime asked.

“The king killed the rider of one of their dragons, but the beast got away,” Edd said. “The dead are still coming. I would have liked to bring you better news, Lannister. A plague of rats, perhaps. Something that sleeps.”

"I'll have the maester write out the notice for the family," Daven said heavily.

"Have him write to the steward," Jaime said. "I'll write to Aunt Genna myself."

Daven gave a curt nod and followed Edd inside. Jaime, for his part, turned to greet the king. Along the walls and all around him, men had halted to gaze up at their king, and he could well understand the awe in their faces. As he craned his head to look past the walls, Aemon’s black mass loomed above the broken towers, his neck climbing into the low cloud until his head was lost to Jaime’s sight.

Violet flame flared across the yard, drowning the towers in fierce light. Jaime threw an arm across his eyes as men shouted all around him, and for several moments his vision held nothing but stark white. When his sight returned, Aemon was walking toward him on foot while fixing the cloak taken from Howland.

"The barge is clear?" Aemon asked, fastening the iron clasp at his throat.

"All inside by the fire, Your Grace," Jaime said. "Brienne of Tarth brought the last remainders from the North just ahead of you. She takes them south of the Neck at dawn."

Relief softened Aemon’s face at her name. “Good,” he said.

“I had word of Selyse Baratheon,” Jaime said. “You should have clapped her zealots in irons when you forbade their burnings. You knew what sort of people they were.”

“And what charge would you have put to them before they broke my peace?” Aemon asked. “I forbade the burnings. I did not forbid their faith.”

“My sister thought she could manage armed priests,” Jaime said. “I would not recommend the experiment. You have the power to put an end to it.”

“I have the power to do a great many things,” Aemon said. “The men here have given up their homes and brought their families south because I told them they would live under my peace. I mean to keep the law I gave them. If I killed everyone I disliked, your head would have been gone long ago.”

Jaime gave a reluctant snort. He had been quick enough to recommend taking men the king had good reason to mistrust, without considering where that left him. “A mercy I shall try not to find fault with, Your Grace.”

He still thought the king had taken a dangerous chance. The men filing past them had taken one as well, and Jaime let the matter rest.

Aemon headed toward the Drunkard’s Tower, and Jaime accompanied him through the lower hall. Brienne had found room for her people near the hearth. One of the old women was asleep already, her cheek against a sack she still held in both arms, while a boy stood watching the maester cut a black brother’s boot away. His mother drew him back when the man began to cry out. Jaime held the postern open for the king and followed him through.

Behind the tower they found Val and another spearwife were circling one another with blunted weapons. A few of the women working in pairs nearby wore mail, but most had kept their thick wool and fur, and a few of the men had stripped to their shirts despite the cold.

Val caught her opponent’s shaft beneath her own and drove it aside, only to take a tap against the ribs for coming too close. She laughed, rubbed the place, and passed her spear to a woman waiting for a turn. By the time Aemon reached her she had pulled off one glove. She caught him by the cloak and kissed him, keeping him close when he would have drawn back.

“You can give me a little longer than that,” Val said. “They have had you all day. Stay long enough to eat with me before someone finds you another boat to carry.”

Aemon put an arm around her waist. “I will. I want to see the commanders first. Come with me when you have finished here.”

“You can see your commanders later, I have finished.” Val called to the spearwife she had been fighting, asking her to take the last pairs, then retrieved her cloak from a pile of folded clothes. “But you are sitting down for your supper. I am not following you about with a bowl.”

Aemon had the sense not to argue, and they went back through the postern together.

Jaime went over to the smiths, where Gendry worked on making the dragonglass useful. The lad was binding a black spearhead into its haft, with Arya Stark holding the shaft steady while he pulled the binding tight.

“Ser Jaime.” Gendry tested the spearhead, pressing against the binding with his thumb. “I wanted a word. When the fighting comes, I would have a place with the men. There are other smiths here. They can keep the work going while I take a turn at the drills.”

“You have enough to do here,” Arya said. She still held the shaft, though he had finished with it. “They keep bringing you things to mend before you have done the last lot.”

Gendry took the spear from her. “I asked Ser Jaime. You have been out with the others every day, and I have not told you to stop.”

Arya let him take it. Jaime waited for her to rebuke the boy, but she left him to make his request. Gendry set the finished weapon beside its fellows and waited for his answer.

“What did you fight with before I put you to work?” Jaime asked.

“A hammer, mostly. I still have it.” Gendry indicated the heavy weapon hanging apart from the smiths’ tools. “I know what the glass is for, ser. I mean to learn the spear as well.”

Jaime had no wish to waste a good smith, but the boy was right about one thing. There were other men at the anvils. Keeping him there through every drill would serve no one if the fighting reached the forges, and ordering him to be grateful for the work would only send him looking for a chance to prove himself.

“Take your turn at the drill,” Jaime said. “Arrange it with the others so the work carries on. When I post the fighting men, I will put you where I need you, and that may still be here. Do not mistake leave to train for leave to abandon the forge when a horn sounds.”

Gendry had plainly hoped for more, but he nodded. “I understand, ser. I will have someone see to these.” He gathered the remaining points into their cloth and carried them over to another smith, speaking quietly over the scrape of a file.

Daven came around the shelter with a broad-shouldered man in a weather-stained cloak. “Iron Emmett, coz. Edd sent him to find you.” He nodded toward the sword at the man’s side. “Mind what you offer to wager. The king has given him Dark Sister.”

“The king told me to use it,” Emmett said. “I would sooner have the men ready before I need to.” He watched the practice for a moment. “Who has been teaching them?”

“Ser Loras, when he can,” Jaime said. “And whoever else I can spare.”

Loras sat on a bench at the far end of the shelter, correcting a spearman’s footing while another man waited with a padded shield. The Knight of Flowers wore his cloak loose over his injured arm. He had come north with the advance party, along with Marq Piper, though Jaime doubted either had enjoyed the company. At least Loras had found something to do besides regret it.

The spearman tried again, overreached, and stumbled when the shield met his point. Loras rose to place him back where he wanted him. He used his good hand to turn the man’s shoulder, then stepped away and had them repeat the movement. Jaime remembered how readily the young knight had once taken a weapon to show a man his fault.

Emmett unbuckled Dark Sister and set it beside the practice weapons. “I can give these men a start before the light goes, if they have another turn in them.”

Loras sent the spearman back to his partner and came over to Jaime. “Give me charge of the training,” he said. “Emmett can teach the serjeants. I can work with them when they take their own men through it.”

“Can you manage the work through the day?” Jaime said.

“I have been doing it this afternoon.” The irritation sharpened Loras’s words, but he made himself finish plainly. “I am scarred, not crippled.”

Once upon a time, Jaime would have resented those words, but he really couldn't care right now. Loras had found the spearman’s fault quickly enough and corrected it without taking the weapon from him. Whatever else his injuries had cost him, he could still do that.

“Then it is yours,” Jaime said. “Use the serjeants. You need not correct every man yourself.”

Loras brought the remaining pupils together, and Emmett set them to work in pairs, close enough that each had to leave room for the other’s spear. The spearwives came against them with padded shields. When a point touched a shield, its bearer stepped out and another woman took her place, allowing the defenders no pause between attacks. Gendry caught the first shield squarely, but swept his weapon across Arya’s as he drew it back. The next shield struck him before either could get a point free.

“Straight back,” Emmett told him. “Let her cover you while you bring it clear. When you sweep across her spear, you leave both of you open.”

Arya levelled her weapon. “Again,” she said to the women with the shields. Gendry bent his knees and waited for them to come.

By the time the men began putting the weapons away, the smiths had lit their lamps. Jaime went inside to write to his aunt. The maester found him parchment at the end of a crowded table, and he sat among the bowls and damp cloaks until he had made himself begin. Genna would not thank him for a prettily worded letter. He kept it plain, signed it, and waited for the wax to set before taking it to the maester. It was full dark when he returned behind the tower.

Brienne had washed and taken off her mail. Her damp, straw-colored hair was tied back with a leather thong, and she stood beside the rack testing a practice sword while the last of the pupils went in to eat. The smiths still worked under their shelter. Farther off, the shattered curtain wall kept most of the wind from the space between two braziers, leaving them enough room to move.

“Do you ever rest, my lady, or did Sansa Stark wind you up with an iron key before you left Winterfell?” Jaime asked.

“We can sit, if you would rather talk.” Brienne laid Oathkeeper across her folded mail, though she kept the blunted sword in her hand. “You looked as though there was something you wanted to say when I came through the gate.”

There had been several things. He had found fault with her lateness instead. Jaime chose a practice blade and set his own sword beside hers. “I have spent all day talking. I would rather you hit me.”

Brienne raised her sword, the beginnings of a smile undoing her solemnity. “Very well, though if you think I will go gently—”

Jaime lunged before she could finish, aiming for the inside of her wrist. Brienne caught his blade near her crossguard with a sharp clack and turned her hands to bind him. He felt her strength coming onto the steel and slipped his point beneath hers before she could trap it, bringing the flat lightly against her thigh.

He stepped back out of reach, grinning. “You were saying?”

Brienne glanced down at the place he had struck, then raised her sword. “That tap would scarcely have cut my breeches.”

“I was being considerate,” Jaime said. “You have a long ride tomorrow.”

“How kind of you.” Brienne advanced, giving him just enough time to bring his sword up before she struck at his shoulder.

Jaime turned the blow aside and gave ground, his left wrist already feeling the difference between her two hands and his one. She followed with a cut toward his hip, and he stepped inside its reach, checking her forearm with the heel of his gold hand while he tried to bring his pommel beneath her chin.

It was a close-quarters brawl move, and for half a heartbeat he saw the opening behind her guard that his right hand would once have taken without a thought. His left hand was a fraction too slow turning the hilt. Brienne read the drop of his right shoulder, wrenched her arm free of the smooth gold, and pivoted her hips into him. Her crossguard locked his left wrist down while her blunted edge settled firmly against the side of his neck, just above his collar.

They stood chest to chest in the heat of the brazier, both of them breathing hard. Jaime could feel the solid weight of her steel against his throat and the heat coming off her quilted gambeson an inch from his jerkin. A strand of damp pale hair had come loose from her tie and stuck to her flushed cheek.

Gods, I missed you, he thought.

Brienne lowered her sword, her gaze dropping to his gold hand. “You used to be quicker.”

Jaime flexed his left fingers around the hilt. “I had hoped you might have forgotten.”

“I remember having to use both hands to hold you off,” she said. “And yours were chained.”

“So they were.” He had seen the opening and known how to take it, yet his hand had lagged behind the thought. Hearing her remember the man who could have done it brought an ache he had not expected. He looked up at her. “You needn’t look so troubled. You’re allowed to enjoy beating me.”

Brienne’s mouth twitched. “I was enjoying it.”

“Then let us not spoil your evening,” Jaime said, stepping back and raising his sword. “Again.”

They went at it again under the tarred planking while the sleet drummed on the boards overhead. Stepping clean off the line after baiting her into an overhand cut, Jaime made her scramble two paces to parry the riposte he sent at her chest. Once she set both fists to the hilt and laid on with all her weight, though, his left forearm burned from turning the steel, and she drove him across the flagstones, bound his blade high, and hooked a boot neatly behind his left ankle until he had to yield or sit down hard in the coal ash.

“I yield,” Jaime said, laughing breathlessly as he lowered his sword. “Before Daven comes out and sees you sweeping the floor with me.”

Brienne withdrew her boot from behind his ankle and stepped back, lowering her own blade, her face bright with exertion and an unguarded smile that took all the sternness out of her mouth. They put away the practice swords, and Jaime fetched water for them both. He handed her a cup and sat beside her on the bench, stretching out his legs while he caught his breath.

"You never told me how you got the King to listen to you," Jaime said, looking down into his cup.

Brienne held her horn cup between both hands, warming her knuckles. "He was angry when I showed him Oathkeeper and told him Lord Tywin had forged it from Ice. He split the table with his hand."

Jaime let out a quiet snort. "And you stood your ground."

“I told him about the bear pit, and what you told me in the bathhouse,” Brienne said. “I told him a quick death in a dungeon served nothing when you could fight for the living.” She hesitated before continuing. “When word came north from King’s Landing, we heard only that Queen Cersei died in Maegor’s Holdfast.”

She stopped there and waited for him to choose whether he would answer. Looking at Brienne's honest, weathered face beside him, he had no stomach left for deferring it.

“Cersei ordered Tommen poisoned,” Jaime said quietly. “I found Qyburn carrying nightshade to him. He called it a mercy.”

Brienne went still. “Her own son.”

“Our son,” Jaime said. “I killed Qyburn. When I reached her, she had everything ready to set off the wildfire beneath the city.”

“And you stopped her,” Brienne said.

“I broke the mechanism. She laughed at me.” He had gone there believing he could still bring her out alive. Even now, he could remember wanting it. “I thought I could send her away somewhere. Somewhere she could do no more harm.”

Brienne waited.

“I killed her,” Jaime said.

Brienne stayed beside him. She offered no excuse for what he had done, and he was grateful that she did not try. He had spent too many years finding excuses for the two of them.

"Do you wish you'd saved your breath in Winterfell, my lady?" Jaime asked.

"No," Brienne said immediatly. She reached out then and laid her broad fingers over his wrist. "I am still glad you walked out of that room alive." Brienne finished her water with her free hand and set the cup aside. “We ought to get some sleep.”

“That we should. Come and find me when you’re back,” Jaime said.

“I will,” she said, smiling as she stood.

He set down his cup and rose with her, reluctant to let go. “Brienne.”

She looked at him, and he drew closer. Her fingers tightened around his as she bent her head to meet him.

The first kiss was brief. Jaime drew back far enough to look at her, but Brienne caught the front of his jerkin and kissed him again. He let her draw him closer, keeping her hand in his.

When they parted, she glanced down at the leather bunched beneath her fingers and smoothed it. Jaime waited until she looked up again before offering his arm.

They walked to the hall together. At the door, Brienne slipped her arm from his.

“Good night, Jaime,” she said.

“Good night, Brienne.” He held the door for her, and she brushed his arm as she passed.

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Kings Landing, The Crownlands

Sitting on the Iron Throne took more vigilance than Viserys had ever known to warn her about. Twisted barbs caught at Daenerys’s cloak whenever she shifted against the high iron back, and the armrests ended in half-melted points that waited for a careless wrist. All through her childhood across the Narrow Sea, her brother had spoken of their father’s chair as a monument of dark majesty. He had never told her how cold the metal stayed in winter, or that when she finally claimed a seat upon it, she would be holding the hall for a nephew neither of them had known existed.

Ser Barristan stood at the foot of the dais. Nearby, Missandei sat with parchment and ink ready to record the audience. Down at the far end of the Great Hall, the guards drew open the tall oak doors.

Willas Tyrell entered with Baelor Hightower beside him, the tap of Willas’s cane marking a steady measure against the ground. Beside Baelor walked an old man leaning upon a staff, and at the old man’s other elbow came a tall dark-haired woman who did not lower her eyes toward the floor as courtiers usually did when approaching the dais. Halfway up the hall she tipped her head back to study the high windows, said something out of the side of her mouth to her father, and looked straight up the iron steps at Daenerys. Behind them, Hightower men-at-arms and her own Unsullied marched three elderly men in plain grey wool, their wrists linked with iron chains and their throats bare of the collars they had worn for decades.

Willas halted at the foot of the steps and bowed as deeply as his stiff leg allowed. “Your Grace. Thank you for taking the time to see us.”

“You are welcome to the Red Keep, Lord Willas,” Daenerys said from the throne. “Ser Garlan left the city in good order when he marched north with the rearguard.”

“While Garlan goes to the Neck, I will keep King’s Landing quiet, Your Grace,” Willas said, resting both hands over the head of his cane. "I will contoniue to see the southern provisions moving up the kingsroad, and hold the crown’s prisoners until you or the King return.”

Baelor Hightower stepped forward, his broad face set hard as he gestured toward the three men behind him. “As promised at Harrenhal, Your Grace. We bring you the Seneschal’s Court. Archmaester Theobald, Archmaester Norren, and Archmaester Ryam. The rest... died to Euron's attack.”

Beside him, the old man lifted his chin from the fur of his collar. His eyes were pale with age, yet they met hers without wavering. “I am Leyton of House Hightower, Your Grace,” he said. “And beside me is my daughter Malora Hightower. When Baelor’s word reached me with the King’s list, I came down my tower and sent my own household guards into the Citadel. No man will say Oldtown sheltered those who poisoned the blood of dragons.”

Daenerys looked down at the three prisoners standing between the spears. At Sunspear, she had wanted to fly straight to Oldtown and tear the Citadel down stone by stone. Aemon had talked her back from that heat, asking for a public trial where the realm could hear their guilt proved in open court. Looking at them now—Theobald blinking watery eyes up at the iron steps, Norren hunching his shoulders to hide his chained hands, and spare, white-haired Ryam staring straight ahead in stiff silence—she was glad she had listened. Killing three old men in a closed hall would never undo what their order had done to her house, and it would teach the realm nothing.

“You know the charge that brings you here,” Daenerys said. “Your order began poisoning the dragons of my house centuries ago. The men who began that work are dead. But you kept their methods under lock and key, and for forty years you used your offices to silence anyone who might expose them.”

Ryam lifted his chin a fraction. “We guarded the peace of the Seven Kingdoms, Princess. If you mean to give us to your dragon before you ride north, do it quickly.”

“You will address me as Your Grace,” Daenerys said. “You will have the public trial the King promised. Until then, you will wait in the cells beneath this keep. Just rememeber, if we lose the war you preach doesn't exist, there will be no one left to release you.” Ryam said nothing more. She summoned the Unsullied captain. “Keep them separately. Allow no maester near their doors.”

The captain bowed and motioned the guards forward. Chains clinked softly as the Unsullied led the three archmaesters through the side arch toward the dungeons.

Once the passage doors closed behind them, Daenerys rose from the iron seat and came down the narrow steps, glad to leave the jagged blades behind her.

“Lord Willas,” Daenerys said as she reached them, “have the records seized at the Citadel brought up from Lord Leyton’s ship. Keep them in the royal vault under guard.”

“At once, Your Grace,” Willas said, beckoning his steward forward to receive the instruction.

Missandei brought the sealed orders for the dragonglass and set them in Willas’s hands. The crown’s work at Dragonstone would continue after Daenerys flew north; she had spent too long setting it in motion to leave the men carrying it out uncertain who could answer for her.

“These give you authority over the shipments as well as the provisions,” Daenerys told him. “Keep the weapons moving to the Neck. Missandei will take your steward through the accounts before you leave.”

Willas read the superscription and passed the packet to his steward. “Ser Garlan’s men have remained at their posts, Your Grace. I will keep his arrangements. You shall have the glass.”

Missandei opened the accounts for the steward, setting the shipmasters’ receipts beside each entry. Daenerys thanked them both. She could fly to the Moat in a fraction of the time it would take those wagons to reach it, but the men waiting there would need more than another dragon overhead. For once, she was glad to leave a task in someone else’s hands.

Malora had gone back to contemplating the throne. “Does anyone ever tell a king how ugly his chair is, Father?”

“Malora,” Leyton murmured. “Lower your voice.”

Daenerys studied the tall woman, “It is worse to sit on.” Then looked to her father. “My horses are being readied for the ride up to the Dragonpit, Lord Leyton, which leaves me a little time. There is a hearth lit in the small chamber behind the dais. Will you and Lady Malora sit with me before I go?”

A flicker of pleasure crossed the old lord’s weathered face. “Gladly, Your Grace.”

Willas moved to accompany them, but Daenerys paused beside the door. “I would speak with Lord Leyton and Lady Malora alone, Lord Willas. Missandei will give you the written orders for how to proceed while we leave.”

Willas bowed and turned back toward Missandei, who was finishing her account of the audience. Baelor remained in the hall while Ser Barristan took his place outside the chamber.

Daenerys led Leyton and Malora through the pointed arch behind the throne. A fire burned low in the hearth, and Leyton took the chair nearest the flames, laying his staff across his knees. Malora remained standing beside him.

Daenerys drew off her riding gloves and laid them beside her as she took a seat on the carved oak bench across from Leyton’s chair. Malora lingered a moment longer by the hearth, then pulled a low three-legged stool over beside her father and sat, smoothing her dark skirts around her ankles.

“At Harrenhal, the King cleared House Hightower before the lords of the realm,” Daenerys said, folding her hands in her lap. “He told them the Citadel had distrusted your house for years because you continued to study the higher mysteries. Before I fly north, Lord Leyton, I would hear from you what those studies actually were.”

Leyton gave a dry chuckle. “It suited me to let Oldtown believe I had grown frail behind my walls, Your Grace, keeping our studies out of reach. Yet few knew what lay on my tables, and fewer still knew which three archmaesters ruled the Seneschal’s Court in secret. How did the King come by both truths at Harrenhal?”

He had answered her with another question. Daenerys had expected some caution from a man who had kept his work hidden for years, but his curiosity would not buy him Aemon’s confidence. “How the King learned the names of the traitors belongs to the crown. I am asking whether your studies can help us against the enemy we are going north to fight.”

“I hope they can,” Leyton said. “I cannot yet promise it. We have preserved accounts the Citadel dismissed, and spent years trying to judge which deserved belief. Some have proved less foolish than the archmaesters supposed.”

“The Children, for one,” Malora said. She had been listening to her father with increasing impatience. “Half the talk on the voyage concerned the Isle of Faces. They say you went beneath the trees and saw them yourself, Your Grace. Did you?”

Daenerys felt a tug of amusement. She had spent enough days listening to lords weigh every word before speaking yet Malora Hightower spoke as though rank were merely an interruption to a fascinating subject. And since Lord Leyton and his children had already brought the Citadel’s conspirators to her in irons, Daenerys saw little reason to meet plain curiosity with royal stiffness.

“The smallfoks are not singing falsehoods,” Daenerys said. “I was on the Isle of Faces, and I saw the Children mend the Horn of Winter. It was a strange thing to witness, and a beauty to it I cannot... explain.”

“Then they are not merely dying in a frozen waste and their art is still alive with them,” Malora said, her voice quickening with immediate absorption. “I would have given anything to be on that isle for an hour and see that power still in the world.”

The memory of the singing still moved her, but she had not brought the Hightowers here to satisfy their wonder.

“The Children were not the only power on that island, Lady Malora,” Daenerys said quietly. "Have your studies touched upon the red priests and the god they worship?”

“Anyone who seeks to understand magic must reckon with the red faith, Your Grace,” Leyton said. “Whatever one believes about their god, the power their priests wield is real. In our own work, we call it blood fire, or false fire.”

“Why false, if the power is real?” Daenerys asked.

“Because the priests take their own prayers for an answer,” Malora said. “Something responds to the sacrifice, so they give it the name they have been calling. That does not tell us whether they know what it is.”

Daenerys considered how much to give them. They had offered a doubt so far, and she could find doubts enough without sailing to Oldtown. “Brandon Stark told me that the power Selyse Baratheon worshipped entered her on the island. He killed her to stop it. Does that account mean anything to you?”

Leyton took longer over his answer. “We wondered whether something acted through Euron Greyjoy, and whether his crown made that possible. We had reports of the crown, and of what followed him. We could not prove the connection. What you have told us would give us reason to look beyond it.”

“You believe the same power served him?” Daenerys asked.

“I do not know, Your Grace,” Leyton said. “And we have no proof that it served Euron at all. He may have been serving it. That is one of the things we have been trying to understand.”

Malora had been silent through her father’s answer. “I do not think the priests understand what they feed,” she said. “There is an appetite in it. I have sensed something of that, though I cannot tell you how much would satisfy it, or whether anything could.”

Daenerys sat straighter. “You speak as though you have encountered it yourself. Is that something you found in your books?”

“No, Your Grace,” Malora said. “Nor anything I could lay before you as proof.” She seemed troubled by the inadequacy of the answer, but she offered no greater certainty to mend it. “Did Brandon Stark tell you more?”

“Only why he had killed her,” Daenerys said. She would not make a longer account of it merely because Malora wanted one. “Have you spoken of these suspicions to the King?”

“We have never spoken with him at all, Your Grace,” Leyton said.

Daenerys had expected learning from the old lord. She had not expected his daughter to have encountered something of the power Bran had faced. “I understand—”

A knock interrupted her. At her summons, Ser Barristan entered.

“Your Grace. Lord Willas sends word that the chests are secured in the royal vault. Your escort is ready, and the horses are waiting at the gate.”

With her gloves gathered in hand, Daenerys rose and led the way into the hall, where Missandei joined her. Baelor, waiting at the doorway, offered an arm to his father as the old lord came through on his staff with his daughter following.

“May my father and I accompany you to the Dragonpit, Your Grace?” Malora asked. “Only as far as you allow. I have spent years dreaming of dragon skulls, so to see one in life is a dream come true.”

“Malora,” Baelor said, though there was more resignation than anger in his voice. “Her Grace is flying to a war, not holding a tourney.”

“My daughter would walk up that hill in her slippers if I let her, Your Grace,” Leyton said dryly, adjusting his grip on his staff. “And I am too old to chase her up a cobble lane alone.”

Despite the weight of her thoughts, Daenerys felt a small smile return to her lips. “Have your men bring a litter and a mount to the postern, Lord Baelor. They may come up the hill.”

The ride from the Red Keep up Rhaenys’s Hill was cold and steep, a pale winter mist hanging over the roofs of the city while supply wagons rumbled north toward the gates. At the crest of the hill rose the blackened, broken dome of the Dragonpit—the great stone cage where her ancestors had walled their dragons away from the sky while the Citadel’s creatures slowly poisoned their clutches into memory.

No roof shut out the sky now. When Daenerys dismounted inside the ruined gatehouse and walked out to the edge of the scorched ring with Leyton and Malora a few paces behind her, Drogon lifted his great horned head from the cinders.

Heat rolled off his black scales in a dry wave that turned the drifting mist to steam along his spine. A low rumble vibrated through the cracked flagstones beneath Daenerys’s boots, answering the familiar tug inside her own chest.

Behind her, Leyton stopped beneath the broken entrance and caught his daughter’s sleeve. Malora let him hold her there. She had gone silent, her hair blowing loose in the wind, and when Drogon shifted across the cinders she took a step back with her father. Daenerys wondered how much comfort ten years of reading could offer at this distance.

“Stay beneath the arch, Lady Malora,” Daenerys said over her shoulder.

“I will, Your Grace.” Malora scarcely seemed to hear herself. “In the dream, there is no sun to melt the snow. Only a woman holding a little flame between her hands.”

Daenerys stopped. "What?"

“You have not told me this,” Leyton said.

“I thought she was trying to keep it alive. But whenever she opens her hands to let it go, it burns her.”

Drogon shifted as if he too was trying to puzzle through the woman's words.

“The fire you spoke of earlier?” Daenerys asked.

“I do not know.” Malora sounded troubled by the admission. “She is always there when I dream of it. I have never heard her say a word. Just the coldness and the longing for fire.”

Leyton waited for more, but his daughter had fallen silent.

A woman in the snow, holding something she could neither keep nor put down. Daenerys disliked the pity the image stirred in her almost as much as she disliked not knowing whom it belonged to.

“Ahem... y-yes, thank you Lady Malora.” Daenerys walked out across the blackened stone and laid her hand against the warm scales below Drogon’s jaw. He leaned his heavy head briefly into her touch, his hot breath stirring the hem of her cloak, before lowering his left wing-joint to give her a step. She turned to Baleor one last time. "We shall see you in the North."

When he gave his nod, she caught the harness and pulled herself up between the ridges of his spine. Ser Barristan followed more slowly, his armor scraping against the saddle as he settled behind her. She fastened the straps across her waist while he secured himself and took hold of the rear chain. The heat of Drogon’s body soaked through her riding clothes.

“Ready, ser?”

“Ready, Your Grace.”

Beneath her knees, the great muscles of Drogon’s shoulders bunched. With one heavy beat of his black wings, he launched himself in the air driving a gust of ash and snow outward against the ruined walls. On the second stroke the shattered dome dropped away beneath them, and the cold wind off Blackwater Bay caught her cloak as they climbed toward the grey clouds.

Far below, the Red Keep and the winding lanes of the city shrank into the haze while the northern road stretched out ahead toward the Trident and the Neck. Daenerys leaned forward into the warmth rising off Drogon’s neck. She would tell Aemon what Malora had said. Perhaps he could make sense of the woman in the snow, though she was beginning to wonder how much he already knew.