He Would Be A God To Them Chapter 12 (Patreon)

Have another chapter for you today-Daemon focused. I did a vision sequence in chapter 8 and wanted to try out writing a dream sequence. Let me know what you think!-Moving forward I am posting the chapters directly here with an optional pdf file if you prefer that way.

4/6-Trimed some fat and rewrote what Garth saw the second time.

10/6-Added a bit of extra to accommodate the rewrite of chapter 10

X I I

The Broken Prince

The dream was always the same.

The small council chamber warm with afternoon light, the long table stretching before him, the high windows casting rectangles of gold across polished wood. Daemon sat in his usual place at the far end, and everything was as it should be-Lord Beesbury shuffling his parchments, Grand Maester Runciter bent over his notes, Lord Corlys standing by the window with his arms crossed and his sharp eyes missing nothing. The air smelled of tallow candles and old parchment and the faint mustiness of books left unread for years.

Viserys sat at the head of the table, his crown catching the light, his face soft and weary and familiar-the face of a brother who had never understood why Daemon could not simply be content.

"Brother," Viserys said. "We have been discussing the matter of the Stepstones. Lord Corlys believes-"

"What happened to your hand?"

The question came from nowhere. Viserys's gaze had dropped to the table, to Daemon's right side, and the concern in it was so sudden and sharp that Daemon followed without thinking.

His right hand was gone.The sleeve of his doublet ended in nothing, the fabric flat against air, and where his hand should have been there was only a stump-clean, cauterized, and wrong.

He stared at it. The room seemed to contract, the walls pressing inward, the light dimming at the edges.

"Daemon?" Viserys's voice was distant now. When Daemon looked up, his brother was no longer sitting at the head of the table.

The boy sat in Viserys's chair with his hands folded and his chin lifted and his blue eyes fixed on Daemon with an expression of calm, implacable judgment-a man weighing something and finding it wanting. He was utterly ordinary except for the eyes, which were no longer blue.

The colour bled in from the edges like ink dropped in water, filling the irises, and the glow built behind the boy's pupils-faint at first, then brighter, then the red-orange of forge fires and dying stars.

"Your hand," the boy said, and his voice was not a child's voice. "You raised it against me. So I took it from you."

Two columns of fire erupting from the boy's eyes, tearing through the air, striking Daemon in the chest with a force that should have killed him but did not-because the dream wanted him to feel it. The heat was total burning through his doublet and skin and flesh and ribs to find the still-beating heart beneath.

He screamed. The sound tore from his throat raw and endless, and the chamber dissolved around him-replaced by darkness and the red glow of the boy's eyes and the smell of his own flesh cooking.

Then the darkness shifted.

He was in Runestone.

The great hall spread before him-stone walls, bronze fixtures, the ancient runes of the Royces carved into every surface, lit by a cold grey light that seeped through the high windows as if the sun itself refused to warm this place. The fire in the hearth was dead. The tables bare.

Rhea Royce stood at the far end, her arms crossed, her plain face set in an expression of cool amusement that had always made Daemon's blood run hot. She was dressed in the bronze and iron of her house, her dark hair pulled back in a severe knot, her jaw set in the stubborn line he had grown to despise over years of marriage.

"Broken," she said, her voice echoing off stone. "They call you the Broken Prince now. Fitting. You were always broken-you simply hid it better before."

"Shut your mouth."

"A prince who cannot hold a sword. A dragonrider who cannot fight. A man who lost his hand to a child." She smiled-the small, tight, knowing smile that had always made him want to put his fist through a wall. "How does it feel, Daemon? To know you will never be what you were again?"

He drew Dark Sister.

The Valyrian steel sang as it cleared the scabbard-bright and clean and familiar, the weight of the blade perfect in his grip, the ripples in the dark metal catching the cold light. He advanced down the hall toward her, the sword raised, his jaw tight.

She did not flinch. She simply watched him come.

He swung.

The blade disintegrated. The steel flaked away in spirals that dissolved before reaching the ground, the hilt crumbling in his grip, centuries of Valyrian forging ceasing to exist as if it had never been.

He stared at the empty hilt. At his hand-

The beams came again.

From behind. From the shadows where something had been waiting. The heat tore through his back and out through his chest, and the scream that came this time was not human. It was the sound of a man being unmade.

Rhea's face dissolved, the cold grey hall melting like candle wax-

-and reforming.

A bedroom. Silk curtains. The smell of perfume and wine. Moonlight painted everything silver and shadow, and Daemon stood in the doorway and watched.

Mysaria lay on the bed.

Pale and slender in the moonlight, her white hair spread across the pillows. She was not alone.

A man lay beside her-tall, dark-haired. He turned his head, and his eyes were blue and they met Daemon's across the room with the unhurried ease of a man who belonged there.

It was the boy from the stable. Grown.

"I never cared for you," Mysaria said, without looking at him. Her hand traced patterns on the man's chest. "You were convenient. Powerful. A ladder. Nothing more."

"You lie."

"I never lie about the things that matter." Her eyes found his at last, flat and certain. "You were never enough, Daemon. Not for your grandmother. Not for your wife. Not for your brother. You were a blade without an edge, and everyone saw it but you."

The man's arm tightened around her, and the look he gave Daemon was not mockery or triumph.

Pity.

The bedroom dissolved-

-and reformed.

The throne room of the Red Keep. The Iron Throne rising in its jagged mountain of swords, the hall vast and empty and lit by a hundred torches. At the foot of the throne stood Rhaenyra.

She was grown-eighteen, twenty, he could not tell-silver-gold hair and violet eyes, dressed in black and red, the crown of the conqueror on her head. Beautiful in the particular way of Targaryens, as if the gods had made her from fire and blood. Beside her stood the boy, tall now, dark-haired, his face strong and honest in a way Daemon had never managed. No crown. No sigil. A simple doublet of black, and at his side no sword-because he was a sword.

Rhaenyra reached up and placed a circlet on his head-dark metal with a blue stone that pulsed with its own light.

"What are you doing?" Daemon's voice was a croak. "He is nothing. A boy from the streets-"

"He is more than you will ever be." Rhaenyra's voice was clear and final. "And you-you were always a shadow that thought itself a flame."

She turned away.

The red came into the man's eyes like sunrise. Slow and inevitable. The glow built, brighter and brighter, and Daemon could feel the heat from across the throne room, feel his skin beginning to tighten -

The beams hit him.

And this time, they did not stop.

Daemon woke.

He came up out of the dream like a man breaking the surface of deep water-gasping, his heart hammering, his skin slick with sweat that soaked through the linen sheets and pooled in the hollow of his throat. The room was dark. The fire had burned to embers.

His hand went to his right wrist.

The stump was there. It was always there. The maesters had taken the hand six months ago- six months of unconsciousness, fever, infection, and the desperate prayers of a court that had not known whether their prince would live or die.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat with his head in his left hand and breathed until the shaking stopped.

The dreams had come every night since he woke from the coma. He had told them-Viserys, the small council, anyone who would sit still long enough-about the ring, the symbol, the boy with the unbreakable skin, the Valyrian steel that had shattered like river ice. He had told them about the beams that destroyed Duskendale, about the fire from a child's eyes.

They had not believed him.

Why would they? Valyrian steel did not break. Children did not shoot fire from their eyes. A prince of House Targaryen did not lose his hand to a childs face. These things were impossible, and so Daemon Targaryen was either lying or mad.

He had asked them, that first day when he was well enough to sit upright and hold a thought in his head, how he had come to be found on Caraxes with his hand already bound. Someone had put him in that saddle. Someone had strapped him in with what the maesters had identified as two common belts. Someone had been in that stable yard with him and the dragon and had done what needed doing and disappeared before dawn.

Otto Hightower had smiled his mild smile and suggested hedge knights, who had perhaps helped an injured traveler. Probably dead now, he added-Caraxes was not known for his patience with strangers. A sad business, but hardly remarkable.

Daemon had stared at him. Hedge knights, he had said. You think hedge knights strapped me into a my saddle in the middle of a storm while my dragon stood there and let them.

Otto had spread his hands. Men did extraordinary things under duress, he said. The instinct to help was a powerful thing.

Then Daemon had asked about Dark Sister.

A maester had been produced-an old man from the Citadel, a chain so heavy with links it pulled at his neck, his eyes bright with the particular excitement of a scholar handed a problem no one else could solve. He had examined both halves of the blade for three days. His conclusion, delivered in the small council chamber with the gravity of a man announcing a theorem, was that the magic inherent in Valyrian steel had interacted with some form of newly manifested energy-a confluence of forces not yet cataloged. The sword had not broken so much as resolved against a superior-

"Get him out," Daemon had said.

The maester had blinked. "My prince, if you would allow me to finish-"

"You are a charlatan and your chain is an embarrassment to the men who forged it. Get him out of my sight. "

The maester had been escorted out. Otto had said nothing, but his expression had said everything-the look of a man watching a mad prince confirm his madness for the benefit of the room.

He had looked at Daemon and suggested, in his mild reasonable tone, that the trauma of the injury and the prolonged unconsciousness might have affected the prince's mind. That perhaps it would be best if Daemon rested, and did not tax himself with tales that could only distress the court.

The rest had followed. Even Corlys Velaryon, who had been on that hilltop, who had watched Duskendale burn-even Corlys had said nothing, because the alternative was believing the impossible.

The rumours spread within days. Servants talked. The story that reached the streets was simpler than the one Daemon had told: a prince who had lost his hand in a drunken brawl and invented sorcery to cover his shame. A prince who had woken from a coma raving about boys with red eyes and magic rings. A prince who was not well.

The Broken Prince.

He heard it everywhere-in the corridors of the Red Keep, in the yards and stables, in the taverns and streets. He hated them for it. He hated Otto most of all, because Otto was clever enough to see the truth and cowardly enough to bury it. A mad Daemon was a harmless Daemon. A harmless Daemon could not threaten Otto's plans for his daughter, his grandchildren, his slow patient climb.

But more than any of them, he hated the boy.

He rose from the bed. The sheets clung to him, damp and cold, and he peeled them away with his left hand. He crossed to the washbasin and splashed water on his face and looked at himself in the looking glass.

Gaunt. He had lost weight in the coma. The strong lines of his jaw had sharpened into something haggard. His silver-gold hair was lank. His violet eyes, once bright with fire and the absolute certainty of his own destiny, were dull, the skin beneath them dark with sleepless nights.

He looked like a man who had been broken. The glass did not lie.

He dressed himself. He had not let servants dress him since the first morning after he woke, when a serving boy had tried to help with his laces and Daemon had seen the look in his eyes and sent him away with a curse and a thrown boot. A prince of House Targaryen did not need help putting on his own clothes.

It took three times as long as it used to.

The left boot was manageable- awkward, but manageable. The right was harder. He braced it between his knees and worked the laces with one hand, pulling them tight with his teeth when his fingers slipped, and by the time he finished his jaw ached and the boot was still too loose.

The doublet was worse. The buttons on the right side required two hands, and Daemon stood before the looking glass for a full minute staring at the small brass discs before he gave up and left the right side hanging open.

The belt was hardest. He could thread it through the loops, but fastening the buckle without a second hand to hold the leather steady was another matter. He tried. He tried for five minutes, the leather slipping, the buckle falling open again and again, until he threw the belt across the room.

He stood in the middle of his chambers, breathing hard, the empty right sleeve dangling. Then he picked up the belt. He fastened it-finally, by bracing the buckle against the edge of the table and forcing the prong through with his thumb. Inelegant. Undignified. The best he could do.

The Red Keep was stirring. Servants moved through the corridors with linens and water buckets. Guards stood at their posts with the blank faces of men who had learned to see nothing. The morning light was grey and thin, and the smell of the city drifted through the windows-smoke and fish and the endless stench of too many bodies in too small a space.

He made for the training yard. It was the only place that still felt real-the only place where the weight of a sword in his left hand drove out the dreams and the rumours and the aching absence where his right hand used to be.

The yard was already occupied. Ser Criston Cole stood at the far end, his dark hair gleaming, his sword bare and ready, going through the forms with a precision that bordered on mechanical-each cut and thrust and parry flowing into the next with the ease of a man who had been born to fight. Two girls sat on the stone bench near the archway. One was small- eight years old, silver-haired, violet-eyed, her legs dangling, her face bright with the particular attention of a child watching something she did not yet understand but knew was important. Princess Rhaenyra. His niece.

The other was older-ten, perhaps, auburn-haired, with the careful stillness of a girl who had learned early that the safest place in any room was the corner where no one was looking. Alicent Hightower. Otto's daughter.

Queen Aemma stood behind them, her hands folded, her gentle face composed. She looked younger without the swollen belly-more like the girl she had been before the years and the miscarriages settled onto her.

When Daemon entered the yard, their attention shifted. Rhaenyra's, bright and curious. Alicent's, careful. Aemma's, warm with a concern that made him want to walk back the way he had come.

Cole's eyes held the same thing, more subtly-the quick, involuntary flick to the empty sleeve, then away, the measured glance of a man taking stock.

"Pardon, my prince," Cole said, his voice perfectly even. "I did not hear you approach."

"Obviously." Daemon crossed to the weapons rack and selected a sword with his left hand - a castle-forged blade, plain and unadorned.

He hated this sword. Too heavy in his left hand, the balance wrong, the grip unfamiliar. He took his stance-left foot forward, right foot back, the sword at middle guard, the first thing any boy learned when he picked up a blade.

He began the forms. The overhead cut. The lateral slash. The thrust. The parry. Each movement was slow, because his left hand did not know what it was doing. The blade wavered. The transitions between forms were clumsy and graceless, and he could feel the watching-the girls whispering, Cole's careful neutrality, Aemma's concern-and the weight of it made every stumble louder.

The sword slipped.

His left hand opened and the blade clattered to the stones with a sound impossibly loud in the silent yard. Daemon stared at his empty hand, at the sword on the ground. The heat rose in his chest.

He bent, picked it up, and resumed the forms.

From the corner of his eye, Cole's hand moved toward his own blade-the instinctive offer of a sparring partner.

"No," Daemon said, before the man could speak.

Cole's hand dropped.

The princess and the Hightower girl were whispering. He could not hear them, but he saw Rhaenyra's furrowed brow, her question directed at Alicent, who answered with a slight shake of her head.

He swung the sword harder. For a moment-just a moment-he felt the old fire. Then the sword slipped again, and the moment was gone.

"My prince."

A messenger stood at the edge of the yard

"The king requests your presence in his private chambers."

Daemon looked at the boy. Then at the sword in his hand. Then at the yard full of careful eyes.

"Tell His Grace I will attend him shortly," he said.

He set the sword back on the rack and walked out without looking at anyone.

The king's private chambers were on the upper level of Maegor's Holdfast, accessible through a narrow corridor lined with tapestries depicting the Conquest. The guards admitted him without question.

The room was warm and cluttered-models covering every available surface, tiny replicas of dragons and castles and cities, painstakingly assembled from wood and metal and wire. Viserys sat at his workbench near the window, a magnifying lens clipped to his eye, attaching a wing to what looked like Balerion, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth.

"Brother," Daemon said.

"Close the door."

"I have made a decision," Viserys said, not looking up. The wing clicked into place. "I am appointing you Commander of the City Watch."

Daemon said nothing.

"It is a reassignment." Viserys set down the tweezers and looked up, and his eyes were tired in the way of a man who had been worn down not by one great blow but by years of small ones. "You cannot sit in council arguing precedents and writing decrees-we both know you were never suited to it.

He paused.

"You need a purpose, Daemon. I can see what's happening to you. Everyone can." His voice was quiet. "You have let the loss of your hand become the loss of yourself, and I will not watch it any longer."

"So you are throwing me to the gutters."

"I am giving you a command. Two thousand men. They patrol the streets, guard the gates, keep the peace." He held Daemon's gaze. "It is not a punishment."

Daemon stood very still. The rage that had been simmering since he woke rose in his throat and threatened to spill over. He swallowed it.

"Fine," he said. "I accept."

Viserys nodded and turned back to the dragon's other wing. There was nothing more to say.

Daemon turned and walked out.

The City Watch maintained three barracks across the city. The East Barracks sat in the shadow of the Dragon Gate. The West Barracks occupied a converted warehouse near Cobbler's Square, a short walk from the Gate of the Gods. And beneath the Tower of the Hand, tucked into the bowels of the Red Keep itself, sat the third-a low, vaulted series of chambers that served as the watch's command post and the lodging for the men who patrolled the castle grounds and the streets of Aegon's Hill.

It was to the Red Keep barracks that Daemon went first, because it was closest and because a man who could not yet ride with confidence should not start his first day by falling off his horse in front of the men he was meant to command.

He arrived with a single Kingsguard escort-Ser Harrold Westerling.

The barracks beneath the Tower of the Hand were exactly as grim as Daemon had expected. The vaulted ceilings leaked in three places. The air was close and damp, smelling of wet wool and old sweat and the faint sourness of a place where too many men slept too close together without enough ventilation. The bunks were narrow and crowded, the blankets thin, the straw pallets gone grey with age and use.

The watchmen on duty straightened as Daemon descended the stairs. They wore the standard issue of the City Watch-ring mail that had seen better days, black cloaks that were more grey than black from repeated washing, steel caps that were dented and unreplaced. They knew who he was but they did not know what to make of him, this one-handed prince who had been dragged from a coma and given command of their force as if it were a consolation prize.

"Prince Daemon," one of them said, bowing. "We were told to expect you."

"Then expect me." Daemon looked around at the damp ceilings and the crowded bunks and the threadbare blankets, and the full weight of what Viserys had given him settled onto his shoulders like a lead cloak. This was his command now. This was his kingdom-two thousand men in black cloaks across three barracks, a vaulted crypt that was falling apart, and a city that whispered about his madness behind his back.

A man detached himself from the group of watchmen near the far wall and crossed the room toward them. He was young-twenty-five, perhaps, with a lean face and sharp eyes that took in Daemon's empty sleeve and his haphazard doublet and the Kingsguard at his back with a single, efficient glance. His cloak was in better repair than the others, his boots less worn.

"Prince Daemon," he said, and his bow was the correct depth-not too deep, which would have been sycophantic, and not too shallow, which would have been insolent. "Garth, if it please you. I've been assigned as your adjutant. I'm to show you the barracks, introduce you to the captains, and answer any questions you have."

Daemon looked at him for a moment. The man met his eyes without flinching, without pity, without the measuring assessment of a courtier calculating his worth. Just steady attention, and beneath it something Daemon could not quite read.

"Show me," he said.

The barracks were worse than they appeared from outside. The dormitories were overcrowded, bunks crammed so close a man could not turn without disturbing his neighbor. The armory was understocked.

"The captains are worse," Garth said as they walked the perimeter. "There are four. Two are competent men who do their duty and go home to their wives. One hasn't drawn a sober breath in three years. The fourth-" He chose his words. "The fourth is in the pocket of every merchant and moneylender in the city. Takes bribes to look the other way, takes them from both sides when there's a dispute, and he's been doing it so long that half the watch thinks it's simply how things work."

"And the men?"

"Some are good. Most are adequate. A few spoil the barrel." Garth stopped at the edge of the yard. "The watch is not what it was, my prince. It needs a firm hand and a clear purpose. If you can provide those, the men will follow. If you cannot-" He shrugged. "They'll follow whoever can."

Daemon said nothing. He stared at the mud and the cracked walls, and the gap between what he had been and what he was now seemed so vast he could not see across it.

"My prince." Garth's voice had changed-lower, more careful. "May I speak freely?"

"You may."

He glanced at Ser Harrold, who had maintained a respectful distance throughout, then back at Daemon. "Not here."

They found a storage room off the armory-dusty and dim, lit by a single high window, shelves lined with rusted chains and broken manacles and the detritus of law enforcement past. Garth closed the door and stood with his back against it.

"I believe you," he said.

Daemon went still.

"The story you told the small council." He held Daemon's gaze. "I believe it."

"You are either brave or foolish," Daemon said, his voice flat. "Why would a city watchman believe what lords and maesters do not?"

"Because I saw something." Garth's jaw tightened. "Six years ago. Two weeks after the star fell in the Kingswood. My partner Gareth and I were assigned to follow up on a report-a hedge knight called Aldric Flowers and his squire, a boy named Tomlyn, had come through the Gate of the Gods on the night of the crash. They were coming from the wrong direction, and the knight was carrying a child. The commander wanted questions asked."

Daemon's attention sharpened. Tomlyn.

"We traced them to the Street of Flour. A house with a green door-the squire's mother, a woman called Rosey. She gave us a story. A cousin's child. Fever. Died at Storm's End. Neat and tidy. We had no reason to disbelieve her."

Garth paused. His hands had clenched at his sides.

"Then the boy sneezed."

The words hung in the dusty air.

"He was two years old. Sitting on the floor with a wooden horse. He sneezed, and the wall blew out." Garth's voice was steady. "Exploded outward-bricks and timber and plaster flying across the street. And the boy didn't flinch. Just looked at the hole where the wall had been with this puzzled expression, like he wasn't sure what to make of it."

Daemon's heart was beating very fast.

"Tomlyn was knighted?" he asked.

"He's a hedge knight now. He and the boy travel together. Kallen is his squire."

The connection struck Daemon like a physical blow. The boy in the stable had said: I'm the squire of Ser Tomlyn.

For months-through the coma, the recovery, the whispers-the boy had been a nightmare without a name. A face, a ring, an impossible strength, eyes that burned red. Something that haunted his sleep but could not be found in the waking world.

The dust motes drifted in the thin light.

"Four years later," Garth said, his voice dropping further, "I was on the Street of Flour again-a burglary, merchant's house, the usual. And I saw the boy. Kallen. Six years old, playing in the street with other children. He tripped-caught his foot on a loose cobblestone and went down hard, hands and knees on the street."

He met Daemon's eyes.

"Any other child that age, you'd expect tears. Blood, at least-the skin scraped clean off. But he just stood back up. No mark, no redness. Like he'd fallen onto grass rather than stone. And I told myself I was seeing things. That I was letting an old incident colour my perception."

He took a breath.

"Then Duskendale happened. And you told the council about the boy."

Daemon studied him. His eyes were steady and there was no calculation in them. Only the conviction of someone who had seen an impossible thing and refused to pretend otherwise.

"Where does the mother live?" Daemon asked.

"Street of Flour. Green door, bottom end, near the livery on Threadwater Street. Rosey. She works at the mill. Good woman, keeps to herself, doesn't make trouble."

"Have Tomlyn and the boy been seen in the city?"

"Not since Duskendale. I've had men watching the Street of Flour on and off-nothing official-but they haven't come back. If the mother knows where they've gone, she's not saying."

Garth hesitated. "Though she may be more forthcoming if the right questions were asked by the right person."

"Not yet." Daemon's voice was quiet. "We watch first."

Garth nodded slowly.

"Aldric Flowers?"

"He's in King's Landing, staying near the Street of Steel, doing work for the smiths. He visits the Street of Flour sometimes. Spends time with Rosey."

"Men on Flowers as well. Where he goes, who he talks to, what he buys. I want to know every move he makes. And if Tomlyn or the boy set foot in King's Landing-I want to know within the hour."

"And you, my prince? What will you do?"

Daemon turned and opened the door. The serpentine steps lay ahead-forty feet of winding stone climbing from the lower ward to the outer yard. He took them one at a time with his left hand trailing the wall, because the steps were uneven and a man with no counterweight on his right side found the world less balanced than it used to be. Ser Harrold followed without comment.

At the top, the cold morning air hit him, carrying the smell of the city from beyond the walls.

"I will learn to hold a sword," he said, when Garth reached the top behind him. "And I will remember what was done to me. And when the time comes-when I find the boy-I will be ready."

He walked out across the outer ward without looking back.

Garth watched him go. After a moment, his hand went to the hilt of his sword-not to draw it, but to hold it, the way a man holds something familiar before stepping into the dark.

The boy had a name. And Daemon Targaryen had something he had not had since the night in the stable.

A thread to pull