He Would Be A God To Them Chapter 20 (Patreon)

A hard chapter to write.

XX

A Song For The Cupbearer

The Small Council chamber sat at the heart of Maegor's Holdfast, a room of modest size that belied the weight of the decisions made within its walls. The morning light came through the tall, narrow windows on the eastern side, casting long rectangles of gold across the polished oak table that dominated the center. Each chair had its place, each place its lord, and the arrangement of bodies around that table was as carefully choreographed as any dance at court.

King Viserys Targaryen, First of His Name, sat at the head. The weight of the Iron Throne had already carved lines into his face, deep grooves between his brows and shadows beneath his violet eyes. His silver-gold hair, once worn long and flowing in the fashion of his grandsire, was cropped shorter now, framing a face that was kind and weary in equal measure. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm, a gesture his councilors had learned to recognize as the precursor to a long day.

At his right hand stood his daughter.

Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen was one-and-ten years old, and she was the most beautiful girl in the Seven Kingdoms. She knew this because everyone told her, from the lords who bowed when she passed to the servants who curtsied to the minstrels who wrote songs about her violet eyes. She had been named the Realm's Delight by the court before she could walk, and the name had settled onto her shoulders like a silken cloak-comfortable, flattering, and impossible to remove. She had the silver-gold hair of her house braided intricately down her back and the clear, pale skin that marked the blood of the dragon. Her features were fine and sharp-high cheekbones, a narrow jaw, a mouth that was inclined toward smiling but could set into a line of pure, immovable stubbornness when crossed, which was often.

She held a silver flagon of Dornish red in her small hands, and she watched the men around the table with the bright, restless attention.

She was the cupbearer. She poured the wine. She listened. And she remembered everything.

The arrangement of the council was familiar to her, as comforting in its way as the layout of her own chambers. Ser Otto Hightower sat at the king's right hand in his capacity as Hand of the King. Rhaenyra did not like him. She had never liked him. He looked at her the way a man looks at a problem he has not yet decided how to solve, and she did not care to be a problem.

Lord Lyonel Strong, Master of Laws, sat opposite Otto. He lacked Otto's cleverness-he was not quick or nimble with words-but he was solid and honest, and he noticed things that quicker men often missed, too busy being clever to look. Rhaenyra tolerated him, which was more than she could say for most of the council.

Lord Lyman Beesbury, Master of Coin, sat beside Lord Strong. His voice was thin and reedy, and he spoke the way he counted: carefully, deliberately, with each word placed as precisely as a coin in a stack.

Ser Tyland Lannister, Master of Ships, occupied the chair nearest the windows. He was the handsomest man on the council-square-jawed, golden-haired. He spoke rarely, but when he did, his words were measured and his counsel was sound.

Grand Maester Runciter sat at the far end, hunched over his parchments, his chain of many metals clinking softly with each movement. He was old and his eyes were weak and his hands trembled when he poured ink, but his mind was a vault of knowledge that the rest of the council drew upon without acknowledging the debt. He coughed frequently and apologetically, as if sorry to trouble the air with his presence.

Lord Larys Strong, Master of Whisperers, sat in the shadow of the window frame. He was young with the soft, unremarkable face of a man you would forget the moment you looked away. But his eyes were anything but unremarkable. They moved constantly, cataloguing, weighing, tucking away details that would later be assembled into the whispers and secrets that were his stock-in-trade. He had a clubfoot, and he walked with a cane, and the slight, perpetual smile on his face never quite reached those watchful eyes. Rhaenyra found him deeply unsettling, which she suspected was the point.

Ser Harrold Westerling, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, stood at the door in his white cloak and white enamel armor, his face schooled to blankness. He had stood at that door for so many years that the councilors had long since stopped noticing he was there, which suited Ser Harrold fine.

Rhaenyra shifted her weight from one foot to the other. The flagon was heavy, and her hand was small, but she did not complain. Complaining was for people who had no dragons.

"Lord Beesbury," King Viserys said, rubbing his tired eyes. "The rebuilding. Tell me it is finished."

Lord Beesbury smoothed a hand over his velvet doublet and consulted a parchment before him.

"Yes, Your Grace," he said, his thin voice carrying quiet satisfaction. "The rebuilding of Duskendale is complete. The harbor has been dredged and the quays restored. The fishermen have returned to the water-the first catches came in last week, and the smokehouses are running again. The granaries have been rebuilt and filled with grain purchased from the Riverlands at a reasonable rate, though I should note that the river tolls ran higher than I would have liked, the rivermen having taken advantage of the situation as is their custom. The sept has been reconsecrated. The Street of Weavers has been cleared and the first foundations laid. The treasury bore the cost-some forty thousand gold dragons, all told, including the alms paid to the displaced families and the wages of the builders and laborers-but the city stands whole once more."

"It took three years," Ser Otto Hightower observed.

"It took three years," Beesbury agreed, unperturbed, "because stone and timber and labor do not spring from the earth like dragon's teeth, my lord Hand. They must be purchased and transported and organized, and the men who do the work must be fed and housed and paid, and the weather must cooperate, and the supply lines must hold. All of these things took time. But the work is done, and done well, and Duskendale will stand for another thousand years."

Viserys let out a breath he seemed to have been holding for years. His shoulders, which had been hunched forward settled back against his chair. "Good," he said softly. "That is good. We must put that tragedy behind us."

Rhaenyra watched her father's face as he spoke. She saw the relief there, genuine and deep, but she also saw the shadow that passed behind his eyes-the flicker of something unresolved, something that surfaced whenever Duskendale was mentioned and submerged again just as quickly. She had seen those beams of fire. She had been on the road, in the royal wheelhouse, when the sky had turned white and the city had come apart. She remembered the sound-the deep, resonant boom that had shaken the earth beneath the wheels, and then the screaming that followed, carried on the wind across the fields. She remembered the smell of smoke that reached them even at that distance, thick and acrid and wrong. And she remembered her father's face when he rode through the ruins the next morning-the grey, hollow look of a man standing in the ashes of something he could not explain and could not prevent.

No one ever spoke of what had caused it. The official explanation, recorded in the small council minutes by Grand Maester Runciter's careful hand, was that a cache of wildfire had been ignited in the basement of an inn-a freak accident, a tragedy, a reminder of the dangers of storing alchemical substances in crowded cities. The alchemists' guild had denied the presence of wildfire in Duskendale with the fervent, panicked certainty of men who did not want to be blamed for a catastrophe, but their denials had been quietly ignored. The explanation was tidy. It was sufficient. It let everyone sleep at night.

Rhaenyra had not slept well since.

"And the Stepstones?" Viserys asked, turning his gaze toward Ser Tyland Lannister. "Is there word from the Narrow Sea?"

Ser Tyland Lannister steepled his fingers, his golden hair catching the morning light. "Lord Corlys Velaryon and the Triarchy are locked in a bitter stalemate. Neither side has gained meaningful ground this past fortnight. The Crabfeeder holds the beaches and the tidal caves, and Lord Corlys holds the sea lanes. There have been skirmishes-minor engagements, ships lost on both sides-but the balance of the war holds as it has for weeks. Lord Corlys has requested additional ships, but the royal fleet is stretched thin policing the Narrow Sea against pirates and Essosi raiders, and I cannot spare them."

Viserys nodded slowly, though the relief in his eyes was tempered by the next question he knew he had to ask. "And my brother? Is there news of Daemon? Anything at all?"

Rhaenyra straightened. The flagon shifted in her grip, and she tightened her hold, her knuckles whitening. She loved her uncle.

She watched the councilors exchange glances.

Lord Larys Strong shifted in his seat. The Master of Whisperers leaned forward, his clubfoot braced against the leg of his chair, his thin smile widening by a fraction.

"My spies tell me Caraxes was seen soaring high over the Red Waste, Your Grace," Larys said, his voice silken and unhurried. "Flying towards Qarth."

Viserys frowned. The lines on his forehead deepened. "Qarth? What business has Daemon in Qarth?"

"I can only speculate, Your Grace," Larys murmured, and the pleasure he took in speculation was faintly audible, like a string pulled just tight enough to hum. "But it is said the Qartheen harbor warlocks-men who peer into the shadows, who drink the shade of the evening and see things that others cannot. Given the prince's... interests of late, it is not unreasonable to suppose he seeks answers to questions that cannot be asked in Westeros."

Viserys let out a heavy, exhausted sigh.

"The prince has truly lost his mind," Ser Otto Hightower said. The Hand's voice was sharp and cold, precise as a blade wielded. "To chase sorcerers and warlocks at the edge of the world while his brother's kingdom bleeds and his allies die in the Stepstones. It beggars belief."

"Otto," Viserys said, a warning in his voice-soft, tired, but unmistakable. He did not defend Daemon. He never defended Daemon-not where the words could be recorded and recalled. But he did not let the Hand strike him unopposed either. It was a dance the two of them had been performing for years-the Hand attacking, the king deflecting, the prince surviving-and all of them knew the steps by heart.

Rhaenyra, however, did not know the steps. She had not yet learned the art of silent fury, the practiced mask of a woman who hears her family insulted and does not react. She was one-and-ten, and her blood was dragon's blood, and Ser Otto Hightower had just called her uncle mad.

Her violet eyes flashed. She glared at the Hand of the King with a ferocity that would have made Daemon proud-a heat that belied her small frame and her silver flagon and her carefully braided hair. How dare you, she thought. How dare you sit there in your immaculate doublet and your chain of office and speak of him as if he were a fool. He is a dragon.

She said nothing. She was the cupbearer. She poured the wine. But her grip on the flagon was white-knuckled, and the wine she poured into her father's cup splashed slightly, a single red drop landing on the polished oak, and she did not wipe it away.

Grand Maester Runciter cleared his throat. The old maester's chain clinked against his robes as he produced a small roll of parchment from his sleeve. The paper was cheap, the kind the Night's Watch used, rough-cut and unsealed, the handwriting upon it cramped and hurried.

"Your Grace," Runciter rasped, his thin voice cutting through the tension. "A raven arrived this morning. From Castle Black. From the Night's Watch."

Viserys looked up, his attention shifting from his brother to the far north. "The Wall? Read it."

Runciter unfurled the scroll, squinting at the cramped handwriting through eyes that had been failing for a decade. He held it close to the window, tilting it to catch the light, and read aloud.

"To His Grace, King Viserys Targaryen, First of His Name. Your Grace, I write with haste and no small measure of confusion. Beyond the Wall, in the Haunted Forest, a structure has risen from the ground. It is made of crystal-or a substance that resembles crystal-and it glows with a blue-white light that is visible for miles. It appeared without warning, emerging from the earth itself. We know not what it is, nor whence it came, nor what it portends. The men of the Watch are troubled. I await your counsel. Yours in service, Karl Storm, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch."

The chamber fell silent. The kind of silence that has texture.

Ser Otto Hightower broke it first. He let out a derisive snort-a short, sharp exhalation through his nose that managed to convey contempt, dismissal, and the implication that anyone who took this seriously was a fool, all in a single sound.

"The cold addles their brains up there. They see a frozen lake catch the moonlight and suddenly it's a crystal palace. Next they'll be reporting Snarks and Grumkins and Giants in the snow."

Ser Tyland Lannister chuckled-a rare sound from the usually composed Master of Ships, dry and brief and genuine. "One must wonder what they drink at the Wall to hallucinate such things. I was under the impression the Night's Watch had access only to sour ale and weaker faith."

Lord Lyonel Strong did not laugh. His heavy brow furrowed, and he shifted in his seat, his big hands folding on the table. "It is unlike the Night's Watch to send ravens for fanciful tales," he rumbled, his gravel voice low and thoughtful. "They are hard men, bred to a hard life. If the Lord Commander writes of a structure, there is a structure."

"A structure of ice, perhaps," Otto countered, his tone patient in the way that suggested patience was a garment he wore for form's sake. "The Wall itself is ice. The lands beyond are ice. It is not unreasonable to suppose that a formation of ice, sculpted by wind and weather, might catch the light in unusual ways and alarm men who have been staring at the dark for too long."

Rhaenyra did not hear the rest of the exchange. Her gaze had shifted to her father, and what she saw there drove everything else from her mind.

Viserys was not laughing.

The king sat in his chair with his hands flat on the table, his eyes fixed on the parchment in Runciter's hands. His fingers, spread on the oak surface, were trembling. Not much. Not visibly, unless you were watching closely. But Rhaenyra was watching closely, because she was her father's daughter, and she knew his tells the way a player reads an opponent's face across a cyvasse board.

"Father?" she said, her voice small, forgetting for a moment that she was the cupbearer and not a child.

Viserys did not look at her. He was staring at the parchment, and his mind was clearly elsewhere.

"Ever since that star fell," he said, his voice tight, strained, as if the words were being pulled from him against his will, "strange things keep happening."

He looked around the table, and the lords fell silent one by one-Otto first, then Tyland, then Beesbury, then Strong-each of them catching the quality of the king's voice and recognizing that this was not a moment for jesting.

"First, Duskendale burns," Viserys said, and his eyes were distant, haunted. "I still dream about it. Two beams of fire, red-orange, cutting through stone and timber as a knife cuts through cloth. Thousands died. And no one-no one-can tell me what caused it."

He paused. His jaw worked.

"Then my brother breaks his hand. And Dark Sister-Valyrian steel, a blade that has cut through iron and bone-shatters. On what? On what Daemon claims was a boy."

Rhaenyra's breath caught. She had heard the whispers, of course-the court gossip, the servants' tales, the story that Daemon had lost his hand in a drunken brawl and invented sorcery to cover his shame. She had heard the maesters murmur about infection and complication, about a wound that festered, about a prince who was not well. But she had never heard her father confirm the details of Daemon's actual account.

Her eyes widened. She leaned forward, the flagon forgotten in her hand, her entire being focused on her father's words with the rapt, hungry attention. She had been told her whole life that magic was dead and dragons were the last of it, and she was now hearing something that suggested the world was far stranger than anyone had let on.

"And now," Viserys continued, his voice dropping lower, "there are stories from Lannisport. A boy saving people from a fire. Moving in the blink of an eye. Blowing frost from his mouth to quench the flames." He looked up. "There is even a song about it now. The smallfolk are singing it in the streets."

Rhaenyra's heart hammered against her ribs.

"Daemon reported," Viserys said, and his voice was barely above a whisper now, "that the star had flown north. He chased it. But it outran him. It went north." He swallowed hard. "This structure-this crystal fortress rising from the ground-it might be connected. It might be the same thing. The same... whatever it is."

The lords looked at their king, and Rhaenyra saw the expressions on their faces and she understood, with a clarity that surprised her, that none of them believed her father. They thought he was coming undone, the way his brother had. They thought the horror of Duskendale and the shame of his brother's madness had pushed the king toward the same precipice Daemon had apparently leapt from.

Rhaenyra believed him. She believed him because she had seen the beams, and she knew-knew with the bone-deep certainty of Targaryen blood-that the world was not as small and tidy as the councilors wanted it to be.

Otto Hightower cleared his throat. The Hand's voice was measured, careful, a blade wrapped in silk. "Your Grace, if you truly believe there is a threat beyond the Wall-or even a situation that warrants investigation-we should not rely on the Night's Watch alone. They are understrength, under-equipped, and, as we have noted, prone to exaggeration. We should send a dragon."

"I suggest we send a message to Driftmark," Otto said smoothly, and Rhaenyra saw the scheme already taking shape behind the Hand's sharp eyes-political calculation layered over real concern for what might be moving beyond the Wall, the two so tangled that not even Otto himself could have said where calculation ended and concern began. "Ask Princess Rhaenys to fly to the Wall. Her dragon, Meleys, is swift and capable. Or, if Princess Rhaenys declines-and she may, given the distance-send Lady Laena. She is seven-and-ten now, and Vhagar is the largest dragon in the world. A sight to cow any wildlings, or whatever is lurking in those woods. And it would remind the realm that House Targaryen's power extends to the farthest corner of the kingdom."

Rhaenyra's blood ignited.

"Father!" she cried out.

The word burst from her before she could stop it, loud and bright and completely inappropriate for the small council chamber, where princesses were seen and not heard. Every head at the table turned. Every pair of eyes found her-the cupbearer, the child, the girl with the silver flagon who had been standing quietly at the king's elbow and who had suddenly, without warning, stepped out of her place.

"Send me," she said, and her voice was clear and fierce and did not waver. "Let me go. I wish to see this structure. I wish to see the Wall."

She saw Otto's mouth twitch, already glad of an excuse to dismiss her; saw Tyland startle in something like respect; saw the older lords trade uncertain glances. She did not care about any of them. She cared only about her father, who was looking at her with an expression that was equal parts love and alarm.

Viserys's brow creased. His mouth opened, and she could see the refusal forming behind his eyes-the protective, fatherly instinct that had swaddled her since the day she was born, the fear that had only deepened since Duskendale.

"Absolutely not," he said.

"Father, I am a rider. Syrax and I-"

"You are one-and-ten years old, Rhaenyra." Viserys's voice was gentle but firm. "I will not send my only daughter to the edge of the world to chase ghosts and crystals. The North is cold and dangerous and wild, and I will not have you there. The matter is closed."

Rhaenyra's jaw clenched. She felt the hot sting of disappointment-sharp, immediate, personal-and beneath it the fierce, stubborn pride that burned in her blood like dragonfire. She wanted to argue. She wanted to shout. She wanted to say I am the blood of the dragon, Father, and dragons do not hide behind walls while the world unfolds around them. But she saw the look in his eyes-the fear, the love, the exhaustion-and she knew that arguing would only make him dig in deeper.

She stepped back. She resumed her place. She picked up the flagon and held it steady, and her eyes blazed with a light that had nothing to do with the morning sun.

Viserys turned to the Grand Maester. "Runciter, send the message to Driftmark. Ask Princess Rhaenys for her counsel, and for Vhagar's eyes, if she is willing. The council is dismissed."

The lords rose. Chairs scraped against the stone floor. One by one the councilors filed out-Otto first, his back straight and his mind already working; Tyland beside him, speaking softly; Beesbury alone, folding his parchments; Strong following, his heavy tread echoing on the stones; Larys last, his clubfoot tapping a slow, uneven rhythm, his eyes lingering on Rhaenyra for a moment longer than was comfortable before he disappeared through the door.

Rhaenyra set the silver flagon down on the table with a sharp clink that echoed in the emptying chamber. She looked at her father, who was still sitting in his chair, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm.

She wanted to go to him. She wanted to ask him more-about the star, about Daemon, about the boy who shattered Valyrian steel. But the look on his face was closed and distant.

She turned and walked out of the chamber, her silver-gold braid swinging behind her, her small hands clenched into fists at her sides.

The afternoon sun hung low and golden over the Red Keep, casting long shadows across the godswood. The weirwood tree stood at the center of the small, walled grove, its white bark like bone, its red leaves like blood, its carved face staring into the pool below.

Rhaenyra sat on the edge of the pool, her legs folded beneath her, her shoes discarded on the grass beside her. The morning's anger had cooled into a simmering frustration-a dull, persistent heat that sat in her chest and would not be dislodged. But beneath the frustration, and more important than it, was the wonder. The wonder of what she had heard. A boy who shattered steel. A boy who breathed frost. A crystal fortress rising from the earth beyond the Wall. Magic. Real magic. Not the faded, tired magic of the maesters' books or the metaphors of the septons' prayers, but actual, impossible, world-breaking magic, walking the same roads and breathing the same air as the rest of them.

She wanted it to be true. She wanted it with a ferocity that surprised her-a physical, aching want, like hunger, like thirst, like the pull of the tide toward the moon.

Alicent Hightower sat beside her, cross-legged in the grass, a book of septon's tales open in her lap. At three-and-ten, Alicent was more woman than girl-poised and quiet and possessed of a serenity that Rhaenyra both envied and relied upon. Her auburn hair was loose around her shoulders, catching the warm light, and her hazel eyes moved over the pages of her book.

Alicent was Rhaenyra's closest companion-her only companion, if she was honest.

"You are thinking about it again," Alicent said, without looking up from her book.

"I am always thinking about it," Rhaenyra admitted.

Alicent turned a page. "The council meeting troubled you."

"My father is troubled. That troubles me."

"Your father is tired." Alicent looked up, her hazel eyes gentle and knowing. "He carries too much, Rhaenyra. The Stepstones, the treasury, Prince Daemon's... absence. It is natural that he would see patterns where there may be none. Men who are exhausted see connections that do not exist."

Rhaenyra shook her head. "He saw the beams at Duskendale. So did I. So did half the court. That was real."

"I am not saying Duskendale was not real. I am saying that the leap from a fire in Duskendale to a crystal fortress beyond the Wall may be larger than your father realizes."

Rhaenyra opened her mouth to argue, but then closed it, a thought taking shape. She turned to Alicent, her eyes bright with sudden purpose.

"I sent Ser Criston to find a minstrel," she said.

Alicent blinked. "A minstrel?"

" The song about the fire in Lannisport. I want to hear it."

Alicent sighed, but it was a fond sigh. "You sent a Kingsguard to fetch a minstrel. Ser Criston must have been thrilled."

"He is a knight of the Kingsguard. He guards the king's family. I am the king's family. I required a minstrel. "

Alicent shook her head, a small smile playing at the corner of her lips. "You are impossible."

"I am the princess."

Footsteps on the path interrupted them. Ser Criston Cole walked into the clearing, his white cloak bright against the darkening green of the godswood. He was handsome, dark-haired and clean-jawed. Behind him walked a stranger-a thin man with a wispy beard and a lute slung across his back, dressed in the motley doublet of a traveling minstrel.

"Your Grace," Ser Criston said, bowing his head to Rhaenyra. "Lady Alicent. As requested, I have found a minstrel. He claims to know the song that is spreading through the taverns and inns."

Rhaenyra looked the minstrel up and down. He was nervous-she could see it in how he held himself, the slight tremor in his hands, the way his eyes darted between her and Ser Criston and the weirwood tree as if he were not sure which of them was the most intimidating. He was not a handsome man, nor a young one, and his lute had seen better decades. But there was an eagerness in his face she recognized at once.

"What is the song called?" Rhaenyra asked, her chin lifting with the instinctive authority of a princess addressing a commoner.

The minstrel bowed low-too low. "If it please Your Grace, it is called 'The Spinach Boy.'"

Alicent looked up from her book, her brow furrowing in genuine puzzlement. "The Spinach Boy? Why in the Seven Kingdoms is it called that?"

The minstrel smiled "Well, my lady, the story goes that when the fire spread in Lannisport. A boy began pulling people from the flames. He moved so fast no one could see him. One moment he was standing in the street, and the next he was gone, and then he was back, with a woman over his shoulder, and then gone again, and back with a child, and then gone again, and back with a babe in blankets. And the fire didn't touch him. He walked through burning doorways without a mark on him. His clothes weren't singed. His hair wasn't burned. The fire reached for him and found nothing it could grip."

Ser Criston Cole snorted from behind the minstrel-a sharp, dismissive sound.

"Superstition. Men exaggerate when they are frightened. A boy pulls a few people from a burning building, and suddenly he's moving faster than sight and walking through fire. It's the same story every time-ordinary bravery becomes extraordinary magic in the retelling."

The minstrel swallowed, his eyes flicking to the Kingsguard's armored form. "Perhaps, Ser. I only tell the tale as I heard it. But the tale gets stranger."

He turned back to Rhaenyra and Alicent, and his voice dropped, taking on the cadence of a man sharing a secret.

"The innkeeper's daughter-I don't recall her name, I'm afraid, the stories don't always agree on it-but the innkeeper's daughter told the singers that a few days before the fire, the boy had helped her carry a full cask of honey-wine up from the cellar. A cask, mind you, that takes two grown men to lift, and she was struggling with it, and he just... picked it up. Put it on his shoulder. Carried it up the stairs like it was a loaf of bread."

Alicent leaned forward, her book forgotten, her hazel eyes wide. "And the spinach?"

The minstrel grinned. "The innkeeper's daughter asked him how he was so strong. She was standing there with her mouth open, staring at him, and he looked at her-serious as a septon, and he said: 'I eat a lot of spinach.'"

Ser Criston Cole burst out laughing. It was an unguarded sound-a bark of laughter that startled a bird from the weirwood branches and made Alicent jump. "That is ridiculous," the knight said, wiping his eye. "A child lifting a wine cask? The whole story is a fabrication from start to finish. Spinach. As if anyone believes that strength comes from leafy greens."

Rhaenyra, however, was not laughing. She was leaning forward on the edge of the pool, her eyes fixed on the minstrel's face with an intensity that made the man take a half-step back. Her heart was pounding. Her father's words echoed in her skull-moving in the blink of an eye, blowing frost from his mouth.

"Is it true?" she demanded. "Did he really breathe frost? Did he really save them? Did he really freeze the fire?"

The minstrel held up his hands, palms out, the gesture of a man who knew the difference between a story and a fact and was careful not to claim more than he could deliver. "I cannot say, Your Grace. I was not there. I only know the songs the people sing, and the stories the travelers tell. The people of Lannisport swear by it-they say the boy stood in the street and breathed out, and frost came from his mouth like a winter gale, and the fire froze where it stood. The flames went dark. The timbers stopped burning. The whole row, from the chandler's to the cordwainer's, went cold in the space of ten heartbeats."

He shrugged, spreading his hands. "But I am a minstrel, Your Grace, not a witness. I sing what I am told. Whether it is true or not, I leave to wiser heads than mine."

Rhaenyra stared at him. She saw the truth in his face-not the truth of the story, which she could not verify, but the truth of his sincerity. He believed the people who had told him. He believed that something extraordinary had happened in Lannisport, even if the details had been polished and embellished by the passage of mouths and miles.

"Sing it for me," Rhaenyra commanded.

The minstrel unslung his lute. His fingers found the strings-they were old and slightly out of tune, but his hands knew them the way a carpenter knows his tools, by feel and by memory and by the accumulated experience of a thousand performances in a thousand taverns. He cleared his throat. He looked at Rhaenyra, at Alicent, at Ser Criston, at the weirwood with its bleeding face. And he sang.

"In Lannisport where gold is coined, Where fires burned and fate was joined, A boy appeared from out the flame, Who knew no fear and felt no pain.

He bore the burning children clear, Through smoke and ash and blazing fear, And when the fire roared its worst, He breathed out frost and quenched its thirst.

Oh, the spinach boy, the spinach boy, With ice for breath and heart of flame, He saved the inn, he saved the folk, And no one ever learned his name.

Some say he was a god come down, Some say a spirit of the Crown, But those who saw him know the truth- He was just a boy who ate his youth.

Oh, the spinach boy, the spinach boy, Strong as ox and brave as knight, He froze the fire, saved the folk, And vanished in the morning light."

The last chord lingered in the air, thin and sweet, fading into the rustle of the weirwood leaves and the distant cry of a gull from the Blackwater. The minstrel lowered his lute and bowed, his eyes on the ground.

Rhaenyra sat motionless. The song had done something to her. She could see the boy-stepping through the flames, frost pouring from his lips, his eyes calm in a face that should have been terrified, saving people he did not know because they were in danger and he could help. A hero who was none of the things heroes usually were-no lord, no knight, no prince. Just a boy who ate spinach, carried wine casks, and walked through fire.

"Thank you," she said softly. "You may go."

The minstrel bowed again, deeper this time, and retreated the way he had come, guided back toward the gates by Ser Criston, who walked beside him with the faintly amused expression.

Alicent closed her book. She watched Rhaenyra's face-the brightness in her eyes, the flush in her cheeks, the parting of her lips-and she felt a familiar twist of concern. She had seen this look before, on Rhaenyra's face and on the faces of other girls who had heard songs about knights and heroes and adventures. It was the look of someone falling in love with an idea.

"You are thinking about it too deeply, Rhaenyra," Alicent said gently.

"Do you think it is true? All of it? The frost, the speed, the strength?"

Alicent sighed. She picked a blade of grass and split it lengthwise with her thumbnail, a habit she had when she was thinking.

"I think," she said carefully, "that an inn burned in Lannisport. I think people were terrified, and in the confusion and the smoke, someone-perhaps a squire, perhaps a large boy, perhaps a brave young man-helped pull people from the wreckage. And I think that in the aftermath, frightened people looking for a savior embellished the tale. They added the frost because fire is hot and the opposite of fire is cold, and it makes a better story. They added the impossible speed because the human eye cannot track movement in smoke and darkness, and what cannot be tracked becomes magical. They added the strength because fear makes the impossible seem possible, and memory makes the possible seem impossible."

She looked at Rhaenyra, her hazel eyes kind but firm. "People love a miracle, Rhaenyra. It makes the cruel world seem less so. It gives them hope. And hope is a powerful thing, more powerful than any frost or fire. But hope is not the same as truth."

Ser Criston, who had returned to his post at the edge of the clearing, nodded in agreement. "Lady Alicent speaks wisdom, Your Grace. I have seen it on the tourney field. A man makes a lucky strike, catches his opponent off guard, and the smallfolk whisper that his sword was blessed by the Warrior. A knight unhorses a prince and suddenly he is a hero of legend, not a man who put his lance in the right place at the right time. It is always the same in the retelling-brave men become sorcerers, and lucky strikes become blessings. It is the way of the world."

Rhaenyra looked down at the dark water of the pool. The weirwood's face stared back at her from the surface-red eyes, red mouth, ancient and knowing and silent. She felt a sharp, heavy pang of disappointment settling in her chest, like a stone dropped into water. She wanted it to be true. She wanted the magic to be real. She wanted there to be a boy out there-somewhere in the world, walking the roads, breathing frost and shattering steel-who could stand against the cruelty of the world with nothing but his bare hands and a handful of spinach. A boy who owed nothing to lords or politics, who wasn't bound by the careful, suffocating calculations of men like Otto Hightower. A boy who simply helped, because helping was what he did.

But Alicent was practical. Alicent always saw the world as it was, not as it should be. Alicent read her books and tended her flowers and believed in reason and order and the steady, reliable workings of the world as it was understood by maesters and septons and the fathers who ruled the lives of their daughters.

And Ser Criston-Ser Criston, who had unhorsed her uncle and won the melee at Maidenpool, who was the bravest knight she had ever met-Ser Criston agreed with Alicent.

"Perhaps," Rhaenyra murmured.

But her fingers curled into fists in her lap, pressing into the fabric of her gown, and she thought of the beams of fire at Duskendale-two columns of impossible heat, cutting through stone and timber and flesh-and she thought of her father's face when he had spoken of Daemon's shattered sword, and she thought of the crystal fortress rising from the earth beyond the Wall.

But I know what I saw, she thought, stubbornly, fiercely, in the private citadel of her own mind where no one could reach. I saw the sky tear open. I saw the fire. And I do not believe the world is as small as they want it to be.

She did not believe it was just a story. She would never believe it.