Lys, The Narrow Sea, second week, third moon of 294 AC
For once, Tregar looked well-rested and clean-shaven, with no dark circles under blood-shot eyes. With the Council of Magisters remaining neutral towards House Ormollen lately, our merchant ships finding better opportunities through the continued practice of insider trading, and Lynesse once again taking up some of the workload while she recovered from sorcery practice, the merchant prince was no more exhausted than his binding made him. He was sitting at a grand table heavy with maps of seas, shores and ports, much of it taken up by a ten-foot-wide canvas showing the area from a hundred miles below Lys up to the sea of Myrth to the North and from Sunspear to the west up to the Orange Shore in the East, an area seven hundred miles across that included the Disputed Lands and the three cities contesting them.
The aging yet still spry figure in wine-colored tunic and bleached white leathers, with a captain's cap of green silk adorned with peacock feathers joining Tregar in that table was no other than Salladhor Saan, the pirate-lord that had recently allied to us and with his warning helped me survive the latest attempt on my life. So engrossed were they looking at the map and the hundreds of tiny figurines of ships set upon it that neither of them noticed my projection's arrival. That would not do.
"Those positions are wrong," I said in lieu of arrival, making them both jump just a little as I pointed at figurines in the Narrow Sea. "Much of the Tyroshi fleet is lying in wait behind Grey Gallows, with only a screen of twenty left in Pirate Coast and another dozen serving as a picket south of Torturer's Deep. The Myrish fleet on the other hand has split in two, with one half seeking repairs and maintenance in northern Westeros while the rest are ferrying sell-sword companies from northern Essos up the rivers and into the Myrish heartlands. And that convoy making for Slaver's Bay over there? They were tragically lost at sea with all hands."
"Lady Belaerys, welcome to our smaller council," the old pirate mirthfully joked. "Last I heard you were in your little camp to the South. When did you arrive?"
"Oh, I am still there, captain Saan," I shot back and made my image waver. "This is just illusion."
"I see your sorcery is even more formidable than I'd been led to believe." His eyes trailed to the map, then widened. "Is that how you knew the positions of those ships? You saw them yourself?"
"Indeed. I might not yet have a thousand eyes and one across the breadth and length of Westeros like Brynden Rivers does, but finding a few ships upon the ocean in broad daylight? That is not hard at all." Taking Tregar's seat on the table as the man hastily vacated it at a mental whisper from me, I looked across it at the other newly rising power in Lys. "How are things going in the city then? No problems from our new friends in the Council of Magisters?"
"Oh, everything is going splendidly, my dear!" Salladhor told me with a smile. "They even approved your delightful little suggestion the day before yesterday. They gave me a bit of parchment, crisp and waxed and marked with gold and signed by them all." He laughed. "I am made Constable of Old Gallow and the Pirate Coast, and no vessel may be crossing my protected waters without my protection, no. And when these outlaws are trying to steal past me in the night to avoid my lawful duties and customs, why, they are no better than smugglers, so I am well within my rights to seize them!"
"Interesting. Useful too." I had taken a page from Stannis Baratheon of the original timeline and suggested Sallahdor be given official authority to 'patrol' the waters Lys lay claim to both with his own ships and any allied warships available. This would turn his raids on Tyroshi and Myrish ships from piracy to lawful exercise of maritime authority at least on paper and as long as he kept from killing honest merchants, naval powers like Braavos or Westeros would have no reason to go after him. Pirates and slavers coming towards Lys from the Narrow Sea could still be legally destroyed, obviously, and those still accounted for much of the fleets of both Tyrosh and Myr, while merchant ships could still be 'taxed'. "Too bad the Tyroshi seem to have laid down a trap for you. I wonder how they found out so quickly," I lied.
"Spies and traitors and vile sycophants," Saan mock-raged then shrugged. "You know how it is. But if the ship positions you just mentioned are true, we could set up a nice surprise for them."
"If you say so, Captain Saan. Naval battles are not my expertise." Not conventional ones anyway. "Would it help if their next supply convoy was unexpectedly delayed?"
"How and for how long?" he asked with mild interest, still more focused on the ship positions on the map.
"Be careful," Tregar interjected. "Tyroshi warships are more heavily armed than our own." Of course, what he said did not quite match the churning thoughts in his mind. Revealing that I could destroy ships at sea would be... suboptimal at this point in time.
"That would hardly matter if they were caught in port during repairs, wouldn't it?" I countered with a smirk that matched Saan's earlier one. "With the war on and our closing the sea routes to the East, Tyrosh can't do repairs on all its ships. I have it on good authority that they are outsourcing some of the work to Westerosi ports now and there are some people that owe me favours over there that would also be happy to arrest suspected slavers."
"My dear," the old pirate chuckled, "I suspect this will prove a wonderful friendship."
xxxx
My stomach was cramping, just like everything else, forcing another cough through burning lungs as I lay on the cold stone floor on my hands and knees. Nails that had become thicker and ever so slightly claw-like since the aftermath of that assassination attempt months before dug into the tiles of my tower lab as I tried to collect myself. Another attempt to feed the flames beyond a certain point had gone... less than perfectly. Not only had the gold and red flames - the first and twelfth respectively - rejected the offerings but when I'd tried to push, well... puking my guts out was rather conclusive as denials went.
There would be no easy improvement further into a superhuman baseline or new knowledge of sorcery... at least not yet. I pushed to my feet, then forced my hands and feet to stop shaking. While the backlash had been considerable, I had also pushed further towards success before being rejected. Not by much, but my efforts were no longer pushed back as if they were nothing. There was more... weight in my vision of the Flames than before, for lack of a better term, though more weight in motion also came with more risks. It was not a physical thing, any more than the plinths the Flames rested upon in that vision had been real stone. It might represent momentum, accomplishment, fame, or even age. More would need to be learned with further tests in the future.
Unfortunately, the power would not stay contained now that an attempt at using it had been made. Adding it to the magical ruby that beat in time with my heart had been an option, one that would improve it as a magic supply for the wielder, but I had decided against it. Artifacts, however useful, could be stolen or destroyed. With more people to delegate things to as the Dread Company expanded and both my interests and the scope of conflicts I was involved in broadening, information and trump cards in battle would be necessary.
The green radiance of the ninth flame had options for both, mostly by making handling multiple perspectives easier, especially for animals but not just them. Dipping into the perspective of plants or even the earth was possible now, expanding my mind to a range around me instead of specific targets where I could touch the wind, taste the soil, hear the water, even speak to plants just a little. Making a branch twist, a tree sway as if by wind, or a tuft of grass grasp at something might look like a parlour trick... but doing it a thousand feet away, or letting it happen on specific triggers much less so. It let me string my new bow with the same ease as my old one, despite it having been made to match my new height and growing strength.
Pyromancy had similarly expanded the scope of my abilities. Shaping stone came faster and more easily, especially with igneous rock and minerals, not by my adding more heat to the rock, but by recalling the heat that originally formed it. Given a piece of igneous rock I could easily call heat and flames from it while paying only a fraction of the cost it should have had. The visions had shown Valyrian mages use dragons to first melt large quantities of stone or even soil, which let them recall that same flame to re-melt and shape it, or if they had a source of volcanic glass, ash, or similar substances, recall that natural heat to turn it to lava. The second ability I had gained was to magnify or drain existing heat at long ranges and while the effect was still much weaker in anything except igneous rock, burning a bird flying half a mile away from within was now possible. Humans were still stubbornly resistant, but setting hair or clothes on fire should distract most enemies.
There were holes in what the visions had revealed, areas of my magic where I felt something ought to be that had not been shown to me. That was the magical awareness I had gained through divination that allowed me to notice and I suspected those secrets would come through collaboration with other abilities, the offerings of other flames. That too would need looking into. So many things to do, so little time.
xxxx
An overhead chop came at my skull and I frantically raised my own blade to block. Sparks flew as steel clashed with steel, my own sword was forced down from the transfer of momentum while my opponent's blade hovered at throat-height, the better to stab me with the follow-up lunge. I voided the strike by stepping aside then slashed at my foe's extended arms.
Unfortunately, his blade came up at an aggressive parry with the same momentum-transfer trick, throwing my blow aside while leaving him into position to counterattack. I missed my spear with its greater mass and leverage but even more the familiarity and comfort it provided when held. I knew how to use a spear. I had used one in every fight worth mentioning and most of the ones that weren't, been trained in its use for months at a pace that would have killed soldiers without magic from the length of training alone. Plus spears were both simple and complex in their use, from stabbing with the pointy end to effectively being usable as three different weapons, the pointy stick, the quarterstaff, and the good ol' club.
Swords were different. Just as adaptable in their way, they were designed as a single generalist, primarily defensive and maneuver-based weapon. In theory I knew how to use them too. Could use them fairly well from all the memories of battle I had gained through visions. But the fight I was currently in was already beyond a "fairly well" level of skill as my opponent kept hounding me around the field with slower but too-precise, elaborate moves backed by decades of experience that mere knowledge could not keep up with even with my advantages.
So why try to keep up? After rolling away from his latest efforts to beat me into the ground with fancy fencing, I swung again in a horizontal arc and enough power to bisect him had he not been wearing armor of black plate. Even with it, that kind of hit would hurt like a warhammer to the side. Almost lazily he parried from a low guard - not to counter my own swing but to force my sword up. Instead of trying to power through I let him do just that, then redirected the momentum of both our swings into a pirouette in a way that shouldn't have been humanly possible. Almost too quickly to catch I had made a full turn like Ewan McGregor dueling Ray Park without the slow-down for the cameras and was swinging in from the opposite direction.
My opponent did not have my speed and the maneuver had been entirely outside his expectations so he didn't manage to reposition before my blade struck his helmet and rung it like a bell. Sparks flew and the blunted training sword chipped then shattered, leaving the helmet with a sizable dent and its wearer lying on his ass for the first time in nearly a week.
"Stranger take me, lass," the older man slurred after about a minute of trying to get his bearings. "That could have killed me."
"At which point I could finally try my hand at resurrection and this would have become an actual training session," I shot back before pulling him to his feet one handed just to show off to the gawkers we'd gathered. "Why are we even using swords, Jorah? You know I prefer the spear."
"Spears and other polearms are large weapons, slow in dueling, and awkward to carry around all the time even if your host would allow them in a guest's hands," he explained as he gingerly took off his helm. Feeling out the forming bruise on his balding head he winced. Yea, that would have needed a day or two of rest if not for the healing ring he wore. "It is better for a warrior to know their way around all manner of arms, lest occasion or necessity find them untrained in the arms at hand."
"I suppose that makes sense, though I doubt I will ever be as good with a sword as I am with the spear or daggers, let alone the bow." All the extra visions of scouts, rogues, assassins and similar types as well as combat experiences meant it would take too long. Then I smiled at the exiled knight and a spear of solid black flame formed in my off-hand. "Besides, being who I am means the weapon of my choice is never far from my hand." I shook my head and lowered my tone. "What is this really about, old man?"
"You must be seen more, my lady," the exile told me in a serious tone - more serious than his usual bluntness, that was. "You have not been very involved with the men lately and there have been... whispers."
"Really? After Saelys?" Color me surprised - and unimpressed. "Our men saw me in battle several times - I fought among them even. What, they want more?"
"Not our original men, lady Belaerys," he told me almost regretfully. "The trainees. The transfers from other companies certainly saw the aftermath of the siege and some of your magic but none saw you in battle. Newer recruits only have hearsay to work with and you know how rumours are. The... intense training is not helping things."
"It is meant to make warriors out of them, Jorah." Boot camp was supposed to break down individuality through intense stress, sleep deprivation and isolation, to wean out the usual insubordination of unprofessional mercenaries and turn them into reliable soldiers, building camaraderie through shared hardship. "We can't have people in our lines that don't know their blades from their backsides, or that would break discipline because they feel like it." Honestly, I would have preferred to continue recruiting injured veterans and healing them, but my days weren't getting any longer and we needed to build our numbers faster.
"It is only working for some of them, my lady. Those that haven't fought before, or are in awe of your healing and other sorcery." He scowled. "But nearly a third of the recruits have been sell-swords with little discipline for years that were never injured to be healed from you. And with how long the new training is..."
"Ugh. Back in my world, the best units got sixteen hours of training, five days a week. We are going less and we have magic that helps with fatigue." Yet for some reason it wasn't working like it was supposed to. Was it because these guys had prior combat experience in companies with nonexistent discipline? Was it because everyone on this planet was an asshole? Whatever the case, it was a problem. "Maybe what the recruits need... is a demonstration."
"A demonstration, my lady?" the exiled knight asked as we walked off the tiltyard now that he could stand again.
"Yes. If some of them do not believe in my leadership or cannot respect someone they have never seen in battle, perhaps they should be shown." One could not expect the average uneducated grunt to infer things, but seeing was believing. "And we need to do it this evening. The ship from Highgarden is arriving tomorrow; we can't have messes in our barracks or worse, people talking to the Reachmen at the first sign of coin."
"As you say, lady Belaerys."