Prince Aegon Targaryen
The legendary storms that came from the Narrow Sea to the Stormlands reached the shores of the Blackwater exhausted, having lost all their fury, tired; leaden clouds, still gloomily leaden, still heavy, somehow crawled across the bay to rip open their bellies on the spires of the Red Keep, on the bell towers of the capital's septs, on the bulk of the Dragonpit. In Maegor's Holdfast itself it was gloomy, as in autumn, in the inner yards—damp and dirty, as if they had not been paved, in the Godswood—slushy. At first Aegon thought that due to prolonged rains it would become like the Conqueror's Garden on Dragonstone, but if the half-wild vegetation in the ancestral castle echoed in him with something poignant from its harsh beauty, the wet capital thickets evoked only despondency and unwillingness to go beyond the limits of his chambers.
At court they whispered that with bad weather the gods mourn the untimely demise of Princess Calla, but Aegon did not think they would shed tears for such petty reasons. The Pentoshi ladies-in-waiting led by Lady Teressa Sunglass sighed sadly in all ways, mourning the one by whose grace they sat all day with needle in hand, like simple seamstresses, sewing for the future child. Other courtiers also donned grief and mourning clothes, but this could deceive only the blind. While Calla was alive, she was treated with due respect as the wife of the heir to the throne, but behind her back they good-naturedly laughed at her speech, habits, thoughts, in a word, at everything that betrayed a foreigner in her, and a dim-witted one at that. There was no doubt that scarce would the seven-month mourning pass when she would be thrown out of mind immediately, leaving memory of her only to family and Maester chronicles.
The newborn Alyssa Targaryen was placed in the same chambers where her mother lived; the boudoir became a nursery, the large bed was replaced by a cradle and a narrow cot for the wet nurse, huddled against the very wall. On the fourteenth day of the Princess's life, the egg which Daemon, under the vigilant gaze of his younger brother, personally placed in the crib, hatched, and from it, under the frightened squealing of the nurse and Maester, a small dark red dragon crawled out into the light, immediately settling near the infant.
Immediately after his wife's funeral, Daemon flew to Pentos. This was correct: the Carlaryses should have learned of the tragedy from him, and not from a raven-harbinger of grief. In an unfavorable scenario, he should have returned home in a couple of days, in a favorable one—in a week or two, but days folded into weeks, those turned into months stretching one after another, and red wings and the serpentine silhouette of Caraxes never appeared over Blackwater Bay. Daemon limited himself to a couple of letters, reassuring the Small Council and his brothers that King Callio is very gracious and confirms his commitment to allied relations.
Viserys was somewhat calmed by this, although other news coming from Pentos was not distinguished by optimism. Far from all Magisters remaining alive after the coup reconciled themselves with the breaking of familiar foundations, and now tried to return their own. In a year, they tried to kill Callio more than a dozen times, though surely the number of attempts was much greater; his eldest son and heir Cassio acquired a scar across his whole face and caught a crossbow bolt in the back during a ride into the city, but miraculously remained alive; they tried to poison Callio's wife, but by accident their youngest son Hennio drank the poison, dying in terrible agony; they tried to get even Daemon, but the matter ended with a dozen mercenaries smearing their guts on Pentoshi pavements. Finally, they tried to overthrow the Carlaryses openly, but the conspirator-Magisters forgot to take into account that the King's brother-in-law is a dragonrider, and remembered this only when Caraxes poured streams of fire on their mansions.
By the end of the fourth month, the Lord Hand at a session of the Small Council grumpily inquired whether the Prince of Dragonstone thinks to stay with his brother-in-law for good, and, as if hearing these words, Daemon returned the very next morning. Aegon found him in the nursery, where his brother stood leaning against a post of the bed canopy, watching his daughter sleep in the cradle. The Prince prudently touched the doorframe with his cane, indicating his presence, and Daemon, not turning around, listlessly waved his hand, inviting him to enter.
"She has grown," remarked the brother with some surprise in his voice.
"This is a common property of children," snorted Aegon and looked into the cradle.
Princess Alyssa slept on red-and-black sheets prepared by her mother's ladies-in-waiting, throwing her arms to the sides, and nearby on a pillow, curled into a ball and covering herself with wings, her dragon sniffled. With its hatching, the girl's health began to strengthen, and by the fourth month of life she represented the most ordinary child. How much merit in that lay with the bond of the dragonet and its future rider, and how much with prayers to Meraxes the Merciful that Aegon offered, remained only to guess.
Daemon stretched out his hand and tenderly touched his daughter's head, smoothing the light infant fluff.
"It seems she takes after her mother in hair."
"Not necessarily," shrugged the younger Prince. "Hair color can change."
"Yours was silver from the very beginning."
"You were three, Daemon. I do not believe you could remember that."
"Viserys remembered it," chuckled the brother. "But I remember how the egg Father put in your bed went cold. You know, I feared this one would turn to stone too."
"Did you doubt my choice?" Aegon was feignedly offended.
"A little. But now I see it was in vain. Is it not clear yet who it is?"
"Female."
"Did you look under her tail?"
"Simply felt it," shrugged the Prince; he had no other explanation for the understanding of dragon nature that began to manifest after the Mantarys revelations, and he did not want to lie to his brother. Perhaps someday he will tell Daemon about this, but definitely not now. "Believe me?"
"I believe."
"She has not been given a name yet, decided to wait for you."
The dragoness, as if understanding that speech was about her, raised her head and cooed. From this sound Alyssa woke up and, seeing an unfamiliar man above her, began to cry. Her father chuckled joylessly and scooped the Princess into his arms:
"What, dear, do you not recognize your father?"
"Father should have stuck around across the sea less," grumbled Aegon.
At the child's crying, the wet nurse ran out of the rooms, gasping at the sight of the Princes; Daemon smiled somewhat embarrassed, and the woman quickly came to her senses.
"Allow me to show, My Prince," she rushed to help. "Better like this, hand here, M'lord. And rock, rock, but do not shake! Come now, dear, hush, hush, it is your daddy! Coo, coo!"
Watching the newly-made daddy try to calm his daughter was amusing, and Aegon laughed even more when the fully awakened dragoness fluttered out of the crib and began to circle over her future rider, frightening the wet nurse and amusing the Targaryens.
"Lilys issa, a? (She is a dancer, eh?)" chuckled Daemon, shifting his gaze from his calming daughter to the flying lizard. "Ñuho zaldrīzo brōzio Melo Peldiō issa. Pāsan brōzilā Mele Lilys, skoros iotāpan? (My dragon's name is Blood Wyrm. I think I will name her Red Dancer, what do you think?)"
The named dragoness chirped in agreement and tried to perch on Daemon's shoulder; her claws, however, turned out not large enough to catch onto the thick leather of the traveling doublet, and the Dancer would surely have fallen had she not opened her wings in time. With an offended cry, she flew to the more convenient wooden side of the cradle and stared at the "impenetrable" human with a condemning gaze.
"Red Dancer?" drawled Aegon thoughtfully. "Well, this is not the worst of names, moreover truthful."
"Are you satisfied?"
"I—quite, but you should ask Alyssa."
"She will like it," said Daemon with conviction, allowing his calmed daughter to grab his hanging silver strand. "Both the name and the dragon."
A couple of minutes later the girl whimpered again, and the wet nurse announced that the child wanted to eat; under this plausible pretext, the indignant Red Dancer was expelled to another room, and Alyssa migrated from hand to hand. When the brothers walked out of the nursery, Daemon stretched with pleasure and announced:
"Found a good wet nurse, tits just right."
"Ready to bet you would not mind attaching yourself to them."
"Possibly," he did not deny. "I shall share if you want."
"I have not the habit of robbing nieces," shook his head Aegon, and onyx beads woven into his hair clicked against each other; Daemon only chuckled in response.
For some time they walked the corridors of the Holdfast in silence, but then the younger Prince asked a question that had occupied him for a long time:
"What did Callio say?"
"About his sister's death? He was upset."
"That is obvious, but I ask in general."
"He was upset, though not surprised. It seems to me he is a little fatalistic now."
"Does he not hate us yet?"
"We made him King, Aegon. You made him King, helped him take power of which he secretly dreamed. You know, he takes the deaths of kin more calmly than I expected," remarked Daemon, stopping at the exit to the grand staircase. "Politics killed his son and tries to kill all the rest of his family. He believes it killed Calla too."
"Is that so?" something cold and sticky stirred in Aegon's stomach.
"Both I and he needed this marriage, and the child was to cement the alliance. Calla, while she was with child, behaved like an ordinary Pentoshi woman—walked circles. Only in Pentos pregnant women walk on one floor and in the garden, not all over the castle. The child was politics, the child destroyed her."
To hear such words from a man who just a few minutes ago rocked this child in his arms was strange, and Aegon grimaced.
"If Calla heard these words, she would have slapped your cheeks."
"Nothing of the sort," waved Daemon off. "She would not hurt a fly. But Aemma would, yes, she would not have remained silent."
"So you blame Alyssa for Calla's death?"
"I blame for Calla's death only her stupidity and her Pentoshi midwives. Alyssa has nothing to do with it."
Saying this, Daemon began to descend the stairs without farewells, leaving his brother alone with his thoughts. Aegon sighed and began to climb up, to his-father's study; since Viserys became King, no one disputed his younger brother's rights to the chambers of the Spring Prince, but counting them his own did not work out. The day before, a raven arrived from Dragonstone with the traditional report of the Commander of the Dragonwatch; he ought to fly there at least for a couple of days: walk on the Dragonmont, in the Conqueror's Garden, sit in the chapel, but it just didn't work out. He also needed to return to the Smoky Valley and check if the clutch he left in the cave was alive; from thoughts that the eggs turned to stone, an unpleasant knot tightened in Aegon's stomach, but the Prince immediately calmed himself: it is just fear, the gods themselves pointed the way there to him, and they cannot be so cruel.
Ideally, he should visit the new royal fief more often, since Viserys had already sent an architect and masons who began to look out a place for the future fortress. Construction in the mountains is a slow business, but they did not need a full-fledged castle: two pairs of towers, barracks for Dragonkeepers and a stable for horses. Nevertheless, Aegon already anticipated how complaints of builders about lack of time, money, people, food, materials, in short, everything in a row would rain down on him.
It did not go without attempts to redistribute zones of responsibility in the Small Council. Lord Chamberlain Robin Massey, managing royal property and Crown lands, tried to join the construction of the castle in the Smoky Valley. He referred to the fact that management of lands directly belonging to the Crown was entrusted to him, however, to Aegon's some surprise, Otto Hightower began to object to this.
"A castle in a remote mountain valley has no significance for the defense of the Realm, Lord Robin," said the Hand. "Furthermore, it will protect not people, but a dragon nesting ground, and this is the responsibility of the Master of Dragons."
After such a hint, Massey did not dare persist, especially since Beesbury and Strong were not on his side either; the Chamberlain, who had already prepared to improve the material position of his House, or even promote one of his younger sons to castellan of the Smoky Valley, had to curb his ambitions.
After the hushed-up scandal with the "heir-for-a-day," Aegon's attitude toward Lord Otto was contradictory. Yes, the Hand's whisperer slandered the Prince and lost his tongue and the opportunity to live south of the Wall for this, but Hightower's reputation was shaken anyway, if not in the eyes of courtiers, then in Aegon's eyes for certain. The support rendered to him by the Lord undoubtedly served as both a rainbow-star banner of peace and an outstretched hand; in the end, Hightower was an experienced courtier and could not fail to understand that enmity with two King's brothers at once might be beyond his strength. Nevertheless, to Otto's seemingly accidental glance, Aegon deemed it necessary to respond with a barely perceptible nod, indicating gratitude. It will not diminish him, he promised the Hand nothing himself, and the absence of quarrels and squabbles at court beneficially affects state affairs.
At the very door of his chambers, a nervously shuffling Dennis awaited the Prince.
"What is it?"
"A raven from the Stone," he announced briefly. "Urgent."
A small scroll sealed with a black seal lay in the outstretched hand; black wings could bring black tidings, but a black seal destroyed all hope. Aegon hurriedly opened the letter. Just a few lines written in a simple, jumping-in-different-directions handwriting:
"Dārilaros ñuhys (My Prince),Valopradax idakossis zaldrīzoti hae mazumbillā se ipradis hāro. Skorion gaomagon? (The Cannibal attacked the dragons of the nest and ate three. What should we do?)Baelor, jemiros urneroti (Baelor, commander of the watchers)."
Naturally, they flew to Dragonstone the same day; he left a brief note for each brother: Daemon will understand, Viserys will be worried and insist on some general measures, but this no longer suited Aegon. His heart was consumed by black fury and burning malice not so much at the terrible dragon with selective taste as at himself. What kind of Keeper of Nesting Grounds is he, who arranges a new one, allowing the old one to be destroyed? What kind of Master of Dragons is he, if he so stupidly loses the main treasure of his family? He pledged to keep it, but how to keep dragons from dragons themselves?
Black thoughts tormented him the whole way to the island, and night clouds that ran onto Blackwater Bay from the Stormlands did not help dispel them a whit. They flew right under their low canopy, periodically falling into bands of fine nasty rain; Vermithor grumbled grumpily, Dennis wrapped himself in a leather cloak and ground his teeth, but was silent. The Bronze Fury could have found the way to the place where he was born completely blind, but Aegon did not want to see either stars or moon. They arrived at Dragonstone toward morning, sleep-deprived, hungry, wet to the skin, and therefore angry as devils of the Seven Hells without sinners in their cauldrons.
At the cave where Vermithor usually rested, seven Dragonkeepers led by Baelor and the castle castellan already awaited them. Scarce had the dragon folded his wings, the Prince climbed out of the saddle and the first thing that burst from him as soon as his feet touched the coal-black stones was:
"Where is this devil?!"
"Dārilaros ñuhys (My Prince)," began Baelor.
"Where were you looking?" as if they could prevent a fire-breathing flying lizard from filling his belly.
"It happened at night, dārilaros ñuhys. Zōbrie iksis (It was dark/black), he appeared suddenly..."
"Where did it happen?"
"Mazumbillā iemnȳ (Inside the nest). We left everything as it was."
"And left the hatchlings there?!"
"No, dārilaros ñuhys. Zaldrīzoti (Dragons), those that survived, we moved to nopalbār gō sombāzmiot (the cave under the castle)."
"Let us go to them, I need to count them... or no, to the nesting ground!"
A heavy hand lay on the raging Prince's shoulder.
"We shall go to the castle," declared Dennis firmly, allowing no other exit. "We flew half the night, we are soaked and, unlike this bastard, hungry."
Aegon wanted to wriggle out of his grip, furiously lecture the presumptuous sworn shield and do everything his own way, but scarce bad he squared his shoulders to object when all the physical fatigue accumulated during the night flight and emotional exhaustion lay on them. His stomach rumbled treacherously, and his leg reminded of itself.
"Good," nodded the Prince. "Let it be so. We shall rest, and then decide what to do."
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