Blood and saltwater taste much alike, he finds.
He would have died, if not for the hooks the pirates latch through his clothes and his thigh - they slice away his breeches and stitch him closed as soon as he's on deck, and then he is thrown below, and the hold echoes with Vayeles' dying cries.
Aemon's soul feels scorched away, unable to return for the bronze collar clamped so quickly around his neck.
"A princely slave," a pirate grits out in ugly-accented Valyrian, and Aemon spits in his face.
The whip cuts deep into his ribcage, lashing around from behind, and he almost screams.
Grandmother is the one to tell Rhaenys - Mother has already gone to the sept, fled there to find some peace so that she might face this horror, and Grandfather is already mourning, but Grandmother thinks to come to Rhaenys, alone but for her books.
Corlys brought them for her, from his last journey - even when she was a little girl clamouring at his heels, he always brought her marvellous gifts, but they have become more personal in nature these past moons, since she made it known that she intended to court him, in the Westerosi style rather than the Valyrian - in the Valyrian style, she would have to wait for him to make the first move, and if she did that, she would wait until she was in her grave.
Grandmother takes the book from her hands and sets it carefully aside, showing it as much respect as she would any treasure belonging to Rhaenys' cousins. Her cousins would not return the favour, of course, but that is to be expected.
"The pirates have been driven away from Tarth, little one," Grandmother says, "but Vayeles has been sighted on the eastern reef."
Vayeles hates the water, and would never choose to land anywhere but dry land.
"What of my father?" Rhaenys asks, and Grandmother's fierce eyes are soft.
"Oh, my poor sweetheart," she says, lifting one age-worn hand to Rhaenys' face. "Of your father, we have found no trace."
Rowing is arduous work, and Aemon is only thankful that he was in such a peak of health before he was collared. Some of his companions are sickly, or old, or frail. Aemon has never been any of those things, stronger than an average man with dragon's blood and dragon's bond bolstering him, and he does his best to offer what strength was once Vayeles' in his soul to his gangmates, who will have no homes to return to if ever they are freed.
A delicate man with the bright golden eyes of the Naathi laughs when Aemon admits that he has a wife and daughter to return to - he is told again and again that if he does free himself, he will return to find his wife remarried and his daughter cast out.
Such a thing will never happen - he will return to Jocelyn, no matter how long it takes, and even if she does remarry for thinking him dead, well, Aemon's father is King, and Dragonstone Rhaenys' inheritance - she cannot be cast out.
And she will have Corlys behind her, the wily snake - he's been making doe eyes at her since the tourney for her eighteenth birthday at the start of the year, and he's a fool if he thinks Aemon and Jocelyn didn't notice. Few have the influence to trouble Corlys, never mind the wealth.
None of his gangmates believe that he is a Prince, of course. They think him some Lysene pretender, or perhaps one of their half-mad bankers, and they humour him through mockery - he is the biggest, the fittest of the galley-slaves, and he is given the first servings of gruel each morning and evening, and the others jape that such is a Prince's right.
He is a Prince. He is the Conqueror's great-grandson, heir to his throne.
He only hopes that he is not heir to his great-grandmother's death.
Mother refuses to allow them to hold a funeral.
"If Aemon were dead, I would know," she hisses at Grandfather, held back from striking him only by Rhaenys and Boremund together. "I would know, you old fool, just as well as you would know if the Queen were to fall. How dare you wish him away! How dare you!"
Rhaenys cannot help but think that some of them would have dreamt her father's death, if it were coming - some of her aunts, some of her cousins, even she herself, although her dragon-dreams are few and far between.
"He is my son, Jocelyn," Grandfather says, a snarling fury such as Rhaenys has never seen taking over his whole being. "In my heart I yet hope that he lives, just as I hoped that the messengers who found me in Highgarden to tell me that my Aegon had died were liars and rogues, just as I always, always hoped that my brother was not truly rotting away in the courtyard just outside these castle doors - but I am a King as much as a father, little sister. I may hope for Aemon's survival, but I must keep the peace, and if there is to be peace then the succession must be clear."
"And you cannot have a clear succession without a clear heir," Baelon says, standing at the foot of the steps before the throne, where Father always stood. Of all her uncles and aunts, Rhaenys has ever been closer to Boremund than anyone, but Baelon always spoiled her for lack of a daughter of his own - surely that was not false? Surely he does not so quickly seek to take her father's place? "Aemon cannot inherit while absent, even if he does yet live."
Mother screams, launching forward now toward Baelon as if to claw out his eyes, or his maligning tongue.
He is tied to the mast and whipped until his skin hangs in shreds and patchs from his back.
The ship's doctor treats him, stitching what can be stitched and binding the rest, and pouring a restorative potion down his gullet as though he were a tourney horse.
"If only you were not so big," the doctor says, in what Aemon thinks might be Pentoshi - he can understand what of it sounds Valyrian, and no more. "Then the captain would keep you, and you would not be sent belowdecks."
Aemon has never before been so relieved to have his mother's height - they threw what remained of the captain's last favourite overboard just three days past.
"Dragonstone belongs to my daughter, you insolent little brat," Mother says, and Baelon steps back from the force of her gaze. "I don't care a damn that you wish yet to be in the Freehold, I don't care a damn that you feel I ought to be sympathetic because I relinquished Storm's End to my brother so I could wed Aemon - Dragonstone is not for you!"
"The whole of King's Landing knows that Rhaenys will wed the Sea Snake," Baelon says, and Rhaenys wonders how it is that everyone knows she and Corlys will wed when he has not yet agreed to it - he worries that he is too old, or that he will be a poor husband if he continues his adventuring.
He always worries that he will make a poor Prince Consort, she knows, even if he has not said as much. Rhaenys is more worried that they will never have a chance to test his mettle, if her uncle has his way.
"Her children will have High Tide, and all of Corlys' fortunes-"
"And yours will have the Iron Throne!" Mother shouts. "I am no fool, nephew, and neither is your mother - Dragonstone will go to Rhaenys, and with it all her rights!"
"It is not befitting of a future queen to listen at keyholes," Corlys whispers right against Rhaenys' ear, and she almost jumps - but she heard the shuffle of his soft-soled boots before he reached her, and the cold-salt scent that follows him everywhere from his ships. "Baelon persists in pressing his claim?"
Something smashes from inside Mother's solar, and Rhaenys flinches. Corlys looks embarrassed and worried in equal measure, and Rhaenys wonders - he never knew his parents, lost at sea when he was a babe in the cradle, and his grandmother was the last of her line of House Targaryen, half-mad with visions of the future. He has never had a mother to fight on his behalf. Is he afraid of Mother?
She cannot wait for him to see just how terrible Grandmother is in full flight.
"I was not expecting you," she admits, "but I am glad that you're here. Have you given any further consideration…?"
"I will not be the husband you need," he says, "or the husband that you want, I suspect, but I will be your husband, if you will have me."
"You've meant to say yes the whole time, you rogue," she says, delighted to the point of ignoring Mother and Baelon, still screeching at one another in the solar. "Whatever took you so long in saying it?"
"Well," he says, reaching into his belled sleeve and drawing out a box. "I had to find a suitable betrothal gift, didn't I?"
The ring is dense and plain, polished iron engraved with a whorling pattern that might almost be dragons in flight. Had he presented her with some ancient heirloom of House Velaryon, she would have wondered how well he truly knows her, but this is strong, like she is.
"And I have men searching for Blackfyre," he says. "Your father had it when he fell, so it may yet be with Vayeles."
His beard is soft under her touch, and his smile is brilliant.
"That," she says, "will do for now."
Volantis' bells echo strangely down here belowdecks, repeating and doubling until they ring inside Aemon's head as well as without.
"Above!" one of the slavers shouts. "Above, come on now, we've stock to move!"
Stock, meaning both goods and people. Aemon is not so much a fool or a hypocrite as to deny the slave's bones on which the Freehold was built, but having felt that pain these past months, well. He knows better now.
His wounds have not yet healed since his last whipping, and he is almost glad of it - at least they will not risk him carrying much, not while his back has been oozing blood and pus every day, and so he is given only a single bale to carry down the gangplank for inspection by the hugely tall man below on the dock.
"Master Mopatis expects his merchandise to arrive in perfect condition," the pirate with the ruby in his tooth says, foot to Aemon's seeping bandages. "Do not fall, dragonborn."
He does not fall until he has set his bale down with the rest, and moved aside to let the others in. He trips over an uneven board, or the end of a rope, and simply cannot find his balance.
He has fallen before, face-down, but always in armour, or into his and Jocelyn's soft bed. This aches, and sets his whole back bleeding again, neck and shoulders and arse altogether.
There is a blankness, and a shadow, and then he opens his eyes and the hugely tall man is kneeling beside him.
"This ring," the tall man says, "is a relic of the Freehold."
"It belonged," Aemon says, "to my great-grandfather."
The tall man's smile spreads, and Aemon feels dizzy. Loss of blood or pain or hope, he doesn't know the cause, and it doesn't matter because the tall man is draping him in soft, soft linen, and the heat of the sun is off his wounds.
"I will take the Prince," the tall man calls, "and you will pray for your lives."
The pirates argue, and the tall man barks an order, and there is the sound of fighting. Then the tall man smiles again, and Aemon does his best to return it.
Rhaenys stands at the foot of the steps leading to the throne, wearing the same circlet of beaten silver her father always favoured.
"I have been convinced," Grandfather says, "that the direct line is the best to keep with, to avoid messes in the succession."
Baelon seethes, in the shadows, but Mother and Grandmother glow, and Rhaenys is relieved enough in her security that it eases the sting of her father's absence, just a little.