The distinctive stench of burnt flesh still lingered in the air, an unseen miasma that spoke of madness and the slow, inevitable march into madness. Spots on the carpet and straw-covered floor were stained with soot, bare spots amongst the finery and livery, just like the sores that covered the face of the king.
"These sweet rolls," The king exclaimed, snarling, spitting saliva like a dog in the last grips of hydrophobia. His wizened fingers clutching at the armrests, letting the blades of one-time enemy swords bite into his palms, "They aren't sweet!"
"Your Grace!" The cook squirmed below, quivering in fear, his great girth turned to blubber by the force of his kowtowing demeanor. It's a strange sight to see a man of such vitality forced to his knees below a wizened and twisted man, aged beyond all years by a touch of madness upon his brow.
"Silence!" The king demanded, inflicting a sudden silence on the great hall, like a switchblade suddenly stabbed into the living, breathing heart of court life. Still whispers died before they could be uttered. Those closest to the doors slipped free while the king's attention lingered on the unfortunate soul before him. All knew what would come, such spectacles had become a common occurrence in the lair of the mad.
I stood alone, the usual courtiers had grown sparse, even they could sense the lingering tendrils of insanity in the wind. Could feel the long, slow creep of death eternal if they stayed overlong. Any could die to the whims of the king.
The city would fall, but none know living knew that with certainty but I. None had read the hallowed letters, black on white pages that spelled out the doom yet to come.
The king, in all his madness, turned eyes that would look more fitting on the worst inmates in an asylum toward the gaoler, who stood stiffly by the cook's side. The cook in turn continued to shudder, trembling with fright. He had to already know what was coming, all present could discern the current mood of the king, a black mood that was not easily broken.
Four provinces rising in open rebellion could do that to a monarch whose grip upon the kingdom was already fraying, which had been fraying for years. A kingdom held together by the strength of the king's small council, and not by the vigour of the monarch. The king was sick, and where sickness is, ill things follow.
"Burn him! Summon the pyromancers!" Good King Aerys demanded, commanding the man in gold and white below him to carry out his fell orders.
I grimaced from my place in the shadows, below the head of one of the dragons, staying out of the king's sight, but close enough to see the fallen fruit of my deeds. It was not the cook who soiled the king's sweets. The cook had toiled loyally for King Aerys for many years, still present when many of the servants had been already stripped away, burned by the king, or lured to safer pastures. He was a master of his craft, and I had supped on his creations for all the months that I had lingered within this den of treachery.
He had to take the fall and burn. It was my folly, the dosage not strong enough. To my credit, a poisoner's business was a complicated one. Too much and the taster would succumb before it reached the lips of the king, too little and the king would not succumb. Here it was too little. Poison was a fickle thing, especially for one that was only nominally an expert. An internet expert to be honest. Killing a king was a deed made for those of greater strength.
I was weak. Frail in body and, before this new genesis, in mind as well. Thin limbs, bordering on anorexia. I had to force this pitiful body to eat more to build up the strength I knew I would need. Strength to carry out greater plots, with greater success than bitter flowers in a king's pastry.
There was steel there that lingered, kept my spine straight when I should be bowed by guilt and self-recrimination for the failed plots. For all the innocents that had to suffer so. My path was clear, for the good of the realm, for the good of the seven kingdoms, Aerys must die.
"No, no, no, please your grace! Please! Please! I have a family!" The cook blithered, pushing against the binds that kept him prostrate before the king. Kept him kneeling before an unworthy ruler, unkempt and sallow-faced.
It was a wonder that a king looked no better cared for than a man that spent four days in the dungeons, within the dreaded Black Cells. I forced myself to watch as the Alchemist's Guild acolytes shambled forward, just about tripping over their long robes, the barrel of liquid, un-catalyzed wildfire sloshed in the barrel. I couldn't help but cringe, every time Aerys ordered a death, he gambled with fire in more ways that one. The wildfire was volatile, like nitro-glycerin, it did not like potential energy of any kind.
Potential energy, kinetic energy, one of the two. Maybe I'd be better at toxins and poisons if I had paid more attention during the endless lectures of General Chemistry. Still, I learned enough to at least meddle with the two and meddling was all I had going for me.
"Your grace," one of my ladies-in-waiting murmured, half-hiding behind me, not willing to draw the king's eye.
"Yes?" I answered, tone equally quiet, barely heard over the increasingly frenzied begging of the innocent man I had condemned to death through non-action. Philosophically, I didn't have much to blame on myself for these senseless killings, but this one was personal. It had been I that slipped the supposedly tasteless powder into the king's food. The sugar had evidentially reacted with the poison to render it inert, like the cakes fed to Rasputin by his murderers. Failed there and failed here.
"It is a princess's place to watch the king's justice be carried out," I defended my continued presence, my voice high, lending toward shrill. My words were false, from all accounts this body had been frail in both body and spirit.
The lady-in-waiting turned her face away, the blue eyes and brown hair of a lesser daughter of a lesser house of the crownlands. She shied away from my probing eyes, not daring to meet my own sharp brown. I had no more Dornishwomen in my employ, only Crownlanders. Aerys didn't trust them and my predecessor correctly deduced he would see them burned for their heritage. He remembered the Targaryens brought low by the Rhyonish people of Dorne.
I needed to see this, nonetheless. Needed to see what my incompetence had wrought.
The wildfire splashed, and the cook spluttered for a moment, like a drowned man gasping for air when his head reemerged from the waves. Then the greenish, faintly glowing fluid ignited, sending tongues of green flames dancing across his flesh.
The air was rent with the cook's shriek, splitting the air as he screeched like a dead man. My lips curled back into a grimace, but I did not cover my ears. My ladies-in-waiting quailed, manicured hands slamming into their ears, disturbing their delicate coiffures. I unclenched my teeth, not permitting myself to turn my gaze away from the cook as his flesh boiled and cooked upon his own bones.
The smell that hit the air was nauseating, at once reminding me of burnt pork and turning my stomach at the same time. It was an unholy smell, only hideous by the point of its origin in pain and paranoia. Justified paranoia in this case, but hideous all the same.
One of those behind me dry-retched, then turned and fled the great hall. I did not turn, not daring to draw attention to her fleeing form. It would be unwise to move while the presumed poisoner burned. The king's eye was like Sauron's, always watching, roving over the crowd, watching for 'weakness' or 'deceit.' To show sympathy for those the king burned was anathema in this court.
Once, reason had prevailed. But it had fled with the departure of the crown prince, Rhaegar, the man who could have been king. In his absence, the spymaster, Varys, whispered insidiously in turning the king against the city. Enough to keep the king placated, but just enough that the city suffered.
I hated him. A balding fat eunuch, waddling around with a grim but satisfied smile on his face. He was enemy number dos, and I hated him almost as much as I hated the King. My breaths were shallow, and the screams of a dying man filled my ears. I hated Varys for he was the one that unveiled the subterfuge, that suggested the taster when I first began to pore through Maester Pycelle's tomes of herbal knowledge.
His little birds dogged my steps, but he was still too high in Aery's favour to touch. Not yet, but his comeuppance would be not long in coming.
Jaime Lannister, newest knight of the kingsguard, stood below the king, guarding the ascent up to the Iron Throne.
The cook had ceased screaming, and all I could think was that I needed to be better next time. I had no intention of letting more innocents suffer for my mistakes. Next time the dagger needed to be sure, the poison bitter, and the operation perfect.
Nausea swam in my stomach, and I forced myself to keep watching over the body as it twisted, life long since boiled away. The muscles burned, contracting upon themselves, twisting, making it seem like the man was still alive, but it was just a facsimile.
"Wine," I ordered quietly, and a servant-girl stumbled forward with a glass, followed by another with a pitcher. Tremblingly she filled my glass, and I allowed myself to lift it to parched lips, letting the sour wine wash down my throat, watered down. Alcohol was the only safe thing to drink in this hellhole, everything else was riddled with bacteria or needed pasteurization before I would even dare to drink it.
The wine did nothing to curb the nausea that continued to climb like an unseen caterpillar in my stomach. Some say that you feel butterflies when nervous, but all I could think of was flesh-eating caterpillars squirming through my intestines.
"Dornish wench," King Aerys spat, and I straightened from where I stood in the shadows of the dragon's skull. I stepped out into the light of noonday, that streamed through the narrow windows and let the torchlight dance over my red and black dress. Targaryen colors for a Targaryen house.
"Your Grace," I curtsied, the action as natural as any this body attempted to make. A graceful slight bending which made my head swim, but through it all I kept my composure. Ten thousand curses upon the weakness of this frail body!
Aerys seemed to smile, cracked lips pulled back past the grime filled once-silver hair. He leaned back in the Iron Throne, shifting with discomfort but not uncomfortable to forgo his seat of authority.
"Come to beg permission to flee back to your wretched den?" Aerys cackled, yellow nails scraping against iron, "Or maybe to admit your place in this plot to kill me?"
I stood silent for a moment, letting Aerys vent just a little of his madness. So soon after ordering death, he would be satiated for at least a short while. A slight intruding of reason through the veil of madness.
"Have not the Dornish ever been your loyal servants?" I asked, voice still girlishly clear. It carried farther than I intended in the silence that followed a public execution.
Aerys' brow twitched. For better or for ill, I had caught his attention, "Four of the seven kingdoms, parts of the kingdom that your ancestors built, now fight in open rebellion! Haven't the Dornish stood by your side through all of this tumultuous time?"
"Westeros is mine, Martell," Aerys said, glaring, a line of spittle stretching down from his pale lips. My gambit was in full play. If I only could get enough agency to act. I needed to take this chance.
I ignored the way my heart thumped in my chest, how I felt lightheaded where I stood, dressed in red and black funeral colors.
"Mace Tyrell sits with an army of a hundred-thousand besieging a single keep. A hundred-thousand which could have marched to assist my prince, Rhaegar, your heir."
"A pitiful heir," Aerys murmured, the glint of madness leaching back into his sallow face. He reached up with a yellowed nail to pick at a sore on his cheek, worrying it with filth-covered fingers. I held back a shudder.
"Tywin Lannister does not move from the Westerlands, he looks to see where the wind is blowing," I continued, "A pitiful action for a lion."
Aerys' attention snapped back down to me where I stood far below both the Iron Throne and the dais of the throne. The courtiers that still lingered tittered in place, whispers rising. They could sense the whim of the king was in flux. Loyalists and opportunists alike.
"Yes, it is, isn't it?" he said, fingers curling into fists, "Tywin a coward? I'd like to see it."
"You are seeing it, your grace," I dared to say, my throat felt parched, and it was to my credit that my voice didn't tremble, "Where are the Lannisters? Did they march to aid your heir?"
Aerys seemed to ponder this, his eyes wandering over the great scales and skulls of the dragons of his forefathers. His nails tapped against the metal. Visions of my own flesh melting from my bones, joining the flesh of my burned servants danced through my mind. Twisting in agony for eternity.
"Who marched with the prince?" I pontificated, "It was the Dornish! My brother marches with ten thousand Dornish warriors, all but leaving Dorne undefended, all for the rule of the rightful king of Westeros! When all else forsook their bonds of loyalty, the Dornish remained!"
Aerys leaned back, sharp eyes lingering over the court, the eyes of a man who watched for a crossbowman in the shadows, a man who watched for a dagger in the dark unceasingly.
"Give me leave-"
"To what? Dornish wench? Flee to your brother in the south? Forsake me like the other traitors of traitor houses?" Aerys stood in place, tottering, almost teetering, and glared down at me, fury burning in his gaze.
"Give me leave to seek out these traitors-," I raised my voice, a grand gesture to the corpse before me, "To find those that seek the ruin of both house Martell and Targaryen, and end them! Give me this power, this permission, your grace!"
"Begone!" Aerys hissed and sank back down, teetering no more. Splotches of color were high on his pale cheeks and he huffed from the exertion. His madness-filled eyes watched me as I curtsied again and walked backward until it was polite to turn my back. I lingered for a moment, watching his furious gaze sweep over the hall, daring any to approach him.
He was the dragon in a hall of lambs. At least for a time. The viper lay in weight for the dragon to rest its madness-addled head.
Then the fangs would strike swift and true.