As a child Aemond had always liked visiting Oldtown, although his voyages on the Roseroad always began on a bitter note. Aegon was wont to disembark ahead of the royal procession on Sunfyre, with a sneer on his face as he bid Aemond farewell, while Helaena left Dreamfyre to languish in the Dragonpit so that Aemond would not feel alone. Neither his sister's pity nor his brother's self-adulation were welcome to Aemond. Yet it never took more than two days for his dragonless mood to disperse, for on the way to the city of his grandfather he would see beautiful, flower-decked towns like Ashford and Tumbletown; merchant caravans and hedge knights wading through fields of flowers like shorebirds in a marsh; and the great castle of Highgarden itself, from whose walls the sunset's slow dance on the River Mander was like a painting wrought by the Father Above for all his creatures.
Often Aemond coursed on his pony ahead of his mother's carriage, pretending to be a knight of the Reach before the great Aegon vanquished the last Gardener King (in his imagination, the Targaryen banner couched under Aemond's arm was a lance), readying for war with Dorne or the Westerlands. Mother would always send the Kingsguard to ride after him so that he would not go too far—in Aemond's fantasies they were his leal bannermen, charging with him into glorious carnage.
But those days were over. Now, Aemond sat numbly in a stifling little carriage with his mother and her handmaidens. Now, even Aegon rode with them, out of sympathy for Aemond; and though he did not say it, Aemond knew being on horseback immensely bored his brother. Father, of course, had already returned to King's Landing.
"We should've gone back with my father," Aemond heard Aegon furtively say to Ser Criston one day, as the two rode by the carriage. "This Trystane fellow could have been sent for."
"The Queen wishes for the whole Citadel at the disposal for the care of your brother, my prince."
"The whole Citadel, just to stick a coloured rock into his eye."
"Do not be blithe, Aegon. The technique is not a simple, but we know that Maester Trystane has mastered it. Moreover we want to discourse with the maesters about all manner of things, like how I should train Aemond in arms such that his disadvantage will not become a weakness."
"A disadvantage is by definition a weakness," Aegon said with a snort. "Why does my brother need to be good with sword and lance when he's got Vhagar?"
"Your namesake Aegon killed Qhorin Volmark in single combat with Blackfyre to take the island of Great Wyk. With that same blade, Maegor the Cruel fought the Warrior's Sons in a trial of seven for the throne. He was the last alive of fourteen. Your great-grandfather, Jaehaerys, fought on horseback in Dorne—"
"Pity you weren't there to stop him, aye Cole?"
"My father rode with Lord Roger Baratheon. I have no lost love for the bandits he put down."
"Yes, yes. But you are Dornish all the same. Know this, Aemond and I will rain seven hells upon your arid little country if it stirs up trouble again."
"But what if you must take a castle, rather than incinerate it? What if you must chase brigands through a forest in the Stormlands? What if your dragons fall?"
Aegon's tone grew even more sardonic. "Who will make Vhagar fall? Your Stormlander brigand in the forest?"
"There are weapons, my prince, that can take down even dragons. Meraxes fell at Hellholt."
"And what did my namesake Aegon and his sister Visenya do, Cole, when they heard that your countrymen butchered their sister?"
The last two days on the Roseroad felt like a fortnight. Just when Aemond believed the hurt in his eye was at last gone—he had gone three entire days without milk of the poppy, and even went out for tentative little rides on his mother's courser—it returned with a vengeance. At first Grand Maester Mellos said it was a false start, the final bout of his old pain instead of the first sign of a new attack, but within a few hours everything came crashing down.
With the renewal of Aemond's physical suffering came the renewal of Queen Alicent's anguish. Her face began contorting into unqueenly expressions, whenever she beheld Aemond clenching his jaw in pain, similar to those it had taken on that freakish night at Driftmark. She ceased eating breakfast, and began praying—incessantly—over the tranquillised form of her son, who sometimes started up in fits of terror from his poppy dreams. She ensured that her consoling arms would always be available to him. Three or four times she savagely berated Aegon for inebriating himself at Laena's funeral; twice she yelled at Ser Criston for his neglect during the same. These outbursts were always followed by pitiful gestures of apology. Once she asked Aegon if he would like to ride ahead to the next village to procure himself some hippocras.
Aemond's behaviour, though much milder than his mother's on account of his being sedate under milk of the poppy three-quarters of the time, was no less erratic. Though his body had become deliriously weak, his imagination worked more powerfully than it ever worked in his life. It was as though the physical power he could not channel alchemically transferred into his spirit. He thought, simultaneously, of the entirety of his life; of the entire history of his house; of the tragedy of Valyria's Doom; of his mother's love for him; of his father's coldness towards him; of the jealousy and stupidity of the Strong bastards; of the conceit of young Velaryon girls; and of the seven heavens and hells. He felt, in the span of two days, more hate, more love, more envy, and more desire than he had ever known in his entire life—but none of this was vocalised to those in the royal entourage. Instead, he simply asked those closest to him, whether they thought the Stranger and the Father were one and the same, as some heretic septons two centuries before the Conquest believed.
One evening, Aemond woke up and knew he was in Oldtown. The carriage shook; its wheels rolled over ancient cobblestone roads. Outside the carriage, Ser Criston, and some men with unfamiliar, hoarsely accented voices—presumably local guardsmen—yelled at the gibbering smallfolk to make way for the queen.
"Will we visit Great-Uncle Ormund and Daeron, mother?"
"They will visit us, sweetling," cooed Queen Alicent. "At the Citadel."
Aemond was disappointed but did not protest. He had a strong affinity for the eponymous tower of his maternal family; the Lord of the Hightower always arranged chambers on the higher floors of his vertical fortress for his royal niece's children. The view afforded by the windows of these rooms, of the dark Honeywine spreading into the Whispering Sound, was sublime.
Lost in his own memories again, Aemond's vacant eye began to ache. He swallowed a spoonful of milk of the poppy and sank comfortably into sleep.
He was waken up by his mother no more than an hour later. Apparently they were already in the courtyard of the Citadel.
"Princess Helaena of the House Targaryen, daughter of His Grace the King Viserys, first of his name. Prince Aemond of the House Targaryen, son of His Grace the King Viserys, first of his name. Queen Alicent of the Houses Targaryen and Hightower, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms, and daughter of the Port."
A dozen maesters in grey overalls bowed as Aemond disembarked from the carriage. A platoon of guards of the Oldtown city watch, habited in modest green garbs and armed with lustreless iron spears, heralded the way to the entrance of the Citadel's ancient entry fortress. It was the third, or perhaps fourth time that Aemond had been in this particular courtyard, but his first time seeing it with only one eye. He felt dizzy as he walked. A moderately corpulent Archmaester wearing a black iron mask—presumably the Seneschal—awaited them.
"Where is Aegon?" Aemond asked his mother.
"He left for a jaunt in the city while you were asleep, dear. Ser Erryk is with him."
The maester and Queen Alicent exchanged a couple of words. Pity that Aemond did not want was heaped onto him. They walked through another courtyard, into a huge, sleek limestone building that looked like a Sept built five hundred years ago. Curiosity alleviated Aemond's morose humour; this was a part of the Citadel he had not visited in the royal progresses of his earlier childhood. Its corridors were wide, lined with torches that gleamed with pure white flames, and quite empty. A heavy odour of flowers lingered in the air.
At the end of a hallway they reached one of the Citadel's many wooden elevators. The scrawny young novice who operated the elevator dropped his jaw at the approach of the royal retinue. He hastily bowed and murmured an expression of simultaneous gratitude, apology, and awe, before pulling a huge lever to permit the motley group of nobles, maesters, and guards to ascend.
They disembarked onto what was surely the uppermost floor of the building, into a narrow corridor, whereupon the Seneschal rapped on a polished ironwood door. He was received by a lean, ageing maester whose coppery skin made Aemond surmise he was the Dornish maester they talked about in the carriage—a bastard grandson of Morion Martell, whose late sister had sired yet another bastard with Vaelerys Saan, himself a Lyseni bastard of Saera Targaryen—and whose prominent black eyebrows and hooked nose gave him the aspect of a mature falcon. The maester's expression, however, was mild and forbearing, much like that of the recently reinstated Hand of the King.
"Maester Trystane, I trust you have received my Raven?" asked Queen Alicent.
"That I have, your grace." The Dornish maester's voice was slow and lyrical. "I am at your service. Come in."
An hour later, Aemond found himself once again reposing on a soft surface, with milk of the poppy running thick through his veins. The ceiling of Maester Trystane's office made him think of the cellars of the Red Keep. In a few minutes he would fall asleep, and for the following hours sharp metal instruments would slowly ply apart the eyelids of his right eye, or what remained of it, so that a sapphire—one mined in a river valley in the southernmost island of the Summer Isles, and cut by a celebrated Braavosi lapidary—could be planted into the right orbit of his skull. Maester Trystane had presented Aemond a magnificent range of gems. He had been tempted to choose an amethyst or emerald, before his eyes laid upon the sapphire necklace resting on his mother's collarbone. It was one she always wore in Oldtown, the city in the realm where she smiled the most.
Three leagues east of the Citadel, still along the embankment of the Honeywine, the morning sun shone upon the Seven Shrines. It was the fourteenth day of the seventh month. Giant flowers from Essos, lichen-covered willows, Dornish wisterias, and marble fountains spurting crystalline water surrounded seven pavilions—each large enough to be a small country sept—of the seven divine colours, from whose ceilings suspended enormous bells of the same colours in metallic hues. The Shrine of The Father, with rose-red rubyish eves, erected the tallest, and indeed took the middle position in the series of shrines. Attending it was the High Septon himself, with a golden mallet for the crimson Bell of The Father, flanked on either side by three argentine cardinals of the Most Devout.
In increasing order of smallness seaward: the Shrine of The Crone, shrouded in lavender, attended to by a troupe of elderly septas conjointly wielding a staff entwined with purple ivy; the Shrine of the Mother, wherein three well endowed highborn ladies in velvet robes with faces painted in indigo likewise conjointly handled a staff, this time coiled with dark bluish chrysanthemums; and finally the Shrine of the Maiden, a blithe little temple with a ceiling that seemed made of sapphire—in reality polished stained glass—as diaphanous and clear as an oasis in Dorne, where the prettiest maidens of all Oldtown (there were both Lord Ormund's comeliest granddaughters, and particularly winsome smallfolk girls), wore thin blue silk dresses and laurels of forget-me-nots, together were to ring a bell likewise inlaid with flowers, with a large crystal staff.
Maia Sand, a pale, lithe, black-haired maiden of twelve who had a vermilion-red ruby for her left eye—its aspect was brilliant when it reflected the morning sun—regarded the Shrine of the Maiden with simultaneous longing and spite in her dark right one. Along with a dwarf, a Summer Islander, and an old knight who had lost his leg fighting Myrish pirates, Maia attended the decrepit Shrine of the Stranger and its massive corroded brass bell, second only in size to the Bell of The Father. They were dressed in grey garbs strewn with leaves, and their faces were painted vividly green. Where the blue Maidens attracted the attention of the morning devotees for their comeliness, the Strangers were looked upon with a mix of fear, contempt, and mocking. Their bellbeater was the trunk of a Dornish willow sapling finished with black stone.
The High Septon rang the Bell of The Father. Its imperious clanging was followed by the more mellow tones of the bells of Crone, Mother, and Maiden, before those of the Smith and Warrior joined the fray—respectively engendered from a brawny blacksmith in a orange cassock striking an orange steel bell with a hammer, and a handsomely armoured knight prodding a golden bell with an ancient ceremonial lance. Finally, Halfpenny, Xholhanar, Ser Rolland, and Maia struck their bell.
Thinner than the six other bells, the chime of the Bell of the Stranger was a shrill sound that lended a certain coldness to the divine strains of the other six Shrines. Its ringing heralded the chiming of the other bells of the city—the Starry Sept and the Lord's Sept always waited for the Stranger of the Seven Shrines to sound its first note before sounding their own. As Maia mechanically swung her delicate arms back and forth, she discovered the grace of the God she served slowly blossom in her heart. She no longer desired to be with the Maidens. She wouldn't have swapped her place with any of those laureled silken girls, not even if the High Septon gave her ten silver moons. Neither did she resent them; their task was as necessary as hers.
A tear rolled down Maia's cheek. The moment was sublime, though her ears began to ache and the sounds in them began to mix. Though it was really Xholhanar and Ser Rolland whose strength propelled the bellbeater, Maia felt power rippling through her. The Stranger was evidently grateful for her summoning of him. But as the bells began to fade, Maia remembered it was the thirty-first name day of her father. Her father whose lilac eyes were girded by deep black brows. Her father who died six years ago.
After changing out of her ceremonial habit into a dull red cotton smock, Maia met Wyllis, a spindly, fumbling seventeen-year-old acolyte of the Citadel who was often her chaperone. His thin face was pale but pink at the cheeks, and his hair was a dense mass of dark brown curls. He wore a necklace with a single link of metal; black iron, signifying expertise in ravenry. Like Maia, Wyllis was a bastard; unlike her, he had never met his father. His mother was a serving woman at the Quill and Tankard of Northern origin. He spoke in that cadence particular to Citadel acolytes who affected the refinement of their favourite Archmaesters. They embarked on an upstream barge.
"Hail, little strangeress. How was the ceremony?"
"'Twas ceremonious, I suppose," said Maia, staring into the sea as her chin rested on the barge's bulwark. "Ser Agrivane hit the Bell of the Warrior with an old Andal lance."
"Was it a lance well-made?"
"Do you think 'twas?"
"Do you think it was," Wyllis said with vague irritability. "Don't drawl, we're not in Dorne."
"'Twas a lanse well-forged you think?" Maia asked in her best imitation of a Plankytown poleboater.
"If 'twas, it's not a real Andal lance. Real Andal lances are without ornament; they are spears cast from crude Rhoynish iron," Wyllis proclaimed smugly, scratching his nose, "and in this hundred-and-twentieth year of our conqueror, any that remain would be completely corroded."
"Since when did you have a link in metallurgy?"
"I don't, but I do have something to show you." The acolyte put his hand into his robe. He pulled out a link of bronze.
"Astrology?"
"Astronomy."
"Seven blessings to you, Willy. Clever boy." Maia took Wyllis' hand with her both her own. She rubbed it. Her friend's flesh was warm but the metal it held was cold. "You've doubled the weight of your chain."
"More than doubled," the acolyte corrected. "Bronze is heavier than black iron. I'll have it forged tonight."
The acolyte and the one-eyed girl sat in silence for some time. As the barge went southward, so did the Honeywine widen and increasingly brighten to the rise of the sun. Maia kept staring into the river; if she faced the other passengers of the barge, they would stare at her eye. Her mood that morning was not one for the attention of strangers, for she could not stop thinking about The Stranger. She thought of asking Wyllis for his view on that most opaque of Gods, but knew his least favourite subject was theology. It was anyhow he who broke the silence.
"Your uncle wants you to go straight to him once we disembark at the Citadel."
"So early? What for?"
Wyllis blinked at her. "You don't know?"
"Apparently not. What's it?"
"You really don't know."
"Well, maybe I don't want to know."
Wyllis fiddled with his link. A smile curled on his lips. "Then I won't tell you."
"Then don't. Then I won't go to Uncle Trystane. Then you'll get in trouble," said Maia, returning his triumphant expression with one of her own.
Wyllis glared at her and sighed. "Prince Aemond Targaryen is in your uncle's office right now. He's to have a gem placed in his eye, just as you have one placed in yours."
"Very funny, Willy," Maia drawled joylessly. "I suppose the Queen's there as well?"
"Yes she is," Wyllis the acolyte said quite seriously. "With more than one knight of the Kingsguard I'd wager."
Maia inspected her friend's face. Though Wyllis was neither particularly inclined nor disinclined to jokes and japes, he was bad at withholding laughter and seeing mischief to its conclusion. The face that stared back at Maia's was a blank one. Her right eye expanded in surprise.
"It was at Princess Laena's funeral that Prince Aemond somehow lost one of his eyes," Wyllis continued. "But he also claimed his deceased aunt's dragon—yes, that dragon. Queen Visenya's Vhagar. It's mad, he's ten bloody years old. Apparently one of Princess Rhaenyra's children got jealous, and cut Aemond's eye out with a fang of the Black Dread. They've got a few of those at Driftmark you know. Or was it Princess Rhaenyra herself? Some say it was the Sea Snake's men, who got drunk and caught Aemond as he dismounted the dragon near High Tide. In any case, the secondborn son of the King is in your uncle's office right now."
For a moment Maia said nothing. She recalled the prince in question; she had seen him at least once before—two years ago, by the side of the King, placing red carnations under the Shrine of the Father. Queen Alicent was with them, too, and she was beautiful—but Aemond was a snotty little boy.
"I hope my uncle takes his other eye."
"Maia!" The acolyte exclaimed with indignation. "What's gotten into you today? You've had a dour air about you since we got on this boat."
"It's my father's thirty-first name day."
"I'm sorry"—Wyllis placed an arm on Maia's shoulder, only for her to shove it off—"truly, but does that make it fair, or wise, to wish harm upon a royal prince?"
"Do you know how my father died?"
Wyllis paused to ensure that his words would be carefully chosen. "In the Stepstones, fighting under the banner of Qoren Martell."
A memory of her father flashed through Maia's mind. Her last memory of him. He stood on a beautiful poleboat, in black Lysene chainmail with gleaming green jades embedded in his belt, upon which hung a beautifully painted scabbard concealing a scimitar. He serenely paddled down the Greenblood. His long black hair blew in the wind, and when another warrior, less elegant and powerful than he, stepped onto his boat, his lilac eyes flashed with sorrow as he stared back at Maia for the last time in his life.
"He was burned alive by Aemond's uncle."
"War is tragic, Maia, but Prince Daemon did a service to all Westeros in securing the Stepstones. Oldtown may depend on the Narrow Sea less than Driftmark, but we need her all the same."
Wyllis' opinion was also that of Uncle Trystane, who spoke often of the cost Dorne's stubbornness would incur upon herself; but to Maia the significance of all these places, aggregately considered, amounted to nothing when weighed against the heaviness of her father's absence. The statue of the Warrior in the Starry Sept was an old knight of the Reach; but the Warrior had never revealed itself more fully to Maia than in the form of her father, abandoning her forever, in his ink-black Lysene chainmail. The acolyte perceived the impenetrability of the girl's intellect, and took instead to soothing her spirit. He took her hand and gently kneaded her palm.
By the time they arrived at the Citadel's dock, Maia had forgiven her friend. She considered his opinions too trivial to take seriously, in the way guards of the city watch were more permissive towards the scrawny acolytes of the Citadel than they were to the populace at large. Yet the barge ride had left her feeling constricted and vaguely morose—she needed to stretch her legs.
"Were you going to have this forged tonight?" she asked Wyllis, fingering the piece of bronze in his hand.
"I already told you I am."
"Not anymore you aren't!"
Maia snatched the link out of the acolyte's hand, leapt out of the barge, and broke into a sprint.
"Hey!" yelled Wyllis, struggling to climb out the boat. "Stop her! The girl with the ruby eye, stop her!"
But the girl with the ruby eye had already fled into the Citadel, past one courtyard into another, up a winding staircase in a dark, narrow tower, onto a rooftop, where her little feet clattered against the mildewed red tiles.
"Maia!" Wyllis shouted from below. A bewildered maester passed him. "No time for games! Your uncle will be furious with us both if you don't go to him right now."
Maia Sand stuck her tongue out at the confounded acolyte and dangled the piece of metal by her fingertips. For a moment an expression that made the Wyllis look thrice his age came over his face, but Maia's pity was not stirred. The southern side of the Citadel was a labyrinthine mass of small towers, old maester's homes, courtyards overtaken by weeds, and twisting oaks. Maia traversed the canopy of this maze with monkeyish agility while Wyllis struggled to chase her from the underbush. She occasionally stopped to taunt him; he would raise his vexed face to gaze upon her curling lips and twinkling ruby eye. It was only when they reached the Citadel's Godswood that she unceremoniously threw the bronze link back at him.