Author's Note: Thanks for all the reviews and supports lords and ladies. Y'all rock. Second a/n has a housekeeping note.
I hope you enjoy and review this update.
Chapter 12
Original Word Count: 2976
Revision Word Count: 3674
They'd turned Flea Bottom into a funeral pyre.
The fire that had started during the Sack had not been set intentionally, unlike the burning of the river wharfs, but it had spread quickly and savagely. Randyll Tarly, commanding the main force of Aelor's army, had sent teams through the shieldwalls and the chaos of the sack to contain it as best as they could. As the serious fighting had died down, he'd added more and more to their number, eventually committing most of the loyalist force to the task. While that had successfully stopped the fire from escaping the slum, it had already grown too large to save Flea Bottom itself. The morning after the battle she still burned hot and high, the army encircling it and patrolling the streets and rooftops around it to ensure the flame did not take any more of the city.
The bodies of the dead, lord and peasant alike, were carted to the raging bonfire from wherever they had died across the city. Corpses bred disease and thusly had to be dealt with, and there were thousands of them in the capitol; soldiers of both sides who were killed in the fighting, citizens of the city who were victimized by the attack, even merchants and visitors who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. All came to the fire, hauled there in fly-infested mounds by tired mules and grim men. Soldiers were stripped of arms and armor before being tossed, alongside the dead innocents, into the heart of the flames. The stench of burning flesh clung to the city like a Lyseni gown, ugly work for hard hearts. Several septons, tougher of will and stomach than most of their brethren, repeated death rites for hours, a communal prayer over a communal end.
The wagons of armor and weapon were hauled away from the fire to the Red Keep and into the custody of Aelor' quartermasters, headed by Lord Donnel Buckwell. The armaments that could be identified as belonging to lords—Brax, Falwell and Jast had been recovered already, and more were sure to be found—were set aside to be returned to the dead men's families, per the orders of King Rhaegar Targaryen. The rest—spears of levies, swords and armor of knights and retainers—were sorted and distributed among the loyalist forces, per the orders of Aelor Targaryen, Hand of the King.
That same man rode through King's Landing in the light of morning, ten of his companions riding alongside. The scent of burning bodies and buildings clung to the quiet streets, the smoke black and billowing in the sky behind him. The capital was a massive, sprawling city of hundreds of thousands of people, but the streets were almost empty of anyone not a soldier, few of the smallfolk venturing from their homes so soon after the attack. Thrice, though, the prince passed carts of mounded dead. One of those had a child, a young lad of no more than eight, sprawled across the top. The Dragon of Duskendale had glanced at it, then turned his head.
Many Lannister men had undoubtedly used the sheer size of the population to their advantage, discarding their weapons and armor for stolen or stripped civilian garb once it was clear the day was lost. The prince was certain there were dozens throughout the city, but there wasn't anything he could do about them now; besides, in small groups or alone as they were they could do little. Except try and assassinate me, I suppose. Ser Barristan had remained with Rhaegar at Aelor's instructions, but Aelor had honored the knight's requests and kept the ten men with him as a guard. Together, they were on par with one Barristan the Bold.
Two or three men are not my concern, the fortress inside a fortress that Tywin Lannister and his retainers have made of the Great Sept of Baelor is.
The Lord Paramount of the Westerlands had realized rather quickly that his men were too disorganized and focused on pillaging to throw Aelor and his attackers back. Instead, Lord Tywin had rallied close to seven hundred of his men, stripped the Street of Steel for all the weapons they could carry, and pulled back to the top of Visenya's Hill. His men had charged the Mud Gate, heavy fighting taking place before they were thrown back by footmen under Lord Cleyton Byrch, but it was soon discovered that it had been nothing but a gory diversion. Fishmongers Square, a maze of a market located just inside the Mud Gate, had been picked clean of food and drink, as had the bakeries along the Street of Flour. While men fought and bled and died, Tywin and his advisors had used the chaos to carry as many rations as they could to the home of the High Septon.
They'd even had the audacity to hoist a roaring lion banner over the sept. Aelor clenched his jaw so tightly at the sight of it that his teeth nearly shattered.
"Strong shield," Renfred Rykker called, having been Aelor's trusted representative in the war council while he had recovered and reunited with Rhaegar the night before. "You look like hell."
"Stronger sword," Aelor responded, dismounting Warrior with a barely concealed groan. His companions dismounted around him, Desmond taking the reins of Warrior and leading the stallion and his own horse towards the temporary stable. The other knights in his guard did the same, joining other honor guards waiting for their lieges. "I feel worse." It was true. Aelor's face had been restitched but still gave him a monstrous appearance, and it hurt like all seven of the hells.
Ren glanced at the wound, wincing sympathetically. "How does it feel?"
Like it is going to kill me. Like a thousand pinpricks of red-hot needles. Like my eye is going to swell and burst and leave me blind.
"It hurts."
The big man in blue fell into step besides him as Aelor entered the simple, squat building in the shadow of Visenya's Hill. It still smelled of steel and billows fire, clinging to the timbers and stone of the interior even after the Lannister's had stripped the smithy clean of arms and armament. A table of rough wooden planks, once having displayed the smith's ware, now held a map of King's Landing. Two others, shoved end to end, held a map of the whole of Westeros. Chairs of all different makes and styles had been moved in around the "T" the tables made, clearly "borrowed" from the surrounding businesses and homes. It was as ramshackle of a headquarters Aelor had ever seen, but it was close to their target and spacious enough for the advisors.
Several of those were already huddled around the maps, mid conversation. Flags, red for Lannister and black for Targaryen, showed the positions of men in the city. There were a few other Lion holdouts, one at the Dragonpit and another on the Street of Silk, but those were minor and were being methodically overrun. Tywin and the men with him were the ones that mattered, and to them Aelor had gone.
Lord Randyll Tarly, lean and beginning to bald, had been given command of the city while the Targaryen brothers had gotten reacquainted. In addition to containing the Flea Bottom Fire, he'd restored order to the rest of the city quickly and capably, implementing frequent patrols that kept looting to a minimum as well as isolated Lannister resistance. The man himself stood up straight as Aelor entered, his massive greatsword of Valyrian steel—Heartsbane—sheathed across his back. Tarly's face was grim, his bearded jaw hard-set. "Prince Aelor," he said more in acknowledgement than greeting, hard grey eyes meeting the prince's violet ones and holding them as the others in the room echoed his greeting.
"Lord Tarly, my lords," Aelor nodded in return. The Dragon of Duskendale didn't quite like the man, for Tarly had a somewhat nasty disposition that made truly liking him difficult, but Aelor greatly respected his talent and efficiency. "You've done an impressive job. King's Landing hasn't been this disciplined in a century." Tarly nodded but said nothing, never one for pleasantries. That was fine with the Dragon of Duskendale; he was sore and tired and wasn't in the mood to be pleasant anyway. "How long can he hold out?"
"We're unsure, my prince," said Lord Cleyton Byrch. Though more of a tactician than a warrior, Aelor's direct vassal had personally commanded the shieldwall at the Mud Gate and acquitted himself well. "We have no way of knowing how much food and water he managed to stow away."
"We do know he can't escape," Tarly said, gesturing towards the black flags at each gate with a gray gauntlet. "The city is locked down completely; we aren't letting anyone in or anyone out, with no exceptions."
Aelor stroked his beard as he stared at the map, focused on the mass of red atop Visenya's Hill. "Seven hundred you say. More than enough to make a bloody mess of things were we to storm the Sept, and they have seven towers to hide in."
"With plenty of archers in them all, Prince Aelor," said Jon Connington, voice neutral. "Our skirmishers have been trading shots with them all through night." Rhaegar's protégé and the Lord of Griffin's Roost in the Stormlands, he had been Hand of the King for a brief period before falling out of favor with Aerys. He could have reasonably expected to be restored to the office now that Rhaegar had come to power, but the new king had chosen Aelor instead, appointing Connington to the war council but no further positions. It remained to be seen how well the red-haired knight would take it.
The Dragon of Duskendale didn't give a solitary fuck if he was at peace with it or if it made him furious. He did not care for Connington, finding his obsession with Aelor's brother as unsettling as Rhaegar's prophecy.
But as a man in love with my brother's wife, I suppose I don't have all that much room to judge now do I.
"You're right that it would be a bloody affair, but we do have the numbers to assault it." Tarly said. "There will be heavy casualties, but they have nowhere to flee to. A few hours bloodshed and it will be over."
"As will the lives of hundreds of our men," Aelor countered. "We're going to need every sword we have to fight the Rebellion's true strength."
"You know as well as I that we cannot leave a hostile force inside the city's gates, Prince Aelor," Tarly countered.
Aelor shook his head. "Of course not. If we must attack, we attack. But the army won't be moving out for several days. It will take that amount of time to rest and ready the supply trains, and we must affirm Rhaegar as king and ensure the rest of the city is firmly under control." Aelor gestured in the vague direction of The Great Sept of Baelor. "They are going nowhere, or so you tell me. That gives us time to come up with another way."
"Baratheon—" Connington began.
"Doesn't have the strength to attack King's Landing," Aelor cut in with another shake of his head. "Scouts and spies put Prince Oberyn and the Dornish a mere two days away, while Baratheon has reunited with Stark and Arryn at Riverrun just three days ago. Oberyn will beat them here with days to spare. The Lannisters gained the gates through deception, but the rebels have no chance of that. They can't take King's Landing, and they won't try."
Aelor stretched, trying to work the soreness from his joints. If I do have to storm a fortress, I don't want to be slow. A sept would be a hell of a place to die. "Give it time, my lords. An opportunity will arise, and we will take it."
Rhaenys seemed wary of her father. The petty part of Elia loved her for it.
The same royals who had fled the city in a panic a day ago returned to it quietly an hour before dusk. They'd left on a smuggler's ship from a hidden cove she'd had no prior knowledge of and returned in a crew boat off Aleqou Garantis' finest ship to the very well-known dock at the base of the cliffs, where two men awaited them.
Rhaegar Targaryen was one of them. His brother was the other.
Elia had not seen her husband for several moons, since before the world had fallen apart. There had been no letters, no couriers, nothing since that night on Dragonstone when he had left as he usually did to "do my duty". She'd thought nothing of it at the time. She'd thought of little else since.
Rhaenys shied into her as she came to a stop before the man she'd once shared a life with. He met her gaze evenly, holding her eyes until she dropped them to look him over. Still the same tall Valyrian, handsome and sharply dressed in the black and red of his house. The only changes were the dark bruises on his face and the crown on his head, a heavy thing of red gold with gemstone eyed dragons at its points. The crown of his ancestors. Of Aegon the Fourth, of Daeron the Second, of Aerys the First. And of his father, the Mad King.
That could mean only one thing.
Elia looked back behind her, to Rhaella only now disembarking, one hand gripping her son and the other the arm of Prince Lewyn. The woman had also seen what rest on her eldest son's head. Her face gave nothing away, but she glanced down at Viserys, who was tugging her hand impatiently. The Princess of Dorne—now Queen of the Seven Kingdoms—would not miss Aerys, but her heart went out to the young man who didn't know any better than to idolize him.
"Rhaenys, my love. Do you not recognize me?"
Elia turned back around, Rhaegar's soft voice bringing emotions she had been carefully tamping down back in a rush. Anger, shame, hurt, concern, so many all at once that her knees almost buckled and betrayed her. He was smiling at Rhaenys, who clearly did recognize her father but was hesitant.
Another voice spoke aloud the reason they all knew, its deep tones pulsing through Elia like they always did. "I doubt it. You disappeared on her, remember."
She turned her head to look at its source and gasped in shock.
Aelor too had changed, in the moons he'd been hunting Robert Baratheon through the Stormlands—or maybe only recently, judging by how fresh the stitching over half his features looked. Two jagged lines of it, one from hairline to eyebrow of the right eye, the other, wider one starting at that cheekbone and carving down to the hinge of his bearded jaw. She could smell the cloying scent of herbs and ointments rubbed into the wound to try and prevent infection and could see the pain in her goodbrother's eyes even as he gave half a smile, those same stitches pulling oddly. "Don't worry. It's worse than it looks."
She almost reached her hand up to touch the wound, every fiber in her wanting to, but she caught herself in time. Gods, there is too much going on at once.
Aelor sensed her difficulty. "I'd ask to hold Rhaenys, but I doubt she'd like that much in my current state." As if to confirm that, the young girl looked from her father to her favorite uncle before giving half a whimper and hiding her face in Elia's neck. Aelor chuckled, though Elia knew it killed Aelor to see Rhaenys afraid of him. "I'll go help mother, shall I?" He gently patted Elia once on the shoulder, speaking low. "I am glad you are safe."
He started to walk away but stopped abruptly, looking at something behind Elia. She too turned, and with a start found Ser Manfred Darke had appeared mere inches behind her right shoulder, glaring up at Rhaegar with such ferocity she wondered if it might pierce her husband like swords.
"Manfred," Aelor said, tone indicating he hadn't sensed the man approach either. "Thank you for getting my family out safely."
The squat boulder of a man answered without turning his glare away from Rhaegar. "Only doing my duty, my prince."
When it became clear Manfred had no intention of moving, Aelor spoke again. "Come, let us leave the king and queen to talk."
Manfred lowered his head like a bull about to charge, not budging an inch. "It was you who ordered me to serve the Princess above any other fucker."
The rush of affection she felt for the ugly knight was enough to make her genuinely smile, despite everything going on around her. Aelor laughed outright, a great booming one that had to hurt his face. "By the Seven you're right. We'll let the queen decide then." With that the Targaryen prince moved away, joining Ashara Dayne with Aegon, Prince Lewyn, Rhaella and Viserys far enough down the dock to give them a sense of privacy.
Elia glanced at Rhaegar, who was meeting the hostile glare of Manfred Darke with one eyebrow raised. Still smiling at the knight, she spoke for the first time. "Peace, Ser Manfred." She extended Rhaenys, still shy and uncertain, towards him. The little girl reached out her arms at once, having taken a liking to rude Ser Manfred despite his best efforts. "Take Rhaenys and join the others please, so I may speak with my husband alone."
Manfred growled—there was no other word for it—but he obeyed her command at once. Bowing stiffly and only to her, he took Rhaenys just as rigidly in both hands. Turning on his heel, he walked away in his stomping gate, little girl still held out in front of him with both hands, his arm fully extended. It did Elia good to hear Rhaenys giggle as she was carried in that manner the entire length of the dock.
Rhaegar, to his credit, had no anger in his voice when he spoke. "A bit too impertinent. We can't have that in public."
She whirled on him, smile gone. "If you lay a hand on Ser Manfred, I'll order him to chop it off. You should know he will do so, with pleasure and no hesitation." She glanced at his crown. "King or no."
Rhaegar at least looked a touch chagrined. "I am sorry, Elia."
Cold rage stoked by hurt and embarrassment purged all other emotion from her in an instant. "You're sorry? Sorry?"
"We have much to discuss, I know."
"We had much to discuss months ago."
He raised a placating hand, tone still neutral in contrast to her rising volume. "Your anger is justified, but please do not shout and scare our children."
"The ones you left?" She turned and gestured behind her, where Aelor was crouching in front of Viserys, speaking in low tones while the others waited, Rhaenys now clutching the leg of her grandmother. "All so you could…gods, I don't even want to think about it." She lowered her chin as she looked back, much as Ser Manfred had done. "Did you hurt the girl?"
A flash of anger crossed his features, though it disappeared just as quickly. "Aelor asked me that. I was offended that he could think so low of me."
Elia scoffed, unrelenting. "You did not answer me."
"Of course I didn't hurt Lyanna. I know I have hurt you, but I am not a monster."
The Dornish princess found she believed him. Is it love then? Am I to be set aside? No, he wouldn't risk that when he needs my brother's army so badly. When she spoke again her tone was quiet. "Where is she, Rhaegar."
He started to reach for her, but she took a quick step back, anger flaring once more. Rhaegar at once turned his hands palm out in concession, dipping his head in silent apology. "There are many things to talk over, Elia. Aelor and I have discussed much over the last day, with much more to come. For all of us, including the children."
She didn't know what to say. She didn't know how to do any of this, so she said the first thing that came into her mind. "Was he angry with you?"
Rhaegar smiled smally, though she couldn't say why. "Furious. The scar on his face is from a Lannister blade, but the bruises on my own are from his fists."
She felt a bit of vindication about that. She loved that man sometimes.
The small part of her that she kept buried argued it was far more often than sometimes.
"Will I be angry also? Angrier, I should say."
"Yes, I imagine you will." He took a breath, then continued softly. "I have no right to ask anything of you, Elia. I know I have hurt you deeply. We were never in love, we've always been honest about that, but I betrayed your trust and insulted your honor. Many would never be able to overlook that, and I'm not asking you to. I only ask that you return to the Keep where it is safest for you and the children, and where I can give you the answers you are long owed."
She glanced at the great red stone of the keep overhead, and at the smoke still rising in the air around it. "Manfred stays on. He was once Aelor's man, but he is mine now."
Rhaegar didn't hesitate. "Of course, though you may wish to ask Aelor first."
"Why?" Elia turned, walking towards the others waiting patiently out of earshot. "He's never been the Targaryen that causes me pain."
And so Elia Martell returned to the Red Keep, Aegon in her arms, and wondered what her life was now.
A/N: More of these three to come in chapter 14. Housekeeping note for anybody re-reading, the second half is all new material. There was a different second half in the original; that content will be moved to chapter 13. Still putting the new/old word count on each chapter even if it'll be a bit skewed for 12 and 13.
Cheers kiddos.