VISERYS IV
"My sister has not been here at her family's home in four years, four bloody years, and now she is bound to marry a stinking muddy riverlord and never return!"
Viserys heard his own noble voice of iron ringing, echoing against the inner walls of the Stone Drum, even as he said them out loud to the other members of the council. "I am her elder brother, and I will have my sister returned to me, and not held as a hostage on the muck of the mainland for any day longer!"
"My son-in-law is right", Lord Monford Velaryon concurred. "It is treason what Lord Tully has done to us, without as much as a word of Princess Daenerys's sudden betrothal, and also what the king has done to my seat at the Small Council. Many years ago, when I first surrendered my fleet and cause to His Grace, he said that my loyalty would be rewarded and that I would be a forever friend to the crown, but instead he has replaced me over a moon with that Northern pig Manderly!"
"Forgive me, my lord, but I believe that the physical presence at the Small Council is a minor prerequisite for keeping one's spot in it", Ser Godry Farring japed in earnest.
"Hold your tongue, boy!" Lord Monford shouted and pulled out his long seahorse-hilted dagger to stab it right in the wood of the Painted Table. "Am I to be punished for wanting to escape poison?!"
"Silence, all of you!" Stannis called out. "King Eddard has decreed that he accepts the betrothal."
The table quieted, and his father-in-law Lord Monford reluctantly dragged his weapon back and sat down again. It had made a small scratch in the wood close to Torrhen's Square in the western part of the North. The wolves would not be pleased if they ever came to visit..., Viserys had time to muse.
"I have spoken to him, when last I was in King's Landing. It will not do us any good to go against the king in this matter", Stannis said. "Whatever wrongs he might have done, Eddard Stark is my king. I swore a vow to him on the day that I went against my brother and I intend on keeping it. Whatever we are to do, we must first inform the king of our grievances and see what he makes of them."
"What? You are the one who has kept him out of the dark!" Viserys shot back, incredulous.
"Perhaps that is so, but I am letting him in on it now, my prince", Stannis replied. "I have already told His Grace, and informed him of the wrong that Lord Hoster and Ser Marq Piper have done. I await his reply, and I believe it will come soon enough for us to stymie these plans of taking the law into our own hands."
"What hands should the law be taken into, if not ours? If not yours?" Lord Monford asked upforderingly. "You are the Master of Laws, are you not? Or has he replaced you as well?"
"The king has not replaced my seat in the council, as far as I am aware. He told me thus the last time we spoke, less than a fortnight ago, in King's Landing. I also made him aware of my suspicions for the poisoning of Jon Arryn, although I fear he has not heeded my word on that just yet."
"It is not the King himself that we are going against, in any matter", Lord Monford said again. "We are going against Riverrun."
"I still say it is madness", Lord Bar Emmon declared. "How would we possibly go against Riverrun without breaking the king's peace?"
"More importantly, my lords, how would we possibly manage to get the princess safely to Dragonstone if she is at Riverrun, or Pinkmaiden Castle?" Maester Cressen noted, in one of his rare bouts of clarity of mind and voice.
"The same way that someone tried before, of course.", Lord Monford said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Only better this time."
"This would surely further raise the suspicions on us. We are all motley fools for even discussing it.", Lord Massey [concluded/mon[ ]].
"The suspicions are already on us, and talk across King's Landing ever since four moons back. It is high time we acted, instead of waiting for the mainland to see upon us with favour. They never will at any rate so we might as well fight for our cause."
"And what is our cause? Might someone please tell us that? To challenge the king?"
"To get my sister, Princess Daenerys of House Targaryen, home to Dragonstone, here at my side, with her house and family, where she belongs", Viserys wriled. "She is my sister, and my responsibility. Not Ser Marq Piper's."
"Yes, we shall get the princess safely back to us. She will then go on to marry my son Monterys, if she chooses to do so, and live out her life happily here on Driftmark and Dragonstone for many good years with her true family", Lord Monford explained.
"I just hope the trouts have not hurt her all too much, or quenched the spirit she had when last we all saw her. She is a sweet and amiable girl, and she belongs here, with us, the last and only ones of her own kin."
"Agreed, dear good-father", Viserys nodded, with an effort of weight behind his voice.
"Even if we were to try and do this, it would be a folley doomed to fail at best", Lord Bar Emmon said. "If the last attackers could not do it with the aid of the Golden Company, how are we to succeed? Lord Tully will have secured the entire reach of the Trident by now, right up to the mouth of the Bay of Crabs. It will be impossible to get around."
"Lord Mooton gave the news to Lord Hoster last time. Perhaps we can bargain with him?"
"Lord Mooton is not a fickle man. He will not likely surrender his loyalties to us before his liege lord or the king", Ser Davos rose up his voice and said. "Although... Perhaps there is another way."
"A smuggler's way?" Lord Monford scoffed, the tone clear in his voice what he thought of any advice coming from the lowborn Onion knight. Viserys himself thought much the same, although he had to agree that Ser Davos had proved himself useful on their last mission to capture the singer.
"Aye... A smugglers' way", Davos confirmed. "Times of deceit such as this call for smuggler's ways, whether we like it or no. What say you?"
Chiefly among those that the question bemoved, of course, was Stannis. And Stannis considered the proposal.
"Perhaps... that would be preferrable", he said, teeth grinding only slightly as he thought about it.
"What do you propose?" Viserys reluctantly asked to the dirty-looking man who still always wore his cut-off fingers in a pouch around his neck like some common old sellsword or other.
"I know not now what I could do, my prince, but leave me a few days, perhaps a fortnight, to think about it, and I will do my best to come up with a plan to get back the Princess", Davos promised.
Stannis raised his mouth marginally, not completely ruling out the idea. Viserys looked around.
"Ser Davos certainly has a way with small ships and discreet missions", Ser Godry allowed. "Perhaps this would be the right way to go about this. What say you, my prince?"
Viserys beheld the sight of the Onion knight, and thought of whether he would have any reason to doubt the loyalty of an ex-smuggler who first and foremost answered to Stannis.
On the other hand, if Stannis wanted to betray him, he would do so with or without the help of his underling.
"Very well..." He said, his lilac eyes surveying the genuinity of the scruffy knight's appearance. He had a commonborn face and a beard peppered with black and gray, but he did not look untrustworthy by his nature. Only perhaps by his previous life, and that pouch of bones he carried.
"You accomplished the last mission effortlessly, and captured our dear little tattling singer for us. I have no reason to doubt your capabilities, Seaworth. …"
He considered once more whether he was giving too much power away. His good-father liked the man even less than Viserys himself. He would not have a higher opinion even if the mission would succeed.
But on the other hand, Viserys needed not impress Lord Monford any further. It was he himself who was the Prince and lord of Dragonstone. Not Driftmark, true, and not his father's lost seven kingdoms on the mainland, but Dragonstone was his. The choice was his.
And he found, once again to his surprise, that he did not necessarily mistrust the Onion knight, commonborn Flee Bottom smuggler of birth or no.
Swallowing a cup of his dreamwine from his goblet, he rescinded all arguments against and allowed Ser Davos the benefit of the doubt.
"Very well. Have it your way, Ser Davos. You will take hold of your previous crew again, to return to us within a fortnight and tell us of your plan."
"Yes, my Prince", Ser Davos said eagerly and bowed his head. "You will not be disappointed."
Some of the other lords made vague grumblings, with Viserys' father-in-law and Lord Massey chief among them, but Viserys paid them no mind anymore. If they were to get Daenerys back before she was wed, gods forbid, they would need to think outside of the box with this one.
...
"Have no fear", he told Lord Monford in a whisper above his shoulder, as he leaned across the table from Dragonstone towards the Neck. "If the Onion knight should not succeed, we will come up with something new. One way or another, we will get her back to us."
"Yes", Lord Velaryon agreed. "We shall."
...
He concluded the meeting to be at an end, soon after, and this time made well sure to be the one to make and call out the decision, instead of Stannis.
As he made his way down towards the slanting hills outside the castle gates, however, he came upon the shape that was among the last he wanted to face at the moment. The red woman. Lady Melisandre of Asshai stood blocking his path like a of blood red shadow of doom and terror.
"My lady", he said tensely as he walked past her with hurried steps. "I pray that you are well."
"A busy day, my prince?" She said with her usual red seductive smile. He hated having to deal with the sight of her.
Take her away, Stannis... Take her away from me, away from this, our home here... Tell your dour old wife to find something else to fill her ugly head with when the days grow long. Knitting apparently is not enough for her. But I will not suffer the queer evils of shadowbinding on my island. Not on my island, not in my home. Enough.
"If it is help to save your sister that you crave, my prince, then I hereby humbly offer my services in finding her and bringing her back to you safe."
Viserys stopped in his step right at the moment. He was shocked.
"What did you say?"
"I believe that you heard me, my prince. Your sister. Princess Daenerys. You do not wish to go against the king in this matter, but you have a vengeful thirst for blood against the old trout, do you not?"
Viserys felt the flushing of rage creeping along his red back.
"Stannis...! Stannis has told you, despite my orders, that useleess bloody traitor!"
"He did no such thing, my prince", Lady Melisandre assured, as she straightened to her red dress and slid further along the pathway up onto the hill, beckoning him to follow.
"Your thoughts are very loud, my prince, did you know?. I can hear them, even as I stand all the way down here."
She pointed to the slanting green hillside, his own dear old hillside, that led down to the old strand further down to their left, where she and her followers would recently stand and have their queer nightfires in the tongues of Asshai and demon alike. He hated the way they stood there, where he had played as a boy.
"I see your thoughts in my dreams", she continued on, numb to his anger or discomfort with her words. "I hear them at night. So pure... So true, just like the fire that burns inside of your heart, my prince. In the fires of R'hllor I see your anger, and your dreams for what you would accomplish if you only had the power to do so."
He was made even more angry by the taunting of his [ ]. He stepped back from her, maddened.
"Stannis told you! And now you shall go and tell the king! I will have his dour grey head for this!"
"I assure you, my prince", she promised once again, "Lord Stannis told me nothing. Your whole being burns with the truth of your heart."
"Stop with your riddles, you red witch. Of course it was Stannis. If he did not tell you... Then he told Lady Selyse, and Selyse told you. Either way it is treason towards me, of the highest kind. But I will show him, though. You be so sure. I will show him...-"
He was just about to turn back on his heel and into the castle again when he saw an instantaneous flutter of the air in front of him, a black shadow of cloud sweeping over, just as the flap of a bat or dragon or other, or as if someone was holding a giant coverlet above and in front of his eyes and shook it, as one rusts a blanket coverlet with a single thrust, and then there she was.
She was standing in front of him, blocking the entrance to the castle behind him once again.
"But how...- What in the fourteen fires do you think you are doing?" He shouted at her.
"You seem surprised, my prince."
"Have you poisoned me already, you red witch? Is that the way of it?"
He reached for his blade to slay her, but found it not when he felt his swordbelt beneath him.
"Looking for this, my prince?" She said, as she held up his own sword above her in the air, balancing it on her blood red fingernails, as if it were as light as a feather.
"What in-... How in the Seven did you do that?" He demanded. "What is this game? Answer me!"
"Please, my prince. Just come with me... And I will show you something. Something that you should have seen a long time ago."
Viserys was seething; crevellating inside. He did not wish to go with her anywhere, least of all now, when he had just left the meeting with [ ].
"No...? You do not wish to come? You may take Lord Stannis with you to come and see as well.
...Or your wife. She would benefit from seeing my powers first-hand. She might do well from them", Melisandre said, angling her pale slender neck and making her ruby necklace around her throat burn and go alive with that terrifying red light.
Viserys was beginning to feel light-headed, as he tried his best to struggle out of her grip and called for his guards, but noone heard him. His voice was as faint as a whisper, all of a sudden.
When he turned back to look, he saw not the guards. Not captain Jate Blackberry, nor the guards themselves, [ ] and [ ], nor any of the others. Half the world was turned into shadow. And something ominous told him that it would never quite come back to normal until he steadied himself down, and listened to what the red witch had to say. "