Chapter 11: Daenerys I – The Vale/Riverlands
DAENERYS I
Her nights were torture. As she slept, so too was she haunted. A city was consumed in flame, great, and green and terrible, beneath the shadow of a dragon. A boy with the face of a wolf was weeping tears of sap. She saw her brothers dying, over and over and over again, in rivers, in tents, in castles, in fields, dying emblazoned by gold and ruby, felled by blades, consumed by fire, entombed in ice. A thousand deaths, in a thousand ways, and a thousand and one eyes, always watching.
The beggar cried for mercy, for golden was his crown, but the Stallion gave him none. He burned and Dany screamed. The dreamer wept, as rubies flew like blood from his chest, but the Stag gave no quarter either. No crowns, no glory. Regret, his only fate. Dany reached for him, but then fire consumed the dragon prince too, and only smoke came to greet her grasping hands. He fell and she wept, too.
In the cold, in the dark, in the snow, the Dragon and the Direwolf danced. She saw them, silver hair and brown, purple eyes and grey, but white were their shrouds. Without her, they were lost, but no matter how far she ran, she never caught them.
The survivor staggered away from the flames, his face ripped anew, and Dany screamed, but he did not hear her. A woman walked the seas, weeping, the last of her kin, following their way. A boy died, staring at the stars. Dany fell to her knees as the little girl cried, as she was ripped asunder, a thousand cuts, not all by a blade. The screams tore from her throat at the baby's fate. She felt to her knees. Please, she wept. Why?
The wolfboy watched her, sadly. "I'm sorry," He howled. "I'm so sorry." A brother's love. It all came back to brothers.
Copper skin, and silver-gold hair, and a halo of flame. A mummer's pale, fleshy hands clutching a cloth dragon, colours changing with the seasons. Winding, thorny roses piercing her palms when she touched them. A Leviathan, rising ever higher, with smiling eyes both cruel. Great stone beasts, silver steeds, dead captains. A giant's shadow, cast over them all. Amid the maelstrom, a small man snarling. Thunderstorms barraging the lands. A field of winter roses, freezing, their sweetness turning foul, the blood soaking through, under the snow to the roots. Don't, she pleaded. Don't do this. Save the boy.
The Father. Her father, screaming. Kill them all. Burn them all. Enemies, everywhere! KILL THEM ALL! No. No. The mother, hers, smiling, palms as soft as silk. We are as much our mothers as our fathers. Her salvation. Rhaella reached for her, but then she faded. Left her, as they all did. Instead, there were only grasping hands, too many to count, and she stood, surrounded, loved by so many, and so very, very alone.
Her heart burst and broke and splintered like glass. Ahead, a comet raced through the sky. In its tail, three great shadows lurked.
She was flying. She was screaming. She was crying. She was fire, blazing. She was ice, freezing.
A red door awaited. The Stranger lurked behind. She bore her veil to greet it.
Her days were barely any better, and she would have given much and more to have this particular morning never arrive.
"-if the Crown had seen fit to deal with those fucking squids before now then we wouldn't – Daenerys! Are you even listening?!" Harry halted his frantic pacing in her chambers mid-stride to turn and glower, his handsome face twisted in frustration. It was often his look, these days: bloodshot blue eyes, and sandy blond hair growing wilder by the day. To think, she had once deemed him handsome…and it was true enough that in better times, Harrold Arryn – as he was so named now, though he had come into this world a son of House Hardyng - could look every inch a High Lord, handsome and lean, tall and hard with muscle…but beauty was only skin-deep, she knew. Ugliness sank right into the bones.
"Daenerys!"
Dany adjusted, wrapping her gowns tighter around herself, and looked up to meet his gaze, ignoring the fresh waves of pain from down below. She was sat upright in her bed, and was unsure what was worse: her sleeping night terrors, or waking to the sight of her husband.
"Yes," She declared dully. "You were complaining about my brother."
Harry's laugh was both harsh and full of despair. "The whole realm grumbles about your brother.," He spat, resuming his pacing, with voice rising, and edged with something frantic. "The Ironborn have struck the Lannister fleet, sacked Lannisport, and now they pillage the West as we speak. And still, your brother does nothing…"
That news came days ago, much to her joy: the Lannisters had suffered a great rout, smashed by the Ironborn. Some said they swarmed from the storms to smash the Lannister ships and terror their towns. Others cried that thunder birthed great monsters; krakens rising from the deep. The West had fallen, they all sang. Thousands dead. More taken as thralls and slaves. Already there were men, women and children fleeing east, and soldiers marching west, and already, she'd heard some even sing of Tywin's folly, and how the Gods had spited him for daring to dream that he could ever best them, for they punished all those who tried. The House of the Dragon was the Gods' anointed, after all, and they took umbrage with those who sought to bring their chosen few down.
Who are you, the Seven said, that you dare not bow so low?
Dany was not particularly pious, but it felt like divine justice all the same, a fitting fate for evil men. She sighed. "Why should he?" She asked. "They are our enemies."
Her Lord Husband stopped, scowled, and then sighed, running a pale hand through his hair. He had not showered, and she winced at his scent. "Are they?"
"Yes."
"We've no proof-" He protested, then. There was an odd look to his face, she thought.
"Who else would it be?"
"Anyone," He said, after a long pause. "Why think it them? Why not the rebels? You know, the Fury are not so far. Or the Baratheons? Or the Starks. You heard Viserys. You were there, you saw the man who claimed it was justice for the Northerners. Surely they'd have more reason-"
Dany was too tired for this talk. She stepped out of bed, clutching her silks more tightly around her body, for fear of him seeing her naked. "It was the Lannisters," She insisted more firmly. "No other party would have gained as they did-"
"-Tywin Lannister would never be so foolish-"
"And now the rains weep o'er his hall," She sang. "And not a soul to hear." The whole realm knew those words. "You think he never would? He is certainly ruthless enough, I think. Or do the Reynes disagree, dear husband?"
He didn't respond. How could he? They both knew the truth. No, Dany did not weep for the Lannisters. Let their ships burn, she thought. And one day, their gold too. It will melt into rivers that drown them. "Now, if you please, Harrold, I need must get ready for the day-"
"If it was them who attacked that night," Harry started again, after a moment, as if she wasn't speaking at all. He did that too often. "Then why does the Crown Prince's betrothal still stand?"
Rhaegar was not one for changing plans. Even when the world demanded it. "I don't know," She lied instead. Her eyes briefly roamed up to the slightly sloping ceiling, and she shivered. Harrenhal was a place for ghosts. "It worries you?"
His look grew darker. "Greatly."
"You have better things to fear than who my nephew weds."
"Do you not see it?" He asked instead. His eyes roamed over her face. "Are you so dim?"
Dany almost laughed at that. Was she the dim one? What had Rhae said, way back when? Harry the flying falcon, my father called him, her niece-sister had laughed over wine, in that way of hers when they gossiped, voice low and harsh. Noble, sharp-boned Harry. Harry the Arse, more like, I say, because all that comes from him is shit.
"Well?" He said further, when she spoke no more. "Can you not see it at all?"
All she wanted to see was Harry face down in the dirt. "Enlighten me then," She said archly. "What do you see, Lord Husband? What do I miss?"
"Your brother has married his kin to all the Great Houses."
Knitting back the realm. Dany grimaced. "The King. Yes. I am aware."
"And Jaime Lannister's daughter is to be Queen one day, after the King is gone."
She had once tried to persuade her royal brother to take on Dornish inheritance instead. A pity he'd done what he always did – sigh, and then say no. As fond as she was of her nephew, there'd been enough King Aegon's. "Yes."
"She is also second in line to the Rock."
"For now," replied Dany. She'd asked Rhaegar about that too. Rhae would be Lady at Highgarden, while Dany was sent to the Vale. Who would inherit Casterly Rock, if Egg was to marry the heir's only child? Her brother had merely smiled softly, as he often did when he thought someone was being a lackwit, and told her Jaime Lannister had no sons, but his father had two.
Her brother could be ever the optimist, sometimes. Lord Tyrion would never inherit his father's lands.
"For now," Harry muttered. "And for now, still a future Queen. Why, if her House are traitors to the Crown?"
She sighed again and watched a fly buzz around the room. There were too many flies at Harrenhal too. Perhaps it was fitting. Flies were the Stranger's friends. "How am I to know?" She questioned. "I am not my brother. He has his reasons."
Harry collapsed onto the bed with a pathetic flourish. "That's what I fear. He has his reasons."
"Well, dear husband, you've no reason to fear. You're his goodbrother."
"So's Eddard Stark."
Dany raised an eyebrow. "I thought you said he was a bastard?"
He sat up quickly, frowning. "I never said-The King?!"
"Aemon."
Harry scowled again. He never liked mention of Aemon. "Your brother thinks him his goodbrother, and yet he wages war against his lands," The Lord of the Vale pointed an accusing finger at Dany, as if she were the one waging war on her goodbrother's family. "His small council plots the man's downfall. They plot your dear, beloved bastard's ascension to his seat, do they not?"
Aemon had always feared so. He had never wanted Winterfell; it was never his to take. Still…his words gave her pause. "You think he wants your lands?"
"Perhaps he wants them all," Harry whispered. "I am not the only one to think it."
What? "Madness," Dany declared. Who has he been talking to? "That's not-"
"It's not madness." His tone grew moody. "I can see it. So can some of the others-"
"Which others?"
"-he blames the Lannisters. If…if he casts them down, attaints them, marries his son to Jaime Lannister's daughter, and then if Prince Aegon gets a child on her, and they control the Rock, and-"
Gods, but she had not the patience for this. Where had this come from? Her morning was a mummer's farce. "Harry-"
"And the Imp. He sold his out his blood so keenly – or mayhaps he did not…you know what they say about him, don't you?"
Dany did. It was a favourite of vile gossipmongers at court. "A baseless rumour," She dismissed. Dany knew this for fact. Rhaegar himself had sought the truth of it. "Even then, one of those children would just take the Lannister name. Harry, you're not making any sense-"
"I always found it strange," He continued, uncaring of her interruption. "The King marrying off his whole family to the High Lords. No King has ever sought that before-"
"He wants to tie the realm together-" She protested again.
"-but it makes perfect sense when you think of it as I do. He hasn't cancelled the debt either. How much gold do the Crown owe the Lannisters? Isn't that queer?"
"You have not slept, and your wits have fled-"
"No, Daenerys, seven hells, listen to me! It is the only way I can make sense of things! Listen! The Princess Rhaenys, married to the Tyrell heir. You, married to me. Why did he marry you to me, Daenerys? You hardly wanted it – but the Vale, the Vale-"
She looked down at her husband coldly. If only Rhaegar had been so cunning; Dany could have almost accepted her fate, then. "You overestimate the King," She declared shortly. "As you overestimate yourself."
"It was not the Lannisters," Harry insisted. The odd look returned. I know-"
"You know nothing," Dany spat. "You are a drunken fool."
How could he even defend them, after that night? He'd been there. He'd seen it, just as she did. Gods, she could see it still, whenever she closed her eyes; that night, all of it, like a tapestry woven in a moment in her mind's eye: the blazing green inferno, the smell of sweat and fear and burnt flesh and everywhere, death, and with it, her loyal swornsword Ser Alliser lost to the flames, and the sight of Ser Arthur, eyes lifeless, limbs listless, and the Mountain carved in two – and amid it all…Aemon. Suddenly a man grown, with a frozen face and a leader's gait. "And if it was them who attacked that night-"
He was staring at her now. "If," He said eventually.
"They will burn. By Greyjoy's hand, and by the Crown's."
Silence followed. She turned on her heel, to leave.
"So long as the flames spare us," He declared to her back. "Even if they are the King's foes-"
She turned and folded her arms. "Are the King's foes not yours?"
"No." Harry copied her. He only looked a man, she thought moodily. The rest of him was a boy. "I am Lord of the Vale. They are not *my* foes. No Lannister ever did aught against my house or lands. Nor are they your foes now, either. You are *my* lady wife now. And as *my* lady wife, that means your loyalty is now with House Arryn-"
Never. She stepped closer, the dragon stirring back to life in her chest, burning where her heart should be. "I am a Princess of the Seven Kingdoms," She said, lifting her chin. He was a foot taller, but he felt so small to her. "I am a Targaryen. Not an Arryn. I may have to share your bed, but I do not share your name. You would do well to remember that."
Targaryens never lost their name. You will always be a dragon, she heard her brother whisper. She had run to him in her worst moment, weeping, not so long ago, pleading, begging for his help in stopping the match to the Arryn. He had only sighed. You will always share the blood of old Valyria, he'd murmured. She loved Rhae, and Egg, and Aemon most of all, but in the end, it had always been them, the two of them, bound by a shared burden none but they could understand. Whatever else happens, remember that, little sister. No man can take that from you, whatever else they do.
Harry rose, towering over her, fists clenched, face fuming. "Perhaps you don't share my name, " He hissed, "but your children will be born Arryns."
"Unlike you," She snapped.
Then she turned on her heel and stormed from the room without a second glance.
-
The dreams wouldn't stop.
For weeks, and weeks, it had been all she knew – visions of death and dread and darkness, untold miseries and unknown mysteries, spectres that sought to split her soul. At Harrenhal, ghosts walked the halls, and lived in the walls, and at night they haunted her, infesting her, incubating in her mind and nestling there, refusing to ever leave.
And the worst nights were when she saw him.
He had always haunted her, but it had gotten worse, these past weeks. The spectre lurked in the shadows of her dreams, panting and snarling and hissing, a cruel corpse given life, with hair down to his waist, all matted and greasy, silver-turned grey. At any point of the day, she could see that face stretched tight across the skull, and the wild, protruding eyes, and the yellow talon fingernails, grasping. It was strange how she'd forgotten things, such as how his beard tangled, or how his fingernails had grown half the length of his fingers. Or his smell. "Daughter."
"You're dead."
He wasn't here. He wasn't here. He wasn't here-
"I always will be here. Stupid, stupid girl." Even here, even now, his voice was high, and hoarse, like a chair dragged on wood. "For as long as you live, so do I."
No. My brother watched you die, and I am as much my mother as my father. As Rhaegar had told her, that very night, sad, solemn face reflecting her own. The Mad King wasn't her only ghost. When it wasn't Aerys she saw, it was Elia, who looked so much like her daughter, but smiled so much like her son, or old Ser Bonifer Hasty, as sad and solemn as Rhaegar, the knight who served as her mother's closest friend at the end, or even, when they faded away, the girl she'd only ever known from songs, slim of frame and brown of hair, who wept as she walked the halls, leaving blue petals in her wake.
Dany was older than her, now. So was her son. She saw him too, in the dark.
She didn't know why the living haunted her alongside the dead. She didn't know why Aemon looked so different, standing before her, so much like before, with grey eyes so full of passion, long face so open and unguarded, so much like the boy he'd once been – but all the same, she saw him as she saw the others.
The blue petals followed him, too.
-
They had been at Harrenhal for weeks now, counting down the days, waiting for the Prince's arrival. When the royal party finally arrived, late last night, after touring the local lands, with fanfare and banners and all manner of men marching into the grounds, she thought it must have been the first time she ever looked upon the three-headed dragon with dread.
For with that party came Aemon Targaryen.
She wondered what he thought of the castle. Dany hated Harrenhal. It was absurdly large, for one thing; its chamber alone was the largest in Westeros, even bigger than the throne room in the Red Keep, and it was said the stables could house a thousand horses. Who would ever need so many?
Its Godswood also covered twenty acres, and the kitchens alone were bigger than some Lord's castles, and there were apartments that could house ten generations, and whenever you were outside, the five sloping stone towers loomed over your head, scaling so far high in the sky one grew dizzy gazing up at them.
It all seemed a tragic, unfunny jape, and a symbol of men's follies, this ridiculously huge castle, fallen to disrepair, devastated by dragonfire and ravaged by time. And it was impossible, here, not to face her heritage wherever she looked: even to look upon the towers, creaking and bent, mishappen and melted, all black cracked stone, was to see the shadow of the Black Dread, spreading its wings. Harrenhal was the Conqueror's warning, his statement to the realm: bend the knee or die. They called this castle Black Harren's folly, but it was more than that: this was a warning, a monument, the Targaryen's testament to the realm.
It was difficult not to compare it all to Maegor's Holdfast – which was similarly burned, similarly blackened now. The front face of her childhood keep was melted and cracked too, now, they said. Three hundred years later, it seemed some men would rather die than bend the knee to the Dragons now. The Targaryen's testament was falling on increasingly deaf ears.
Though some still heeded the call. It was a good thing Harrenhal was so large, in some ways, because there were thousands upon thousands at the castle and surrounding it, with tents as far as the eye could see, with more than a hundred different sigils flying in the wind, and knights and Lords coming and going, bearing colours and accents from across the realm. She tried to take comfort in it, but at the queerest times, when she closed her eyes, when she had a moment of quiet, when she was alone with nothing but her ghosts and her thoughts…
Fires, great and green and terrible, and the smell of burning flesh…
Every time. Every moment she had to herself, every second she was alone – fires, great and green and terrible, and the smell of burning flesh – and when it wasn't the flames, it was the ghosts, whispering in her ears, haunting her steps.
"Princess?"
Dany turned away from the food laid out by the far wall. It was supposed to be a small gathering – a smattering of the highest lords and ladies and most able knights, to discuss the campaign to come. And yet, there were platters that could feed hundreds in the great chamber: trout and carrots and onions and nuts, soft white cheeses and mushroom caps stuffed with goat cheese, and pigeon pie and lamb stew and roast game and herbed chicken and seemingly a thousand other things besides. Viserys would have called all this stupid, and a gigantic waste.
Then he would have helped himself to everything. She had no such appetite. Moon tea disagreed with her.
Instead, she moved to greet the Lady Darry, inclining her head and accepting the curtsey in return. "You recognise me?" She adjusted the scarf around her head. Dany resented her silver hair, sometimes. "Well met Lady Lysa."
"The guard, Princess Daenerys," Lady Lysa simply simpered. Of course. Dany barely spared him a glance. The man was some Arryn knight, clad in blue, who no doubt spied for Harry. She'd been ignoring his existence; to see him was a reminder of Ser Alliser Thorne's fate, and every reminder of her sworn sword's absence felt a fresh stab…but she was blood of the dragon, and dragons did not cry. "Of course." Dany turned back to the table. "Would you like some trout, Lady Darry?"
Lady Darry was a Tully, in truth - the last Tully, some said, although her father and uncle surely still lived at the Wall, and her sister served as Ned Stark's Queen in Winterfell. She was almost two decades Dany's senior, and the years had been kind to her: she was still pretty and slender, with long tresses of dark red hair and only the slightest signs of aging around her small blue eyes and thin mouth.
Though her eyes avoided Dany's gaze, as they always did. "I've eaten enough trout for a lifetime," She giggled. "Are you not hungry Princess?"
Dany waved her away, settling one hand on her belly. "Perhaps later." More were filling the chamber as they chatted, to meet with the King's younger son. Just the prospect made her feel as if there were a snake twisting inside her. Their last encounters were all still too...stark in her mind, and she was ill-prepared to see him again today. "Though I have heard great compliments for the pigeon pie."
They watched together as some passing lord helped himself to a hunk of cheese. He wore green, his sigil a two-headed horse, brown upon a field of wavy greens. The cheese dribbled down his chin, and onto his clothes. He didn't seem to mind.
"It was most kind of Lord Arryn to have all this prepared," Lysa offered as she plucked a date from the tray to nibble. Dany did not reply. Instead, she kept watching as the man – a Roote of Harroway's Town – merely shrugged, scooping the fallen cheese from his doublet. His face settled into a satisfied smile as he licked his fingers clean.
Dany could not remember ever being so pleased by food.
"Most kind, I think," Lysa murmured again.
It was an effort not to grimace. The Lord moved on, and was now happily munching on nuts, mouth open as he chewed. The sound of his lips smacking almost made her ears bleed. "Yes, most kind," She returned after a pause. "It is all from the reserves of the Eyrie." Even though I told him it was foolish.
"Enough to feed every Lord and solider here, I should think." And he's boasted to all who'd hear. Her eyes settled on the banner by the far wall, bearing the three-headed dragon, and the snake in her belly tightened. "We will need well-fed men for what is to come."
Now the Roote was gorging himself on chicken. Though not that well-fed.
A strange look flashed across Lady Darry's face, and her gaze grew distant for a moment. "Yes," she murmured. "Riverrun…"
It was why they were here, after all. "My condolences for your brother, Lady Darry," Dany offered, as she placed a soft hand on the older woman's wrist. "To lose any family is always a loss."
Lysa's brow merely furrowed. "There is still hope, my Princess," She said. "The Lannisters claim Edmure has simply fled North to my sister and goodbrother, after all. I have not yet heard – well, I wouldn't, I have not spoken to my sister in a long time, a very long time, of course, but-"
"Oh, no, I-" Dany shook her head, while reaching up to secure the scarf. "I meant your…illegitimate brother, my Lady. The man known as Walter." Dany had glimpsed him only barely, back in the Capital, but he'd bore the look of a Tully. The man had been murdered the night of Maegor's Inferno.
It was the wrong thing to say, for Lady Darry's face went suddenly still, something cold immediately washing over her features. "Thank you," She said at last, but her words had lost some of their warmth, becoming stiff and brittle. "But I did not know him well. He was just a bastard."
Just a bastard. Dany despised that word, and the way she said it. There was a softness in her heart for bastards. No child could be blamed for their parentage. Dany knew that better than most. How dare this woman-
Remember your courtesies, her brother's iron tones demanded in her mind, just then.
How strange, and how sad it was that her mother's voice had faded over the years, replaced by Rhaegar's would-be wisdom. Gods, how she wanted her mother now. Nothing could ever be truly so lost so long as Rhaella Targaryen lived. Without her, Dany was a ship in a storm with no safe port in sight.
Focus, Dany.
She pressed on, pushing back the sting and biting back the retort forming on her lips. "But you must fret for Lord Edmure too," She bit out instead. "Your husband is at Riverrun…?"
"He is," Lysa allowed. "I asked him to go. I fret for Edmure and for his children. They are the heirs to Riverrun, and if something has happened to my brother…"
Dany eyed her critically. The heirs to Riverrun. She didn't know. "Let us hope they stay safe," Dany offered instead. No child could be blamed for their parentage. She took the Lady's arm. "Shall we?"
Together, they made the way further into the chamber. It was already filling up with Lords and Ladies from around the Riverlands and the Vale, and even some further afield; in one direction, she sighted a Tyrell rose on one man's doublet, while in another there was the swirling colours of House Wylde. There were Reachmen and Stormlanders, together with Rivermen and Knights of the Vale, all settling into the chamber. And Crownlanders too, she knew, and soon enough, the Dornish.
Her elder's arm shook slightly. "A lot of people here," Lady Darry murmured. There was a sudden shyness about her. "Forgive me, my Princess," She said, and then she fled to the outer wall, where there were less people mingling.
A wise move, Dany thought. She unwrapped the scarf around her neck with a sigh just as the Arryn man neared her. "Princess-"
"Yes, I am aware, ser."
Harry was just entering the chamber, looking fresher than before. Dany mourned the last of her anonymity and gave a signal to move. At once, she and the guard parted the small crowd before her, and soon lords and ladies alike were kneeling and offering their greetings, as if she had not been among them for minutes already. The cries arose around her – 'Princess Daenerys! Princess Daenerys!' – but she kept going, smiling and nodding without second thought, her focus only ever forwards.
Ahead, Aemon was arriving.
He somehow looked both ill at ease and yet strangely at home up there, standing on a raised dais, next to Ser Jaremy of the Kingsguard. She stopped to study him for a moment as he exchanged words with the knight. Unlike all those around him, clad in white or the varied colours of their houses, Aemon was wearing only black from chest to toe: black doublet and breeches, black gloves and black boots, more Night's Watch than Prince of the Seven Kingdoms. He was wearing his new frozen face, too – calm, and stilled, with his dark grey eyes watching, taking in far more than they ever gave away.
How strange it was, she mused dimly, that a boy - a man, now - she had known and loved her whole life could seem such a stranger.
With him were others: there was Richard Lonmouth, who was her brother's former squire and now a member of his Small Council; he was stood to Aemon's left, exchanging words with Lyonel Corbray and Petyr Baelish, a small man with sharp features and greying dark hair who kept company with Harry far more than Dany was ever comfortable with. Next to them, the man with the weirwood tree sigil of House Blackwood was surely Lord Tytos, the reigning lord of Raventree Hall, and next to him was Lady Whent, the wizened old Lady of Harrenhal who had ruled this castle since before Dany was ever born.
To Aemon's right, Harry stood, jaw clenched. She was amused to see his face tighten further at her approach.
"Husband," She greeted. He said nothing. Neither did Aemon, who merely inclined his head, his focus clearly elsewhere. "Princess," He said simply.
Princess. From any other's lips it was a title. From him it was a cut.
It was an effort to keep her face still as she moved to take her place at Harry's side. As befitting her station, she was at Aemon's right, to represent the Royal House at the head of the chamber, while the hall buzzed with murmured words and watchful eyes as the assorted lords and ladies and knights congregated before them.
Next to Aemon, the central chair loomed higher than the rest, with no man to sit it. The King's chair. Dany did not think it wise to make his absence so plain, but then what was she, but the maid to marry off?
Aemon stood soon after, raising a steady hand to silence the chatters in the chamber. "Lords, well met," He said. His voice carried, quieting the room in an instant. A month ago, there would have been sneers, Dany thought distantly. Now there was silence. "Thank you for coming at your King's request."
The assorted lords, ladies and knights kept still as Aemon cast his eyes over the hall, searching for something unseen. For a moment, his eyes seemed to settle on the Tarly man – Lord Randyll of the Westmarch, she recalled. For a moment, she thought she saw something like distaste flash across his face, though Dany knew not why.
"You will have all heard the rumours," He continued. "The Red Keep was attacked, and Maegor's Holdfast was destroyed by wildfire. That same night, we discovered an imposter in our midst. A pretender, who claimed to be Lord Edmure Tully." Whispers broke out amongst the small crowd. Aemon paid it no mind. "When this ruse was discovered, he claimed to be acting on the orders of Cersei Lannister. In the chaos of the night, he was later found dead in the Black Cells."
He was good at this, Dany noticed. She would not have thought this his first real opportunity for commanding a room. Aemon scrutinised all those before him. "We do not have yet proof-"
"No proof? I thought it was Lannisters?"
"Of course it was!"
"But why-"
Cries broke from several of the Lords and knights.
Aemon gave a curt nod to the side, and Ser Jaremy smashed the high table with the dull edge of his blade. The wood thrummed with the force of the below, and it silenced the rising chorus.
"We believe it was," He said simply.
"Forgive me, my Prince."
It was Lord Tarly, lean and balding, with a short grey beard and a face set in stern lines. Again, Dany saw how Aemon's expression shifted, quicker than a hiccup – a fleeting sneer, there and then gone in a moment. His grey eyes, however, remained hard as ice.
"But we have all heard the rumours," Tarly went on. "Plenty of them. And one we have all heard is that a man claimed revenge for the name of the Starks."
"Words are wind," Aemon replied, after a moment. He was considering his words. "The King does not believe-"
"Your mother's family." Tarly's voice was growing firmer. "The Northern menace. Who we have been at war with since before you were born."
Lord Gerold Grafton of Gulltown nodded in agreement. "Lord Tarly speaks truly." The man shrugged his wide shoulders. "And I am more like to believe it was the Starks than the Lannisters-"
The Bronze Yohn laughed. "Have you forgotten Castamere so readily?" He boomed. "Lord Tywin has committed such like atrocity before-"
As she had said earlier to Harry. Dany knew there was a reason she'd always liked Lord Royce.
"To rebels, traitors!" shouted Lyonel Corbray. She could already see the battle lines forming before them. "To vassals who sought to undermine his own! Have you forgotten, my Lord, that Lord Tywin served the realm faithfully as Hand for over twenty years-"
"I remember that he left the capital with his tail between his legs and then sat out most of the war like a craven," Royce replied, lined face twisted. He pointed a meaty finger at his fellow Valeman. "I remember far more than you do. Do you not find it suspicious the man was so eager to shout about the Starks? At a time when it was most convenient for the Lannisters? Do you think at all, Corbray?!"
"I will not have you insult me-"
"You will and you shall like it Lord Corbray-"
Dany turned back to Aemon. He was saying nothing – only watching, eyes roaming from face to face. He was letting them speak, she realised, to see how this played out. To see what he learns.
"Why gather here just to talk?" Symond Templeton's tone was as cold as his blue eyes. "If we can't even agree who our foes are, why are we here?"
"Oh, I know who my foes are," interjected Harry. He stepped from the platform, flanked by Lady Waynwood. Lords Grafton and Corbray soon joined him. "I know what game you play, Templeton."
"Do you, my Lord?" And there it was, Dany thought. Lords Royce, Redfort and Hunter, quickly joining Templeton's side. The battlelines of the Vale, drawn in the great hall of Harrenhal. Loyalists to the Crown on one side, flanked by her Lord husband, and those who fought for the Rebellion on the other. Did Robert Baratheon know his war never ended? Did he care, in wherever of the seven hells he was?
"Enough," Aemon commanded sharply.
"Quite right," said Richard Lonmouth. "We are not here to bear witness to your petty Valeman squabbles."
"I do find it strange that we are gathered here, on little more than the King's…belief." Littlefinger's voice was perfectly soft, and perfectly measured, but it cut through the din of the feuding Lords. "Forgive me, my Prince. I fostered with the Tullys. Edmure is like my brother. If something has happened to him at the hands of the Lannisters…well, they would have no friend in me. But if the King is so sure it was them, why do…certain arrangements still stand?"
Lord Royce turned from Corbray with a snarl. "Speak plainly, Baelish."
The Lord of the littlest fingers smiled softly. "Of course. Forgive me, Lord Royce. I speak of Prince Aegon's betrothal to Jaime Lannister's daughter. And the gold owned to his father. If they are traitors to the crown, then the debt is forfeit, and the betrothal no longer appropriate…"
Harry turned to shoot a meaningful glance back at her, eyebrows raised. Aemon said nothing. Instead, he simply stared at Baelish, long face still, eyes like grey flints. The easy smile on Littlefinger's face remained.
"Mayhaps the King does not wish to judge a House for the sins of its Head," Aemon said finally, just as the silence had begun to become awkward. "Or perhaps, he merely wishes to give Lord Lannister the same chance he would give all to you. It is the King's express wish that we meet with Lord Tywin-"
The cries were immediate, and loud. Dany winced at the chorus of outrage. "Ridiculous!" blustered one of the Crownlander lords. Other cries joined the din.
"He attacked the Red Keep!
"How many dead?"
"Half the Kingsguard! More!"
"Madness!"
"The King must-"
"The King must act as he sees fit," Tarly interjected, louder still than all the rest. His tones was scathing. "But when a man strikes you, you don't sit down with supper with him. Give Lord Tywin a day and he will bury you in a month. We should lay siege, and quickly, instead of sitting here like fools. Enough time has been wasted already."
There were murmurs of agreement from several, though Dany noticed the royalist lords in the Vale had turned oddly quiet. Aemon was unmoved. "The King…is not his father." His eyes flitted toward Dany, and she felt her cheeks redden. Their conversation in the throne room echoed in her mind. The Mad King's daughter, is that all I am to you?
"He would listen to a man before he condemns him to the flames. As any King should." Aemon's gaze was cold as he surveyed the room. "You may disagree as you please, but this is your King's command. He does not want war. The Lannisters have nowhere to go. They can meet us, and discuss their fate, or they can starve. You have all heard the news from the West."
"Nowhere to go," Lord Blackwood spoke up for the first time. "If Lord Tywin does not meet us, then it will be a siege."
"So be it," declared Aemon. "But we must avoid bloodshed. The King does not want it…and neither do I. It would be a waste of men's lives." He turned to Symond Templeton. "You speak of foes, ser. We know our foes. And there are more than just the Lannisters."
"The Ironborn," Ser Symond replied immediately.
"The sacking of Lannisport does worry me," Lord Grafton agreed with a great frown. "I would have thought the Old Lion would have taken measures to protect the city."
Roote, the local Lord who'd eaten too much nodded. "I would have thought the Old Lion would have left ships aplenty to smash the Ironborn."
"Clearly he did not," said Lord Tarly. "And if they can sack Lannisport, they can sack Oldtown."
"And we need all the men we can get," Aemon finished. Yet there was…something that flickered across his face. I can't read him as I once did, Dany thought, but…she had the queerest feeling he hadn't meant the Ironborn. "Let us prepare to take a force to Riverrun," He commanded further. "As the King demands it. We will plan for the best, and prepare for the worst. Either Lord Tywin agrees to meet us, or he starves in that castle. We leave in a week."
Dany didn't know why she kept going back to the tower, but she did that day, as she had so many others. In a castle of ruins, it was the most devastated of them all; immense, dark and desolate, the Tower of Ghosts stood behind the remains of a collapsed sept, in the east of the complex, where naught but beasts underfoot still roamed.
It was well-named. A tower of ghosts in a land of them. She shivered as a fresh chill rippled through her dresses, ignoring the whisper that carried with the breeze.
The dreams were not new. For as long as she had known anything at all, she had known to fear her nights. As a girl, she'd wake and run to her mother's rooms, or to Viserys, terrified to find their corpses. I dreamed of you, she'd scream. You wore a golden crown. Her brother had smiled - As I should. Why does that scare you so? – but he hadn't seen, he did not understand, not as Dany did. No, she'd cried. No crown fit for a King.
It was normal, Rhaegar had told her instead. Dragon dreams, he shared them too. Targaryens often did; a mark of their heritage…but do not chase them. Even now, Dany could see the distance in his eyes, how he stilled, how shame came to wash away the paleness of his cheeks with his warnings. Not all dreams are not meant to be chased. Of all things, I know that most of all. There is no greater fool than the dreamer.
But I saw you die, she'd whisper into the dark. He'd sit there by her bed, silver hair like her own blending into the moonlight, but in her dreams he was in his death throes, over and over and over again, by rivers, by walls, by hammers, by ice, and every time, the rubies scattered, east and west and north and south, alone in the world: a terrible thing.
When she didn't dream of death, she dreamed of dragons, soaring in the skies, black and green and yellow, swooping and roaring and blazing, ever fiercer, ever freer. Sometimes all they did was fly, and she watched them; sometimes they came from her, soaring over King's Landing or the Vale or Dragonstone or the wide expanse. One would descend – the same beast, every time, with swirling scales of black dashed with streaks of brightest crimson and eyes of burning coals, and then she was away, unburdened too, unshackled too, to fly, now forever free.
Rhaegar never had those dreams. He had frowned to hear them, and then he sighed, suddenly distant and awkward. I am sorry, he even said once. She hadn't understood why. If you were born a boy, perhaps…
None of them had understood but Aemon. He had dreams too – of wolves and stone statues, and summer snows and blue roses. None had ever understood her but Aemon – until men had sought to kill him.
Dany choked back the sob as she pulled out the vellum scroll, still bearing the maester's loopy handwriting. It was months old now, and looked it: the edges were rough, curling in some places and outright torn in others. The ink was fading too, where it wasn't covered by dirt or the tracks of her tears.
She had thought Aemon dead. In the darkest moments, she thought it still, as changed as he was. What she wouldn't have given, for the black dragon's sanctuary now, for the freedom to fly away and never look back. To look back was to lose herself – to stay still was to lose herself, now and forever, lost in a life that wasn't hers to live.
I should have run. Perhaps she'd been in Essos now, and Aemon would be as he was, and they'd roam the lands, drinking and dining until they were old. There would be long-faced, silver-haired babes running past lemon trees, faster and further afield – the Three Daughters, Volantis, Meereen and Qarth – what would it matter, so long as it as they were together?
That life was not hers to live, either. Like the Tower, like Harrenhal, like Maegor's Holdfast –here she was, Daenerys Targaryen, a ruin to what-ifs.
-
"We need to talk," She said that night.
Aemon was hunched over a small wooden desk, taking supper, reading letters by the light of the roaring fire in the hearth, in one of the smaller rooms of the castle. It was hidden away from the main apartments in the deeper and darker depths of Harrenhal, for which she was thankful – it would not do well for Harry or Littlefinger's men to see her visiting him so openly.
He looked up, frowning at her approach, and for a moment, it was Rhaegar she saw, thumbing through papers, long hair falling like curtains across his face, solemn and guarded, a mystery to the world as much as the world was a mystery to him…then the raven behind him cawed, and he jumped, hastily pushing a scroll to the side. "Princess-"
"Dany," She said shortly. There was a direwolf sigil on the broken seal of the scroll. Her eyes fixated on it for too long before she remembered to speak. "Stop calling me Princess. The Gods have denied us marriage. You will not deny me your friendship. We have spent too much time together for anything less. Who is that raven from?"
By the window, the raven screeched again. She could have sworn it's beady black eyes were staring at her. "Of course…Dany. I…forgive me. I have had a long day."
"Likewise. Your mother's family are writing to you?"
It was technically treason, but she found herself unable to care.
"My….yes. Robb Stark."
"Your cousin," Dany remembered. "Eddard Stark's heir."
"Cousin." He spoke the word as if it were the oddest he'd ever heard. She supposed it must be odd, to have such close family you'd never met. "Yes. My…cousin."
No doubt he was writing to them now he was free from King's Landing. She approved. "You have many cousins, I think." At least seven, by her count. Eddard Stark had five children, and his brother Benjen, two. She reached for the jug by his plate, only to frown. "Water? With your meal? Who are you truly, and where is Aemon Targaryen?"
Aemon glanced at the raven again, and it rose, flying to her shoulder, crying "Here! Here!"
"You heard the crow. Still here." He studied her as Dany stroked the bird's feathers; it leaned into her touch. She had never known ravens to be so friendly.
"I'm glad to hear it."
"I figured I should not drink," He explained, after a pause, gesturing to the water as she poured some into his cup. "Given how people gossip. I wasn't aware I'd become a drunk."
"And a whoremonger," Dany added helpfully, smiling at his grimace. The thought still stung, but she didn't blame him. The raven rose back to the window as she reached for water. It was iced and cool to her lips, and she granted herself a second gulp. "Explain to me the truth of things," She demanded then.
He leant back, suddenly looking very wary. "On?"
"What is the King's plans?"
If anyone knew, Aemon would. He'd always had a way of wrangling hidden truths from her brother. Instead however, he merely shuffled in his seat, glancing away briefly to take in the flames. "I fear you might know better than me."
"If only," She said. For all she loved her brother, she'd never truly known him. Two decades and more of distance echoed between them. "Why does Rhaegar command caution? Like a craven. They attacked us, Aemon. They burned our keep. Has he forgotten our words?"
Aemon blinked, and suddenly his gaze grew distant. "Fire and Blood," He whispered, as if those words had not passed his lips a hundred times before.
"They deserved nothing less," Dany declared. "Nothing less. All this talk of meeting him. Why? He's there, with nowhere to go."
"He is the King. Who am I to question the King's decisions?"
"You are his son." Sons outranked sisters. "And his favourite. If you cannot question him, who can?"
The raven screeched again as he rose and turned to the window overlooking the grounds. Dany spied a twisted, misshapen tree in the distance. Ugly and broken, like everything else in Harrenhal. "Riverrun would be hard to sack, or so I am told. The Lannisters will have filled the moat. It will be surrounded on all three sides by water. If he won't come out…it will be a long siege."
"Then we starve him out." She helped herself to a half-eaten loaf of bread, ignoring Aemon's odd look. The broth was cold, but well-seasoned, with chunks of coriander settling upon the top. Her appetite was returning to her, at least. "I was not educated in matters of war as you and Egg were, but I still do not see why-"
"We don't know where the Lannister armies are. They could smash us in our rear. We don't know the situation at Riverrun, nor the loyalties of the men there…and the Small Council quakes at the thought of war. The King most of all."
He stopped, eyes roaming back to the direwolf on the wax seal. "If the truth comes out – that Joffrey and his siblings are bastards born of incest - some will call for Joffrey, some for Lysa Darry, some for…"
A curious shadow suddenly passed over Aemon's face. "Catelyn Stark," He finished. "They're terrified-"
"-of a new Rebellion," She finished. "Yes, I know. But are we just to let them get away with trying to kill us all?"
Aemon said nothing. Nor did he move. Yet Dany saw how he tensed, and how he flexed his fingers. Madness, she thought. Fire and Blood. Her brother had forgotten their words. Or perhaps he had never known them at all. Viserys had often said so. Bookish, solemn Rhaegar, always quiet, always thinking, he snarled once. Always thinking, never doing.
"What a mess this is," Dany said when he did not reply. "How did we end up in a situation such as this?"
He turned, and a strange smile split his long face. "I ask myself that every day," He said dryly. "My whole life seems a jape."
His and hers, she thought. A very long, very sad one. "When did it all change?" She sighed. "Would that I could go back even a decade."
Her heart was aching. Before the marriage and her mother's death, before, when the world was right, when Dany knew nothing but her family. Before she had left for the Vale, before she had given up her dreams and her desires, before she had ghosts to haunt her at all.
"The four of us, running everywhere. Elia and my mother still alive. The world felt safe, then."
It was so easy to lose herself in memories. She'd been doing it more and more, at Harrenhal.
"Even Rhaegar smiled more. Viserys too. And my mother – do you remember how she'd tell us all the stories?"
Rhaella Targaryen had loved to tell tales of the dragons of old – the good and the wicked, those long remembered and the Targaryens lost to time. Even as frail as she had been, there was always strength in those violet eyes when it was time to for tales, and if Dany closed her own eyes, so much like her mother's, she could almost sense her mother still, and smell her, and feel the soft press of her palms.
Longing, hard and fierce, bloomed in her chest. Of all the ghosts that haunted her, there was only one she yearned for. The world had never felt right after her mother's death. Perhaps it never would again.
"She doted on you," Dany murmured. "Her little wild wolf. Do you remember?"
Perhaps she was dreaming. She latched on the thought like a starving woman. It could all be a dream. No attack on her home, no marriage to a cruel, cold man. She would wake up in her bed at King's Landing. Perhaps it was all a dream, and Dany was in her room, back when the world was safe, and Aemon would be battering at her door, already awake, already shouting, because the day was young and so were they.
Rhae would be in the throne room somewhere, even then sparring with her wits, and Dany's mother would be in her chambers, waiting for her morning greeting, and soon enough Egg or even Allyria Dayne would be racing into her room to join Aemon in bidding her to break her fast. Yes, she thought. And Arthur Dayne would be laughing at them, and Ser Alliser would be waiting for her, and Rhaegar would even spare them an hour, or two, if the sun set just right, to tell them tales of grumpkins and snarks and white walkers and last heroes. Yes…how would the world ever have been so wrong as it had been?
"The world wasn't safe, then," said Aemon.
No. Of course it wasn't. How could the world have ever been so right, back then? She opened her eyes to see Aemon staring at her. Like a monolith, Dany thought – still as stone, standing there as he was, back straight, gaze solemn. So very different than the boy she knew, now the ghosts of her dreams. Her heart broke anew to think it. There had once been a time when Aemon Targaryen stopped for nothing, blazing like an inferno, one part Daemon the Rogue Prince, one part the Dragonknight, one part, all him.
Now he was a wall of ice.
And yet, for a moment, she saw something of his father in him, in his gaze, in the mysteries of his face – her brother, and something else entirely, something that must have been from his mother, married together in that long Stark face. For all that he had changed – and the gods only knew that he had, so very much – there were mere moments, she noticed, when the icy façade would break - and then emotions would ripple across his face like water in a pond.
It was doing so now. Aemon's dark eyes were suddenly elsewhere, and his voice grew softer.
"The world wasn't safe," He repeated, voice almost a whisper. She noticed too how he ran one hand over his chest and belly, almost by reflex. Where his scars were. She'd never seen them. The idea that there was a single blemish on his skin she had not yet seen or touched sat wrongly within her. "It was just smaller."
"If only it'd shrink now," She replied.
They stared at one another for a moment, then Aemon sighed and glanced down at the water with a shake of his head. "Maybe it should be wine," He decided.
"Oh?"
"Yes. Your husband's brought enough wine for two armies." Aemon moved towards the door, to fetch a servant. "He won't miss one night's worth. Let's drink wine tonight."
She felt herself smile. "Are you certain?"
A shadow of the boy she knew flickered in his face as he returned her grin. "I have never been more so, I think. Though I have a request."
"Do you?"
"There are things I do not…remember," He said, after a pause. "That I should know, but I do not."
She shook her head. "You were attacked. It has been known to happen, according to the maesters. You still cannot recall certain things?"
He looked away. "One of the last times we met, you told me I was… a Targaryen, too. And sometimes you fear I forget."
"I do."
"Then remind me," He murmured. "I can't recall certain people. Tell me about your mother." His eyes locked onto hers. "Tell me about my grandmother, then."
-
That night, she dreamt of her. Rhaella Targaryen looked just as she remembered – frail only on the outside, bearing the scars of her father's love, but smiling kindly, with palms soft as silk.
"You're dead," She whispered.
No. Her lips never moved, but she could hear her voice still, whispering in her ear, and in her heart. For as long as you live, so do I, sweetling.
"I miss you."
There's nothing to miss. Her voice was like silk on skin, like rich broth on her tongue, like cool water over her lips. I'm still with you, always.
"If you were here, I would know what to do." The world was wrong, and growing more terrible by the day. "Mother-"
Her mother's smile was kind, and patient, and as beautiful as the day Dany first saw it. You have always known. You are a dragon.
And dragons were never meant to stay still, Dany thought.