Chapter 28: Viserys's Decline
ULF
Viserys fell during a small council meeting.
I wasn't there. Guards don't sit at that table. But the news outran every raven in the Keep, and it reached the library before the maesters had even got their boxes open.
"The king fell!" A servant came down the gallery at a dead run, sandals slapping, robe hauled up past his knees. "Maesters to the royal chambers! Now!"
I was escorting Helaena between the shelves when we heard him. She stopped mid-step. One hand stayed on the spine of a book she'd never come back for.
"It's happening," she whispered. "The crown begins to drown."
Two scribes had already turned their heads. I put my hand under her elbow and walked her into the alcove behind the map cases, where the lamps didn't reach.
"What did you see?"
"Fever. Delirium. Father won't recover this time. And when he dies—" Her voice broke. "Everything breaks with him."
"How long?"
"Days. Maybe a week. The dreams aren't precise."
Days. Every plan I'd built assumed months.
I took her hands. Both of them were cold. "Listen to me. When it starts, you stay close to me. You and the children. I don't care what Otto orders, what Aegon demands. You stay within my sight."
"Ulf." She tried to pull her fingers back.
"Promise me."
She nodded. Trembling. "I promise."
The Keep changed overnight.
Maesters swarmed Viserys's chambers. Leeches, poultices, prayers, and a smell of vinegar that got into the corridors and stayed there. Nothing worked. Twice in that first night I heard the king calling for his dead wife, loud enough to carry down two floors, and each time the sound stopped a servant on the stairs like a hand on the throat.
Alicent took effective control before the second dawn. I passed her in the Hand's gallery with Otto, both of them walking fast, neither of them looking at me. Guards are furniture. Furniture with ears.
"He asked for Aemma again," she said. Her voice stayed level. "He doesn't know the season, Father. He doesn't know me."
"Then it matters very little what he says in the room." Otto didn't slow. "It matters what is written down afterward."
"He is my husband."
"He is the succession." A pause of exactly the length he wanted. "Grieve when there is time to spend on grief."
Ravens flew to Dragonstone that morning. Summoning Rhaenyra.
The court fractured where anyone could see it. Otto, Alicent and Criston Cole took their meals in private chambers now, voices low behind closed doors. What few supporters Rhaenyra had in King's Landing huddled at the end of the long tables, counting themselves and not liking the number.
Criston caught me on the serpentine steps, mail sliding as he turned.
"You've made yourself the princess's shadow."
"I'm assigned to her."
"Assignments end." He looked at the scarring on my hands, the new pink of it. "When this turns, the realm will remember which men were standing where. Choose the wall you want at your back."
"Already have."
Corlys Velaryon came up from Driftmark on the evening tide with salt still drying on his cloak. He stopped in the outer yard, put his head back, and read the towers over for a long moment before he spoke, not particularly to me.
"Storm's sitting out past the bar," he said. "Everyone inside these walls is shouting about which sail to set. Not one of them has looked at the sky."
"And House Velaryon, my lord?"
"Keeps its ships where they can still come about." He walked on.
And me? I stayed with Helaena. Doubled her guard shifts. Slept in four-hour increments on a folded cloak outside her door, and woke at every footfall in the corridor.
Day 130. Otto summoned Aegon.
I knew because I had the post outside the Tower of the Hand when the prince arrived, drunk, mid-afternoon, one hand on the wall for the last four steps. The page holding the door for him kept his eyes down. The door didn't close properly behind them.
"Father wants to talk," Otto said. "About your future."
"My future's in a wine cup. Leave me alone."
"Aegon. Your father the king is dying. That makes you—"
"Nothing. It makes me nothing. Rhaenyra's the heir. Everyone knows it."
Something scraped. A chair pushed back, or a decanter dragged across wood.
"The law says otherwise. Eldest son inherits."
"The law can fuck itself."
Nobody spoke for a while. When Otto did, all the warmth had gone out of him.
"You will be king. Whether you want it or not. The realm needs stability, and a woman on the throne invites chaos."
"Then let it have chaos. I never wanted this."
"Your wants are irrelevant."
I heard Aegon storm out. He stumbled past me a moment later, reeking of Arbor red, eyes rimmed pink, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. He didn't notice I was there. Soon enough they'd put a crown on that head, and tonight he couldn't find the middle of a corridor.
Day 133. Helaena's vision came during dinner.
We were alone in her chambers, the children already asleep next door. She'd cut her capon into pieces and eaten none of it. The candle between us needed trimming and neither of us had done it.
Then she spoke, and her voice had gone flat and far away.
"The crown drowns in blood. Brother kills brother. Mother buries her children. The white stands alone in fire."
Her eyes weren't on the room. They weren't on me.
"Helaena." I set my cup down.
"It's coming. The Dance. Dragons burning. Cities falling. Everyone dies. Everyone." She turned to me and the tears came all at once. "And I can't stop it. I see it all and I can't stop any of it."
I pulled her against my chest. She came apart there, both fists shut in my shirt, sobbing into the wool.
"You don't have to stop it alone," I said. "We'll face it together."
"How? How do we fight dragons? How do we stop a war?"
"We don't stop the war. We protect what matters. Your children. You. That's enough."
She sat back, gripping the shirt tighter. "Promise me. When it begins, when the dragons dance, you'll protect my children. Not Aegon. Not the throne. Them."
"I swear it. On my life. On my soul. On everything I am."
"Not just swear. Promise that you'll live. That you'll survive. Because if you die—" She stopped and started again. "If you die, there's nothing left."
I wiped her face with my thumb. "I'll live. I'll fight. I'll survive. For you. For them. For however long it takes."
She kissed me then, hard and frightened, one hand at the back of my neck as if I might be called away mid-breath. When she finally let go, her forehead stayed against mine until the candle guttered.
I didn't sleep that night.
I lay on my cot with my eyes open, counting the work.
The armorer at first light, for treated leather that would hold against dragonfire long enough to get someone out of a burning room. The nursery, every escape route mapped and walked, Helaena taught all of them, the children drilled until it felt like a game and not a warning. The undercroft. Blood and Cheese were bones in a lime pit, but the passages they'd used were still there, and other men could count doors as well as I could.
My knife wanted sharpening. Shigan wasn't yet reliable through plate. Rankyaku still needed twenty paces more reach than I had.
And Silverwing. Back to the outcrop, as often as the shifts allowed, until tolerance turned into something I could stake a life on.
I stood and strapped on the weighted gear.
Soru bursts across the empty barracks floor. Tekkai holds until my ribs stopped protesting. Rankyaku. Geppo. Again, and again, until the sweat ran cold and my hands shook.
Days. Not hours yet. Days were still something I could spend.
When the eastern sky went grey I stripped off the harness, washed, and went down toward Flea Bottom with my own coin to start buying what the list wanted.