Chapter 67: Escalation - Part 1
OTTO
Otto laid the reports out in the order they would cost him, the granary tally at the bottom, under his hand.
The small council chamber felt smaller every week. Nothing in it had moved. Same table, same shutters, same smell of tallow and old ink. Yet every man at it sat now with his elbows drawn in.
"We're losing ground." He spread the latest reports across the table. "The Blacks control the Riverlands, most of the Vale, and the North has declared for Rhaenyra. Our territory shrinks daily."
"Then we attack." Aegon's voice slurred slightly. Wine at breakfast again. The four men who'd carried his chair up out of Maegor's still stood in the passage; nobody had dismissed them. "Burn them out."
"Attack where? With what? We have four dragons. They have more. We have one army. They have three."
"Then we use what we have better."
"That's what I'm trying to explain." His patience went, and he heard it go, and there was no calling it back. "Strategy requires resources. We're running short."
He slid the granary tally out where they could all see it and none of them would. A loaf at the Mud Gate ovens: nineteen coppers. Six barges a day had come up to the wharves before the Gullet closed. Now there were none.
Ulf sat in his corner, listening. The queen's representative in military matters—a title Otto had invented in a bad month to keep the man where he could see him. It gave him access without giving him a vote. It had not worked.
They're panicking. That was what the corner of the room was thinking, and Otto couldn't have disputed it. Thirty years at the trade and he couldn't think of the thing that would stop it.
"What about Daemon?" Criston Cole asked. "He's the key. Kill him, and their command structure collapses."
"Daemon is at Harrenhal, surrounded by armies, defended by Caraxes." Otto shook his head. "Attacking him directly would be suicide."
"Then we lure him out." Aemond spoke for the first time. "Give him a target he can't resist. An insult he can't ignore."
"What kind of insult?"
Aemond's smile was cold. "Me. On Vhagar. Burning everything he holds dear. Let him come for me."
Silence. Below the window a cart went by on a broken wheel.
"That's... risky," Otto managed.
"That's war. Risks are required." Aemond stood. "I'll plan the operation. I'll execute it. All I need is your approval."
Otto looked around the table. Cole's jaw was set. Orwyle wrote. The king watched his cup.
No one objected.
"Approved. But take backup. Don't face Caraxes alone."
"I don't intend to." Aemond's single eye found Ulf. "The White comes with me. Silverwing can handle what Vhagar can't."
The bastard didn't look up and didn't look surprised. Otto had sent a great many men to war and none of them had ever taken it like that.
"As my prince commands."
"Where," Cole said.
"Maidenpool." Aemond didn't turn his head. "The last northern harbour still feeding my uncle's blockade. He answers for it or he watches the river trade come apart in his hands."
"Two dragons is thin, my prince."
"Two is the whole of it. A host is a battle. Two is an insult."
"Then keep the third out of the sky. Hugh Hammer stays in the city with Vermithor, and the order is written, and the Hand signs it."
Otto set down his pen. "Why written?"
"Because a spoken order is a thing a man remembers differently afterward."
Aemond laughed once, without warmth, and went out.
Otto signed it before the noon bell. Four heartbeats, a scatter of sand, done. Then the chamber emptied and he moved the tally figures round twice more, and they came out as they had every morning since the ships closed the river.
ULF
The streets hadn't changed.
Same narrow alleys. Same stench of too many people in too little space. Same desperation written on every face. But there were more faces now, refugees from burned lands, and the population had doubled in weeks.
Marsh met me in the yard behind his tavern, among the empties. He didn't offer to take me in. He hadn't since the day I laid Nel on his long table.
"They're starving." He tipped his chin at the wall, at the noise coming over it. "Food shipments can't keep up. Prices triple every day. People are dying."
"How bad?"
"Bad enough that riots are coming." He said it flat, as a report. "Bad enough that the Gold Cloaks are scared. They've stopped walking the Hook in fours. They walk in tens." He lowered his voice, though the yard was empty. "Bad enough that people are starting to say the old queen was better. That Rhaenyra would fix things."
"Rhaenyra's ships are why they're hungry."
"They know who's wearing the crown when bread costs nineteen." He shrugged. "That's the whole of it, and it's enough."
"I need food distributed. Can your network handle it?"
"With what money?" His eyes went over me once. "You had a box under a stair. You've not got a box under a stair any more."
I pulled the pouch off my belt. Half of what I had left in the world.
"This. Buy what you can. Distribute to families with children first."
Marsh took the pouch. Weighed it on his palm twice. I watched him arrive at the number and not say it.
"This'll help. For a week, maybe. Then what?"
"Then I'll find more."
Somehow.
He put it inside his coat. He didn't thank me. I hadn't earned thanking.
HELAENA
Helaena insisted on coming.
The guards surrounded them, nervous, scanning for threats in every shadow. Ser Rickard had made his objection at the gate and hadn't spoken since. A queen shouldn't walk Flea Bottom. A queen shouldn't see this.
But Helaena had never been a normal queen.
"They're suffering." Her voice was soft. Sad. "All of them. And we're the ones causing it."
"The war is causing it," Ulf said.
"The war we're fighting."
She stopped at a corner where a woman sat with three children, all thin, all hollow-eyed. The smallest had a fist wound in its mother's skirt and didn't let go for the bread. Helaena knelt on the wet stone, pulled a loaf from the basket she'd brought, handed it over.
"Thank you," the woman breathed. "Gods bless you."
"What's your name?"
"Morra, Your Grace."
"Where's your home, Morra?"
"Gone. Burned. We came here hoping..." The woman's voice broke. "We didn't know where else to go."
Helaena took her hand. Squeezed. Her fingers were shaking and had been since the corner before this one.
"You're safe now. I'll make sure of it."
They moved on. More bread distributed. More names learned. More promises made. At the end of the fourth street she said them all back, out loud, in order, and got them right.
ULF
She came to my chambers that night and locked the door behind her.
No words needed. After months of building trust. After surviving assassination attempts. After my departure to war and my return. After everything we'd shared, the last boundary between us felt arbitrary.
She kissed me. I kissed back. Hands found skin, breath quickened, and we moved to the bed, slow and careful, two people who'd learned each other's minds now learning each other's bodies.
"Are you sure?" I murmured.
"I've been sure for months."
When we finally joined she gasped, and it wasn't pain. Recognition, maybe. Completion.
"I see you," she whispered. "All of you. Everything you are."
"I see you too."
Afterward she lay against my chest, silver hair spread like a river, her breathing slow and steady.
"I've never felt this before," she said. "Safe. Whole. Like I belong somewhere."
"You belong here."
"With you."
"With me."
She smiled, and closed her eyes, and sleep took her quickly. The deep, peaceful sleep of someone finally at home.
I lay awake longer, watching her. Morra's name went round in my head in Helaena's voice.
She was too good for this world. Too kind. Too caring. That was why I loved her.
The war continues. Enemies circle. Death waits in countless forms. Out past the shutters a bell rang the wrong hour, and under it the city was awake and hungry and counting coppers.
But right now, Helaena slept in my arms.
Right now, that was enough.