Chapter 65: Aftermath
HUGH HAMMER
Nine steps across the quay and Hugh stopped, because of what the bastard was doing.
Sitting on a broken stretch of harbour wall with the old lord's sword laid across his knees, working an oiled cloth down the blade. Methodical strokes. Blood that wasn't his own flaking away with each pass. Behind him the fish market was filling up with stacked spears and men holding nothing at all.
"You let her escape."
The White didn't look up. Just kept cleaning.
"She was wounded. Fleeing. The town was taken."
"The battle was won when that bitch was dead. Not before." Hugh came close enough to smell the oil. "She should be meat for the crows right now. In the water. With every man on that wall watching her go under."
"Moondancer won't make Dragonstone on that wing." Still the flat calm, unhurried, like a man counting sacks. "If the joint sets crooked she never flies again. If it sets straight, that's months of healers and meat and somebody's whole attention, on a rock that hasn't got any of the three to spare."
"That's coward's logic."
Now the bastard looked up. Pale eyes, and nothing moving behind them.
"That's tactical logic. You wouldn't understand it."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you think with your blood, not your brain. You burned drying sheds this morning because nobody handed you anything better. You break formation to satisfy yourself. You're not a weapon. You're wildfire. Useful. Nobody's ever put it out on purpose."
Hugh's fist connected before he finished thinking about it.
The bastard moved. Faster than Hugh expected. The punch grazed his jaw instead of breaking it, and the gauntlet took skin off it, and that was all.
"Don't." A warning in that voice. Something dangerous under the calm.
"Or what? You'll tell Aemond? Run to your precious queen?"
"Or I'll hurt you in ways that don't show." The bastard stood, and set the sword down flat, which was somehow worse. "I've killed men in alleys you've never heard of. I've broken bones no healer could put a name to. Don't make me demonstrate."
They stood face to face. Equal height. Unequal rage.
Hugh's hands were still bad under the leather. Two years on, and the backs of them wept when the weather turned, because he had walked up to Vermithor through the fire and let it come off him in sheets and hadn't stopped walking. That was the price. Every man who had one had paid it.
Nobody had asked this one for anything.
"This isn't over," Hugh growled.
"It never is."
Hugh spat on the flags between them and walked away, past the burial detail, past a boy in Darklyn blue being sick against a bollard. The prince had said the words. *Kill her. I want it seen.* Two thousand men had heard them, and every one of those men had then watched the White drive her out over the bay like a farmer shooing geese.
Ser Criston was at the foot of the harbour steps with a wax tablet, counting stacked spears out loud.
"You heard the order," Hugh said. "Same as me."
"Four hundred and twelve," Cole said to the tablet, and scratched it in, and moved down the line.
"That's it? A man refuses the prince regent in front of the whole army and you count spears?"
"I write the hour down. Somebody else decides what it's worth." Cole didn't look up. "You'd do better to go and see to your dragon. He's been screaming at the mole since you got off him."
*I'll remember this, bastard. I'll remember everything.*
AEMOND
The prince regent found the White by the winch house at the head of the quay.
"Walk with me."
Not a request.
They went along the waterfront, past a rick of stacked spears, past a maester's boy sawing at a soldier's forearm on an upturned crate, past six men rolling barrels into a line so a septon could lay bodies on them. The tar sheds were still going. The smoke stood up straight in the dead air and leaned east, out over the water, where the girl had gone.
"Cole reports you drove her seaward rather than finishing her."
"I did."
"Mercy or tactics?"
The bastard took long enough over it that Aemond could watch him choose. That was fine. A man who chose his answers was a man who could be steered by what you rewarded.
"Tactics."
"Explain."
"A dead Baela Targaryen is Daemon's daughter, killed by us, in front of a town. That's a recruiting song. Every hedge knight between here and the Trident learns the tune inside a month, and they learn it with her age in the first line." He walked three more paces. "A one-winged girl limping home to Dragonstone is a report. Daemon reads it in a cold hall and it tells him his blood can be beaten in our sky by ours."
Aemond turned the logic over. Examined it for flaws.
"Strategic. I approve."
"Thank you, my prince."
"But don't make a habit of disobeying implied orders." His single eye fixed on the bastard. "The next time I want an enemy dead, I'll be explicit. And I'll expect obedience."
"Understood."
"Good." Aemond resumed walking. "The surgeons have Tessarion's flank sewn shut with sail thread. She'll fly it. Badly, and not far, and my brother leaves for Oldtown at first light regardless. He may command the Hightower host and burn Reachmen who cannot fly away from him."
"That leaves three of us."
"You have already been told what it leaves." A gull went over, low, screaming. "Hugh wants you punished. Says you're soft. A traitor."
"Hugh wanted to burn the world the moment he mounted Vermithor."
"True." A rare smile crossed Aemond's face. "He's useful, but unstable. Keep an eye on him. Report anything... concerning."
"You want me to spy on a fellow dragonrider?"
"I want you to protect Green interests. Sometimes that means watching our own." They had reached the mole, and Vhagar's bulk lay along it like a fallen wall. "My sister writes to you."
The bastard didn't respond. But he nodded once.
*Good. Another piece under control.*
ULF
I walked the fishing quarter alone.
Sunset came in under the smoke and put everything in orange and red, which was about right for what was lying in it.
Bodies. Hundreds of them, counting the wall and the gate and the sheds. Darklyn blue, Green tabards, one boy in nothing but a fishmonger's apron. All the same colour once the fire had been over them. Some of them weren't shapes I could put a trade to any more.
How many of these came off Vermithor? Off Vhagar? Off us, in that first climb, when Silverwing's downdraught took the roofs off two rows of houses?
Dragons burn what they burn. The men underneath are weather to them.
A hand grabbed my ankle.
A man, barely recognisable as such. Burned across half his body. Green tabard melted into the flesh of his chest.
"The dragons..." His voice was wet. Broken. "They didn't care... which side..."
"No." I knelt beside him. "They didn't."
"My boy... in King's Landing... tell him..."
His grip loosened. His eyes fixed.
I closed them, and went through his belt for a name, because nobody else was going to.
A letter in his pouch, folded twice, the ink furred where the sweat had got at it. Addressed to *Willem* in careful handwriting. A child's name, probably. Or a brother's.
I put it inside my coat.
The quarter went on. More bodies. More letters that were never going to be delivered, and a man with an oiled cloth who'd cleaned another man's sword for him because it was the only thing all day he could finish.
I walked until dark. Counted what I could. Mourned what I couldn't.
When I got back to the tent I found my journal and wrote:
*Second battle. I've stopped counting the kills. Hundreds dead. I chose tactics over vengeance. I hope I chose right. I hope Helaena can still love what I'm becoming.*
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