Chapter 73: New Regime - Part 2
HELAENA
Maps covered Ulf's desk, three deep, weighted at the corners with a whetstone and two cups.
King's Landing's streets. Sewer systems. Harbor approaches. Three different routes marked in red ink, and each red line had smaller marks beside it in a hand so cramped she had to bend close to read them: distances, tide hours, the names of gates.
"This one leads to the docks." Ulf traced the first route with one finger, out through the Guildhall lanes and down. "My contacts have a ship on standby. Fast, discreet, can sail to Essos within days."
"Essos?"
"Far from the war. Far from dragons. Far from anyone who'd use your children as pawns."
"What about you?"
"I come with you. Obviously."
She put her hand flat on the second map before he could move to it.
"And Aegon? He lies in that room with a maester counting his breaths. I'm his wife. If I walk out of this city while he's like that, I'm a woman who abandoned a broken king."
"You'd be alive."
"So would every septon in the Seven Kingdoms, telling my son what his mother did."
"Your son can hear it in Pentos and grow up," Ulf said. "He can hear it here and not."
Helaena studied the maps again. The careful planning. The contingencies inside the contingencies, arrows drawn from one route to another where they crossed.
"You've been preparing this for weeks."
"Since Aemond became regent." He met her eyes. "Maybe before. Since I realized how dangerous this war would become."
"You think he'd hurt my children?"
"I think Aemond would sacrifice anything, anyone, for power. If your children become obstacles, he'll remove them." He said it without heat, flat as a tally read aloud. "He wouldn't enjoy it. That's the part people get wrong about him."
Cold. True. Necessary.
She pulled off her rings one at a time. Three pieces, emerald, ruby, sapphire, still warm from her hands. She placed them on the corner of the harbor map.
"These can be sold. Gold for bribes, for passage, for whatever we need."
"Helaena—"
"I'm not being generous. I'm being practical." She looked at him. "You've given everything for us. Your gold. Your safety. Your future. Let me contribute something."
"Someone will notice your hands."
"Then someone will decide I'm mourning."
He took the rings. Held them carefully, one thumb over the emerald, and didn't put them in his purse where a cutpurse would look.
"I'll hide these with the other caches. Three locations. If one's compromised, the others remain."
"How many caches?"
"Seven. Different districts. Different contacts." He smiled slightly. "I learned paranoia in Flea Bottom. It's serving me well."
"What else have you prepared?"
"Weapons. Food supplies. Forged documents. You become a wealthy widow from Lys, the children your heirs." He paused. "And a dragon."
"Silverwing?"
"She knows the plan. Or she knows that we might need to flee quickly. She'll come when I call."
Helaena touched his face. There was grey ash still along his jaw where the water had missed.
"You've thought of everything."
"I've tried. But plans fail. People fail. All I can do is maximize our chances."
"Then let's hope we never need these plans."
"Let's hope."
But neither of them believed it, and neither of them rolled the maps away.
AEMOND
The war was finally being fought properly.
Aemond went through the reports twice, in order. His brother had never read one of them twice. Food distribution centralized under Wylde's clerks, and the riots down by half. Dragon patrols pushed out past the fifty-mile line, and no Black scout had come inside it in eight days. Targeted strikes against Black-aligned lords: three castles burned, two surrenders, one execution on the ground where the man had knelt to beg.
This is how you win wars. Not drinking and whoring while advisors squabble.
"My prince." Criston Cole came in with his helm under his arm. "The Riverlands reports."
"Good news or bad?"
"Mixed. Daemon remains at Harrenhal. His forces grow, but slowly. He's waiting for something."
"Reinforcements?"
"Perhaps. Or perhaps he's baiting us to attack."
"Let him wait." Aemond set down the report. "Harrenhal is a fortress. We'd lose dragons trying to take it. Better to starve him out, cut his supply lines, make his position untenable."
"That could take months."
"We have months. The Blacks have problems of their own. Rhaenyra lost Rhaenys, her most experienced commander. Syrax is wounded. Moondancer's rider is dead or fled." He smiled. "Time favors us now."
"They pulled nothing off the shore at Maidenpool," Cole said. "Not a body. Not a scale."
"Then they can spend the winter hoping."
Cole nodded. Started to leave.
"One more thing." Aemond's voice stopped him. "The queen's protector. Ulf the White."
"What about him?"
"Have him watched. Discreetly. I want to know where he goes, who he meets, what he plans."
"He carried your brother home strapped to a dying dragon, my prince. Men saw it."
"Men saw what I told them to see." Aemond turned back to his reports. "I suspect everyone. Especially those who proved willing to let kings die."
ULF
The wine was cheap, and I could smell it from six paces.
I'd come down to the training yard because the forms are the only thing that empties my head, and the moon was high enough to throw a clean shadow off the practice post. Hugh Hammer came through the gate with a skin in one hand and his boots dragging.
"Drinking again?"
"Celebrating." He raised the skin. "Queen's own dragon went west out of Maidenpool with a wing she couldn't fold. Whole Black host packed up behind her. And the realm's in Aemond's fist now, and the king's where he belongs."
"His place being a coma."
"Better than the throne, way he was ruling." Hugh stumbled closer and lowered his voice, which for him meant everyone within thirty feet could still hear it. "Listen. I've been thinking."
"Dangerous habit."
"Fuck off and listen." He leaned in, and the wine came with him. "Aemond's power-hungry. Anyone can see it. And Aegon's probably going to die. So what happens then?"
"Aemond becomes king."
"Or what if he doesn't?" Hugh's eyes glittered. "What if neither of them survives this war?"
There it is. The treason. Out loud, in a stone yard, with a guard on the wall walk forty feet up.
I kept my face where it was and rested the wooden sword point-down in the sand.
"What are you suggesting?"
"We're dragonriders. You and me. The two most powerful weapons in the realm." He grinned. "Why should Targaryens rule? What makes their blood better than ours? We've got the same fire. Same scales under our saddles."
"You're talking about betraying everyone."
"I'm talking about taking what's ours. The Blacks, the Greens—they'll destroy each other. When the smoke clears, who's left standing? Us." He spread his arms wide enough to nearly go over. "Dragonlords. Real ones. Not inbred nobles playing at war."
He's serious. Or drunk enough to be serious, which in Hugh is the same thing with a longer road home.
"That's... a significant plan."
"It's the only plan that makes sense." Hugh grabbed my shoulder, and his grip was a smith's, hard even loaded with wine. "Think about it. When you've got a real idea how to make it happen, come find me."
He staggered away across the sand and got the gate open on the second try.
I watched him go.
Hugh Hammer wants to betray the Greens. Wants to rule himself. Wants me as an ally.
The smart move was to report this. Tell Aemond. Let Hugh be executed for treason.
But Hugh on Vermithor was a valuable weapon, and I might still need that weapon pointed at somebody. And Aemond wouldn't take a bastard's word against another dragonrider without proof he could hold in his hand.
Watch. Wait. Gather evidence.
My hand found my knife hilt.
And be ready to kill him if necessary.
I picked up the wooden sword and went back to the post. On the wall walk above the yard, a white cloak moved out of the torchlight and didn't come back.
Enemies everywhere. Even among allies.
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