Chapter 82: The Regent's War
ULF
Otto Hightower had been speaking for half an hour without once saying the word regent about himself. That was how I knew he wanted it.
I stood behind Helaena's chair with my hands crossed at the small of my back. Rain came sideways off the bay and hit the shutters in bursts, and every time it did the lords raised their voices a little without noticing.
"Lord Otto has the experience." Jasper Wylde spread his fingers flat on the wood. "He carried the Hand's chain under two kings. No man living knows the Crownlands better."
"Lord Otto has the ambition, you mean." Tyland Lannister hadn't opened the ledger he'd brought in with him. "Experience is what we call ambition once it's gathered enough dust to look respectable."
"The queen is mother to the heirs. That counts for something."
"The queen is prone to episodes."
That came from the foot of the table, from a Reach lord with rain still standing on the shoulders of his cloak. He said it to his neighbour. He said it loud enough.
Helaena's hand didn't move on the arm of her chair.
None of them care about the realm. They care about which chair they're standing behind on the morning the king stops breathing.
Otto waited until the noise thinned. "A council of regents shares the burden and shares the blame both. Three men of proven service. Myself, the Lord Commander, the Grand Maester."
"Four." Criston Cole didn't raise his voice for it. "Her Grace sits first, with myself commanding what's left of the armies. Or I don't sit."
"The Lord Commander is sentimental."
"The Lord Commander is a soldier. Soldiers count heads before they count reasons." Cole looked down the length of the table. "Put the mother of the coming king outside that door and every man in this room spends the next ten years wondering what she's saying on the other side of it."
Helaena had been in that chair since the hour after dawn.
She'd taken it before anyone else entered, which meant nobody watched her sit and nobody would watch her rise. Grey wool to the throat, a fur across her lap in a room with a fire in it. Her face was powdered a shade warmer than her skin. She had eaten nothing since morning, on Orwyle's blunt advice, because a woman four months gone can't always leave a long sitting when she needs to.
She's burning herself out. For politics she hates. For a crown she never wanted.
"Perhaps we should table this until the king's condition is resolved," she said.
The table stopped.
"Your Grace." Otto turned toward her with that patience he kept polished for exactly this. "The realm needs a hand on it, and needs it before the week turns."
"The realm needs stability. Not fractured leadership." Her voice carried steel I rarely heard out of her. "When Aegon dies, or recovers, we'll reconvene. Until then, the existing council continues its duties."
"There are matters that cannot wait."
"Then we'll do them, my lord, rather than argue about who is permitted to." She turned her head. "Lord Tyland. The Crown's word to the Iron Bank goes out under my seal this week, not next, and I'll read it before it's sealed."
Tyland Lannister opened his ledger at last. "Your Grace."
"Lord Jasper. Every holdfast in the Crownlands that hasn't sent a rider to this city since Rook's Rest. I want the names before the week turns."
Wylde blinked at her. "That's, ah. That is a great many names."
"Then start tonight."
"Your Grace," Otto said, "this is not customary."
"Neither is a king who cannot hold a cup." She let that sit precisely as long as it needed. "We shall all be doing uncustomary things, Lord Hand. The ravens to Oldtown wait until I've read them."
She rose. The meeting was over.
No one quite knew how that had happened.
THE DRAGONPIT
The message reached me at midday.
*Vermithor has returned. Aggressive. Refusing handling. Come immediately.*
I found the Bronze Fury in the largest pit, circling the sand in a tight furious ring, bellowing, snapping at any dragonkeeper who came within a spear's length. Two of them had already been burned.
The sound he made wasn't rage. I'd heard him in rage over the God's Eye and it had been flatter, all bottom and no top.
This came up out of him and broke.
"Hugh's dead," I told him.
Vermithor's head swung round on that long neck. Those ancient eyes found me and held. Loss in them. Confusion. Pain, of the kind that has nowhere to go.
"I killed him. He attacked me and I killed him." I walked out onto the sand at my own weight, which took more out of me than making myself light would have. He deserved a man standing on the ground in front of him. "He wasn't a good man. But he was your rider. I'm sorry."
A rumble came out of the earth under my boots. Neither threat nor acceptance.
"You can stay here. Heal. Mourn. When you're ready, maybe you'll find another rider." I held out my hand, empty, palm up. "But you won't survive if you keep on like this. The council will order you killed and I'll be outvoted."
Vermithor studied me.
Smoke came off his teeth. His tail swept the sand and I marked where it would come back to.
For a moment, I thought he'd attack.
Then he turned away. Settled onto his haunches. Stopped bellowing.
Not tame. Not claimed.
But calmer.
The dragonkeepers stared at me from the tiers as though I'd worked a miracle on their sand.
I just told him the truth. Dragons deserve that much.
THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS, EVENING
Helaena's voice cut across the debate.
"The bronze cries for blood."
Every head turned.
She sat rigid in her chair, eyes unfocused past the far wall, gone into that prophetic distance I'd learned to be afraid of.
"The rat returns in different skin. The child will be born in fire."
Murmurs ran the table. Exchanged glances. Wylde found something to look at in his own hands.
They think she's mad. They dismiss everything she says.
But I've learned better.
"Your Grace?" Otto's concern was warm and thick and entirely for the room. "Perhaps you should rest."
"I see what I see." Her eyes came back and found mine. Clear now, and haunted. "The shadows gather. Something comes."
The council dismissed her words, as always, and moved on to the grain levies.
I didn't.
The bronze cries for blood. Vermithor, grieving, dangerous, one bad morning from a slaughter.
The rat returns in different skin. Another try at the children. New hands.
The child will be born in fire. Ours.
After the lords dispersed I sent for the men I keep and never name in that room.
"Reactivate everything. Every informant. Every watch point. I want to know about anyone new in the city, anyone asking questions, anyone who doesn't belong."
"Looking for something specific?" Marsh asked.
"Rats. Wearing different skin."
He didn't ask me what that meant, which is why I pay him.
Daemon burned in the God's Eye. The men he bought are still drawing breath, and the hate he taught them didn't drown with him.
HELAENA
She leaned on me the whole walk back to her chambers, and by the third stair she wasn't pretending she didn't need to.
The pregnancy was draining her faster than the others had. Each day a little paler. Each day a little less of her under my hand.
"I dreamed the child comes early," she whispered. "Before we're ready."
"When?"
"I don't know. Soon. Weeks, maybe."
Too soon. The war isn't over, the succession isn't settled, and there's a dragon in the pit who'd eat a maester for standing wrong.
"We'll be ready anyway."
"How?"
"Because we have to be." I got her through the doorway. "Whatever comes, we face it together."
She touched my face. Her fingers were cold.
"You keep promising things you can't guarantee."
"I keep delivering them anyway."
A ghost of a smile.
"So far."
"So far is all we get." I helped her down onto the bed and pulled the fur up over her. "Rest. I'll handle the rest."
"You always say that."
"I always mean it."
She closed her eyes.
I sat beside her a long while, watching her breathe, listening past the rain for threats that hadn't come yet.
The child will be born in fire.
Not if I can help it.
The knock came well after midnight. A page, white to the lips, still hauling air from the stairs.
"Grand Maester Orwyle's compliments, my lord. It's the king."
I was in the corridor before he finished.