fix chapter 46
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By the ancient customs of Volantis, the Triarchs gathered at least once a week to discuss affairs of state, receive important petitioners and envoys, debate new laws, and decide the city's most vital matters… war and peace, major trade contracts, relations with overseas colonies.
For the city's new ruler, abruptly shattering every tradition would be unwise.
Viserys's power was still being cemented. What he needed most right now was the appearance of order unchanged.
The seizure of Volantis had been swift and almost bloodless. The colonies had rushed to acknowledge the new reality. There was no need to discard the façade of collective rule.
Besides, the so-called shared rule was now little more than a façade.
Viserys carried pure Valyrian blood—double legitimate descent, in fact—but many Volantene customs struck him as either idiotic or pointlessly ornate and cumbersome.
Why ride elephants when the gods had given men horses?
Why insist on litters when the stone streets inside the Black Wall were already smooth and clean?
Yet no matter how much it grated on him, he still had to respect the city's traditions.
When he traveled to the Hall of Power for the Triarchs' meeting, he still rode an elephant.
Of course, the custom was not entirely without benefits.
Seated high on the beast's back, he could look down across the entire district inside the Black Wall—the palaces of the old-blood nobles, soaring temples, ornate clock towers, and lavish estates. The view was magnificent.
Statues, spires, colonnades, towers, crystal-clear pools, lush gardens—all wove together into a tapestry of splendor.
Some tower tops even held wide, open circular platforms, like the abandoned resting places of dragons.
Compared to this city, King's Landing was nothing but a crude village.
A sentimental man might have believed he had returned to the golden age of the Valyrian Freehold.
Sadly, the dragon eggs in his palace remained beautiful but lifeless relics, and the legendary beasts did not soar above the ruins of that past glory.
All the lavish buildings and faded statues were, in the end, nothing but hollow echoes of dead glory.
At least, that was what the world had always believed.
Until Viserys Targaryen arrived.
He intended to awaken the long-dormant martial spirit of the First Daughter, fan the embers until they became true dragonfire.
Only then could he secure his power—and one day return to Westeros.
A peaceful, decadent Volantis that knew only trade had no need for a sellsword Triarch, nor for his army.
But a First Daughter reborn in glory, marching once more upon the path of conquest? That city would need his sharpest blade.
Slaves helped the Triarchs dismount and carried them into the palace until they reached the inner halls, where they could walk on their own.
Even so, the litter-bearers stayed close through the long corridors and staircases. It grated on him.
No wonder so many old-blood nobles grew fat. They gorged themselves daily and scorned even the simple act of walking.
At least in recent months their numbers had… thinned considerably.
Yet the surviving highborn of Volantis still worried him.
Weymond Dorya had been right: inside the Black Wall there were ambitious, capable men, and many now felt genuine gratitude toward their new leader.
Others had been crushed and humiliated by the old regime; even if they had not yet sworn loyalty, they had no reason for revenge.
But crushed serpents still left behind children, kin, and servants. That knot could not be cut in a single stroke.
His men had done everything possible, and the official justification—avenging the murdered former Protector Varyon Dortalos—was enough to satisfy most.
Still, the work was far from finished.
In recent weeks the new ruler had spent endless hours weaving alliances, untangling the city's labyrinthine politics, and mapping old grudges and fresh wounds.
He had won admirers and earned slander, gained supporters and provoked open jealousy.
Outside the Black Wall some hailed him as the city's savior and champion of justice; others cursed him as butcher and robber.
Add the rumors flowing in from overseas… his instincts told him the next few months would not be peaceful.
But he had to master it all. He had to meet every threat and challenge.
He had climbed too high. There was no way back down.
The guards at the Hall of Power were split evenly between his Black Knights and the Sons of Valyria.
They pushed open the carved doors in silence, revealing a vast, bright hall that seemed transported straight from Valyria itself, shutting out almost the entire world.
Ancient heroes and dragons stood in stone around the chamber. A magnificent altar to Balerion, greatest of the Valyrian gods, dominated one wall. The ceiling frescoed the entire history of the Freehold in breathtaking splendor.
At the center of the hall stood a massive round table of weirwood—solid, imposing, majestic.
The Keeper of the Foundation, a dignified, slender old man, had once told Viserys that this masterpiece of carpentry came from the sacred groves of House Mormont in distant Westeros.
That family had traded their holy trees for a single blade of Valyrian steel.
How ironic.
It was arrows made from that same wood that had ended his first life.
And now he would sit at this weirwood table to correct that terrible mistake.
The other two Triarchs were already waiting.
Weymond Dorya looked exactly as he always did. Even for such an important meeting he wore only a padded jerkin, though someone had hastily added the newest fashionable crest.
A red dragon.
The nephew of the murdered Protector Varyon was a reliable young man—passionate, resolute, utterly committed.
He had promised the coup would find support, and it had. He had sworn the elephant party would not dare bleed, and they had not.
His one true faith was simple.
Restore the ancient glory of Valyria. Return to the sacred old ways. Reclaim a pure world cleansed of merchant lies—an age of dragonlords, invincible legions, endless conquest, and eternal honor.
His flaw was equally obvious.
Weymond reminded Viserys of his own younger self in his first life—a man who believed every problem could be solved with steel, brave but impatient, stubborn and deaf to counsel, forever imitating the heroes in his heart and refusing any compromise.
Either achieve the dream or have nothing.
Worse, becoming Triarch had made Weymond even more arrogant.
He now recognized only Viserys's authority. Everyone else was, at best, expected to show him constant deference.
He had zero interest in actually governing Volantis and openly admitted he knew nothing about "petty matters" like trade or civil appointments.
Such a man could hold a battle line and never break, never flee, never surrender.
But governing a city… no wonder Varyon had chosen Viserys over his own nephew for the Triarchy.
The problem was that Viserys trusted no other tiger-party figure even half as much as he trusted Weymond.
From the moment the Sons of Valyria had charged through the Dragon's Gate, Weymond had bound his fate forever to the last Targaryen.
He had no escape and could not stand aside.
To every enemy he would always be the sellsword Viserys's accomplice, the key figure in the coup.
They would rise or fall together.
After all, even the old dragonlords had known how to work together when necessary.
Just ask King Garin… or the lords of ancient Ghis.
The other Triarch at the table was a middle-aged man dripping with jewels and rings, ordinary-looking, utterly unremarkable.
Weymond and his followers had urged Viserys to strip the elephant party of all power, expel them from the government, purge their retainers, and leave them no seat at the Triarchy.
But the exiled prince understood that doing so would turn a vast, immensely wealthy faction into mortal enemies and leave him overly dependent on the tigers.
Handing all power to Weymond's faction would be foolish in the long run. One day they might decide they no longer needed his command.
Tame, then control.
So the man now seated at the table was Menyx Renigar, spice and grain magnate.
His fleets sailed as far as Yi Ti. He lived in obscene luxury, yet had never been able to turn gold into real power or high office.
As far as Viserys knew, Menyx's heir had become a novice in the Red Temple and broken with his family, destroying his father's last chance at a Triarch's seat.
The three men took their places.
The meeting of the Triarchs had begun.