The Red Keep, A few hours before Dawn
Rhaegar walked briskly, a bundle of parchments held tight in one fist, the blood of the night's earlier business still faintly clinging to the edges of his memory even after the bath, even after the change of clothes.
It had taken no small effort to secure this audience. Rhaegar had made an almighty fuss at the King's door, enough that Ser Ryam himself had finally roused Jaehaerys rather than continue enduring the racket. The Old King had been more than a little incensed at being shaken from sleep at such an hour, but he knew his eldest grandson well enough by now. Rhaegar did not disturb him at such hours over nothing. So Jaehaerys had grunted something about needing a few minutes to shake the sleep from his bones, and told him to wait.
That wait was over now.
Viserys kept pace beside him, his tunic thrown on hastily, his silver hair a mess from sleep he hadn't gotten to finish.
"So," Viserys said, breaking the silence between them, "we are seriously flying to Essos?"
"Yes," Rhaegar said.
"On dragonback. Just the two of us."
"Yes."
A beat of silence stretched between them, filled only by the sound of their boots against stone.
"You still haven't actually explained to me why."
"I will," Rhaegar said. "We'll speak of it on the way."
Viserys shook his head, muttering something under his breath that Rhaegar chose not to hear, and kept walking.
They rounded the last corner and came upon the heavy doors of the King's solar. Ser Ryam stood before them, one arm over the hilt of his blade.
"Ser Ryam," Rhaegar greeted, offering a small smile.
Ryam looked at him and grunted. "Prince Rhaegar." He tilted his head toward the door. "His Grace is waiting for you."
Rhaegar nodded and turned to his brother. "Stay here."
Viserys blinked. "What? Why?"
"Stay here. I will call for you."
Before Viserys could voice the retort already forming on his tongue, Rhaegar had already pushed the door open, stepped through, and shut it firmly behind him.
The solar was dim, lit only by a single low-burning lamp and the embers of a hearth Rhaegar had grown more familiar with than his own. Jaehaerys sat behind his table, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his palm, looking every one of his nine-and-forty years upon the throne.
"Grandfather," Rhaegar said, remaining near the door.
"Rhaegar." Jaehaerys did not look up immediately. "What is it now?"
Rhaegar did not answer. He crossed the room instead, closing the distance, and set the bundle of parchments down on the table with a soft thud.
Jaehaerys glanced down at the scrolls, then back up at his grandson, his eyes still heavy with sleep but sharpening by the moment. "This had better not be about some new ship designs or gutters for the city, Rhaegar. That can wait for a more decent hour."
A small, wry smile touched Rhaegar's lips. "It is not that, Grandfather."
Jaehaerys let out a long breath through his nose. "Then what is it?"
Rhaegar opened his mouth and closed it. For the first time in a long time, he found himself uncertain of how to begin.
Jaehaerys watched this with something like fascination, one silver brow arching upward. "Oh. Now I am intrigued. What has caught your unruly tongue?"
Rhaegar drew in a slow breath. There was no clever way to ease into this. No angle that would soften it.
"We…" He hesitated. "We have an army."
It took more effort out of him than he had expected it to.
Jaehaerys looked at him, entirely unmoved. "I am aware."
Rhaegar blinked. "You are?"
"Yes," Jaehaerys said, something close to irritation creeping into his voice now. "Given that I was the one who called the banners and sent them to the Marches and the Stepstones."
Rhaegar shook his head. "I do not mean the bannermen, Grandfather. I mean to say... we have an army of our own. Not levies. Not men of Vassals."
Jaehaerys's confusion deepened. "Where?"
"In Essos."
There was a heavy pause.
"On the Isle of Cedars."
"The Isle of Cedars?" Jaehaerys repeated, looking to believe this was an elaborate jest.
"Yes. It sits near Slaver's Bay."
"I know where it is." The King's voice had gone very still. "What I do not know is how we have an army there."
Rhaegar swallowed. "I raised one. Myself."
For a long moment, Jaehaerys said nothing at all. The fire popped once in the hearth, and somewhere far below the city stirred faintly with the sounds of the sleepless. Rhaegar could see the anger building behind his grandfather's eyes, a slow tide gathering before the storm, though the Old King did his best not to be wavered in his composure.
"Why?" Jaehaerys asked, and the single word carried more weight than any tirade could have.
Rhaegar chose his next words with the care of a man crossing a frozen lake, testing each step before committing his full weight to it.
"For the conflict we now find ourselves in," he said. "I have had visions of it for years, Grandfather. I could never fully make sense of them - not until recently. But something in them told me we would need every sword we could gather. That we would need more than what the realm alone could give."
"And you did not think to come to me with this dream?"
"Because I was not certain what it meant," Rhaegar said. "Not fully. And I knew-" He paused, just long enough to make the next words land. "I knew that if I came to you with only half-formed visions and no proof, you would never have authorized such a thing."
Jaehaerys's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
"It had to be done in secrecy," Rhaegar continued. "Lest the lords hear of it. Lest your own court hear of it."
The King leaned back slowly in his chair, the wood creaking beneath him. "And with what gold did you raise an army, Rhaegar?"
"Some of it mine," Rhaegar admitted. "But the greater part of it was drawn from the Consortium without anyone's knowledge. The grants I requested, for new ship designs, for research into new ports, into steel, into a hundred other things, they were massively inflated well beyond their true cost. That is where the bulk of the coin came from."
"And the men?"
"All from the Free Cities. Mostly Lys and Volantis. Engineers and craftsmen from Myr and Tyrosh as well. Desperate men, Grandfather. Men who needed a lifeline more than they needed a homeland. They were recruited and smuggled to the island over the last three years."
Jaehaerys's composure finally cracked. "Three years? This has been going on for three years?"
Rhaegar only nodded.
Silence swallowed the solar whole. Jaehaerys stared at his grandson with an intensity that might have made a lesser man look away. Rhaegar did not. He met the King's gaze and held it, refusing to catch nerves after everything.
"So," Jaehaerys said at last, his voice gone quiet and cold in a way Rhaegar had rarely heard from him, "you wake me at this hour to confess to several counts of treason, one stacked upon another. Awfully bold of you, boy."
"I raised the army in secret," Rhaegar said, steady. "But it was never meant to be mine. It is for this House. The moment it comes into the light, it answers to you."
"Treason is treason, Rhaegar. Regardless of intention."
"Perhaps." Rhaegar did not blink. "But when have my dreams ever failed you?"
Jaehaerys did not answer that. He breathed, slow and deliberate, working the anger back down. He needed a clearer mind for this. His eyes drifted, at last, to the parchments still lying between them.
"If I did not believe we stood in mortal danger," Rhaegar said quietly, "I would never have gone to such lengths. You know that of me, if nothing else."
"Why tell me this now?" Jaehaerys asked, "and what," he added, gesturing toward the scrolls, "are those?"
Rhaegar stepped closer to the table and unrolled the first of the parchments, laying it flat before turning it toward his grandfather. Then the second. Then the third.
Jaehaerys's eyes moved over the ink. Design after design. Formation after formation. Figures, ratios, sketches of arms and armour unlike anything the maesters of Westeros had ever drawn. With every line he read, Jaehaerys's expression grew a fraction more incredulous.
"What are they?" he asked, though his voice had lost some of its heat, replaced now by something closer to disbelief.
"I designed them," Rhaegar said, "inspired by the lockstep legions of Old Ghis. Clad in the finest arms and armour we could produce. Every man among them is trained. Every man whose only profession shall be war."
Jaehaerys did not finish reading even half of what lay before him before he set the parchment down, pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, and let out the heaviest sigh Rhaegar had heard from him in years.
"How many men?"
"A few over fifteen thousand. Three legions." Rhaegar paused. "And roughly four thousand more in siege engineers, blacksmiths, and support."
Jaehaerys's eyes went wider than Rhaegar had ever seen them. "Nineteen thousand men?"
Rhaegar nodded.
"How," Jaehaerys breathed, "did no one find them?"
A small, humourless smile crossed Rhaegar's face. "Well. That is precisely why I am here, Grandfather. Someone did."
Jaehaerys's head snapped up. "Who?"
Rhaegar allowed himself a moment before answering.
"A Volantene fleet is currently sailing for the island. By my estimate, they are no more than a week out. Perhaps less. And that is if they are not already there."
"Volantis?" Jaehaerys stroked his beard hard, a man trying to physically hold his thoughts together. "And how do you know this?"
"A noble of the Old Blood had come to the city," Rhaegar said. "Asking after me. I met with him, in a manse within the city ." He hesitated only slightly. "He had been sent to kill me."
A lie. He had not been sent there to kill him. But stories had to be woven right now. To get what he wanted.
And at that, whatever composure Jaehaerys had clawed back shattered instantly. "When?
"A few hours ago."
"A few-" Jaehaerys was already halfway out of his chair before Rhaegar raised a hand.
"Do not worry, Grandfather. I handled it. Ser Ryon was with me the entire time." He let that settle, then pressed on before Jaehaerys could interject. "What should concern you more is what we learned from him before the end."
Jaehaerys sank back down slowly, still visibly reeling from the knowledge that an assassin had walked freely into his city and come within arm's reach of his grandson while he himself slept soundly not a few miles away.
"The one who told Volantis of our army," Rhaegar said, "was our new friend. Craghas Drahar."
"Drahar," Jaehaerys said the name like something bitter on his tongue.
Rhaegar nodded slowly. "Which means we now know who funded him from the beginning."
He let the silence hang for exactly as long as it needed to.
"It was the Old Blood."
"The Old Blood?" Jaehaerys asked.
Rhaegar nodded.
"And what do they gain from supporting him?"
"The Disputed Lands, it would seem."
Jaehaerys leaned back in his chair, one hand coming up to rest against his temple, his eyes fixed somewhere in the distance rather than on his grandson.
Neither of them spoke for a few moments. The fire in the hearth had burned down to little more than embers, and the solar had started to grow cold.
"So you mean to tell me," Jaehaerys said at last, "that Volantis raised a rival kingdom from nothing, aided a usurper's ascent to a crown he had no right to wear, was informed by that very usurper of your treasonous army, and has now taken it upon itself to send its fleets to rid him of the problem. All of it, in the end, for a stretch of farmland long since fought over and abandoned by them so very recently."
"That is what I was told," Rhaegar said. "Though even I do not believe that to be the whole of it. The circumstances of it feel wrong to me. And from what I have gathered of Volantis over the years, they are not nearly so united, nor so cunning, as to enact for what they stand accused."
Jaehaerys said nothing to that. He studied Rhaegar for a long while, his violet eyes moving over his grandson's face as though searching for something buried beneath the composed surface.
"I know you have not come here merely to inform me of everything," Jaehaerys said finally.
Rhaegar drew a breath and nodded.
"You wish to save your treasonous army, I presume."
"I do."
"And what," Jaehaerys asked, "would you have me do about it? The bulk of our strength is already committed to two fronts, and the fighting there has only just begun. Aemon and Baelon are too entrenched to be pulled free now." He shook his head slowly. "From what I have been told, the Dornish are already proving troublesome even with Vhagar looming over the Marches. The gods alone know what mercenary companies our new friends across the sea have gifted them, and what use they would make of such men should they sense the dragon and her rider have left. The same holds true for Aemon at the Stepstones. The enemy will strike wherever they see an opening the moment they believe the dragons have left."
Rhaegar held the Old King's gaze without flinching. "I know," was all he said.
"And?" Jaehaerys let out a short, humourless huff. "Do you truly believe I would allow you to go? Alone? To lands that far from home? With no army at your back, no men to guard you, and one old dragon you claimed not a few moons past?"
"Not alone," Rhaegar said. "I wish to take Viserys with me."
Jaehaerys laughed then, a short, disbelieving sound entirely devoid of warmth. "Your hubris truly knows no bounds, does it?"
Rhaegar did not answer that.
The smile vanished from Jaehaerys's face as quickly as it had come, and what remained in its place was hard as stone. "He is but a boy. You... are but a boy. I know that you have studied tactics, and strategy, and the old battles of this realm and others. But there is a chasm between studying a war and fighting one. War is the business of men grown. And neither you nor your brother are men yet."
Rhaegar met his grandfather's eyes without wavering. "I am fourteen. I shall be fifteen in a few moons. Viserys is a year behind me." He paused, letting the next words land with their full weight. "You fought wars at thirteen. You sat the throne at fourteen."
Jaehaerys did not answer, not for a long moment.
"I was raised in a time of strife and war," he said finally, his voice quieter now, though no less firm. "You were not, Rhaegar. You grew up within these walls, with everything you could ever want lying beneath your feet. You have a great mind. Perhaps the greatest I have seen in this family in my lifetime. But you do not know war. Not as I knew it at your age."
A faint, humourless smile crossed Rhaegar's lips. "Why do you think I built that army, Grandfather? What makes you believe I do not expect to live my life in an age of war and strife?" He held Jaehaerys's gaze. "I was compelled to it. By the gifts of our blood. And it would all be for nothing, every gold dragon, every year, every man who crossed the sea on the promise of a better life, if I let them meet their end because I was too afraid to finish what I started."
"The gifts of our blood," Jaehaerys repeated, very quietly.
He said nothing further for a long while. He only looked at his grandson, and Rhaegar let him look, refusing to be the one who broke first.
At last the Old King rose. He came around the table slowly, his joints stiff with the hour and the years both, and leaned back against its edge, close enough now that there was no table between them at all, only the space of a few feet.
"I cannot help but find my thoughts wandering, at times," Jaehaerys said. "Wandering over the possibility whether what you speak of are truly dragon dreams, Rhaegar, or merely schemes you have learned to dress in the language of prophecy."
Rhaegar's expression did not change.
"Tell me, my dear grandson," Jaehaerys went on, his voice dropping to something almost gentle, which made it all the more dangerous. "You are wise beyond your years, are you not? What would you counsel your King to do, were he to find himself troubled by such a thought?"
Rhaegar breathed carefully before he answered. This was not a time to waver.
"That is an unfortunate place to find oneself in," he said. "You may dismiss my dreams as nothing more than machinations, and live the rest of your days never knowing whether you were wrong to do so. Or you may choose to believe them, and act upon them - only to learn, too late, that they were machinations after all." He paused. "In either case, Grandfather, by the time you know the truth of it, it will already be too late to do anything about it."
Jaehaerys did not speak.
"But why should any of that matter to you?" Rhaegar asked.
"Why should it not matter to me?" Jaehaerys pressed, his voice gaining an edge.
"What matters to you," Rhaegar said, "is the continuation of the Crown, and the well-being of this realm. Is that not so?"
Jaehaerys did not answer that either.
"If it were truly the Throne that pleased me," Rhaegar continued, "we both know there were much easier paths I might have taken these past years to see myself closer to it. I did not take them."
"So what is it you please?" Jaehaerys asked instead, turning the question back on him.
"You may believe in the truth of my dreams, or you may not. That is your prerogative, and I would not begrudge you for it. But I do not have that same luxury. I must act on what I have seen, and I must act on it with everything I have. If I do not..." Rhaegar's voice did not rise, but something in it hardened all the same. "Then I will be bound by that future for the rest of my life, wondering, every single day, whether I could have stopped it and chose not to."
Jaehaerys stared into his grandson's eyes for a long, long moment. Rhaegar did not look away.
Finally, the Old King closed his eyes, drew a slow breath, and opened them again.
"Are you truly ready for the possibility of your own death," he asked, "in a land you have never set foot upon, surrounded by men who you do not truly know?"
"I am," Rhaegar said.
"And are your shoulders broad enough," Jaehaerys pressed, "to carry the weight of your brother's death, should it come to that?"
The silence that followed stretched longer than any that had come before it.
"They are," Rhaegar said at last.
He held his grandfather's gaze and did not blink.
"I have no other choice."
Silence settled in the chambers for several long moments after that. The embers in the hearth had finally died, sending a spray of sparks up.
"Where is your brother?" Jaehaerys asked finally.
"Outside the door," Rhaegar said.
Jaehaerys nodded slowly.
A moment later, both Viserys and Ser Ryam Redwyne were called into the chamber.
Viserys walked up to stand beside his brother and inclined his head. "Grandfather."
Ser Ryam bowed as well. "Your Grace."
Jaehaerys's gaze settled on Viserys, weighing him truly, perhaps, for the first time. "I presume you know of everything, and what it entails."
Viserys gave an uncertain nod, his eyes flicking between the King and his brother.
"Do not look at your brother, child. Look at me." The steel in Jaehaerys's voice was enough to make Viserys straighten on instinct. "Do you know the risk that shall befall you, should you set out on this endeavour?"
In truth, he did not. He knew only that they were to fly east. Rhaegar had not yet told him the whole of it. But he could read a room well enough by now, and the King's bearing told him everything his brother had not. Whatever this was, it was grave.
But it had been Viserys himself who had begged to be let into his brother's games. He had sworn to help however he could. He could not falter now, not with the Old King's eyes fixed on him like this.
He schooled his features into something resembling resolve and nodded. "I am, Your Grace."
Jaehaerys held his gaze a moment longer before turning to his Kingsguard. "Ser Ryam. Bring me Ser Clement and Ser Steffon."
Ryam inclined his head and had already turned toward the door when Jaehaerys spoke again.
"And bring me my sword."
Ryam paused, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his otherwise disciplined face, before bowing once more. "Your Grace." He left without another word.
"It is an obvious thing I speak of," Rhaegar said into the silence that followed, "but everyone shall notice our absence, and our dragons' along with it."
Jaehaerys nodded slowly. "I shall write to Lord Stark. Ask him to maintain a ruse of your presence in the North, near the Wall, on some matter of academic curiosity. It will not hold forever. But it will buy enough time for the lie to spread further than the truth could catch it."
"I thought the Starks held little love for us. For a great many reasons."
"Yes." Jaehaerys's mouth twitched, something almost like a smile. "But they are loyal. And they will maintain the lie for as long as I command it of them."
Rhaegar nodded.
A few minutes passed before Ser Ryam returned, two Kingsguard trailing behind him. Ser Clement Crabb and Ser Steffon Darklyn, both making their way in and bowing at once. "Your Grace."
Ser Ryam approached and placed a long, cloth-wrapped sword into Jaehaerys's hands, then stepped back into line beside the other Kingsguard.
Jaehaerys unwrapped it slowly. Blackfyre. The blade of Aegon the Conqueror. Jaehaerys had not drawn it from its scabbard in some time.
He rose from where he had been leaning against the table and stood straight, the weariness of the hour falling away from him.
"Kingsguard," he called, and all three men snapped to attention.
"Stand witness."
He turned to Viserys. "Come."
Viserys stepped forward, uncertain, as Rhaegar moved back to give them room. Grandfather and grandson stood face to face.
"Kneel."
By now Viserys had understood, as had everyone else in the chamber, precisely what was about to happen. He sank to one knee upon the cold stone, his head bowed.
Jaehaerys drew Blackfyre fully from its sheath. The blade free, its Valyrian steel shimmering in what little light remained in the chamber. He rested the flat of it against Viserys's right shoulder.
"In the name of the Warrior," he said, his voice carrying the full weight of ceremony despite the lateness of the hour and the absence of any septon to lend it holiness, "I charge you to be brave."
He moved the blade to the boy's left shoulder.
"In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just."
Back to the right.
"In the name of the Smith, I charge you to labour without complaint at whatever burden is placed upon you."
To the left again.
"In the name of the Mother, I charge you to be gentle with the small and the weak, though you are sworn to violence."
Right.
"In the name of the Maid, I charge you to guard the innocent with your life, should it come to that."
Left.
"In the name of the Crone, I charge you to seek wisdom before you seek glory."
He lifted the sword and laid it briefly, flat and cold, against the crown of Viserys's bowed head.
"And in the name of the Seven who are one, I charge you to be faithful to your gods, loyal to your King, and true to the blood that runs in you." He drew the sword back. "Rise now, Ser Viserys of the House Targaryen. A knight of the Seven Kingdoms."
Viserys rose. His legs trembled faintly beneath him, though whether from the cold stone or the sheer improbable weight of what had just happened, even he could not have said. He was, in that moment, the youngest knight the Seven Kingdoms had ever known.
Jaehaerys turned to Rhaegar.
Neither of them spoke. There was no need to.
Rhaegar stepped into the space his brother had vacated and knelt.
Jaehaerys raised Blackfyre once more.
"In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave," he said, the blade settling against Rhaegar's shoulder.
"In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just."
"In the name of the Smith, I charge you to labour hard at whatever calling you set yourself to."
"In the name of the Mother, I charge you to temper your strength with mercy."
"In the name of the Maid, I charge you to protect those who cannot protect themselves."
"In the name of the Crone, I charge you to seek wisdom in all that you do - though I suspect," Jaehaerys added, so quietly it was almost lost, "that particular charge is one you have already taken up without my asking."
The sword came to rest, flat and cool, upon the crown of Rhaegar's bowed head.
"And in the name of the Seven who are one, I charge you to be faithful to your gods, loyal to your King, and true to the blood that runs in you." He drew the blade back. "Hold out your hands."
Rhaegar did as he was told, both palms open before him.
Jaehaerys did not sheath the sword. Instead, with great care, he laid Blackfyre across his grandson's open hands.
"May you find it as faithful a companion as I have found it, in whatever lies ahead of you." His voice had gone rougher now, stripped of its ceremonial cadence. "Rise."
Rhaegar rose, the black blade heavy and cold in his grip.
Jaehaerys closed the distance between them and pulled him into a brief, fierce embrace, the kind Rhaegar could not remember his grandfather ever giving him before, not once, not in fourteen years.
"I intended for that sword to go to Aemon," Jaehaerys murmured against his shoulder, "and I still do. So I expect both of you returned to me, and that blade with you."
He stepped back. One hand came to rest on Viserys's shoulder as he looked between the two of them.
"You are knights of House Targaryen now. Custom dictates that you are men grown." His eyes moved from one grandson to the other. "But I trust the both of you have sense enough left in your heads to know that neither of you is truly capable of fighting as men grown fight."
Rhaegar nodded.
Jaehaerys turned toward the three Kingsguard still standing at attention, their expressions caught somewhere between formal discipline and open bewilderment at whatever it was they had just witnessed in the middle of the night, entirely without context.
"Ser Clement. Ser Steffon. You shall accompany the princes east." His voice hardened into command once more. "Let the fighting on land be theirs to do, not you boys."
Rhaegar turned to look at the two knights properly for the first time, then back to his grandfather. "As you command."
"When do you need to leave?"
"Tomorrow night, at the latest," Rhaegar said. "Eight to ten days of flight, by my reckoning, to reach the isle. The Volantene fleet will have already made contact by the time we arrive. Any longer, and we fly there for nothing."
Jaehaerys nodded once, slow and final. "Go, then. Make your preparations with discretion. I will speak with them-" he tilted his head toward the three Kingsguard "-in the time it takes you to do so."
Rhaegar nodded, and he and Viserys took their leave, walking out of the solar and into the cold, torch-lit corridor beyond, leaving Jaehaerys alone with his knights and whatever explanation the hour still demanded of him.
They parted ways without much more than a tired nod between them, agreeing to speak properly come morning. There was simply nothing left in either of them for more than that tonight.
Rhaegar entered his own chambers and stood there for a long moment, staring at his bed as though it were the first truly good idea he had encountered all night. It had been, by any measure, a very long night. Nyaros, the blood on the floor of that manse, the confession to his grandfather, and now this. A sword he had not asked for, hanging heavy against his hip.
His eyelids were already growing heavy of their own accord. He crossed the room in a stumbling, half-conscious line and collapsed onto the bed without bothering to remove his boots. Blackfyre still hung at his hip, the scabbard pressing against the silk as he fell.
He closed his eyes.
And then he opened them again.
The cold hit him first, a cold sharper and more chilling than anything he had felt in either of his two lives, a cold that seemed to reach past skin and muscle and settle directly into bone. He stumbled, catching himself, and looked around.
He was standing somewhere very high.
It took only a few moments for him to understand exactly where. There was only one place in the known world it could possibly be.
He turned, and that was when he saw the man.
He stood near the edge of the railing, in a spot where no one had been standing only a heartbeat before. A dark cloak hung from his shoulders, and his hair, what little of it showed beneath the hood, was as white as the frost gathering along the stone beneath their feet.
Rhaegar approached slowly, stopping a few feet away, the wind tearing at his voice as he forced the words out.
"Who are you?"
The man turned.
And Rhaegar found himself looking upon a sight he knew, with immediate and absolute certainty he would never be able to unsee.
One eye, red as a fresh wound. The other gone entirely, the socket sealed over by a scar long since healed stared at him.
"You know who I am."