Rhaenys Targaryen
Something had happened.
Rhaenys didn't know what it was, not yet, but she knew something had changed. The air in the Red Keep had changed. It didn't feel as suffocating as it had been for the last two months.
The servants were the first sign. They were smiling. These were real smiles. Broad and loose and careless. Two kitchen maids passed Rhaenys on her way to dinner, and one of them was actually laughing. While servants did laugh, that was nothing strange about it; they didn't laugh whenever Rhaenys was nearby.
Even the guards seemed different.
Something had happened. Something good. Good for them, at least.
Whether it was good for Rhaenys Targaryen remained to be seen.
She ate dinner with Lady Lysa Arryn in the Tower of the Hand, as she had been doing for the last two months since Lord Arryn left to fight the stupid rebellion. Usually, Rhaenys stayed away from Lady Arryn, but that hadn't been the case for two months now.
The dining chamber was warm. Too warm. Lysa insisted on keeping the hearth blazing regardless of the season, and the air was thick with the smell of mutton stew and beeswax candles.
"You look thin, Rhaenys," Lysa said with her tone, it sounded like she was dreaming, but a bad dream. "Are you eating enough? You must eat. A girl your age should have more flesh on her bones."
"I eat plenty, Lady Arryn," Rhaenys said carefully, cutting her mutton into small pieces. She had learned long ago that the best way to survive dinner with Lysa was to keep her answers short and her knife busy.
"Hmm." Lysa looked at her then. Her pale blue eyes moved across Rhaenys's face, and Rhaenys really wished she could slap her face. "You have your mother's look, you know. Those sharp features. That Dornish coloring." She said Dornish the way most people said spoiled. "Elia was never a great beauty, but she had a certain... quality. Men liked her well enough, I suppose. Though look where that got her."
Rhaenys's fingers closed around the knife handle. She said nothing. She took a bite of mutton and chewed slowly.
"You'll be pretty, I think," Lysa continued. "When you're older. In a dark sort of way. The eyes help. Those purple eyes. Men are fools for unusual eyes." She paused, and her unsettling eyes looked at her lips. "But don't be foolish about it, child. Beauty means nothing. You can have all the beauty in the world, but it's not up to you who you marry. That decision belongs to the King, or to Lord Arryn, or to whoever holds your leash at the time."
Rhaenys set down her knife. She looked at Lysa. "My leash, Lady Arryn?"
Lysa waved a hand, dismissing the edge in Rhaenys's voice. "Don't be sensitive. I only mean that you should prepare yourself. They could marry you to anyone. A lord twice your age. A hedge knight. A man so old he's practically a corpse already." She smiled at Rhaenys; it was an ugly smile. "At least my future son will marry well. I'll make certain of it. But you, dear..." She shrugged. "Who knows? They might give you to some old Reach lord as a third wife, just to keep you out of the way. The important thing is that you don't complain about it. Complaining accomplishes nothing. I should know."
Rhaenys knew she was talking about herself; she knew Lady Arryn was not happy with her marriage, after all, Jon Arryn was old enough to be her grandfather, but Rhaenys felt no pity for her. Lysa Arryn always made sure to make odd comments about her beauty and her family, sometimes talking about her mother as if the two were close. Rhaenys did not know what was wrong with her, but the only one she felt pity for was Lord Arryn; he had to endure someone like her.
Rhaenys decided not to respond. She ate another bite of mutton. She looked at her plate.
Don't poke the mad dog, she thought. Just eat and leave.
She finished her dinner in silence while Lysa talked about a man named Petyr, whoever the hell that person was, about the quality of the wine, about the new seamstress she had hired, about nothing and everything and all the small, desperate details that filled the life of a woman who had been given everything and still had nothing.
When Rhaenys finally excused herself, the air in the hallway tasted like freedom.
She changed into her training clothes in her chambers: a loose tunic of dark brown wool, leather breeches that she'd had to mend twice at the knee, and soft boots that made no sound on stone. She pulled her dark hair back with a strip of cloth, tying it tight so it wouldn't fall in her eyes. She always prefered to dress like this, whenever she wore a real dress, they did not allow her to dress with the right colors, she had tried once, even had even given coins to the tailor to make one for her, black, red and gold, she wanted to feel those colors in her skin, she wanted to see them, to feel...closer with them, but the tailor had told, thankfully, it was Lord Arryn who he had told, and Lord Arryn then had a long talk with Rhaenys, telling her to never ask for something like that again, reminding her that Robert's mercy can evaporate in an instant, and not just Robert, if people saw her wearing those colors, her life will be in danger. People around the Red Keep won't be as kind to her if the word spreads that she was wearing the colors of her family.
Rhaenys could not wear her colors, but she could wear her training clothes. She had never met them, but Uncle Oberyn had written in his letters that his daughters were all spearswomen, what they wore, what they liked. In those training clothes, Rhaenys liked to pretend she was one of them, and when the day came, she met them. She would be one of them.
Her guards were waiting outside her door.
Ser Willis Fell stood with his arms crossed, his grey beard neatly trimmed. Beside him, Ser Donnel Swann leaned against the wall, picking at a callus on his sword hand. Jacks and Terrence flanked the corridor at either end, one tall and one short, like a pair of mismatched sentinels.
Lord Arryn had assigned them to her. Four men sworn to protect a girl that most of the kingdom would rather see dead. Rhaenys did not love them. She did not fully trust them. But she trusted that they followed Lord Arryn's orders, and she trusted Lord Arryn, so the math worked out well enough.
"Training, my lady?" Ser Willis asked. He didn't sound surprised. She trained most mornings.
"Training," Rhaenys confirmed.
They fell into formation around her as she walked. Two ahead, two behind. The corridor was busier than usual for the hour. A cluster of servants passed carrying wine flagons, grinning at one another. A pair of Gold Cloaks stood near a window, talking, and Rhaenys heard the words 'Rebellion' and something about the Lannister boy. A maid hurried past with an armful of fresh linens, humming a tune that Rhaenys didn't recognize.
Everyone was smiling. The whole keep was smiling, as if someone had declared a holiday that Rhaenys hadn't been told about.
"Ser Willis," Rhaenys said as they descended a staircase toward the lower levels. "What has gotten into everyone today? The servants look like they've all had too much wine, and it isn't even past sunset."
Ser Willis glanced back at her. He was smiling too. All four of them were, she realized. Even Jacks, who rarely smiled at anything.
"The war is over, my lady," Ser Willis said. "The rebellion. Pyke has fallen. Word came by raven this morning."
Rhaenys kept walking. Her face remained passive, and a thought grew in her head like a plant.
She almost asked. The question was right there, sitting on her tongue like a coin balanced on its edge: Did the King or Lord Tywin Lannister meet any unfortunate ends during the fighting?
She swallowed it. That was a traitorous question. She knew if she told them, someone might hear them; after all, the Red Keep has ears. Rhaenys was told that by her uncle in his letters. Lord Arryn had said the same.
Instead, she asked: "Lord Arryn. Is he safe?"
The smile on Ser Willis's face broadened. "Safe and sound, my lady. He's sailing back with the fleet. Should be here within three weeks, give or take."
Something loosened in Rhaenys's chest. She hadn't realized how tight it had been until it let go. Lord Arryn was the closest thing she had to protection in this city, him and Ser Jaime. Without him, she was no longer protected. Ser Jaime would want to protect her, but he was just one man, and if his family was the one wanting to get rid of her, she was not sure he wouldn't step away and close his eyes.
"Good," Rhaenys said quietly. "That is good to hear." She paused at the bottom of the staircase, letting the guards catch up. "Were there casualties? Of note, I mean."
"Every war has casualties, my lady," Ser Donnel said from behind her. "But nothing concerning that we've heard. The big lords all came through."
Rhaenys understood what that meant. Robert Baratheon was alive. Tywin Lannister was alive. Eddard Stark was alive. The pillars of the realm still stood, and she was still living in their shadow.
"And the boy?" she asked. "The Lannister boy. Was he saved?"
She knew his name. Everyone in King's Landing knew his name. It would have been impossible not to. Every time Rhaenys set foot in the Sept of Baelor for her lessons with Septa Annara, the first order of business was a prayer for his safe return. Let us pray for young Adrian Lannister, taken from his family by wicked men. Let us ask the Mother for her mercy and the Father for his justice. Over and over and over, week after week, until Rhaenys was certain that the rats and cats of King's Landing could recite the prayer from memory. Adrian Lannister, Adrian Lannister, Adrian Lannister. The name had been drummed into the city like a war hymn.
"Aye, the boy's been saved," Terrence said. He was the tallest of her guards, and the youngest, with a long face and honest eyes. "Rescued during the fighting, from what we heard. We didn't read the letter ourselves. But the word's spread fast."
"That is a relief," Rhaenys said with a fake smile. It seems the Faith favors the sons of wicked men, who will likely grow up and become like their father. Wicked and twisted. Yet, the Father, the Mother, they could not bother to lend a hand on innocent. He was just a baby.
Jacks cleared his throat. He had a rough voice, and his voice made Rhaneys escape her thoughts much to her relief. "Some of the rumors have gotten a little wild, though."
"Wild how?" Rhaenys asked, happy to think about something else.
The four guards exchanged glances. Jacks chuckled. Terrence grinned. Even Ser Willis looked amused.
"Well," Jacks said, "the way some people tell it, the boy freed himself from his cell. Killed his captors with his bare hands, fought his way through an entire castle, and put a Valyrian steel sword through a lord's belly."
Rhaenys raised an eyebrow.
"Four men, some are saying," Ser Donnel added, shaking his head. "Four grown men, killed by a six-year-old boy. Other versions have it at ten. I heard one fellow in the yard swear it was twenty, and that the boy was breathing fire while he did it."
The guards laughed, even Rhaenys giggled a little, and the four soldiers seemed happy to see her smile.
"He's six," Terrence said, still grinning. "People love a good tale. Give it another week and they'll be saying he rode a dragon out of the dungeon."
Rhaenys nodded along, but she was not as sure about this.
She was thinking about something Lord Arryn had told her once, in his solar, during one of their private conversations that she treasured more than anything in the Red Keep. When you hear a rumor, Rhaenys, believe half of the simplest version of a rumor. That is usually close enough to the truth to be useful. He'd been talking about court gossip at the time, about whispers regarding Lord Stannis and his daughter, who was said to have been born with Greyscale. She knew that was a lie; no one could be born with Greyscale, otherwise, Stannis's wife would have gone mad long before the baby crawled out of her body. The girl must have contracted the Greyscale somehow.
"I suppose we'll learn the truth when Lord Arryn returns," Rhaenys said after a minute of just walking down the stairs.
They reached the lower levels of the keep, where the corridors grew narrow and the torchlight thinner. Rhaenys led them through a passage she knew well, down a flight of worn steps, past a storeroom that smelled of dust and old barrels, and into a room near the cellars that she had claimed as her own months ago.
It was not much. A low ceiling, stone walls, a dirt floor that she had cleared of debris herself. There was a wooden post in the corner that she used for striking practice, and against the far wall, leaning in the shadows, was her spear.
It was not a fine weapon. Not like the spears Uncle Oberyn used, the ones he'd described in the letters. A spear is the noblest weapon, he had written. It keeps your enemies at distance and your honor intact. Learn it well, niece, and no man will touch you.
This spear was a broomstick with a sharpened iron point that a sympathetic blacksmith's apprentice had fitted for two copper pennies. It was ugly and unbalanced and the shaft was slightly warped. But it was hers.
Rhaenys picked it up. She turned to face the post.
"Ser Donnel," she said. "Would you help me with the drill? The one we practiced last week."
Ser Donnel sighed#. He stepped forward and drew a wooden practice sword from the rack she'd assembled. "Ready when you are, my lady."
They began.
Rhaenys moved through the forms she had taught herself from watching the soldiers in the yard, from the scraps of instruction Ser Donnel occasionally offered, and from the words of her uncle's letter that she had memorized and burned. Thrust. Step. Recover. Thrust. Circle. Retreat.
She was not good.
She knew she was not good. Her thrusts were too slow. Her footwork was clumsy. She overextended on her lunges, and when Ser Donnel pressed her, she stumbled back instead of pivoting. The spear felt awkward in her hands, too long for her arms, the balance always slightly off no matter how she gripped it.
After twenty minutes, she was breathing hard and sweating through her tunic, and she had landed exactly three strikes that Ser Donnel hadn't openly allowed her.
Ser Donnel stepped forward. He caught the shaft of her spear mid-thrust and twisted. The weapon wrenched from her grip with embarrassing ease, spinning away across the dirt floor.
Rhaenys stared at her empty hands. Her palms stung.
"My lady," Ser Donnel said carefully, "I think it might be time to consider other options."
She looked up at him. Her eyes were hard. "No."
"Rhaenys." He used her name without the title, which he only did when he was being serious. "You've been at this for three months. You're improving, I won't lie about that. But the spear is..." He searched for the right word. "It's not suited to you. Not yet, maybe not ever. It requires reach and leverage that you simply don't have. Not at your age, and perhaps not at any age, given your build."
"I will not be defenseless," Rhaenys almost shouted, and she hated the fear in her voice. "I will not."
I will never be defendless, never...That day will never repeat again.
Ser Donnel nodded slowly. "And you don't have to be. But just because your uncle is the finest spearman in Dorne doesn't mean the spear is your weapon. Blood gives you many things, my lady, but it doesn't give you reach."
"I am Dornish," Rhaenys said stubbornly. "The spear is in my blood."
"Aye," Ser Donnel said. "And I'm from the Vale, but that doesn't mean I'm any good with climbing and talking to goats." He picked up the spear and leaned it back against the wall. Then he reached into his belt and drew a short blade. Not a sword. A dagger. Plain, steel, with a leather-wrapped grip and no ornamentation.
He held it out to her, handle first.
"Based on what I've seen," he said, "this would suit you better. You're quick, my lady. Quicker than most. And you're small, which means you can get inside a man's guard before he knows you're there. A dagger rewards those things. A spear punishes them."
Rhaenys looked at the dagger. It sat in Ser Donnel's palm like a question.
She thought about Uncle Oberyn and his spear. She thought about how she wanted to be like him, fierce and untouchable, keeping her enemies at the length of a shaft. She thought about how that dream felt further away every time Ser Donnel twisted the weapon out of her hands.
She took the dagger.
It was lighter than the spear. Much lighter. She turned her wrist, feeling the weight shift. Forward. Back. Forward.
"I can try this," she said slowly. "I can try and see how it feels."
Ser Donnel smiled. "Good. We'll start properly next time. For today, just hold it. Get used to the weight, and maybe sometimes swing it forward, but do not pock anyone in the eye while doing it."
Rhaenys held the dagger and looked at the wooden post in the corner. She thought about all the people she would like to use it on.
The list was long.
Three hours later, she was in the Sept of Baelor.
She hated it here.
The seven-pointed stars carved into the walls caught the candlelight and threw it back in fractured patterns across the marble floor. Statues of the Seven loomed above the congregation: the Father with his scales, the Mother with her outstretched hands, the Warrior with his sword, the Crone with her lantern. All of them staring down with expressions of serene, empty benevolence.
Rhaenys sat on her bench near the back of the sept, surrounded by other girls her age from noble houses. Daughters of minor lords and landed knights, all of them dressed in their best, all of them sitting with their hands folded and their eyes lowered, performing piety like a dance.
Rhaenys performed nothing. She sat with her back straight and her eyes open, and she looked at the statues, and she thought about what a fool Baelor the Blessed had been.
Baelor Targaryen. A Targaryen king who had built this monstrosity for a faith that had spent centuries trying to destroy House Targaryen. The Faith of the Seven had called her ancestors abominations. They had waged war against the dragon lords for their marriages, their customs, their very blood. And Baelor had rewarded them with the grandest sept in the world. He had walked barefoot through the streets and starved himself into visions and locked his own sisters in a tower because he was afraid of their beauty.
A fool. A holy, sanctified, gilded fool.
And now his sept housed the prayers of men who had murdered the last dragon king.
Septa Annara stood at the front of the sept, her grey robes rustling as she moved between the rows. She was a tall woman with a thin mouth and eyes like two chips of flint. She taught the girls scripture and deportment and needlework and all the other things that proper ladies were supposed to know.
She also taught them to hate Rhaenys, though she was too clever to do it openly. It was always in the small things. The way she never called on Rhaenys first. The way she assigned Rhaenys the bench at the very back. The way she said your family with a particular emphasis that made the other girls glance sideways and whisper.
Today, Septa Annara was talking about the nature of mercy. The Mother teaches us that mercy is the highest virtue. It is through mercy that we find grace. It is through mercy that we rise above the beasts of the field...
Rhaenys was half-listening. She was thinking about the dagger Ser Donnel had given her. She wished she had it with her. She would not feel so defenseless.
Then the murmuring started.
It began at the front of the sept, near the altar, a ripple of whispers that spread backward through the congregation like wind through tall grass. Heads turned. Girls shifted on their benches. Even Septa Annara paused mid-sentence, her thin lips pressing together in annoyance.
Rhaenys looked toward the entrance.
Queen Cersei Baratheon was walking up the central aisle.
Rhaenys had seen the Queen many times. She lived in the same castle, after all, though their paths rarely crossed. All Rhaenys knew about the Queen was to always avoid her, and the Queen rarely smiled.
But she had never seen the Queen like this.
The Queen was smiling.
Rhaenys had seen enough fake smiles in her life to know this one was not that.
She wore a gown of deep crimson. Her golden hair was freshly arranged, falling in waves over her shoulders. Her skin, which had been sallow and drawn for weeks, had color again. She looked alive in a way she hadn't looked since Rhaenys could remember her.
The transformation was startling. Rhaenys had seen Cersei during the stupid Greyjoy Rebellion, had watched from the back of this very sept as the Queen knelt at the Mother's altar and prayed with a desperation that bordered on madness. She had looked hollow then. Gaunt. A queen walking through the motions of her own funeral. Servants had whispered that she barely ate, that she wept in her chambers, that she might die of the sadness.
And now, suddenly, she looked more alive, more radiant, more present than Rhaenys had ever seen her.
The other girls were staring. A queen was a queen, and this queen was beautiful, and girls of nine and ten had not yet learned to hide their awe.
Septa Annara's hand came down. Crack. She struck the nearest girl across the knuckles with the thin wooden rod she always carried.
"Eyes forward!" the Septa hissed. "Do not gape at Her Grace like fishwives at a market. You are ladies, not peasants. Comport yourselves accordingly."
The girls snapped their gazes back to their laps. Rhaenys looked away too, but more slowly, and not because she'd been told to. She looked away because she was thinking.
What could make a woman who walked like a corpse for months suddenly smile like the sun had returned?
The obvious answer was the war's end. Her husband was coming home. Her family was safe.
But Rhaenys had watched Cersei long enough to know that King Robert's return had never brought the Queen joy before. If anything, the court whispers suggested that Cersei preferred the King's absences. Less drinking. Less shouting. Less of whatever happened behind closed doors that made the Queen's handmaidens look at their shoes when asked about it.
Something else, then.
Cersei swept to the front of the sept and knelt before the Mother's altar. This time, she did not weep. She pressed her hands together and bowed her golden head, and the smile never left her face.
Septa Annara waited for the Queen to finish, then turned back to the girls with the air of a woman who had been rudely interrupted and intended to make everyone pay for it.
"As I was saying," she began, her voice rising to fill the vaulted space. "Today we give thanks. Word has reached us from the Iron Islands that the rebellion is ended. Pyke has fallen. The traitor Balon Greyjoy has been punished, and young Lord Adrian Lannister has been saved from his captors."
She paused, letting the words settle over the congregation.
"This," Septa Annara continued, "is the work of the Seven. The Father judged the wicked, and the Warrior lent strength to the righteous, and the Mother watched over the innocent child and brought him safely home. We have prayed for this outcome for many weeks, and the Seven, in their infinite wisdom and mercy, have answered our prayers."
Rhaenys sat very still.
She could feel it building inside her. The dragon's rage. She felt it like hot fire in her throat, and in her chest.
The Seven.
The Seven watched over the innocent child.
The Seven.
She could hear it.
She heard crying. A baby crying.
And then she heard the sound.
THE CRACK.
He was just a baby, he was only, he was innocent. What bad things could he have done to deserve it? Egg had done nothing to deserve it. What could an egg do?
And the Seven had done nothing.
The Seven had stood in their stone perfection with their serene, empty faces, and they had done nothing.
"...and so we see that faith is rewarded," Septa Annara was saying. "That prayer is not merely words spoken into empty air, but a communion with the divine. The Seven hear us. The Seven protect us. The Seven..."
"If the Seven are so good," Rhaenys said, "why do they only seem to protect some little boys and not others?"
The words left her mouth before she could stop them. They fell into the sept like the loudest crack in the world. Rhaenys felt like the world heard her words.
Every head turned.
Septa Annara stopped speaking. Her thin mouth went flat. Her flint eyes found Rhaenys at the back of the sept, and her eyes had never shown such anger.
"What," Septa Annara said slowly, "did you say?"
Rhaenys's heart was hammering. Her hands were fists in her lap. She knew she should stop. She knew she should lower her eyes and murmur an apology and let it pass. That was the smart thing. The safe thing. The thing Jon Arryn would tell her to do.
But Jon Arryn was not here. And the crack was still echoing in her skull.
"I asked a question, Septa," Rhaenys said with a tone of defiance, looking up, straight at her. "You said the Seven protect the innocent. That they watched over Adrian Lannister and brought him home. I'm simply asking why their protection seems to extend to some innocent children and not to others."
The silence was louder now.
Queen Cersei had turned from the altar. Her green eyes were fixed on Rhaenys.
The other girls were frozen on their benches. Some of them understood what Rhaenys meant. Most of them didn't. But all of them knew that something dangerous was happening.
Septa Annara walked down the aisle. She stopped in front of Rhaenys's bench and looked down at her.
"You will never," Septa Annara said with loathing, "speak of the Seven in such a manner again. Not in this holy place. Not anywhere."
Rhaenys looked up at her. "It was only a question, Septa. I thought we were here to learn."
The slap came fast. Rhaenys's head snapped to the side. Pain bloomed white and hot across her face, and she tasted copper. Her lower lip had split against her teeth, and blood welled up, warm and metallic on her tongue.
The other girls gasped. A few of them covered their mouths.
Rhaenys didn't gasp. She didn't cry out. She didn't raise her hand to her cheek or press her fingers to her bleeding lip.
She turned her head back slowly and looked at Septa Annara.
The Septa's hand was still raised. Her chest heaved. Her flint eyes burned with fury, and Rhaenys could see the satisfaction in her eyes. Rhaenys knew what she was thinking; she had slapped a dragon, she had made a dragon kneel before her.
"Heresy," Septa Annara said. "Blasphemy in the house of the gods. You should be ashamed, child. Your grandfather's madness runs deep, it seems."
Rhaenys said nothing. She held the Septa's gaze. Blood ran down her chin and dripped onto the front of her dress, a single red drop on grey wool.
When I take my throne back, Rhaenys thought, looking into Septa Annara's flint eyes, I will kill you. I will make you understand what it feels like to be small and powerless and struck by someone who thinks they have the right.
She held the thought like a jewel. She would kill her, she would kill the King, the Lannisters, they all would pay.
"I apologize, Septa," Rhaenys said quietly. "I spoke out of turn."
Septa Annara lowered her hand. She smoothed her grey robes. She looked at the other girls with an expression that dared any of them to show sympathy.
"Let us pray," the Septa said, turning back toward the altar.
The girls bowed their heads.
Rhaenys bowed hers too. She pressed her hands together and closed her eyes, and to anyone watching, she looked like every other girl in the sept: obedient, penitent, small.
But behind her closed eyelids, she was not praying.
She was remembering.
I will remember all of it. Every face. Every name. Every blow.
And when the time comes, I will not need the Seven to deliver justice.
I will deliver it myself.
Blood dripped from her lip onto her folded hands, and Rhaenys Targaryen, last surviving child of the dragon, sat in the house of gods she did not believe in and dreamed of fire.
My name is Rhaenys Targaryen, the Daughter of the Last Dragon, Child of Princess Elia Martell, the Smile of Dorne, and I will bring Fire and Spears.