Pre-Chapter A/N:Another chapter on time? Guess my lock-in is going pretty well. If you haven't already, I recommend turning on notifications for my stuff so you can see when new stuff drops right as it drops. More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Since I just started a new story, there's a cheeky discount on said patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) page for anyone interested.
XXXXXX- TYLAND LANNISTER
"Did you end up finding out what happened in Dorne for the truth?" his brother and Lord asked as he walked into the solar.
He stopped for a second and inclined his head in respect. He was one of the few that did not need to drop to a knee on entry, but he did still respect his older brother tremendously. Tyland knew his strengths. In the yard, he would disgrace Jason a hundred times, but no one could have managed their family's finances and interests just as well as Jason did. Most people thought House Lannister had it easy since they could just dig their wealth from the ground, but Tyland was not stupid enough to be so simple-minded. He had seen the complex mess that their accounts represented.
"I spoke to some sailors who were able to get me something more coherent than the present drivel that escapes that place. It seems that someone in the desert is going through a lot of trouble to keep whispers from escaping as to the present situation," he said.
"So he really did it then," Jason said. Most would have been unable to pick up on the subtle trace of awe in his brother's voice, but to Tyland, it was loud and clear.
"He did it. He and his sister on their dragons. In a day, the city of Sunspear was reduced to ash, and the sands around it reduced to glass," he said, still disbelieving it himself. To think that the Velaryon lordling he'd thought to be a merchant in a lord's clothing had such brutality to him was something else.
"And they have not informed the King of it. They did not have his permission," Jason said.
"Indeed." And that was the crux of the matter. What made it useful.
"Do you aim to use it?" he asked. The question he ought to have asked was how exactly he aimed to use it, because he knew his brother, and using something like this was just what he would do.
"Discreetly. He must never find out that the report came from us."
"I doubt he would stop selling to us simply because we told the King of his own actions," he said.
"No, I fear something more extreme."
"You fear he would turn his dragons on us? Break the King's Peace?"
"He already broke it by waging war in Dorne. Jaehaerys' edicts regarding the desert were clear and never rescinded."
"The Marcher Lords break it every two years," Tyland contested.
"Even they hesitate to venture too far in. A strike against the very heart of Dorne is beyond the pale. Assume the Velaryons to be volatile," he said.
"What would you do then?"
"Have your instruments see to it that the news reaches Darklyn's tools. How the man ever became Master of Whispers is beyond me," Jason scoffed at the end.
"I will see to it," Tyland confirmed.
"Good. While I doubt the Velaryons will truly be punished for this, the news will leak in that castle, and the King will have no way to justify granting them the hand of his only daughter," he said.
"And then her hand will be available again and you can make your bid anew," Tyland summarized.
"Exactly, brother. House Lannister has stood on the sidelines for too long. No longer. Baratheon, Hightower, Velaryon, have been rewarded with royal marriages. We are no lesser to any of them. We should have been the first of the Great Houses the King considered when seeking a bride for his daughter. I have declined taking a bride of my own for precisely this reason," he said.
"Will you truly stand as King-consort then?" Tyland asked a question that he already knew the answer to. Jason scoffed, looking out the window. His solar was on one of the Rock's highest points. From here, they could see the Westerlands stretching out beneath them.
"I am no lesser than a King. House Lannister is no lesser than House Targaryen, brother. They ride dragons and we do not. But when Rhaenyra and I wed, my children, Lannisters, will ride dragons too. The other houses will submit. It is in their nature. And the Lion will rule the Seven Kingdoms in truth. Rhaenyra is but a woman. What does she know of leadership? Of hard decisions? Of war if it comes? She will listen to her husband because I will know best," he said.
Tyland smirked in response before walking to the shelf on the other end of the room. He poured two healthy glasses of a delicious smelling Dornish Red.
"To House Lannister," he said, presenting the glass to his brother.
"To us," Jason said. And they clinked glasses.
"Don't think I have forgotten you, brother. When I am in King's Landing, you will be the Castellan here and you will rule the Westerlands in my name. I will grant your children, should you finally get around to having some, keeps around the Westerlands and ensure they want for nothing for as long as they live," he said. Tyland smiled but said nothing.
"Damn it, brother. Don't tell me that your mind is still on the girl," Jason said, slamming his glass on the table.
"She died, brother. She died and it was my fault. The Maester said she was ready, but I knew better. I could see it in her eyes that she was scared, and what did I do? I got her with child either way. So excited to do my duty, to birth the next generation of Lannisters. She died and the worst part was that I was not even here for it. I was at sea." He did not need to say just what he had been doing at sea.
"She died because she was too weak to do her duty. If I knew then what I know now, I would never have countenanced Lefford's offer for you to take his daughter's hand. She was too weak. You should have married a Lannister. A good cousin with the blood and strength to do their duty. What are their names again? Gerold's daughters?"
"I don't want to talk about this, brother," he said quietly.
Jason stared at him for a few seconds before he scoffed and turned his gaze to the window. He took another drink from the glass. "You can avoid the topic for now, brother. But once I marry, I will see you wed if I have to do it with you hogtied and dragged into the Sept," he said.
XXXX- MAESTER BERNARD
Not for the first time today did Maester Bernard think he had made the right choice. Born Bernard Redwyne, the third son of Lord Hoster Redwyne of the Arbor, there had not been much waiting for him in life. His oldest brother would be the next Lord Redwyne. His direct older brother would be the captain of the Redwyne fleet and would command their formidable—or at least what he had thought of at the time as a formidable—navy. And he? Well, he had two options before him—the chain or the scepter.
He would journey to Oldtown regardless, but what he did there was his choice. He could either join the Citadel and forge a chain as a Maester one day, or he could join the Sept and one day become a Septon. Thanks to his family background, he was sure to one day become an Archmaester or a Cardinal Septon regardless of what he personally did while there. He would have a life of comfort with few worries. But then he knew he would never be able to reach higher.
And so he chose the Citadel. If he was to be doomed to a life he did not want, then it might as well be one that encouraged intellectual curiosity rather than stifling it as men of faith were wont to do. Of course, he would later find that the Citadel, despite its hallowed reputation, or perhaps even because of it, did not care much for unchecked curiosity like his. He had wanted to learn everything there was to learn about a small number of topics, and when he did and he searched for answers to questions that had never been asked before, he was told to shut up and stop causing trouble.
Perhaps they should have conferred with his older brothers first before making such an edict. As his Lord would often say about himself, trouble was his middle name. When the Citadel had enough of him, he was sent to House Velaryon. A newly appointed Corlys Velaryon had dismissed his Maester in disgrace. They felt he would do better when he was not underfoot, and now he had come to realize that they had hoped for him to be dismissed as well, for some humility to be beaten into him by the circumstances. But that had not happened. He had come to enjoy his lot under the aegis of House Velaryon and he had found his place.
But then his duties had come calling. The duty of a Maester to spy on their Lord was not one openly discussed, but only a fool could deny its existence. They were taught codes to use to transcribe interesting conversations and pieces of policy before sending them back to the Citadel. They were taught ways to make sure their Lords did not depart too sharply from the plans the Citadel had made for them. And so Bernard did his duty. He did not see any harm in it. Informing the Citadel of what House Velaryon planned to do harmed no one, after all.
Or at least that is what he had thought until the Old Lord had died and his son had taken over. The threats to his life had been something else. The interrogation, the queer ability to tell when he was being lied to, that dead look in his eyes as he had near ordered his dragon to eat Bernard whole. Laenor Velaryon had never been an ordinary child to him, but he had come to learn just how wrong he was with time. It was not that Laenor Velaryon was a strange human. He was not human at all.
He was something between a human and a dragon. Some kind of abomination that had reincarnated from Valyria perhaps. The House thought he did not see it, but he had been at his window that night. He had seen the boy dragged out dead and then been incinerated by dragon fire. That should have been it—would have been it for anyone else, but he had come out of the fires unburnt and unscathed. That was the day Bernard had made his choice. There was no point in waiting for the chains around his neck to relax so he could escape. What would the point of that be? This was no ordinary man, and there was nowhere Bernard could go to hide from him, so he decided to serve.
That had proven to be the best decision he had ever made. He was given the chance to work on things that he could scarcely have imagined years ago. Ships that outstripped anything he had ever seen set sail—and this was as a Redwyne of the Arbor—glass clearer than the calm seas he had grown up swimming in, liquid stone that was said to have been lost with the Valyrians. Laenor Velaryon was inhuman, yes, but he was a worthy lord to follow and the rewards… Well, the rewards were what he was looking at now. The opportunity to watch as history was made—the birth of what people would one day call the greatest city of them all, and then to not just watch but to shape parts of it.
That was what brought him here now.
"Is this alright, Maester?" he was asked. He looked down at the plans that his Lord had left him with and he looked back at the work in progress.
"Yes, yes. It is perfect. On to the next. I mean to have finished with the skeleton of this before Lord Velaryon returns."
He nodded as the workers moved on to the next project. He took a step back and looked around himself. A lot of progress was being made. Bloodstone Island would become the home of one of the most beautiful cities in all of Westeros. He himself had seen them all. He had seen King's Landing, Lannisport, and Oldtown. The latter two were the only ones with a chance of competing, but if the young Lord's plans ended up coming to full fruition, then they would have no chance in any of the seven hells of even coming close.
First things first was the underbelly of the city. This was the hardest part as it required not just a lot of digging, but it also required alterations to be made to the homes that already had been built to integrate them with the sewage system. Of course, the homes and buildings that had already been built would be eventually demolished and replaced, but that was for much later. Now they had to focus on the dirtier aspects of things.
The sewage system. His Lord envisioned a two-tiered system that dealt with blackwater—human waste—and stormwater as well as grey water; water that was used for other things and could no longer be drunk because of it; the water used for washing was one such example. The plan was for blackwater to essentially be communally stored. Massive underground cisterns connected to every street of homes. They had to make it deep as they could, and then line it with cement to make it water-tight and prevent leakages. The cisterns would need to be emptied every few years according to his Lord's notes. They would most likely go for a more frequent schedule to prevent the smell from getting disastrous. The second system was for when the storms that plagued these islands returned.
They had been fortunate so far. Almost like their work was blessed by the gods in that no truly disastrous storms had struck them while they worked. He had seen some of the weather notes the Citadel kept before the campaign had begun. There were times where it would rain on these islands for weeks with very little respite. A storm period like that might not have put an end to the planned conquest, but it surely would have made things slow down a lot. The fact that they still hadn't been forced to deal with anything like that meant they were extremely lucky. A fact that his Lord did not take for granted. The plan for the stormwater was much more comprehensive.
Drainages along every street and walkway, sloped to ensure that the waters flowed into them, and through them out to the wider sea. It was a more delicate network, not requiring nearly as much digging as the cisterns, but requiring even more focus to ensure the routes were clear and clean as his Lord imagined. If the flow was blocked during one of those storms, the flooding would be a disaster of its own.
"Maester, Maester!"
He turned back to see one of the messenger boys running up to him. He had taken a few under his wing when it became clear that there were not enough hours in the day for him to do everything that he wanted while still handling the rest of his duties. They were lowborn and so unsuited for complex tasks, but he had found them surprisingly capable at doing simple, repetitive things like collecting the letters when they arrived and bringing them to him where he was.
He had no need to even worry about them spying on him, unable to read as they were. And then they were oh so cheap to keep around as well. He handed the boy a copper star for his trouble and accepted the letter that had come in. Looking at the seal, it was clear it had come from his Lord. He broke it and began to read. Every word told a story and then some. At the end, he was nodding, having received a new charge.
"Men, we will need to move at double speed for this. Lord Velaryon has sent new orders and we must begin building before he returns. Dig, men, dig. Put your backs and your legs, and all your great muscles into it. If you finish before noon, I have heard tell that each man will receive a Star extra on top of his usual pay," he said, and delighted when he saw them all begin to move faster indeed. Good, good.
XXXXX- LAENOR VELARYON
The seas were calm as I pushed their boat out into it. I pulled on Igneel's power to grant me some extra strength to make good work of it before pushing the boat out from shore and into the sea proper. I kept pushing until the water had gone high enough to cover my waist and then I pulled himself onto the boat proper as it sailed forward, carried by the movements of the sea itself. We'd spent a week and change on the island already and had run out of things to do on the island, so we turned to father's favourite hobby: fishing.
"Is this it?" Laena asked after they had sailed for thirty minutes. Neither of them had managed to catch anything so far.
"Well, it's supposed to be relaxing, not necessarily entertaining," he said with a chuckle.
"The best things are both," Mother cut in.
"I can't see why Corlys was so obsessed with this," she said after a few more minutes of sailing.
"I think it was more about the chance to be at sea under his own power than the actual catching of the fish," I admitted.
"So what do we do now?" Laena asked.
I was about to answer when the sound of a horn cut across the still quiet. We turned back to the shore as one, seeing Ser Ben standing there waving his hands about to draw our attention.
"Well, that's going to be interesting for sure," I said as I began rowing us back.
A/N: Another chapter bites the dust. Next five chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.