A/N: As the title says, I had to split this chapter in two as it got too long lol. Enjoy!
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Year 300 AC
Sunspear, Dorne
The knock came soft, like a question asked by fingers on wood.
"Enter," Aemon called.
The door opened on a small woman in grey silk holding a bundle of folded cloth. Missandei, Daenerys's young translator and confidante. She bowed her head deep and when she raised it again her expression was carefully composed.
"Your Grace," she said. "Queen Daenerys sends these for the feast tonight. She thought you should be seen as you are."
Aemon took the bundle from Missandei's outstretched hands. The cloth was heavier than he expected. He unfolded it on the bed, and the silk spilled open like a flag unfurling.
Black, high-collared, and trimmed in deep red. The three-headed dragon worked into the stitching along the shoulders and cuffs, small and precise. His father's house. A sigil he had only seen in books until three moons ago, and now he was meant to wear it on his chest like it had always been his. You are one of us. You must dress like it.
He rubbed the high collar between his fingers, the fabric snagging on his rough skin. To walk into the Sunspear in the dragon's red was a silent provocation, a reminder of the blood Rhaegar had cost this house. The politics of the feast felt like a slow-acting poison in his gut. He would swallow every drop to keep the peace.
He was still staring at it when Missandei cleared her throat.
Aemon looked up. The woman stood where she had been, patient, watching him with dark eyes that gave nothing away but missed nothing either.
"How long have you served the queen?" he asked.
A fractional widening of the eyes, quickly schooled was the only indication of her surprise. "Since I met her at Astapor, Your Grace. It's been a year."
"And before that?"
A pause. "I was property of the Good Masters of Astapor. I was taken from Naath when I was very young."
Aemon nodded. He did not offer sympathy. This woman did not carry herself like someone who wanted to be pitied. "You are a long way from Naath," he said.
"Yes, Your Grace."
"And you chose to cross the sea with her. To come here."
"I serve the queen because I choose to." Something quiet and fierce moved through the words. "She freed every slave in Astapor. She could have sailed west that same day with her army. Instead she stayed, and she asked those of us who were free for the first time in our lives whether we wished to follow her." A pause. "I have been free to leave every day since. I am still here."
Aemon studied her for a moment. "Then she earned your service. That matters more than commanding you."
Missandei met his eyes with a calmly. She opened her mouth to reply, but the corridor outside came alive with footsteps, several sets, and voices carrying the easy confidence of women who expected doors to open for them.
Nymeria Sand appeared in the doorway. Behind her, two serving men hauled a steaming bucket between them, arms straining with the weight. A third followed with another. They crossed to the copper tub behind the silk partition and poured without waiting for permission, the water hitting the basin in a rush of heat and orange-scented steam. Three attendants flanked Nymeria, carrying oils and fresh towels, their hair braided in the Rhoynish style.
Nymeria's eyes swept the room, found Aemon and Missandei, and easily read the tension between them.
"Your Grace," Nymeria said, her tone warm and faintly teasing. "The princess sends us to attend you before the feast. A king should not have to bathe himself like a common soldier."
Her eyes were piercing, and she used them like knives, cutting through pretense to the meat beneath. He had met her the day before, in Doran's solar, and she had watched him the same way then. The crowd of attendants and the polite chatter meant nothing to her. She was peeling back his courtly manners to find the truth he tried to hide.
He knew what this was. A beautiful woman, a closed room, an invitation dressed as service.
"I will manage," Aemon said.
The attendants hesitated. They looked to Nymeria.
Nymeria pushed off the doorframe and took a single step closer. Her smile widened. "Northern modesty. Its own kind of armor, I suppose. But you are in Dorne now, Your Grace. We handle flesh and service with less ceremony."
Aemon's expression did not change. His voice dropped a register. "I said I will manage."
The words were quiet but final.
Nymeria read it. Her smile became something else, sharper and briefer. "Of course, Your Grace." She inclined her head, gestured to the attendants, and withdrew. They retreated down the corridor, and the last thing he saw was Nymeria glancing back once before rounding the corner.
Missandei had not moved during the exchange. She stood by the bed where the Targaryen silk lay spread, her hands folded, her face perfectly neutral. But she had seen all of it. The refusal, the tone, the locked door that Aemon's voice had become.
"Thank the queen for the clothes," Aemon said.
Missandei bowed her head. "Your Grace." She turned and slipped from the chamber, her footsteps little more than a whisper against the stone.
Aemon sighed as the door closed.
Alone, he stripped and stepped into the tub.
The water was Dornish hot, scented with oranges. He sank into it with his eyes closed and felt almost nothing. The heat that would have reddened another man's skin barely registered against his own. The healing bruise along his ribs, where the kraken's tentacle had driven him through stone, loosened by a fraction. For a few breaths there was nothing to be except tired.
He leaned his head back against the copper rim and closed his eyes. The orange blossom settled around him. His breathing slowed.
Pine cut through the scent as he felt the familiar cold hit him.
Aemon looked at snow under his paws. Ghost was lying in cool shade, stone against his flank, and watched the open ground beyond the armory.
Val circled in the open ground near the broken tower, a practice blade loose in her hand. Across from her, Sansa held a wooden dagger in a grip that was wrong but committed. Val feinted left. Sansa dropped back a beat too slow and the practice blade caught her wrist.
"Again," Val said. "Feet first. Your hands will follow."
Sansa shook out the sting and reset her stance. Val gave ground to let her close the distance, then turned the blade aside with a motion so small it barely registered. Sansa stumbled past, caught herself, and swore. Not a lady's curse. Something she had picked up from the Free Folk women in the great hall.
Val's mouth twitched. "Better. The Lady in you would have apologized for the language. Do it again."
Sansa forced her shoulders back and found her footing once more. Her features turned as cold, a look Aemon knew intimately. She would be here until her arms gave out.
The water had gone tepid when he surfaced. He sat in the copper tub with the steam fading and let the distance settle back into his bones.
He washed quickly, dried off, and reached for the Targaryen silk.
The silk fit too well. Someone had taken his measure while he slept. He fastened the collar and turned toward the polished bronze on the wall.
Dark hair, lean jaw, Targaryen colors draped over Northern shoulders. For one disorienting breath he saw the ghost of a life he never lived.
He stepped away from the mirror and left the room.
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The feast hall smelled of roasted lamb and cinnamon before he saw it. The scent rolled down the corridor like smoke, heavy and rich. Aemon followed it to a wide archway where two guards stood aside without being told.
The hall was modest by Dornish standards, as his demands were met. No excess while the Shadow City still smoldered, while families buried their dead in graves hastily dug in the rubble. But modest in Sunspear still meant Rhoynish tilework in patterns that hurt to follow, fountain courts where water ran in copper channels, and lanterns throwing amber light on faces he needed to read. The minimal feast signaled respect for the fallen. It also meant fewer distractions for what he intended to do tonight.
Aemon stepped inside and paused in the doorway to survey the room.
Tyrion sat trapped between a spotted surcoat and a nameless minor house. The Martells had him on a short leash, kept well away from the real levers of power. Daenerys held the front, surrounded by houses already leaning toward her banner. The Martells were putting her on display, measuring the heat of her welcome. Sam and Gilly occupied a modest side table, a polite acknowledgment that kept them safely below the salt.
It told Aemon that Doran was being careful.
A knight in spotted silks stood as Aemon entered. The motion caught like fire, pulling lord after lord to his feet until the chatter died. By the time Aemon reached the center of the room, the only sound was boots on tile and the fountain running in the courtyard beyond the arch.
He did not know most of their faces. Two days in Sunspear and a lifetime in the North had not prepared him for Dornish heraldry, and the minor lords who had answered Doran's ravens were strangers wearing sigils he would need to learn. But bodies he could read. The lord in the spotted surcoat gave Aemon a stiff bow and the silver-haired woman beside him inclined her head with the carefulness of someone who had not yet decided what she thought.
The great houses were absent. Yronwood. Dayne. Fowler. Those names he knew from Maester Luwin's lessons, and none of their banners hung in the hall. Either too far to answer in time, or waiting to commit. Doran's full strength was not in the room.
Aemon moved through the hall, exchanging minimal courtesies. A nod here. A murmured greeting there. He reached Daenerys's entourage and stopped.
Daenerys scanned him, making no effort to mask her interest. He wore the red and black like a battle-worn cloak. The dragon found it's home on his Northern frame.
"Your Grace," Aemon said.
"Your Grace." Her voice was steady, formal. But her gaze lingered a beat longer than diplomacy required before she caught herself and lifted her chin. "The colors suit you."
Aemon took it as approval for the message the clothes would send. He inclined his head and turned to Daenerys's entourage.
Ser Barristan Selmy was already on his feet. The old knight's pale blue eyes moved over Aemon's face, the black and red silk, and his composure shattered for a fleeting second, revealing a man drowning in old memories, before he forced his shoulders back and reclaimed the cold discipline of the Kingsguard.
Aemon did not need to ask what Barristan saw.
Then he turned to Jorah Mormont.
The exiled knight stood at the edge of the entourage with the posture of a man waiting for a blow. His eyes met Aemon's, and something passed between them that had nothing to do with queens or alliances.
"Ser Jorah," Aemon said.
"Your Grace." Jorah's voice was careful. Guarded.
Aemon looked at him. He had rehearsed nothing. He had not planned to do this here, in the middle of a feast hall with lords watching. But Jorah was standing three feet away, and Aemon couldn't help when the Old Bear's face surfaced in his memory.
He looked toward Sam's table and as their eyes met, Sam gave a small nod.
So Jorah knew.
But private knowledge and public acknowledgment were different currencies, and Aemon understood courts well enough now to know which one bought more.
He turned back to Jorah. "Your father was the finest man I ever served under."
Jorah's features turned to gray as stone.
"Serving him changed what I thought I knew about you. My uncle Eddard spoke of you once — called you a man who chose exile over justice. For years, that was all I knew of Jorah Mormont."
The words landed like a slap. Jorah's chin lifted, but he did not look away.
"But it matters not in front of a father's love." Aemon spoke with a ranger's grim directness. "Your father sent his mercy through Samwell. I repeat those words now before this assembly. A father's grace belongs in the light of day, where all men might see it."
Jorah looked like a man whose old wounds had been torn open.
"I am grateful," he said. The word came out rough, scraped thin by the effort of saying it where Daenerys and half the Dornish court could hear. "That my father died with forgiveness on his lips."
"There is one thing more." Aemon paused. "Longclaw sits at Winterfell. Your father gave it to me when I served him, and I have carried it with honor. But it is a Mormont blade."
Ser Jorah's expression shifted, revealing a glimpse of some buried grief.
"Lady Maege and her daughters fought beside me in the North. They bled for Winterfell when others hid behind their walls." Aemon's words fell with the finality of a hammer on an anvil. "When the war allows, I will see Longclaw returned to Bear Island, to your Aunt. House Mormont has earned it back."
Jorah accepted the slight. His kin had earned that blade in the snow. He was a ghost from the Free Cities, and he had no claim to the steel they had saved with their lives.
"My aunt and cousins will wield it well," Jorah said.
Aemon nodded once and moved on.
He crossed to where Prince Doran sat in his wheeled chair at the head of the hall, Arianne sitting beside him.
"Your Grace," Doran said as he inclined his head.
"Prince Doran." Aemon kept his voice low. "Thank you for your hospitality."
"You saved my city," Doran said. He let the admission sit between them like an unpaid debt. "My bread and salt are yours by right. I only wonder what else you expect to find at my table."
Arianne's eyes moved between them, reading the exchange the way her father had taught her.
"Whatever Dorne can spare when I call." Aemon did not dress it up. "I will not pretend this is anything other than what it is."
Doran studied Aemon for a long moment. Then he gestured to the hall, to the lords and ladies seated at their benches, to the modest spread of food and the amber lanterns.
"I have called this feast," Doran said, his voice pitched to carry, "to honor the man who defended Sunspear when the sea itself rose against us."
The hall quieted.
"House Martell owes a debt to King Aemon Targaryen. A debt paid in blood and fire. Dorne will not forget it."
He paused, letting the words settle.
"And Dorne will stand with the Dragon, when the realm gathers at Harrenhal to face what comes."
The spoken oath was a snare. By speaking his intent before the assembly, Doran bound his honor to the cause while a hundred sets of ears recorded the promise.
Aemon did not waste it.
"Prince Doran." He kept his voice pitched for the hall. The lords who had just heard their prince pledge to the Dragon deserved to hear what the pledge cost. "Dorne has never seen true winter." He did not dress it up. "Your soldiers fight in sand. Your supply lines depend on open roads and coastal trade. Where I am asking you to march, the cold kills exposed skin in minutes and the ground freezes so hard you cannot dig a trench without a pickaxe. Your men will need furs. They do not own furs."
"Your Grace." Gargalen leaned forward, his hands flat on the table. "Dorne has never fielded an army north of the Reach. The logistics alone would take months."
"You do not have months. The enemy does not eat and does not sleep. Every day you spend preparing is a day their army grows."
The hall had gone quiet in a way that had nothing to do with courtesy.
"I know what I am asking." He turned back to Doran. "Dorne spent twenty years nursing wounds from the last war a Targaryen dragged it into. I am asking you to march into another on the word of a man you met days ago." He stopped. He was not good at this part. The asking. "There is a dead god rotting in your harbor. That is the only proof I can offer that is not my word."
Lady Allyrion spoke from the second row. "You are asking us to believe the world is ending."
"I am asking you to prepare as though it might."
The silence held. Doran's fingers moved once on the arm of his chair. The only sign he gave.
"Arianne," Doran said. "You will coordinate with the king's people on provisioning. Furs and supply wagons. I want estimates on my desk by morning."
Arianne inclined her head. Her expression gave nothing away.
"Prince Doran." Aemon met his eyes. "Thank you."
Doran gestured to the empty seat at his right hand. "Sit, Your Grace. The lamb is excellent, and there is more we must discuss before you fly north."
Aemon sat down. He reached for a cup of watered wine and drank. It tasted of citrus and something sharper, a spice he could not name.
The feast began.
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The Dornish red was stronger than Tyrion expected and the company weaker, sitting between Ser Sylva Santagar and a lord who hadn't bothered to introduce himself. That didn't stop Tyrion from listening to the many conversations layered over each other like waves breaking against a harbour wall.
Strong Belwas had planted himself near the door, a vest barely covering his enormous belly. Grey Worm stood near the kitchens, tracking servants and counting exits.
Aurane Waters worked the Dornish minor lords with the easy grace of a man who knew exactly how handsome he was. He gestured as he spoke while candlelight caught on his rings, making Lord Gargalen laugh at something.
And Arianne Martell circulated like wine poured into empty cups. She paused at one table, touched a lord's wrist while she laughed at something he said, then moved on before he could mistake the attention for attachment. She had been watching Aemon all evening, though whether as hawk or rabbit, Tyrion had not yet decided.
The temperature in the hall rose as more bodies filled the benches. Sweat gathered at the small of Tyrion's back, soaking into the silk doublet Missandei had found for him.
Lord Gargalen turned to Tyrion from the next table, his weathered face friendly beneath a receding hairline.
"Lord Tyrion. You sailed with the queen from Meereen, yes? What manner of city is it? I have heard conflicting reports."
Tyrion smiled. The lord wanted gossip dressed as intelligence.
"A pyramid city built on the backs of slaves," Tyrion said. "The pyramids are impressive if you enjoy looking at monuments to suffering. Yet, for all their… achievements, the wine remains terrible. But in the end, the queen freed every slave in the city, which made her extremely popular with half the population and extremely hated by the other half."
Gargalen chuckled. "Sounds familiar. Dorne has its own divisions."
"Every kingdom does," Tyrion said. "The trick is making certain your half has the sharper knives."
Lady Toland leaned in from across the table. "And what of the dragons, my lord? They are magnificent and… larger than I expected. But do they truly answer to her? Or are they beasts that happen to follow the hand that feeds them?"
"They obey her," Tyrion said. He took another drink. "Not like a hound obeys. More like a son obeys a mother he respects but every parent knows that children can be disobedient at times. Which makes them the most dangerous weapon in the world, provided she never loses their respect."
Best not to mention Viserion.
Gargalen lowered his voice. "And the stories, my lord. The new king… turning into a dragon on the beach." He glanced toward the high table where Aemon sat, then back at Tyrion. "My men have been in the Shadow City for two days, listening to all kinds of rumors. Every fisherman and dockhand has a different version, each wilder than the last. I assumed it was the usual embellishment that follows any battle."
"There is a dead kraken rotting in the middle of the Shadow City," Tyrion said. "I would start there."
Gargalen's smile faded and waited for more but Tyrion reached for the wine instead.
Gargalen leaned closer. "The lords are uneasy, Lord Tyrion. Not about the queen. About him." He tilted his head toward the high table without looking. "Three days ago he was a name in a rumor. Now Prince Doran has pledged Dorne to his war. Some of us rode two days to attend a feast we were not certain we would survive."
"And yet you came."
"A man who kills a sea god on your doorstep earns a hearing. That does not mean he earns trust."
Not afraid of Daenerys. They are afraid of him, thought given the circumstances, perfectly reasonable.
Across the hall, Samwell Tarly sat at a modest table beside Sarella Sand. The girl wore a borrowed dress that fit poorly and she looked like she wanted to crawl out of it.
Then Sam stopped whatever he was saying. He looked toward the high table and rose.
He crossed the hall, weaving between servants and benches, and leaned down to Aemon's ear.
Tyrion could not hear it. He watched Aemon's eyes change.
As Sam withdrew, Aemon's gaze traveled across the hall and found Loras Tyrell.
The Knight of Flowers sat alone at a table meant for six. The other seats had been left empty, whether out of respect or discomfort. Loras held his cup with both hands. The left was bandaged, the fingers stiff. The right shook. Half his face was a ruin, the burns from Dragonstone leaving scar tissue that pulled his mouth into a grimace. The other half was still beautiful, which made the damage worse.
Aemon rose and lords turned to watch him pass. He found Loras and took a seat beside him on the long bench. He sat shoulder to shoulder with the man, ignoring the chair on the other side of the wood.
The hall noise made eavesdropping impossible, but Tyrion had spent his life reading what men did not say aloud.
Aemon spoke first, quiet and close, and Loras looked up. His good eye found Aemon's face and stayed there.
Tyrion caught fragments from the shape of lips and the rhythm of speech. Highgarden and home. Aemon was telling Loras he would take him back, the king himself, not an escort or a ship.
Loras's grip on his cup loosened and the hunch in his shoulders eased by a fraction.
Then Aemon's lips formed a different name. Olenna. Then another shape Tyrion knew well. Harvest and winter.
Aemon stood and clasped Loras's shoulder once, gently, then returned to the high table.
Tyrion reached for his wine and discovered the cup was empty.
The man who arrives at Highgarden with Olenna's broken grandson on one arm will not need the other arm to twist. So how did Ned Stark's bastard learn to play the game like this? He rules the way Father would have ruled if Father had possessed a conscience.
He emptied the dregs. As he wiped his mouth, he saw Aemon coming.
The King bypassed the dais and the seated banners, stepping straight into the shadows of the side tables causing all the chatter to die off. Whatever business the King had, it was not with the great lords, but with the man at the edge of the room.
Aemon stopped at Tyrion's table, yet he did not sit as he did with Loras.
"Lord Tyrion. We need to discuss King's Landing."
The table had gone quiet around him. Gargalen leaned back in his seat and Lady Toland watched openly with abject curiosity.
"I am at your disposal, Your Grace. Though I should warn you, my expertise in city politics tends to end with someone trying to kill me."
Aemon did not smile. "Your siblings are alive, both of them. Though the situation in King's Landing has changed since you last had word."
Tyrion's hand stopped halfway to the cup.
Both. Jaime and Cersei. The two people left in the world who shared his blood. Cersei had put a price on his head before he crossed the Narrow Sea. And Jaime had smiled at him through the bars in King's Landing and said I'm sorry as though two words could stitch shut what a thirteen-year lie had torn open.
Where do whores go?
He forced his hand to complete the motion yet he found the cup empty, like his heart. He set it down and reached for the nearest pitcher instead, pouring with a steadiness he did not feel.
"I was not aware you had word of my brother, Your Grace." The tone came out as measured as he could make it, falling back on his court training. He had survived enough trials to know how to hold his breath and his tongue while his heart hammered against his ribs.
Aemon's chin lifted a fraction.
"Are you aware of what your sister did to the Great Sept of Baelor?"
"Sadly, yes," Tyrion said. "The Wildfire. Prince Doran has informed us of my dear sister's stupidity. And the thousands dead."
Aemon nodded once. "Then you understand why Cersei cannot be allowed to remain in the capital. Your brother Jaime is south of the Neck, heading for King's Landing on my authority. The Brotherhood Without Banners brought him to me at Winterfell. I offered him a choice. He took it."
From the high table, Doran's head turned.
"What choice?" Tyrion asked.
"Remove Cersei from power before she burns what is left of the capital. By whatever means necessary. Afterward, he takes the black."
Tyrion poured wine into his cup and did not drink it. Jaime walking back into Cersei's reach. Jaime, who had been the only Lannister to carry him on his shoulders through Casterly Rock when the corridors were too long for a dwarf's legs. Jaime, who had lied about Tysha for thirteen years and called it kindness.
"That is a great deal of trust to place in a Lannister, Your Grace."
"It is a great deal of trust to place in anyone," Aemon said. "But he knows the city better than any of my people, and he has reasons of his own for wanting Cersei stopped."
Yes. Jaime always has reasons of his own. He had reasons for lying about Tysha, too. Reasons for standing in a white cloak while Aerys burned men alive. Jaime Lannister is a man made entirely of reasons, and every one of them makes perfect sense until you look at what they cost someone else.
Tyrion lifted his cup and drank. The wine was warm and too sweet and he swallowed it like medicine.
"There is a reason your brother will take the black," Aemon said. He set his hands on the table, palms flat. "Your brother was the one who pushed my brother from the tower at Winterfell. Bran was seven years old. He climbed the way he always did, and he saw your brother with Cersei."
Aemon had pitched every word to carry, and the nearby tables had already gone still. Now the silence spread outward, bench by bench, as men stopped chewing and set down their cups.
Gargalen exhaled beside him, a slow, controlled breath that carried its own verdict. Lady Toland was less discreet. "Seven years old," she said, quietly enough that only the nearby tables caught it.
Tyrion sat rooted to the bench, the weight of the words pressing him down into the wood. This truth had been a ghost haunting the corners of his mind since Winterfell. He had spent a lifetime breathing the air of his siblings' secrets, even when he chose to look elsewhere. Jaime and Cersei had been alone in that tower, and he knew his own blood well enough to see the length of their desperation. A boy's life was a small price for the safety of their bed.
"My brother has never been a man who lets inconvenient witnesses live," Tyrion said. He kept his voice flat, conversational, as though discussing a vintner's poor judgment rather than a seven-year-old boy thrown from a window. "I cannot say I am surprised, Your Grace. Only sorry."
Aemon watched him. He reminded Tyrion of a falcon that had missed its strike and now hovered in the air, confused by the empty sky. Whatever he had expected Tyrion's face to do in this moment, it was not what Tyrion's face was doing.
Doran spoke from the high table, his voice low enough that the room leaned toward it.
"You held the man who crippled your brother. And you let him live?"
"I did," Aemon said.
Doran's fingers moved once on the arm of his chair. "The man who stood in his white cloak while my sister and her children were butchered in the rooms behind him, and you put him on a horse and sent him south with a mission."
"I am aware of my own actions, Prince Doran."
"Then explain to me, Your Grace, why a man who throws children from windows and watches princesses die deserves a choice at all."
Aemon's eyes turned to Doran before he answered.
"Jaime was in the throne room with Aerys when the sack began. Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch were in the nursery. Those were Tywin Lannister's men, acting on Tywin Lannister's orders, and Jaime did not know what they had been sent to do until it was done." He held Doran's gaze. "That does not make him innocent. But it makes him no more guilty than every other man in the Red Keep who failed to reach your sister in time."
Doran's features tightened into a mask of sun-baked clay. This truth was a bitter draught, yet it had shifted the foundation of his charge. Doran sat in a heavy, watchful silence. He was a creature of the long game, and he refused to strike while the wind was still changing its tune.
"During Robert's Rebellion, Aerys ordered wildfire placed throughout King's Landing. Thousands of pots. When Robert reached the gates, Aerys gave the command to ignite them all. Half a million people. Jaime killed the pyromancer first, then the king. He saved every soul in that city, and when my uncle Eddard found him on the Iron Throne afterward, he never asked why. He saw a man covered in a king's blood and called him Kingslayer, and that name has followed Jaime for twenty years because no one thought to ask what Aerys had done to deserve it."
Daenerys spoke from the high table. Her hand was flat against the wood and her jaw was tight enough that Tyrion could see the muscles working from across the room.
"My father ordered the destruction of his own city."
"Yes," Aemon said.
"And the Kingslayer stopped it."
"Yes."
She looked at Ser Barristan behind her. The old knight's face had gone the color of ash.
"Did you know?" she asked him.
"No, Your Grace." The words came out hoarse. "I was with your father's army at the Trident. When Prince Rhaegar fell, Robert's men pulled me from beneath the bodies of two horses. By the time I woke, King's Landing had already fallen."
"Yet you did not question the Kingslayer of this," Daenerys said.
"No. I did not." Barristan's hand tightened on his sword belt. "I have spent twenty years despising Jaime Lannister for what I believed he did, but my anger at him made me overlook the facts."
Across the hall, Loras Tyrell's burned hand had stopped shaking. Both hands gripped the cup as though it were the only solid thing in the room.
"My father burned in that Sept." His voice carried further than he probably intended, rough and cracked at the edges. "Cersei used the same fire the Kingslayer stopped Aerys from using. And we called him oathbreaker for it." He looked down at his hands, at the bandaged fingers and the tremor he could not hide. "What does that make the rest of us?"
Silence stretched through the hall until it felt as brittle as dry parchment. The lords looked to their wine or the floor, terrified of the fire he had just kindled in the center of the room.
Tyrion looked away. What else could he do?
Daenerys turned back to Aemon. She kept her hand splayed against the wood, the knuckles jutting like bloodless peaks to signal the quiet fury she held back. "Half a million people," she said. "The Kingslayer saved half a million people, and the realm rewarded him with a name that follows him like a curse." She drew a breath that shook on the way in. "And my father was the one who made it necessary."
She looked at Doran, then at the Dornish lords at the nearby tables, then back at Aemon. "I will not defend what the Lannisters did to Elia and her children. But I will not pretend that the man who stopped my father from burning a city is the same as the men who murdered a prince and princess in their nursery."
Aemon let her words settle, then looked at Doran.
Doran's mouth became a unforgiving seam. He glanced once at the Dornish lords listening from the nearby tables, then back at Aemon. The message was clear without words: you are saying this in front of my bannermen.
"You and I have spoken of my sister," Doran said. "In private, where grief belongs. But you are now asking my lords to accept that a Lannister rides south as your instrument of policy. In Dorne, that name still draws blood."
Arianne's voice came from near the pillar where she had stopped circulating. "If the Lannister succeeds, the woman who sits on the Iron Throne with wildfire at her feet is gone. My lords can swallow a name if the name removes a threat." She looked at her father. "Can they not?"
Doran kept his eyes on the horizon, pointedly ignoring the woman at his side. The space between father and daughter was a wall that no plea could breach.
Aemon inclined his head to Doran, a gesture that offered respect without concession. "When Cersei falls, Dorne will have its acknowledgment. You have my word, Prince Doran. Before the realm, not behind closed doors."
Daenerys spoke again. Her voice was steady but her eyes told a different story. "If my father had not been stopped, every person in King's Landing would have burned. And now his daughter sits on a dragon." She looked at Aemon. "The realm will draw that line whether we want them to or not."
"Let them," Aemon said. "You are not your father. Neither am I mine. The line they draw will not hold once they see what we do with the power he would have wasted."
Tyrion sat through all of it with his cup warming in his hands. He thought of his dream. The one that came back on bad nights, the one with two heads. In the dream he always killed his father first. Then he killed Jaime. And one of his heads wept while the other did the cutting.
Where do whores go?
He drank and set the cup down.
Aemon turned back to him. "I will need your knowledge of King's Landing's defenses in writing. Every gate, every sewer, every weakness you exploited against Stannis."
"You will have it by midday," Tyrion said.
Aemon nodded once and returned to the high table.
A soft, feverish whispering filled the room as the King turned away. The lords leaned toward one another, keeping their words muffled.
Gargalen leaned toward him, barely above a murmur. "Your family has a talent for making simple things complicated, Lord Tyrion."
"Sadly, that too is a Lannister trait," Tyrion said.
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