Pre-Chapter A/N: Welcome to September, guys! Let's smash whatever goals we've set ourselves this year. More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Experimenting with two chapters a week, we'll see how long I can keep this up for.
We banked left before we dived. I felt the air smash against my body, trying to toss me off the saddle, but I held on with only my legs to keep me in place. It was a good feeling despite the strain. The feeling of flying and being free while I did it. Mother would never have consented to a saddle being made for me without the customary chains, but I had not bolted them in years, much in the same way as I had never flown with a whip after the first time. While it was much too weak to actually hurt Igneel, so there was no fear of that happening, there just wasn't any need. People needed whips to tell their dragons where to go. Igneel moved with my thoughts, and when we flew, we were one, a union truer than any marriage could ever be. We came up to the shanty in a matter of seconds and, without any warning, we let loose.
'Dracarys,' I mentally commanded. Screaming while diving straight down on dragonback was not the best way to avoid swallowing an insect. That one was a lesson I'd sadly had to learn from personal experience. In one boom, the first few buildings in the shanty were gone. It took us two passes to leave the tiny outcropping of homes as nothing but cinders. We turned right, continuing to fly. This island was not even one that I could identify from high in the sky. Mother's strategy had changed. Instead of taking the islands one after the other, we were spreading our influence in a circle from around Bloodstone.
Daemon, Mother, Laena, and I all set forth from the island at dawn and returned at dusk. Instructions were simple: patrol in an ever-expanding circle from Bloodstone (each of us was entrusted to a rough quadrant—after a tiny tiff on the first day with Daemon wandering into my territory and me accidentally straying into his, Mother and Laena had become borders between us) and burn everything in sight. Marching from island to island only made sense when we were trying to displace the existing governments and supplant them immediately.
Instead, we were going to eliminate all the civilization that remained on the islands and any trace of organized resistance, making them fear to pop out from their holes—and then when we finished, Borros and Vaemond would swoop in and put whatever remained to the sword. We burned forests to reduce the chances of another Seaspeaker popping up, and whenever it was possible, we demolished caverns and natural hiding spots.
The goal was to make it as easy as possible for the ground troops when they landed. We continued our patrol, noting a small village next. I took a breath in, and we dived down again. This was tedious. A lot of flying with small pieces of action in between—and the action was just this: sitting on Igneel's back while he roasted some wooden shacks and their pirate occupants.
We moved on after a few minutes, and the rest of our patrol was relatively incident-free. We finished one pass across our course and started another pass, a bit farther forward. We didn't come across any settlements. A few fishing boats had suffered our boredom, and we'd ended up filling a few cliff-face caverns with flames to be safe and then went about the rest of our day flying and thinking. Igneel did the flying; I did the thinking. The Stepstones would need multiple things to get them off the ground. The first was a good survey. I had to know what I was working with. We were burning forests, so wood would be scarce, but I just had to hope there would be some deposit of iron or gold or silver. Even copper would be worth the effort. Just something that would make the next steps easier.
I didn't want to turn the islands into a mining civilization by any means. In ten years, even if we found gold in Lannister numbers, my goal would still be for digging shit out of the ground to make up a small part of the islands' economy. The backbone would be trade. And that was another powder keg about to explode. There would be consequences for what we did in Tyrosh, I had no doubts. We had bloodied their nose, but we hadn't knocked them out of the fight by any means. And then they had the two other whores to help their stupidity. They would attack at some point, and I'd have to deal with that. And then while dealing with that, I had to make sure we left enough of the cities standing that they would still be able to trade with Westeros.
It would be a bit embarrassing to take the Stepstones with the intention of controlling the trade only for no trade to end up taking place because we crippled the most viable trading partners on the other end. There was still Pentos, but they were only a single city. Braavos had easier routes into the Westerosi markets they could rely on, and the Slaver's Bay cities only really traded in flesh—a trade that I would not countenance, and neither would most of my fellow Westerosi. Volantis was... well, Volantis. The three whores needed to stand. I needed to beat them, and then with the same hand, raise them up again because their continued existence would be necessary for making this place viable.
And even if I somehow managed to do that, there was the problem of how I would enforce the trade tolls and the like. Sure, the Velaryon navy would be able to handle patrolling, but things like administration, port control, all that, would need capable, learned people. Driftmark did not have so many that I could just take them from there and have the city remain standing. Whatever I felt for the Stepstones, I would not cripple Corlys Velaryon's legacy to prop it up. That meant I had to get the people from somewhere.
Westeros was the first choice. Not Driftmark, no. Maybe the Reach. They had a shit ton of smallfolk. But then again, those smallfolk were needed to cater to vast acres of farmland. They had been farmers all their lives. The Stepstones were famously barren. I wasn't going to bring farmers here only to tell them they could do anything but farm. Of course, I'd try out farming by myself to test if the famous knowledge was truth. Just because everyone knew something didn't make it true—oftentimes it meant the exact opposite, but this was a bit of inherited wisdom that there wasn't a lot of chance of making headway in proving wrong. The pirates would most definitely have tried in the past. And if they had succeeded on a massive scale, they probably would have turned from piracy with time. It was just how things worked.
Only insane people like the Ironborn would keep engaging in piracy and risking their lives, making them outlaws in every port and sea, all to make gold to buy food when the option of growing food and just selling it for gold existed. Only a religion could enforce and cement that level of foolishness. If the pirates found a way to grow food on these islands, they would have settled more permanently. They would have built larger villages, turned those into towns, and maybe one day even into cities. They would have leveraged their position to sell food to both sides of the Narrow Sea. King's Landing would be overjoyed at another source of food—one not in danger of drying up if whoever was King happened to piss off the Reach houses.
The Free Cities were practically insatiable with their need for food. The Disputed Lands were being shared by the Triarchy now but still failed to produce enough food to sate their appetites. So the fact that no such Pirate Kingdom built on agriculture had been born was probably a strong indicator of the viability of these lands for farming.
Beyond the Reach, every other kingdom, bar the North, had some sort of overpopulation. Not in egregious amounts, but there were those who struggled to feed themselves, who their Lords would not or could not care for and support. Those people migrating to the Stepstones could be possible, but how would I get them here, and how would I do it without pissing the Lords off enough to go reporting me to Viserys? Too many other concerns. The only other choice was across the Narrow Sea. I could pull a Daenerys, except instead of buying slaves for an army, I'd buy them for a population. That would cost a lot of gold, though.
Unlike the Stormborn, I didn't particularly want to build a reputation for not paying my debts and being generally unreliable in business. That would be a terrible way to start off a civilization where trade would be the backbone. Of course, I could just pay a fair price for the slaves and eat the cost as an initial investment. That meant I would need to be selective with the kind of slaves I bought. It would be a matter of buying highly skilled and specialized slaves from the Free Cities at a premium and then freeing them once they arrived at the Stepstones. I expected they would be grateful enough to receive their freedom that they would work for me. Loyalty was far from assured, but it would come with time.
Besides, if I kept a tight enough grip on things, separated the people and made them only interact with parts of the industrial process, I could be sure to keep at least some of my secrets. Even more so if I kept the islands that acted as my industrial backbone as unreachable for outsiders and merchants. I could maintain five or so port islands where merchants could stop to drink, trade, and whatever, but block off access to the rest of the islands and use those for building shit. Shit like glass, most definitely. It could work, but it would be another administrative and logistical mess to manage. It was almost like no matter what I did, I was doomed to have to deal with some sort of mess either way.
I turned right, completing my last circuit with aplomb, and then began to return. Thanks to Igneel's speed, we were always sure to finish patrols faster than the others. At first, I had just used that time to explore Bloodstone castle with Laena out and busy, but that had gotten less entertaining with time. I had dozens of guesses as to the origins of the castle, what it had been built for, its initial purpose and whatnot, but there was no way to confirm any of it.
If there had been any texts about its origins, then they were no longer in the castle—if they had ever been there in the first place. The only place guaranteed to have answers was the ruins of Valyria, and I was not going to be taking that risk. I'd read the accounts of what happened to Princess Aerea Targaryen, and if there was even a chance that something similar would happen to me there, it was not worth the risk. All the Valyrian steel and gold in the world was not worth my life. Of course, the counterargument was that Euron Greyjoy had managed it, and I was definitely smarter than that piece of reaver scum. If only that was enough, though. For one, the Doom was further in the past when Euron had gone. Now, while Balerion was dead, there was every chance that creatures that had survived the Doom—dragons or otherwise—remained on the isles. And if they remained, then Igneel and I would be a snack for them.
I had no magic of my own to act as an equalizer, and even if I somehow managed to learn some, what was the guarantee it would be enough? The Valyrians were the best and most twisted mages of an age far more magical than this one. While Euron Greyjoy's accomplishment was without a doubt an impressive one, he had gone when dragons had died and magic slept. Now, neither of those things was true.
Still, no matter how much I thought about the dangers, the lure of Valyria remained. It was not the Valyrian steel or the near-limitless amounts of gold that drew me towards it, no. It was the promise of knowledge. The promise of the magic that the Valyrians had had. The magic to conquer a kingdom and then some. The magic not just to hatch dragons, but the magic it had taken to create the species in the first place.
No matter what the Maesters said in their books, I would never believe that the Valyrians hadn't created their dragons. For one, why could only those with Valyrian blood ride them? It spoke of a powerful enchantment. So powerful that it would last for centuries, even after the Doom. In the canon, the dragons did not allow anyone but Daenerys to control or mount them. And then there was the natural ability of dragons to understand High Valyrian. That wasn't a trait that just naturally occurred in nature. It had to be baked in, ensured in one way or another. Maybe selective breeding, but I doubted it was so mundane. Not for a civilization that had magic in their air and in their water, and in their fucking blood.
Igneel roared. For a second, I thought he was agreeing with me, until I looked down and noted that he was roaring at a set of ships. They weren't just fishing barges, I noted. These were proper merchant ships, not warships by any means. They weren't nearly large enough, but they were much too large to even qualify as small fishing boats.
"Let's go lower, boy," I said, and he heeded. We slowed down, dropping towards our quarry. It took them some time to spot us as we got closer, but the lack of panic on their ships said something—I just wasn't sure what it was. They didn't fly the Velaryon flag. It was not one I recognized: a golden quill on a checkered dark and light green field. Maybe something from a Westerosi house. There were dozens I didn't know anything about. It could also be the mark of some merchant prince from the Free Cities. It would take a lot of audacity for a merchant prince to have his ships crossing this route, though. We didn't have a blockade per se, but there seemed to be the understanding that no ships would pass until we had finished our business.
Igneel and I flew even lower. 'Dracarys,' I said, and we breathed a long line of fire right in front of the ships before we flew back. It was a clear enough signal—stop there.
They were wise enough to drop anchor soon after. Destroying the ships would have taken very little effort from Igneel and me. We flew downwards again once it was clear they would not be hostile. This was a risk, but one that we were going to take with some care. Just burning the ships out of hand didn't sit well with me. For one, having the Stepstones become infamous for not letting people through could hurt us in the short term. There was no guarantee that we would even manage to gain the trust of the people to sail through these waters over time. It was the only route that didn't involve expensively going around Westeros or Essos for both the Free Cities and the Iron Throne.
When we were low enough that I could see the ship at eye level, we flew forward and then began to suspend ourselves right in front of the lead ship with slow flaps.
"My name is Laenor Velaryon of House Velaryon. Who are you? Who do you represent? And what business brings you to these waters?" I asked.
One man sauntered forward from the crew. He had olive skin like most of his crew, pointing them out as most likely Dornish.
"I am Oberon Jordayne of the Tor. Lord of House Jordayne and Master of the Tor."
"Now, on to what business you have with these waters, my lord."
"Simply seeking passage across, my lord. We have goods that we seek to trade with the merchants of Tyrosh."
"Tyrosh, huh? Seems like a strange destination for a pair of Dornish ships."
"We simply seek to trade some famed Dornish red for some of those Tyroshi dyes and Myrish laces. My wife does love them so." I looked at them again.
"Pardon me if I find it hard to believe a lord like yourself is playing merchant," I accused, being markedly more confrontational than I had wanted to be. There was just something that did not sit right with me here.
"Does your Father not do the same often enough? Just following the footsteps of the Sea Snake himself. Surely you will not begrudge me that much. Besides, my wife is a woman of particular tastes, so it's for the best if I do the shopping myself." I watched him as he spoke, unable to see any falsehoods in his words but still feeling something wrong regardless.
"I'll see the cargo," I said next.
"Of course. You're welcome down on the ship, my lord."
"I wasn't born yesterday," I scoffed. Like I'd dismount onto a Dornish ship of all places. Oberon Jordayne just smiled and shrugged, more in a 'you got me' way than anything else.
"Bring one of the casks up," he ordered a deckhand, who quickly disappeared beneath the surface.
"Not one. All of them," I said.
"That would be impossible, my lord. We don't have the deck space, you see?"
"Twenty then. If your other ships have the same cargo, have them do the same," I said, settling in to wait.
A/N: Progressing with the Stepstones now, so we get things moving more and more. 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.