Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter, coming in right on time. Next four chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
The man who was third in line died quickly despite my earlier plea. He tried to block my feint to the right. I had his head from his shoulders with a slash from the left. The man that the foremost man had flown into managed to lift himself from the ground while the one at the very back swung his crossbow around and was trying to take aim. The final standing one stabbed out at me with a dagger. I danced out of its way, lopped off his hand with one swing, and then his head hit the floor sans neck a few seconds and another swing later.
The one with the crossbow managed to fire once. I caught the bolt from the side with my hand. His face wore his shock openly, and he died with that shock painted on said face as I stabbed Riptide straight through his mouth and out the other side. The one that had just gotten up tried to turn and run. I turned the crossbow bolt around and threw with all my strength.
It missed, but the sound slowed him enough that I was able to reach him before he could reach the stairs and stabbed him through the back. I turned around then. I was on a time crunch, and if these men wouldn't give me a challenge, they might as well get it all over with. I walked a bit backwards again before running down straight for the window.
Once I reached it, I placed one foot on the ledge, bent to allow my body to pass through and then pushed off straight at the next building. I crossed my hands in front of my head as I broke through the wood and landed.
On landing, I rolled forwards which was a good idea as a crossbow bolt just barely missed my head right there and then.
I spun back up and only Igneel's magic saved me by allowing me to track the second bolt as he fired it. My blade arced up, and there was a clang as the bolt was deflected by the Valyrian steel. He snapped the next bolt into place, the repeating crossbow allowing him to get the reload done in a matter of seconds, but that was still too long. Or would have been if the man by his side had not charged me with a dagger.
I split him from chin to waist, revealing his innards for all the world to see, and ducked underneath the next bolt with ease.
"With a weapon like that, you should aim for center mass. Harder to dodge," I said, before ripping it out of his hands and tossing it to the side. My other hand found his neck then and I pushed him backwards until I was holding half his body out the window. One shove and he'd be a dead man... or at least a very hurt one.
I put Riptide to his chest to make the threat even more real. The Valyrian steel was drenched in blood.
"How many of you are there?" I asked. His shifty eyes panned from my own down to the side. I watched as he decided to lie, to try to fool me.
"Six," he said. I removed Riptide from his chest and moved it down to his feet. One slash, and one of his legs now ended at the knee. I tried not to focus on it, but Riptide should not have been able to make that kind of cut. Not so easily.
'Valyrian steel has many secrets' Aurion said from within my head.
The man screamed for all his life was worth, and then I placed the blade right in front of his left eye. He slammed it shut and went silent. My threat was clear enough, it seemed.
"Lie to me again, and I'll take an eye. Now the truth," I demanded.
"Two and ten," he said. True.
"Who sent you?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said. Also true.
"What do you know?" I asked.
"They gave us weapons and gold. Not the new gold with the king's face. Old gold. Had a man's head on one side and something like a hand on the other side," he squealed.
"Show me."
He gestured to the pouch at his waist. I reached for the pouch with the same hand that held Riptide, fully expecting another attack but none came. I scattered the contents on the floor. Hands. Old currency from the Reach. I scoffed.
"How silly," I said, and then pushed the man out of the window. The street was mostly deserted, so his landing echoed. And like expected, the next man gave away his position by poking his head out to get a view. I grabbed the crossbow and tested the grip before aiming and just as he looked up to the window his accomplice had fallen from, I fired. Straight in the eye.
Okay now, that made eight that I'd killed now. There were four remaining. Drawing them out would be the goal now, and there was one easy way to do that. I briefly considered picking up the man that I had split open to use as a human shield as I made the journey, but that would be less than ideal considering all the blood I'd get on my clothes and myself. I'd reek of the stuff.
XXXXX- AEGON
The girl who could not be a whore but also could not be anything else, both of those assertions coming from her age and location as well as the familiarity she had with this place, handled Ser Erryk's wounds well. She wiped the blood off the areas and then placed pressure that she claimed would stem the bleeding before she used tight cloth wrappings that she produced from one of the rooms in the brothel to keep the bleeding to a minimum.
All the while, Aegon watched and waited for Lord Velaryon's return.
"He jumped out the window to the next building," she had said when he had asked if she'd seen anything when she had gone up the stairs. That meant Lord Velaryon was possibly out there right now, dealing with the ambushers while Aegon sat here, useless.
He had the good sense to know not to push to follow or even to sneak out after Lord Velaryon. The man was a warrior that some called second only to Warrior but even he could not be in two places as well. It was Aegon's duty to guard Ser Erryk now that the man was unable to defend himself.
It was while he was stuck in his thoughts that a knocking sound came from the door. Aegon drew his dagger and pointed it at the door only to drop it with flushed cheeks as Lord Velaryon's head poked in from the outside. He had that same easy-going smile on his face and looked like he had just gone to take a walk through the godswood, not fight off a small army of ambushers.
XXXXX- LAENA VELARYON
She tried not to yawn as Parvella continued her briefing on the bank and how things were going there. She loved her husband. She really did. He had brilliant ideas, and could chase his goals with a single-mindedness that one could not help but envy when watching from the outside looking in. But she had come to find out that there was one disadvantage to being married to such a man. It was being expected to manage the things that he had already done while he went out to do the next thing.
A tourney in King's Landing, negotiations with the King, and then after that, Dorne. She had opposed it at first. When he would not budge, she had asked to come along. Even in that, she had been refused. Mother, who sat to her right now, had also been refused. The arguments he had used were sound, she could admit that readily. But it stung, being left behind. And stung even more when she realised just how out of her depth she was here.
She was not stupid. She knew that well enough. But she was a noble lady, and noble ladies were taught to manage households and family accounting, not a bank. How would she be expected to have an opinion on whether it was preferable for them to pay an interest rate of 7.5% or 7.75%? The difference between both was massive, Parvella assured her. On that, Laena deferred to her wisdom.
In much the same way as she deferred to Rhaenos when he spoke about the progress they were making on the new class of ship that her brother called the City Breaker. For every letter he sent back to her, he sent two to Rhaenos, so she accepted that they were of one mind with whatever it was they were working on, even as it seemed to need gold like a sinking ship took in water. She would have to expand the agreement with House Forrester if things continued at the present pace. Gold, they had aplenty. Wood? Well, that was proving to be quite finite.
When it was Thoren's turn to report, he said things continued as usual. Slower sales of their more expensive offerings in both Essos and Westeros, but the trade with the Yi-Tish Empire was proving to be a boon. They were loading the glass onto ships as quickly as it could be made. She accepted that with a smile. A grateful one. She might not have known her numbers as well as Laenor or even Parvella did, but she had eyes. This Kingdom of theirs was propped up by the gold that came in. If that gold ran dry, she feared that even her brother for all his brilliance could not keep the ship from sinking.
"And how fare the legions?" she asked one of the newer men to this council.
"The First and Second Legions are fully trained, my lady. Having them participate in the training of future legions has accelerated the process. We should be able to accept double the number of initiates for the Fourth Legion than we did for the Third," he said. She nodded. Laenor would be happy about that, there was no doubt.
"And how many men exactly are we speaking about here?" Mother asked, leafing through the parchment in front of her that contained the specifics.
"The Third Legion had a thousand men, double as many as the First and Second Legions. It is halfway through its training regimen. The Fourth is expected to have two thousand," he said.
"And what does my son plan to do with four thousand men?" she asked. Ser Bonnifer blinked rapidly.
"Apologies, my lady. But there are not four legions planned. When Lord Velaryon last spoke to me on the matter, he mentioned plans for up to seven legions," he said.
"Seven legions? Assuming each legion after the fourth keeps with the same intake, that makes for ten thousand men, yes?" she asked.
"Yes, my lady."
"That makes my question even more important then. Ten thousand men. Ten thousand men, armed and armoured like this. What could my son be up to that would necessitate such a force?" she asked.
"I don't know, my lady. Lord Velaryon just asked me to train the men. I know not what he plans to do with them after," he said.
"Parvella? Surely you know," Mother said.
"Lord Velaryon keeps his own confidence in most things. My job so far has been to allocate the gold and nothing more," she said. Liar, Laena said internally but did not verbally contradict her.
"Mother, Laenor just wants to improve the security of the Stepstones. The Navy trains men to fight on ships. If an enemy manages to make landfall, then there will be no way to repel them," she said. She did not feel comfortable lying to her own Mother, but she could not see another choice now. Only a small group was aware of what the legions were truly for. And while Mother could be trusted, the issue was that she was unlikely to support plans for further expansion.
As Laenor had put it once, she had grown up in an era where little happened, and even less changed. She could not countenance the change they would bring. And so he would let her know when the time had come to avoid a million arguments in the buildup. Mother accepted the reasoning but still looked less than satisfied.
She was smart enough to see the holes. But also smart enough not to call them out on it yet.
"And now on to the matter of building. Zalindros?" she prompted the self-important former Braavosi builder.
The man rose with a flourish and bowed to her at the waist. For this week, his hair was green. She shuddered to think just how much of his substantial wages went towards Tyroshi dyes. Enough to beggar a minor Lord, to be certain.
"On the decree of the Lord Laenor Velaryon to—" His self-important speech was interrupted as there was a knock on the door. Three sharp raps. A letter. An urgent one. It swung open and a runner presented the Maester with a scroll.
Jasper, the acolyte that now served as Bloodstone's Maester, accepted the letter and then bent his head to read it. He did so, and turned before passing it to Rhaenos who stood next to him and nodded in Laena's direction. The missive reached two more hands that did not read it before it was in hers. She devoured it eagerly. It was her husband's writing. That fact alone kept her calm as she thought about the message the letter contained.
An assassination attempt. Paid for in gold Hands that should no longer have existed, not to talk of even being in circulation. The targets? That was unclear. He'd interrogated three different assassins. They all claimed Laenor himself was the target, but the first salvo had not included any bolts aimed at him. If the goal was to kill him, then they hadn't done a very good job in his opinion. He included suspicions that the assassination attempt was the work of the Triarchy, but she did not see things his way. There was a simpler explanation.
Gold Hands were the currency used by the Old Reach.
Their ancestor, Aegon, had banned their use and had every House of the Reach submit their gold to be converted into Dragons. It made sense that not every house would have done so with all their gold in the beginning, but to still have gold Hands in such numbers over a century after the conquest and more than nine decades after they stopped being legal tender anywhere in Westeros, there was only one possibility. The first indication was that it had to be a great House of the Reach. One with enough gold to be able to afford to have so much just tied down and unable to be used. Hightower was an easy suspect. They had the gold, but a motive was hard to find.
There was no way they knew of Laenor's true plans so as far as they were concerned, they and House Velaryon were allied to the fullest extent. In that case, why would they attack? So it had to be another House in the Reach. Redwyne were trade rivals of some significance, but an assassination attempt was a massive escalation. In truth, Laena reckoned there was one real suspect. Because while all those signs pointed to a great House in the Reach, there was one more House with gold aplenty and the means to have Hands—either in reserves from before the conquest, or simply from making new ones. House Lannister had all the means, and more importantly, a motive.
An assassination attempt if successful could remove a threat to Rhaenyra's ambition in the form of her husband and the dragons that he could bring to bear. And if it failed, there was enough evidence to cause suspicion in the Hightower-Velaryon alliance and create a rift there. She handed the letter to her mother's outstretched hand before looking up at the waiting council and speaking.
"My husband, two days ago, on a walk through King's Landing, was attacked by would-be assassins," she said, and the council erupted. Vaemond's voice was loudest, demanding to know if he lived still. She looked over at him and wondered if that glint of eagerness she saw was her imagination or if her Uncle's ambition was great enough that he would wish for her husband's death. She hoped not.
"He lives still. The assassins failed and were killed to the man. Information extracted before some of their deaths revealed that they had been paid with gold Hands from the Reach. My husband wishes for this council to do all in its power to find where the attempt truly came from," she said.
Mother's hands shook after she finished reading the letter. Laena knew what she felt. Not fear. Not quite the fear of loss. But rage. Rage that someone had dared try to take what was hers from her. She reached out, lacing their fingers together as Parvella began detailing how she would use the bank to put pressure on merchants in the free city to see what information could be gathered.
"And while you do that, I want this council expanded once more. Someone with some ability to ferret out whispers so we see something like this coming before it happens. I trust that you can find us such a man," she said, receiving a nod.
A/N: So we jump back to Bloodstone for a bit. Only a bit though. Expect us to return to Laenor after a small timeskip to the end of his time in the Capital. Next chapter comes on here by Wednesday night. Next four 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.