Beneath the shadow of Westeros, the maesters were not entirely ignorant of the plague spreading across the realm.
"Your Grace, this sickness is the Shivering Sickness," Grand Maester Bennifer reported to Regalus with a grave expression. "A similar affliction appeared roughly a century ago, and its progression was carefully recorded. The archmaesters of the New Citadel speculate that the disease was most likely carried to Westeros aboard the Lady Meredith, perhaps from one of the Free Cities, or even some more distant, unknown land."
Port towns were always the first to suffer, becoming the hardest-hit regions where the pestilence struck with devastating force. The casualties were staggering. Many of the common folk believed that this dreadful disease was spread by rats—not the large, aggressive gray rats common in King's Landing and Oldtown, but smaller black rats. They poured from the holds of ships docked at harbor, scurrying silently along mooring ropes into the city.
Though the maesters had yet to determine conclusively whether rats were truly to blame, fear of them spread everywhere. Demand for cats soared to unprecedented heights—from the grandest castles of the Seven Kingdoms to the humblest farmhouses. In this bitter winter, before the Shivering Sickness burned itself out, the price of kittens rivaled that of warhorses.
The symptoms were well known. At first, victims felt an unnatural chill, complaining that the cold pierced their bones. They huddled by fires, buried themselves beneath blankets and furs, and begged for hot soup or mulled wine. Some even craved beer, though none of it brought relief. The sickness advanced all the same.
Soon came the tremors. What began as faint, occasional shivers grew swiftly worse. Goosebumps spread across their bodies, teeth chattered violently, hands and feet twisted in spasms. When lips turned a ghastly blue and blood was coughed up, death was close at hand.
From the first chills to the final breath, the disease advanced with terrifying speed. Some perished within a single day, and at best, only one in five survived. Though the maesters understood its symptoms, they knew nothing of its cause, nor how to prevent or cure it.
They tried everything: poultices, decoctions, mustard and fire peppers, even lacing wine with venom strong enough to numb the tongue. Patients were plunged into near-boiling baths in the hope that heat might drive out the malady. Some claimed green vegetables were the cure, others swore by raw fish, and still others insisted on red meat—the bloodier the better. Fresh meat was brought in from every corner, and some even urged the sick to drink blood. Inhaling smoke from burning leaves was also widely attempted.
One lord even had fires built all around him, encircling himself in a wall of flame to keep the sickness at bay. None of it worked. The plague raged on.
...
In the winter of the sixtieth year after the Conquest, the Shivering Sickness swept in like a demon from the east, crossing Blackwater Bay and racing upstream along the Blackwater Rush. Before King's Landing fell, several islands in the Crownlands were already stricken.
Edwell Celtigar, once Hand of the King under Maegor and later despised as Master of Coin, became the first lord to fall. Three days later, his only son and heir to Claw Isle followed him. Lord Staunton perished within Rook's Rest, and soon after, his wife as well. Their terrified children locked themselves in their chambers, bolting the doors, but the sickness claimed them too.
On Dragonstone, Septa Edyth—beloved of the Queen—succumbed. On Driftmark, Daemon Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, miraculously survived his deathbed, but his second son and three daughters did not.
Lord Bar Emmon, Lord Rosby, Lady Jirelle of Maidenpool... one familiar name after another fell to the plague. The death knell tolled for them, and for countless common men and women alike.
The Shivering Sickness was a merciless reaper. It spread swiftly through the Seven Kingdoms, sparing no one, highborn or low. The elderly and the young were most vulnerable, yet even men and women in their prime were not safe. Lords, ladies, and knights alike fell in droves to the relentless hand of the disease.
Prentys Tully, Duke of Riverrun, died trembling in his bed, and but a day later, Lady Lucinda followed him to the grave.
Lord Lymond Lannister of Casterly Rock, once the most powerful man in the Westerlands, also passed away, and with him went several of his bannermen: Lord Marbrand of Ashemark, Lord Tarbeck of Tarbeck Hall, and Lord Westerling of the Crag. The Lord Tyrell of Highgarden survived the sickness itself, only to perish four days into his recovery after a drunken fall from his horse.
Rogar Baratheon remained uninfected, and his children by Queen Alyssa survived the plague, yet his brother Ser Ronnal was not so fortunate, nor were two of his sisters-in-law.
The great port of Oldtown was struck harder than almost anywhere, losing a quarter of its population. Even "the Delayer" Donnel Hightower could delay his fate no longer. Alongside him died the former High Septon, forty Septons, and fully a third of Oldtown's archmaesters, maesters, assistants, and acolytes.
Sixty years after the Conquest, the death knells tolled across Westeros.
...
But no city suffered worse than King's Landing.
Regalus lost two of his Kingsguard: the aged Ser Samgood of Sour Hill and the gentle Ser Victor, called the Valiant. The Small Council too was left crippled, with the deaths of Lord Albin Marse, Master of Laws; Ser Cole Corbray, Captain of the City Watch; and Grand Maester Bennifer.
Grand Maester Bennifer had served Regalus for eleven years. He had lived through the turbulence of the dark years and witnessed the splendor of prosperity, but he could not outlast this calamity. The dead were gone, leaving the living only endless grief.
At that moment, the death of Cole Corbray struck hardest. With the Captain of the City Watch's seat empty and many of the watch themselves sickened, order quickly crumbled in the streets of King's Landing. Chaos spread unchecked. Shops were looted, women were raped, and no passerby could feel safe in life or property.
Regalus II dispatched the Kingsguard and his household knights to restore order, but they were too few, and soon even they were forced to retreat behind the walls of the Red Keep.
...
In the midst of this turmoil, the Emperor lost yet another counselor—not to the Shivering Sickness, but to folly and resentment.
Rego Draz of Pentos never once moved into the Red Keep, despite the spacious quarters Regalus had prepared for him and the repeated, sincere invitations. He preferred his mansion on Silk Street in the outer city, where he could indulge freely with his mistresses without the judgment of court.
In his ten years of service to the Iron Throne, Lord Rego grew ever more extravagant. His body swelled with excess until he no longer rode a horse, instead traveling between manor and castle in a lavish, gilded palanquin.
But he made one fatal mistake:
He chose to travel through the reeking heart of Flea's Nest—the most lawless, filthy slum in all of King's Landing.
On that day, a dozen thugs from the Nest were chasing a piglet through an alley when they collided headlong with Lord Rego's procession. Some were drunk, and all were half-starved.
They had failed to catch the piglet, and their fury was already boiling. The moment they saw the Pentoshi lord, their anger erupted.
They had long blamed the Master of Coin for the soaring price of bread. One man drew a sword, three pulled daggers, and the rest snatched up stones and wooden clubs. They rushed forward, scattered the bearers of the sedan chair, and dragged Lord Rego to the ground.
According to onlookers, Lord Rego screamed for help in a tongue no one could understand. As he raised his hands to ward off the rain of blows, the mob noticed the glittering gold and jeweled rings on every finger—sight enough to make them strike all the harder.
A woman cried out, "The Shivering Sickness was brought here by these Pentos bastards!"
A man tore a cobblestone from the street and smashed it down upon Rego's head, again and again, until his skull shattered, his face pulped, and his brains spilled out across the stones. Thus died Rego, the so-called "Lord of Air."
But the mob was not finished. Before fleeing, they stripped him of his finery and hacked off his fingers to steal the rings.
When word reached the Red Keep, Aegon II rode out himself under the guard of his Kingsguard to reclaim the body. Ser Joffrey Doggett, seeing the Emperor's face burning with fury, thought he glimpsed the majesty of his father reborn.
The streets were packed with onlookers—some eager to see their Emperor with their own eyes, others drawn by the grotesque curiosity of the Pentoshi money-changer's mutilated corpse.
"I want the names of the criminals," Aegon II thundered to the crowd. "Speak them now and be rewarded. Refuse, and every tongue will be cut out."
Terrified, many in the crowd fled at once. But a barefoot girl rushed forward, shrieking a name.
The Emperor thanked her and ordered her to lead the knights to the culprit. She guided the Kingsguard to a tavern, where the thug sat with a whore on his lap and three of Rego's rings on his fingers.
After interrogation, he quickly betrayed his companions, and every one of them was captured. One, weeping, claimed to have once been a Poor Fellow and begged to don the black and join the Night's Watch.
"No," Aegon II said coldly. "The Night's Watch is an order of honor. You are viler than rats and unworthy of joining them."
By his judgment, the criminals were not granted a swift death by sword or axe. Instead, they were hung from the walls of the Red Keep, their bellies slit open so that they writhed in agony as their entrails spilled down to their knees before death claimed them.
The girl who had led the Emperor to the mob, however, was treated kindly. Queen Alysanne sent servants to care for her—she was bathed in hot water, her rags burned, her hair trimmed, and she was given hot bread and bacon to eat.
"If you wish to stay, we can find you a place in the castle," the queen told her gently after she had eaten her fill. "The kitchens or the stables—you may choose. Do you have a father?"
The girl nodded shyly, admitting she once had.
"He was among those whose bellies you cut open—the one with pockmarks and a sty in his eye." Then, with downcast eyes, she confessed she wished to work in the kitchens. "That's where the bread is kept."
...
The turn of the year arrived in silence. Across Westeros, few marked the passing into the sixty-first year since Aegon's Conquest with celebration.
Only a year earlier, bonfires had blazed in every square. Men and women danced around the flames, laughing, drinking, and waiting eagerly for the ringing of the New Year's bells.
Now the pyres burned only corpses, and the bells tolled not in joy, but in mourning.
The streets of King's Landing lay empty, especially bleak at night, the alleys choked with snow, icicles like spears hanging long from every eave.