Ros was sitting, drinking tea. The prince's new mansion was quite comfortable. By order of the princess, they even gave Ros a room.
"You're back quickly," said the prince.
"Your mother helped sell it," she said, taking a sip as she spoke.
"Our mother helped?" Dany imagined their mother in a market.
It would be absurd to see the Queen Mother selling trinkets. The princess wanted to picture her mother selling her jewelry.
Queen Rhaella would not sell her crown for anything in the world. (*)
"Somehow she managed to find out I was coming to King's Landing. Oh! I must say that your new ships caused quite a sensation among the inhabitants." She paused to enjoy her drink. "Small enough to navigate the river and large enough to transport goods. I was offered a thousand golden dragons for one of them," she waited for his reaction.
"I was expecting around six or seven hundred," said the prince. "But you missed the point," he urged her to continue.
"Ah, yes. The queen received me. She tried the perfumes and bought several oils and soaps for herself." She smiled. "I sold everything the day I arrived. The next day, I had merchants asking me where I got everything. I just pointed 'ArgentStone,'" she said, looking as if she had done something mischievous.
Jaehaerys thought the buyers would arrive soon. The perfumes were in the Tower of Dread, where they used to live. It was the closest to the gates. It would make it easier to sell them.
"How much did you get for each product?" asked Daenerys. The girl had taken out a small notebook, probably following Qyburn's advice.
"Eighty dragons for each perfume," she said with a huge smile. "The queen bought it for forty, but the nobles want to be like her, right?" Rhaella's purchase had brought not only customers but also prestige.
It might be junk, but if the highest royalty purchased it, everyone else wanted it too. The rest of the products were also inflated in price. Each bar of scented soap sold for four gold dragons.
The oils were ten gold dragons, and the shampoo, an unknown commodity, was twenty gold dragons per bottle. Absorbed amounts that would decrease over time.
"Six thousand, one hundred and ten galleons, right?" asked Dany. "One hundred perfumes, one thousand soap bars, fifty oils, and two hundred bottles of shampoo," she tapped her pen on the paper.
"It was six and ten thousand. The queen bought everything cheaper. Suppose you take away the sailors' wages. I gave each sailor sixty silver deer. That would be ten dragons less," said the redhead, taking the last sip of tea and placing the cup and saucer on a small table.
"Good work," Dany smiled at her.
Jaehaerys quickly did the math. He had 820 perfumes in stock. About 5000 soap bars. 237 oils and 310 shampoos. He had focused on producing perfumes, so he had most of those.
Now he considered it a mistake. Perfumes are expensive, and only nobles buy them.
And not all noble houses can afford forty gold dragons. That was the price he estimated for when the initial boom was over. He could sell in Essos, but until his fleet of ships was ready, he would have to rely on Lord Manderly for that or sell to merchants. With any luck, some merchant would buy all the perfumes for eighty dragons and disappear with them.
Soaps, oils, and shampoos are consumed more quickly. Therefore, they would sell better. The first factories he would set up would be for those products, and he already had some apprentices: former slaves.
He ordered a building to be constructed near his mansion. It was nothing big or extravagant; it would have the basics. Divided into sections for each of the products to be created, it would be made of standard brick, not the magical kind used for the castle. He would have to tear down the building later; if it were made of indestructible brick, he would have some problems.
He felt Daenerys' warm hand take his cheek.
"Ros has left. She got tired of you ignoring her," she said, getting up. A maid entered the room to collect the empty cups and then left. "I wanted to talk to you about something," she said, gesturing for him to follow her.
"Very well," he said, accompanying her to their new quarters. In this mansion, the room was not large enough to also accommodate a desk, so his work area was limited to his Solar room. It was connected to the bedroom by a door.
"Here," she pointed to a brazier. The flames licked the prince's three eggs. No one entered her chambers; a loyal guard stood watch at the door, preventing any maids from passing. The door had a rudimentary key that only Dany and Jaehaerys carried. "Touch them," she said.
He felt his heart skip a beat when he saw her hand approach the flames. She didn't touch them directly; instead, she took the eggs, one by one, and passed them to Jaehaerys.
"They're beating, like a heart," he said in surprise. He wondered if the magic of the weirwoods had accelerated the process.
The fire in the embers seemed abnormal, as if it wanted to reach his body, burn him.
"They're alive," she said, holding the black egg.
"They seem close to hatching," he replied. His hand gazed spellbound at the dark line on the silver egg. "What do the books say?" He had left all that work to Daenerys, thinking he could review it later. He hadn't expected them to revive so quickly.
He felt an unprecedented emotion. 'Dragons.' He was not a man given to war or armed conflict. But a dragon would keep all the people away from his business. But dragons weren't enough. He had to be firm with those he let into his home. He didn't want a new Otto Hightower whispering to his children.
He forced himself to calm down. He left the two eggs on the fire and turned to his wife.
"There is a ritual. But I don't like it. There has to be a sacrifice," she said.
"Human?" asked Jaehaerys.
"I... it didn't specify, it just said 'Nykeā glaeson syt nykeā glaeson.'" Her voice became hoarse when she spoke Valyrian, a sound that Jaehaerys enjoyed immensely.
"A life for a life," he repeated, translating the High Valyrian. "It can be an animal," he said. The Valyrians were not good sorcerers; they were rather crude. They could not use magic effectively and resorted to mass sacrifices to complete their spells.
"They need to be burned. A huge pyre. Another said with magic fire, but I don't want to put the eggs in Valyrian fire. I don't want another Summerhall," the princess's hands caressed the egg so lovingly that Jaehaerys became jealous.
"Magic fire," he opened the door to his solar. He took the book of runes and began to leaf through it. He found the rune he was looking for.
Kenaz (ᚲ) was the rune of fire; well, fire was one of its meanings. He planned to use it in the forges, but he needed to hide the magic, and so far, he hadn't thought of anything. He would have to wait until he built better furnaces.
"Runes. They're from the first men, not Valyrian," she said doubtfully.
"It's magic," he said. "Tell me, Dany. When did they start to feel more alive?" he asked her. The flames moved abruptly. The fire made him uneasy. No, it wasn't the fire, it was something else, but what exactly?
"When the curse was lifted," she replied. "I remember that during the curse, they felt bad, like they were sick," she said sadly. "That was when you planted the weirwood tree. Yes," she said, convinced. "When shall we do it?" she asked, looking anxious.
Jaehaerys hesitated. He had about six hundred men-at-arms at Harrenhal. He could be sure of the loyalty of five hundred of those men, the ones who had followed him from the north. He needed more protection. In the long run, the dragons would scare away all his rivals, but small ones would be targets.
He looked at the fire. The flames danced, lulling the eggs in a delicate embrace. He couldn't look away.
'What if I wait until the castle is comple-'
His thoughts suddenly died. He fell into a trance. He searched among the drawers in his study. A small jar with a brush. He took the eggs from the brazier and used them as a canvas.
"Jae?" It was a distant echo.
Before, he drew the runes with mastery, but they had never been so perfect as in that moment. The red ink covered the eggs. The rune Kenaz was inscribed next to Jera (ᛃ), a rune that meant natural growth, among other things.
He destroyed his shirt in one swift movement. He felt his hand forced to write Othala (ᛟ) on his chest. It was the rune that indicated sacrifice, offering.
Whose hand was guiding his?
'I've lived this before,' he said in his mind.
He closed his eyes and was no longer in the room. He was outside the mansion, looking down on everything from the sky. He recognized this feeling.
Warging.
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*I wanted to refer, but it may sound forced.