Red Keep, Master of Coin's Counting Chamber
The air smelled of ink, wax, and old scrolls.
Sunlight fell through the high narrow windows in pale bars, cutting across rows of desks and shelves crowded with ledgers. Quills scratched steadily. Pages turned. Now and then came the low murmur of a clerk checking a sum beneath his breath.
Otto Hightower sat at one of the long tables with his head bent over a parchment.
His right hand moved calmly, marking numbers into neat columns. Beside him lay three opened ledgers from the Crownlands, a pot of ink, and a small stack of tax tallies waiting to be checked against one another. The black patch over his left eye stood out stark against his fair skin. His face gave little away. Only the slight movement of his jaw now and then showed how tightly he held himself.
A door opened behind him.
The chamber stirred.
Otto looked up.
Prince Viserys had entered with the easy warmth that seemed always to follow him. He smiled at once when he spotted Otto.
"Otto."
"My prince." Otto rose from his seat with a polite smile.
The surrounding clerks pushed back their stools and bowed quickly. A few shuffled aside to make more room, their eyes lowered.
Viserys waved them at ease with a pleasant motion of his hand. "Do not let me ruin the king's accounts."
A few nervous smiles appeared, then vanished just as quickly.
Viserys stepped closer to Otto's desk. His whole face was bright in a way that could only mean one thing.
"You look pleased, my prince," Otto said.
Viserys laughed softly. "Pleased? I am ruined."
Otto's brow lifted a little.
Viserys leaned nearer, lowering his voice as though sharing some grave court secret. "My daughter has decided that I may not leave her side for so much as a moment. The instant I step away, she cries as though I have betrayed her."
Otto gave a quiet chuckle. "Then she is already wise enough to know her father's worth."
Viserys grinned. "She is like a pearl, Otto. Small, perfect, and loud enough to wake half the holdfast."
The fondness in his voice was unmistakable.
Otto smiled, gentler now. "My Alicent was much the same when she was a babe. She would fuss the moment her mother left the room."
Viserys seemed interested. "Truly?"
"Truly." Otto rested his fingertips lightly on the edge of the desk. "My wife and I were careful with her from the first. We brought septas to guide her as soon as she was able to speak. Courtesy, prayer, proper conduct. The habits of a lady begin young."
Viserys nodded, thoughtful now beneath the warmth. "It shows. Even as little as she is, Alicent has remarkable manners. I have noticed that more than once."
Otto bowed his head slightly. "You are kind to say so, my prince."
"I mean it." Viserys glanced away for a moment, thinking. "In truth, I may ask your help in that soon enough. Aemma and I would like Rhaenyra to have proper guidance as she grows. When the time comes, perhaps you might put us in touch with the septa who taught Alicent."
"Of course," Otto said at once. "It would be an honor."
Viserys smiled again, but this time it faded more slowly. His eyes drifted over the chamber. The desks. The ledgers. The rows of clerks bent over the work of coin.
When he looked back at Otto, there was something guilty in his face.
"Forgive me, Otto," he said.
Otto did not answer.
Viserys went on quietly. "I could not do more. I could not prevent this… nor secure you a better place."
For a brief moment, the scratching of quills around them seemed louder.
Otto kept his expression mild.
"My prince," he said, "you did more than enough."
Viserys did not look convinced.
Otto spared him the discomfort of saying any more. "The failing was our house's. His Grace's visit to Oldtown went poorly, and the blame could only fall upon us. I am fortunate he allowed me to remain at court at all."
Viserys let out a breath through his nose. "Still. It sits ill with me."
Otto's smile returned, small but composed. "You preserved my place here. I do not forget it."
That seemed to ease something in Viserys. He stepped closer and laid a hand briefly on Otto's shoulder.
"You may always come to me," he said. "If you need anything else. Anything at all."
Otto inclined his head. "I am grateful, my prince."
Viserys's eyes dropped to the parchment on the desk. "And what noble labor has Master Beesbury given you now?"
That drew a drier sort of smile from Otto.
"He has entrusted me with the glory of village taxes."
Viserys laughed.
Otto lifted one of the parchments between two fingers. "The Master of Coin is a diligent man. Very diligent. He expects his clerks to be the same."
"So I have heard."
"I am tallying levies from villages across the Crownlands," Otto said. "Grain, wool, casks, bridge tolls, market fees. A thrilling education."
Viserys laughed again, more openly now. A few of the clerks glanced up despite themselves, then quickly returned to their work.
"I do not envy you," the prince said.
"No," Otto replied lightly, "but if I do this long enough, I may one day become the realm's most fearsome judge of sheep taxes."
That won another laugh from Viserys.
They spoke a little longer after that. Of the child. Of Aemma's recovery. Of court. Of small things that asked nothing of either of them.
Then at last Viserys stepped back.
"I should let you return to your warfare with numbers," he said.
Otto bowed his head. "You do me honor by visiting, my prince."
Viserys gave him one last smile and turned away. The clerks bowed again as he passed. The door opened. Closed.
The chamber settled.
Quills resumed their scratching. Pages turned. A stool creaked somewhere near the back.
Otto remained standing for a moment.
Then the smile left his face.
He sat.
His good eye rested on the parchment before him, but he was no longer seeing the numbers. Instead, his mind turned to the future that had almost been his.
The Hand's chamber.
The promise of higher service.
The path that had nearly opened.
The place beside power. The place he should have been climbing toward.
A clerk coughed softly nearby.
Otto did not move.
He reached for the quill.
His fingers closed around it harder than he knew.
Then, with a faint crack, the quill split between his fingers.
A drop of ink slid down onto the side of his hand.
Otto looked at it in silence.
Dragonstone, Black Vault Tower
A Valyrian falchion lay upon the table before Aegon.
The blade was neither overly long nor unwieldy. One edge ran long and keen, made for cutting. The spine was thick and solid. The hilt was bound in deep teal, worked with subtle patterns that gave the hand a firm grip. Its crossguard curved slightly, elegant without losing strength, and at the center where guard met hilt, sat an emerald, dark green and clear as still water.
Aegon stood over it in silence.
The chamber was warm. Light spilled in through the narrow windows in thin bars. Dust drifted.
He reached for the small bowl at the edge of the table.
Inside was a blood-red liquid, thick enough to cling when stirred. He took up the quill and moved it slowly through the bowl, mixing the liquid until it turned smooth and even.
Then he leaned over the sword.
Carefully, he touched the quill to steel.
A red line spread across the blade.
Clean. Precise.
Aegon's hand moved with steady control, drawing the first inscription near the base and then guiding it farther along the steel. The marks did not resemble any common script. They bent, branched, narrowed, and widened in ways that would have looked senseless to other eyes.
The red liquid behaved strangely as he worked. It did not run. It did not bead at the edges or spill down the fullerless face of the blade. It stayed exactly where he laid it, as though the steel itself had decided to hold it.
Aegon drew on.
His wrist turned. Lifted. Settled again.
One mark led into another. A curve into a fork. A sharp angle into a long trailing line. By the time he reached the upper half of the falchion, sweat had gathered lightly at the back of his neck, though the room was not so hot as to demand it.
He ignored it.
The red engraving lengthened.
Slowly, patiently, he carried it along nearly the whole blade.
When at last the final line was complete, Aegon straightened and exhaled through his nose. He set the quill down first, then the bowl.
For a moment he simply looked.
The inscriptions stretched over the dark rippling steel like fresh wounds that had not yet decided whether to bleed or shine.
Then Aegon unfurled his spirituality.
It spread from him soundlessly.
Another layer of the world opened to him at once.
The sword was no longer only steel.
Black particles moved within it.
Countless tiny motes flowing in ordered paths. They drifted and coiled through the Valyrian steel in old patterns that had been part of the blade since its forging. Those hidden flows were what made such Valyrian steel what it was. Strength beyond common metal. Sharpness. Refusal to dull. A nature half material, half something more.
Aegon did not touch those at first.
His focus went instead to the surface.
Another set of streams had begun to move there, black particles running through the red inscriptions he had just drawn. These were not yet part of the sword. Not truly. They lay upon it like a second skin, fragile and unfinished.
This was the spell [Whispering Oath].
An enchantment.
Aegon reached with his spirituality like careful hands. He nudged one thin stream aside, then drew another closer. He pressed at a knot where the flow had begun to snag, loosening it. He widened one pathway. Narrowed another.
The red inscriptions answered instantly.
They glimmered.
A faint, eerie red light stirred along the length of the blade, more than enough to make the emerald in the guard catch and answer with a colder green. Then the glow deepened. The inscriptions began to sink.
Not melt. Not burn away.
Sink.
The red lines seeped into the steel as though the blade were drinking them.
Aegon's eyes narrowed.
This was the dangerous part.
He kept his spirituality spread across the falchion, watching both sets of flows together. The old native currents of the Valyrian steel moved beneath. The new enchantment flowed over and into them. If the new paths crossed wrong, crowded wrong, or conflicted with the blade's original magical nature, the result would not simply be failure. The spell could warp. The steel could reject it. Worse, the enchantment could disturb what made the weapon Valyrian steel at all.
That he would not allow.
So he worked.
Patiently.
Minute after minute.
A thin stream on the surface drifted too close to one of the deeper currents. He nudged it away. A fork near the middle of the blade began to split unevenly. He smoothed it. Near the tip, one dark thread of the new spell tried to settle into a path already claimed by the old magic of the steel. Aegon caught it and turned it aside before the two could knot.
He did not hurry.
Half an hour passed like that.
By the end of it, sweat ran down his temple. His shoulders had tightened. The space behind his eyes throbbed faintly from strain. But the work held.
The red glow dimmed.
The inscriptions vanished fully into the steel.
What remained on the surface was only the familiar rippling pattern of Valyrian metal, dark and wavy as smoke.
Aegon let his spirituality withdraw at last.
The room became only a room again.
He took up a cloth and wiped the sweat from his face and neck. Then he smiled and let himself relax.
Carefully, he lifted the sword from the table.
Its weight settled into his hand with welcome familiarity. He angled it toward the light, checking the steel. The edge. The balance. The grip. Then he gave it a few slow swings through the air.
The blade whistled.
Smooth. Quick. Alive.
Aegon's smile deepened a little.
The [Whispering Oath] enchantment was subtle by design. Those who remained near the sword for long enough would be touched by faint subconscious whispers and passing subliminal suggestions. Nothing obvious. Nothing a man could easily name. Only a slow, steady guidance working beneath awareness.
For loyalty.
For reverence.
For obedience.
Toward House Targaryen.
Yes. That was the true design. Aegon had no intention of giving away Valyrian blades in exchange for just patronage.
The academy was already doing one half of the work he wanted. That was one layer.
The swords were the second layer. The hidden one.
Most great houses would not leave such gifts hanging idle on walls. They would wear them, sleep with them near, pass them to heirs, and treasure them. That meant the enchantment would have years to work on the men who mattered most.
Weakly at first. Almost invisibly.
But time favored such things. Time let whispers sink deep.
There was, of course, a flaw in the design. If House Targaryen turned upon itself, where would such loyalty settle? The enchantment could name only one target. It could not distinguish between branches, rival claims, or dragons set against dragons.
Not fully. That flaw would remain.
Perhaps the swords were not meant chiefly for the present. Perhaps they were meant for a weaker House Targaryen yet to come.
For a day when the house stood diminished from its height. For a day when no dragons remained. For a day when a little more reverence, a little more instinctive loyalty in the great houses, might matter.
As for the nearer danger, for the Dance that hovered ahead in possibility if not yet in fact, Aegon's expression cooled.
If that day came, he would deal with it himself.
That was what he believed.
In himself.
And in the Class Tree resting within his mind.
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📜 Milestones:
250 Power Stones → +1 Chapter ✅
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