They'd called it the Fishmonger's Gate since before she was born, and the name still fit. The stench of brine and filth clung to the stones, thicker now, fouled with piss and sun and things best forgotten.
Rhaenys waited just off the gate, a roughspun hood hiding her face. Behind her, the cart sagged under old nets and baskets of crab gone soft.Two men stood close - her men, though the world might've called them fools. Once, she'd cut their chains herself.
Her fingers twisted together until the nails bit skin. Still, the trembling wouldn't stop.
...
The crowd outside the gate wasn't a line so much as a scatter of bodies pretending not to wait. Heads down. Nobody looking at the goldcloaks on the wall.
The gate itself was barred, sunlight catching on the iron studs."By order of the King! Gates stay shut! Step back!"
No one stepped forward. Two slipped away.
Kellan and Toms went anyway. Kellan first, older, grizzled, shoulders gone wide from years on ships. Toms close behind, too soft, too hopeful.They moved like fisherman with nothing to hide, hands easy, baskets ready.
Kellan said something, half a plea, half a bargain. Pointed to the crabs as if that mattered.A goldcloak shook his head without looking. Another tapped the butt of his spear against the door, a dull tud.Which means.No.
In the end Kellan and Toms came back with nothing. They wouldn't look at her."Tide," Kellan muttered. "We'll try on the turn."
Rhaenys nodded. "Yes," Her voice held, her hands didn't.
The tremor wouldn't leave her. Anger in it, and fear. Maybe relief too, though she couldn't tell one from the other.
Home. She was back. The word felt too small for what it cost.
Elia's hands had been soft; she used to draw circles on Rhaenys's wrist when her breath came short. Father had smiled the same way he left halfway.
The past that never stop hurting.
She clenched her fist until the old scar at her thumb ached.An another day.
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The heat lifts once the ovens start their work. The air above the city wavers, bright with ash. I wait for the shimmer to rise, then drop from the mast and catch the updraft clean.
No spirals. Straight climb. The gulls peel away, wise things, no fight left in them.Better that. The sky's mine.
Full-grown, near enough. Wings broad as two men side by side, red deepening toward soot, eyes the color of molten gold. Bigger than I was, smaller than I need to be.
I angle down for a look, streets gone gray with smoke, roofs caved in, men moving like ants through the dust.
Anyway.
Keep the wings tight. Don't throw a shadow they'll notice. People don't look up; the sky's just noise to them. I stay part of it.
Glide over the roofs, tiles, cracked slate, a ridge that arched. The city still fits the same shape it had when I crawled out of the shell, only meaner now though.
I drop to a wall near the chimneys. Hit the merlon clean, stone black with soot. Heat leaks through the bricks; feathers catch the taste of ash. From below, I'm just another burned thing clinging to burned stone.
A bell rings eastward. Someone shouts. Someone laughs. Life drags on.
Then I see him.
Didn't plan to. Didn't think the day would feed me that kind of sight.
Ned Stark.Fresh. Blood still bright, still wet.Flies already claiming their share.
Well.
Too early. Too late.Both true.
Something in me bends, sympathy I guess or the ghost of it. Hard to name.
Anyway.Honor didn't buy him life. Maybe it bought him silence.Just the drop and dead.
No words for it. Nothing that'd matter.So I watch instead- guards following their duty, heads on spikes swaying with the wind.Counting spaces where more will go.
The wind shifts. I let it take me. Easier than thinking.
Below, the city spreads out, same way of life, same stink.I never learned it right. Still haven't.I was small once. Still I'm, just meaner.Wings where hands used to be. Heat where fear was.
I look back once, not long.The roofs shine, rain mixing with what's left of him.
Then I let go.Stone slides away, air catches under me, the city shrinking fast.
Mudflats ahead. The cart. Her.
All that's left worth returning to.
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