The feast had ended in rare harmony, the clamor of music and clattering cups fading into the sea wind. Yet its final echo lingered in the minds of every captain present: Aegon the True King.
The words had first burst from the lips of the mustached captain, Nicks, but by night's end the entire fleet had taken it up. Aegon the True King. A title bold as any claimed by even by Aegon the Conqueror himself.
When he returned to his tent, the torches outside guttering in the breeze, Arryk followed close behind. The young man hesitated at the threshold, plainly wrestling with something unsaid.
Aegon sank onto the camp stool, poured two wooden cups full of cool water, and handed one across. "Ask whatever you wish," he said. "Do not bite your tongue on my account."
Arryk accepted the cup with both hands, drank, and gathered his courage.
"Your Highness," he began haltingly, "I fear… you may be giving too much."
Aegon arched a brow, amused. "Too much? You mean the coin I promised the soldiers?"
Arryk blinked his small, earnest eyes, unable to grasp why the prince found this humorous. "Yes, Your Highness. Far too much. You may not fully understand the weight a gold dragon carries beyond King's Landing. Fifteen gold dragons can equip a knight head to toe. Five gold dragons for a single common soldier is already generous, yet you are giving more... coin for their households, coin for homes to be built. It is… excessive."
Aegon sipped his water, feeling clarity returning with each swallow. Then he leaned forward slightly, studying the young man with mild interest.
"So," he said, "what would you advise?"
Arryk straightened, grateful to be asked. "Exchange the gold dragons for silver stags. The gesture would still win hearts, and the cost would be far less. Even if their families follow them to the Stepstones, silver stags will sustain them until the soil yields harvest."
Aegon nodded, acknowledging the practicality of the suggestion.
Arryk , for all his youth, possessed sharp instincts, sharper still for someone raised in the rigid shadow of King's Landing. With guidance, Aegon mused, he may yet be shaped into something formidable.
"You are not wrong," Aegon said. "Silver would feed them... until the first crop rises. But tell me, Arryk… have you considered the rest?"
Arryk frowned. "The rest, Your Highness?"
Aegon plucked a green grape from a pewter bowl and rolled it between his fingers before slipping it into his mouth.
"Imagine," he said, "that you were a sworn brother of the Kingsguard. already an honour beyond price. Now imagine the Sealord of Braavos takes interest in you. He offers you equal pay, equal dignity, equal steel… to serve him across the sea. The king allows you to choose freely. Would you go?"
Arryk answered without hesitation. "Certainly not. Even if the pay matched, I would never abandon the honor of serving as a Kingsguard. And Braavos is strange to me. Even without the white cloak… I would rather remain in Westeros."
Aegon gave him a slow, knowing look, the faintest smile tugging at his lips. "Just so."
He leaned back, voice steady and firm. "It is the same for our men. They are smallfolk of the Crownlands. To uproot their wives and children, leave behind fields their fathers worked, abandon the safety of familiar shores for the barren rocks of the Stepstones… why would they do so for anything less than true promise?"
Arryk flushed, suddenly realizing the flaw in his earlier logic.
"You think I know nothing of coin," Aegon continued, "and perhaps you are half right. But I think you know little of fear, of the dread smallfolk feel when asked to abandon everything they know for the sake of some lord's ambition."
He tapped the empty cup lightly against the table. "I do not merely want soldiers. I want their families as well. I want them to settle those islands, to clear land in my name. That means tools must be bought. Grain must be sown. Houses must be raised from raw stone and driftwood."
He counted each point on his fingers.
"Before the first crop is harvested, they must eat. They must drink. They must survive storms and sickness and the stench of the sea. All of it costs coin. And all while pirates still plague the waters like vermin."
Aegon's voice dropped, lower, sharper.
"If I command entire families to follow me to the Stepstones, then I must give them reason. I must show them that I am responsible for those who bleed for me."
He looked Arryk squarely in the eye.
"And if I cannot even bear that burden… what sort of Lord of the Stepstones am I to be? What sort of king, for that matter?"
Arryk's face burned with shame. "Forgive me, Your Highness. I did not realize you had considered all this."
"There is nothing to forgive," Aegon said with a careless wave. "The Stepstones are barren. You could not know the demands they place."
But he knew. And he knew more still.
If he failed to uproot these families and bind them to him, then Viserys. gentle, malleable Viserys, would forever hold a leash on the fleet. Aegon would command ships, yes, but his father would command the hearts of the men aboard them.
That was something he would never accept.
Only with full control of the fleet, every crewman, every captain, every family, could he make his next move.
He stood and brushed aside his lingering thoughts. "Go find Nicks. Tell him I require his presence."
The mustached captain had been the first to stand at the feast and hail him. The memory still warmed the air between them.
Arryk bowed quickly and slipped out. Before long he returned with Nicks in tow. The man smelled faintly of wine and sea-salt; his eyes drooped with exhaustion.
"You wished to see me, Your Highness?" he rasped.
"Pour him water," Aegon told the maidservant.
Nicks drank deep, the tremor in his hands easing slightly.
"You are a capable man, Nicks," Aegon said.
The captain stiffened in surprise. "Your praise honors me, Your Highness. But I am nothing beside your foresight."
Nicks had no idea what Aegon wanted, and thus defaulted to humble praise, never a poor choice when facing dragon blood.
Aegon chuckled. "Ser Nicks, your sense of loyalty is admirable, but your thinking is narrow."
He pointed, not unkindly, at the older man's chest. "One man's strength is never enough. If you wish to build something worthy of song, you must rally others beside you, all pulling toward the same horizon."
Nicks straightened at once. "I understand. Command me, Your Highness."
Aegon's smile was slow and satisfied.
"Then hear my will. I intend to raise you as Deputy Commander of the fleet. Ten warships will answer to your command. You will sail south and hold Grey Gallows Isle in my name. Can you do it?"
For a moment Nicks simply stared, mouth parted, pupils dilated with disbelief. Then breath rushed from his lungs in a relieved exhale.
He had feared reprimand... feared some subtle trap or dangerous request, but this? This was elevation beyond anything he had ever dreamed.
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A/N: Aegon's ambition has begun to stir.As his power grows, so do his foes, traitors, and enemies rising with blades already drawn.
Will he truly succeed… or be crushed before he can claim it all?
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