A more immediate problem was posed by the Dowager Queen, who refused to reconcile herself to the new king. The murder of the last of her sons had turned Alicent’s heart into a stone. None of the regents wished to see her put to death, some from compassion, others for fear that such an execution might rekindle the flames of war. Yet she could not be allowed to take part in the life of the court as before. She was too apt to rain down curses on the king, or snatch a dagger from some unwary guardsman. Alicent could not even be trusted in the company of the little queen; when last allowed to share a meal with Her Grace, she had told Jaehaera to cut her husband’s throat whilst he was sleeping, which set the child to screaming. Ser Tyland felt he had no choice but to confine the Queen Dowager to her own apartments in Maegor’s Holdfast; a gentle imprisonment, but imprisonment nonetheless.

  The Hand then set out to restore the kingdom’s trade and begin the process of rebuilding. Great lords and smallfolk alike were pleased when he abolished the taxes enacted by Queen Rhaenyra and Lord Celtigar. With the Crown’s gold once more secure, Ser Tyland set aside a million golden dragons as loans for lords whose holdings had been destroyed during the Dance. (Though many availed themselves of this coin, the loans did bring about a rift between the Iron Throne and the Iron Bank of Braavos.) He also ordered the construction of three huge fortified granaries, in King’s Landing, Lannisport, and Gulltown, and the purchase of sufficient grain to fill them. (The latter decree drove up the price of grain sharply, which pleased those towns and lords with wheat and corn and barley to sell, but angered the proprietors of inns and pot shops, and the poor and hungry in general.)

  Though he called a halt to work on the gargantuan statues of Prince Aemond and Prince Daeron that had been commissioned by Aegon II (not before the heads of the two princes had been carved), the Hand set hundreds of stonemasons, carpenters, and builders to work on the repair and restoration of the Dragonpit. The gates of King’s Landing were strengthened at his command, so they might better be able to resist attacks from within the city walls as well as without. The Hand also announced the Crown’s funding for the construction of fifty new war galleys. When questioned, he told the regents that this was meant to provide work for the shipyards and defend the city from the fleets of the Triarchy…but many suspected Ser Tyland’s real purpose was to lessen the Crown’s dependence on House Velaryon of Driftmark.

  The Hand might also have been mindful of the continuing war in the west when he set the shipwrights to work. Whilst the ascent of Aegon III did mark an end to the worst of the carnage of the Dance of the Dragons, it is not wholly correct to assert that the young king’s coronation brought peace to the Seven Kingdoms. Fighting continued in the west through the first three years of the boy king’s reign, as Lady Johanna of Casterly Rock continued to resist the depredations of Dalton Greyjoy’s ironborn in the name of her son, young Lord Loreon. The details of their war lie outside our purpose here (for those who would know more, the relevant chapters of Archmaester Mancaster’s Sea Demons: A History of the Children of the Drowned God of the Isles are especially good). Suffice it to say that whilst the Red Kraken had proved a valuable ally to the blacks during the Dance, the coming of peace demonstrated that the ironmen had no more regard for them than for the greens.

  Though he stopped short of openly declaring himself King of the Iron Isles, Dalton Greyjoy paid little heed to any of the edicts coming from the Iron Throne during these years…mayhaps because the king was a boy, and his Hand a Lannister. When commanded to cease his raiding, Greyjoy continued as before. Told to restore the women his ironmen had carried off, he replied that “only the Drowned God may sunder the bond between a man and his salt wives.” Instructed to return Fair Isle to its former lords, he replied, “Should they come rising back up from beneath the sea, we shall gladly give them back what once was theirs.”

  When Johanna Lannister attempted to build a new fleet of warships to take the battle to the ironmen, the Red Kraken descended on her shipyards and put them to the torch, and made off with another hundred women in the nonce. The Hand sent an angry reproach, to which Lord Dalton replied, “The women of the west prefer men of iron to cowardly lions, it would seem, for they jump into the sea and plead with us to take them.”

  Across Westeros, the winds of war were blowing up the narrow sea as well. The murder of Sharako Lohar of Lys, the admiral who had presided over the Triarchy’s disaster in the Gullet, proved to be the spark that engulfed the Three Daughters in flames, fanning the smoldering rivalries of Tyrosh, Lys, and Myr into open war. It is now commonly accepted that Sharako’s death was a personal matter; the arrogant admiral was slain by one of his rivals for the favor of a courtesan known as the Black Swan. At the time, however, his death was seen as a political killing, and the Myrish were suspected. When Lys and Myr went to war, Tyrosh seized the opportunity to assert its dominion over the Stepstones.

  To press that claim, the Archon of Tyrosh called up Racallio Ryndoon, the flamboyant captain-general who had once commanded the Triarchy’s forces against Daemon Targaryen. Racallio overran the islands in a trice and put the reigning King of the Narrow Sea to death…only to decide to claim his crown for himself, betraying the Archon and his native city. The confused four-sided war that followed had the effect of closing the southern end of the narrow sea to trade, cutting off King’s Landing, Duskendale, Maidenpool, and Gulltown from commerce with the east. Pentos, Braavos, and Lorath were similarly affected, and sent envoys to King’s Landing in hopes of bringing the Iron Throne into a grand alliance against Racallio and the quarrelsome Daughters. Ser Tyland entertained them lavishly, but refused their offer. “It would be a grave mistake for Westeros to become embroiled in the endless quarrels of the Free Cities,” he told the council of regents.

  That fateful year 131 AC came to a close with the seas aflame both east and west of the Seven Kingdoms and blizzards descending on Winterfell and the North. Nor was the mood in King’s Landing a happy one. The smallfolk of the city had already begun to grow disenchanted with their boy king and little queen, neither of whom had been seen since the wedding, and whispers about “the hooded Hand” were spreading. Though the “reborn” Shepherd had been taken by the gold cloaks and relieved of his tongue, others had risen in his place to preach of how the King’s Hand practiced the forbidden arts, drank baby’s blood, and was besides “a monster who hides his twisted face from gods and men.”

  Within the walls of the Red Keep, there were whispers about the king and queen as well. The royal marriage was troubled from the first. Both bride and groom were children; Aegon III was now eleven, Jaehaera only eight. Once wed, they had very little contact with one another save on formal occasions, and even that was rare, as the little queen was loath to leave her chambers. “Both of them are broken,” Grand Maester Munkun declared in a letter to the Conclave. The girl had witnessed the murder of her twin brother at the hands of Blood and Cheese. The king had lost all four of his own brothers, then watched his uncle feed his mother to a dragon. “These are not normal children,” Munkun wrote. “They have no joy in them; they neither laugh nor play. The girl wets her bed at night and weeps inconsolably when she is corrected. Her own ladies say that she is eight, going on four. Had I not laced her milk with sweetsleep before the wedding, I am convinced the child would have collapsed during the ceremony.”

  As for the king, the new Grand Maester went on, “Aegon shows little interest in his wife, or any other girl. He does not ride or hunt or joust, but neither does he enjoy sedentary pursuits such as reading, dancing, or singing. Though his wits seem sound enough, he never initiates a conversation, and when spoken to his answers are so curt one would think the very act of talking was painful to him. He has no friends save for the bastard boy Gaemon Palehair, and seldom sleeps through the night. During the hour of the wolf he can oft be found standing by a window, gazing up at the stars, but when I presented him with Archmaester Lyman’s Kingdoms of the Sky, he showed no interest. Aegon seldom smiles and never laughs, but neither does he display any outward signs of anger or fear, save in regards to dragons, the very mention of which sends him into a rare rage. Orwyle was wont to call His Grace calm and self-possessed; I say the boy is dead inside. He walks the halls of the Red Keep like a ghost. Brothers, I must be frank. I fear for our king, and for the kingdom.”

  His fears, alas, would prove to be well founded. As bad as 131 AC had been, the next two years would be much worse.

  It began on an ominous note when the former Grand Maester Orwyle was discovered in a brothel called Mother’s, near the lower end of the Street of Silk. Shorn of his hair and beard and chain of office and going by the name Old Wyl, he had earned his bread by sweeping, scrubbing, inspecting patrons of the house for pox, and mixing moon tea and potions of tansy and pennyroyal for Mother’s “daughters” to rid themselves of unwanted children. No one paid Old Wyl any mind until he took it upon himself to teach some of Mother’s younger girls to read. One of his pupils demonstrated her new skill to a serjeant in the gold cloaks, who grew suspicious and led the old man in for questioning. The truth soon emerged.

  The penalty for deserting the Night’s Watch is death. Though Orwyle had not yet sworn vows, most still considered him an oathbreaker. There was no question of allowing him to take ship for the Wall. The original sentence of death that Lord Stark had pronounced on him must apply, the regents agreed. Ser Tyland did not deny this, though he pointed out that the office of King’s Justice had yet to be filled, and as a blind man he was a poor choice to swing the sword himself. Using that for his pretext, the Hand instead confined Orwyle to a tower cell (large, airy, and far too comfortable, some charged) “until such time as a suitable headsman can be found.” Neither Septon Eustace nor Mushroom were deceived; Orwyle had served with Ser Tyland on Aegon II’s green councils, and plainly old friendship and the memory of all they had endured played some part in the Hand’s decision. The former Grand Maester was even provided with quill, ink, and parchment, so that he might continue his confessions. And so he did for the best part of two years, setting down the lengthy history of the reigns of Viserys I and Aegon II that would later prove to be such an invaluable source for his successor’s True Telling.

  Less than a fortnight later, reports reached King’s Landing of bands of wildlings from the Mountains of the Moon descending upon the Vale of Arryn in large numbers to raid and plunder, and Lady Jeyne Arryn left the court and sailed for Gulltown to see to the defense of her own lands and people. There were ominous stirrings along the Dornish Marches too, for Dorne had a new ruler in the person of Aliandra Martell, a brazen girl of ten-and-seven who fancied herself “the new Nymeria” and had every young lord south of the Red Mountains vying for her affections. To deal with their incursions, Lord Caron took his leave of King’s Landing as well, hastening back to Nightsong in the Dornish Marches. Thus the seven regents became five. The most influential of those was plainly the Sea Snake, whose wealth, experience, and alliances made him the first amongst equals. Even more tellingly, he seemed the only man the young king was willing to trust.

  For all these reasons, the realm suffered a terrible blow on the sixth day of the third moon of 132 AC, when Corlys Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, collapsed whilst ascending the serpentine steps in the Red Keep of King’s Landing. By the time Grand Maester Munkun came rushing to his aid, the Sea Snake was dead. Seventy-nine years of age, he had served four kings and a queen, sailed to the ends of the earth, raised House Velaryon to unprecedented levels of wealth and power, married a princess who might have been a queen, fathered dragonriders, built towns and fleets, proved his valor in times of war and his wisdom in times of peace. The Seven Kingdoms would never see his like again. With his passing, a great hole was torn in the tattered fabric of the Seven Kingdoms.

  Lord Corlys lay in state beneath the Iron Throne for seven days. Afterward his remains were carried back to Driftmark aboard the Mermaid’s Kiss, captained by Marilda of Hull with her son Alyn. There the battered hull of the ancient Sea Snake was floated once again and towed out into the deep waters east of Dragonstone, where Corlys Velaryon was buried at sea aboard the very ship that had given him his name. It was said afterward that as the hull went down, the Cannibal swept overhead, his great black wings spread in a last salute. (A moving touch, but most likely a later embroidery. From all we know of the Cannibal, he would have been more apt to eat the corpse than salute it.)

  The baseborn Alyn of Hull, now Alyn Velaryon, had been the Sea Snake’s chosen heir, but his succession was not uncontested. It will be recalled that in the time of King Viserys, a nephew of Lord Corlys, Ser Vaemond Velaryon, had put himself forward as the true heir to Driftmark. This rebellion cost him his head, but he left a wife and sons behind. Ser Vaemond had been the son of the elder of the Sea Snake’s brothers. Five other nephews, sired by another brother, had claims as well. When they took their case before the sick and failing Viserys, they made the grievous mistake of questioning the legitimacy of his daughter’s children. Viserys had their tongues removed for this insolence, though he let them keep their heads. Three of the “silent five” had died during the Dance, fighting for Aegon II against Rhaenyra…but two survived, together with Ser Vaemond’s sons, and all came forward now, insisting that they had more right to Driftmark than “this bastard of Hull, whose mother was a mouse.”

  Ser Vaemond’s sons Daemion and Daeron took their claim to the council in King’s Landing. When the Hand and the regents ruled against them, they wisely chose to accept the decision and be reconciled with Lord Alyn, who rewarded them with lands on Driftmark on the condition that they contribute ships to his fleet. Their silent cousins chose a different course. “Lacking tongues with which to make their appeal, they preferred to argue with swords,” says Mushroom. However, the plot to murder their young lord went awry when the guards at Castle Driftmark proved loyal to the Sea Snake’s memory and his chosen heir. Ser Malentine was slain during the attempt; his brother captured. Condemned to death, Ser Rhogar saved his head by taking the black.

  Alyn Velaryon, the bastard born of Mouse, was formally installed as Lord of the Tides and Master of Driftmark. Whereupon he set out for King’s Landing to claim the Sea Snake’s place amongst the regents. (Even as a boy, Lord Alyn never lacked for boldness.) The Hand thanked him and sent him home…understandably, as Alyn Velaryon was but sixteen in 132 AC. Lord Corlys’s seat upon the council of regents had already been offered to an older and more seasoned man: Unwin Peake, Lord of Starpike, Lord of Dunstonbury, Lord of Whitegrove.

  Ser Tyland had a far more pressing concern in 132 AC: the matter of succession. Whilst Lord Corlys had been old and frail, his sudden death had nonetheless served as a grim reminder that any man could die at any time, even seemingly healthy young kings like Aegon III. War, illness, accident…there were so many ways to die, and if the king should perish, who then would follow him?

  “If he dies without an heir, we shall dance again, however much we may mislike the music,” Lord Manfryd Mooton warned his fellow regents. Queen Jaehaera’s claim was as strong as the king’s, and stronger in the minds of some, but the notion of placing that sweet, simple, frightened child on the Iron Throne was madness, all agreed. King Aegon himself, when asked, put forward his cupbearer, Gaemon Palehair, reminding the regents that the boy had “been a king before.” That was impossible as well.

  In truth, there were only two claimants the realm was like to accept: the king’s half-sisters Baela and Rhaena Targaryen, Prince Daemon’s twin daughters by his first wife, Lady Laena Velaryon. The girls were now sixteen years of age, tall and slim and silver-haired, very much the darlings of the city. King Aegon seldom set foot outside the Red Keep after his coronation, and his little queen never left her own apartments, so for most of the past year, it had been Rhaena or Baela riding out to hunt or hawk, giving alms to the poor, receiving envoys and visiting lords with the King’s Hand, serving as hostess at feasts (of which there were few), masques, and balls (of which there had been none as yet). The twins were the only Targaryens the people ever saw.

  Yet even here, the council encountered difficulty and division. When Leowyn Corbray said, “Lady Rhaena would make a splendid queen,” Ser Tyland pointed out that Baela had been the first from her mother’s womb. “Baela is too wild,” countered Ser Torrhen Manderly. “How can she rule the realm when she cannot rule herself?” Ser Willis Fell agreed. “It must be Rhaena. She has a dragon, her sister does not.” When Lord Mooton answered, “Baela flew a dragon, Rhaena only has the hatchling,” Roland Westerling replied, “Baela’s dragon brought down our late king. There are many in the realm who will not have forgotten that. Crown her and we will rip all the old wounds open once again.”

  Yet it was Grand Maester Munkun who put an end to the debate when he said, “My lords, it makes no matter. They are both girls. Have we learned so little from the slaughter? We must abide by primogeniture, as the Great Council ruled in 101. The male claim comes before the female.” Yet when Ser Tyland said, “And who is this male claimant, my lord? We seem to have killed them all,” Munkun had no answer but to say he would research the issue. Thus the crucial question of succession remained unsettled.

  This uncertainty did little to spare the twins from the fawning attentions of all the suitors, confidants, companions, and similar flatterers eager to befriend the king’s presumed heirs, though the sisters reacted to these lickspittles in vastly different ways. Where Rhaena delighted in being the center of court life, Baela bristled at praise, and seemed to take pleasure in mocking and tormenting the suitors who fluttered around her like moths.

  As young girls, the twins had been inseparable, and impossible to tell apart, but once parted, their experiences had shaped them in very different ways. In the Vale, Rhaena had enjoyed a life of comfort and privilege as Lady Jeyne’s ward. Maids had brushed her hair and drawn her baths, whilst singers composed odes to her beauty and knights jousted for her favor. The same was true at King’s Landing, where dozens of gallant young lords competed for her smiles, artists begged leave to draw or paint her, and the city’s finest dressmakers sought the honor of making her gowns. And everywhere that Rhaena went came Morning, her young dragon, oft as not coiled about her shoulders like a stole.