Chapter Text
The Hightower was the tallest thing Daeron had ever seen. It stood alone on its round island, looking like a pale fist aimed straight at the heavens. Oldtown sprawled beneath its great shadow in a blanket of squares, rooftops and glittering channels.
Daeron was seven years old and he did not want to be here.
He stood on the deck of the Queen's Pride with his hands on the railing, watching the city grow larger as the ship eased toward the quay. Behind him his mother's ladies were gathering trunks and cloaks and the last of the provisions. Mother herself had gone below to change into something finer than the roughspun she'd worn at sea. She would want to look like a queen when she stepped ashore, even if she was only delivering her youngest son.
I don't want to go away, Daeron thought.
He had said so a dozen times on the voyage and a dozen times Mother had smoothed his hair and told him it was for the best. Your grandfather's brother arranged it before he died, sweetling. You'll be fostered at the Hightower with Lord Ormund. My brother Gwayne will be there as well. You'll learn to be a knight, to ride and fight and read and write, all the things a prince should know. As if he could not learn those things at home, with his siblings.
A seabird screamed overhead, making its rounds over the ship. Daeron watched it and thought of Tessarion. His dragon was somewhere behind them, following the ship as she had since they cleared Blackwater Bay. The people of King's Landing had called her the Blue Queen, though she was barely larger than a pony. He hoped Lord Ormund did not fear her and would allow him to keep her near the Hightower. Mother was not so sure, People fear lots of things, she'd told him when he asked.
He understood. Daeron, for instance, feared being alone.
✣✣✣
His uncle Gwayne was waiting on the quay for them.
"Seven hells, Sister, you've sent me a Targaryen!" he called out as Mother descended the gangplank with Daeron's hand clamped in hers. "I asked for a nephew and you've sent me a little dragonlord. Look at him. Silver hair, purple eyes, the whole bloody set. Couldn't you have given him at least one Hightower feature? A freckle, perhaps. Or some good honest auburn in the hair."
"He has my chin," Mother said. She was smiling, though, and Daeron heard the relief in her voice. He realized that she'd been afraid.
Gwayne dropped to one knee in front of Daeron, he smelled of leather and honey. "So you're the one they've sent me to civilize. Daeron, is it?"
"Yes, ser."
"I'll be Uncle Gwayne to you, not ser." He leaned closer. "Can you keep a secret?"
Daeron nodded.
"I'm the fun one. My cousin Ormund, he'll teach you your letters and your prayers and how to sit in a chair without fidgeting. All terribly important, I'm told. But I" he pressed a hand to his chest "I will teach you the things that actually matter. How to charm people. How to drink without falling over. How to play the lute so well that you could make a living off that and forget all about being a prince."
Mother swatted his arm. "Gwayne!"
"I'm jesting. Mostly." He stood and offered Daeron his hand. "Come on, little prince. Let's get you settled before supper. Ormund's up in the tower praying, he does that."
They passed through the great, gaping doorway and entered the tower. It was cold and dark within, the torches doing little to light up the cavernous entrance hall. A great spiral stairway wound its way upward at the far end of the hall. Daeron counted the steps as they climbed, forcing his mind to do something else but worry.
Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three.
Gwayne climbed ahead of them, taking the stairs two at a time, talking as he went.
"You know your history, nephew? You look like a boy who knows his history. The Conqueror came here, did you know that? Aegon himself sat astride his beast Balerion right before this city's very gates. The gates opened with no blood spilled and no buildings burned. Just one look at the biggest dragon the world had ever known and the Hightowers decided that war was a rather poor investment."
"He was crowned here too," Mother said from behind Daeron, climbing slowly. The voyage had tired her, though she would never say so. "The High Septon anointed him and placed the crown upon his head in the Starry Sept."
"Exactly right. Your mother always was the clever one in the family." Gwayne grinned back over his shoulder. "Don't tell Ormund I said that. He thinks all cleverness is his."
Daeron glanced back at Mother. He had been doing it every few steps, checking that she was still there and hadn't left him without saying so. She caught him each time and smiled, and each time the smile looked a little more tired of his tenacity than the last.
He looked back again. She was still there.
Sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy.
"We're passing through the household floors now," Gwayne was saying, trailing one hand along the wall. "Kitchens, stores, servants' quarters. The family lives higher up, starting from the seventh floor. Ormund keeps the eleventh floor for himself."
"The eleventh floor?" Daeron's legs already felt like they were made of wet rope.
"Don't worry, you'll get used to it. By the time you've been here a year your legs will be hard as ironwood." Gwayne paused at a landing to let them catch up, leaning against the wall. "Your rooms are on the eighth, mine are on the seventh, so I'm just beneath you. If you need anything in the night, you stomp on the floor and I'll come running."
Mother reached the landing and stopped beside Daeron, her hand landing on his shoulder. He leaned into her without thinking, pressing his cheek against her hip the way he used to when he was much smaller.
"Almost there," she said. He could not tell if she meant the stairs or the end of their time together.
They climbed on until they finally reached the eleventh floor. It opened onto a broad landing with a dark, oaken door. Gwayne strode up to it and knocked twice, then opened it without waiting for whoever was behind that door to answer.
"Ormund! Put your stars away, your queen has arrived."
The solar beyond the door was bright. The far wall was almost entirely window, made of multiple great panes of glass that were set into arched frames that looked out over the city and the sea. The room was furnished but not richly so: a desk piled with ledgers and letters, bookshelves that lined the walls, a hearth. Against one wall sat a small altar to the Father, a worn book of prayers lying open before it.
The man who rose from behind the desk was not what Daeron had expected. In his imaginings, Lord Ormund Hightower had been an old man, but the man crossing the solar toward them was young—not much past thirty, Daeron thought, though he was a poor judge of such things. He was tall and fine-featured, with Mother's brown eyes and her auburn hair.
"Alicent." He took her hands in his, then pulled her into a brief embrace. "It has been too long, you look well."
"You're kind to lie," Mother said, smiling. "The crossing was dreadful. Two weeks of rough seas. I'm surprised I have any color left in my face at all."
"You have our family's constitution. Hightowers don't get seasick, it's beneath us." Ormund released her hands and turned his gaze downward. And this is Prince Daeron, I take it?"
Daeron suddenly felt very embarrassed and lacking under Lord Hightower's gaze. He straightened his back the way Mother had taught him. Chin up. Shoulders even. A prince does not shrink. "My lord."
"Well met, Daeron. You have your father's coloring," He reached out and lifted a strand of Daeron's hair between two fingers, turning it in the light from the windows. "All Targaryen, this one. I had hoped your mother might have left more of a mark."
He was reminded of Uncle Gwayne's words on the quay—silver hair, purple eyes, the whole bloody set—and how that had felt like a warm joke meant for laughs. This did not feel like a joke.
"He has my chin," Mother said again.
"So he does." Ormund released the strand of hair and smiled. Still, Daeron felt wrong-footed, as though he had failed some test he hadn't even known he was taking.
"Well then," Ormund said, turning away. "You must all be tired and thirsty. Sit, please." He crossed to a sideboard where a tray had been laid out; a flagon of Arbor gold, three cups of green Myrish glass, and a smaller cup beside a clay jug. He poured the wine himself, serving Mother first, then Gwayne,lastly he filled the smaller cup from the clay jug and brought it to Daeron. "Apple juice pressed from fruit fresh from Fossoway orchards. The best apples in the realm, if I do say so myself."
The juice was cold and sweet and very good. Daeron drank it too fast and then sat clutching the cup in both hands, staring at the carved rim while the adults talked above him.
There was so much to catch up on, as Mother said. The tower, the city, the arrangements for Daeron's education. Which maesters would teach him, which knights would train him in arms, which septons would see to his spiritual instruction. Ormund had planned everything in great detail in a written schedule.
Gwayne leaned over to look at it and let out a whistle. "Gods, Ormund, when does the boy breathe?"
"Structure is the foundation of character. A boy left to his own devices becomes a man left to his own vices."
"Yes, you've been stitching that onto cushions since you were twelve."
Mother intervened before the exchange could grow more heated. "Ormund, tell me about your wife. Is she well? I would like to meet her."
The talk moved on, and Daeron listened, and no one asked about his opinion on matters. He heard about Ormund's wife Lady Sylva and his four children Garmund, Lyonel, Martyn and Bethany, who had been born just last spring. He heard about the Citadel and the new archmaester who was apparently very tiresome. He heard about Lord Redwyne's latest vintage and the repair work on the harbor wall and a hundred other things that meant nothing to him.
And then, eventually, the talk came to dragons.
"The children at court grow quickly," Mother said, setting down her cup. "Aegon is getting tall, he'll be wanting to take Sunfyre on flights alone soon, I think. The keepers say the dragon has a strong fondness for him."
"A fondness," Ormund repeated, frowning slightly. "And Aemond? Has he claimed one yet?"
"Aemond is determined. He visits the Dragonpit often. The keepers say he has his eye on several, but none have taken to him yet. It will come."
"It must be difficult for him," Ormund said. "To watch his siblings bond with their beasts while he waits."
Daeron thought of the last time he had seen his brother Aemond, standing in am archway leading to the yard as Daeron left in the carriage that took them to their ship. Aemond had not come to the docks to say goodbye.
"And our young prince here," Ormund continued, turning to Daeron for the first time since handing him the juice. "Tessarion, is it? The blue one."
"Yes, my lord." Daeron sat up straighter. Tessarion was the one subject on which he had no shyness. "She's the gentlest dragon in the world. Her scales are the color of—"
"She followed the ship from King's Landing," Mother interrupted him gently. "She'll need a place to nest."
Ormund set down his cup. "Oldtown is the seat of the Faith and the Citadel. The people here are scholars and devout men and women. Many have never seen a dragon, and those who have remember the stories of tyrants come to burn them and their faith to crisps."
Daeron's stomach began to tighten. He gripped the cup more tightly.
"Battle Isle is out of the question," Ormund continued. "The Hightower compound houses hundreds of people—servants, knights, their families. A dragon roosting on the grounds would cause a panic. The Citadel sits directly across the harbor, I don't believe the archmaesters would stand for it." He paused, pinning Daeron with that Hightower gaze. "There are hills east of the city, beyond the Smiths' District. Good high ground, open cliff faces, plenty of game in the surrounding country. She could nest there comfortably. It's perhaps an hour's walk from the gates."
The last ember of hope that still shone in Daeron's chest died, blown out by Ormund's words. An hour's walk to Tessarion. An hour there and an hour back, through streets and districts and past gates and walls, just to see his own dragon.
"An hour?" he said. He had not meant to say it aloud.
Ormund nodded. "It is the best I can offer, boy. I must think of the people of this city, of their safety and their peace of mind."
"Of course," Mother said. "Daeron understands. Don't you, sweetling?"
Daeron looked at his cup. The apple juice was gone. There was nothing left to drink and nothing to do with his hands.
"Yes, Mother."
✣✣✣
He wept the first night after Mother left, with the blankets pulled over his head so no one on his floor would hear it. The bed was too large and too soft and the room was too dark and the walls of the tower held a strange chill that crept into his bones at night. He missed his mother. He missed his nurse. He even missed Aegon's sneering and Aemond's silences and Helaena's strangeness.
In the morning, Gwayne came for him.
"Up, up," his uncle said, throwing open the shutters. Sunlight poured in, along with the sounds of the city below—cart wheels on cobblestones, the chiming of a Sept's bells, a fishmonger crying his wares. "Oldtown waits for no prince, not even one as handsome as you."
"I'm not handsome," Daeron mumbled into his pillow.
"You're right, you look quite pathetic. Come on, get dressed. I want to show you something."
The something turned out to be the city itself. His uncle led him through the streets on foot with no guards nor other retinue to attend to them. They crossed the bridge over the Honeywine, which was wider than any bridge Daeron had seen in King's Landing and lined on both sides with merchants' stalls. The river beneath was green in color and crowded with small sailboats.
"Oldtown runs on three things," Gwayne told him as they walked. "Merchants, books and prayers. Our markets offer a home to the merchants, the Citadel writes the books, and the Starry Sept handles the prayers. Everything else fills in the gaps between." He steered Daeron around a cart loaded with barrels of wine. "King's Landing on the other hand runs on ambition and spite, which is why I prefer it here. Harder to get stabbed over a book."
Gwayne bought him a meat pie from a woman whose stall was wedged into the shadow of a statue—a septon with his arms raised toward the sky—the pie was hot and greasy and better than anything the Hightower kitchens had yet produced in his time here. They found a low wall near by the Honeywine, hoisting themselves up to enjoy their pies. From here Daeron could see the whole sweep of the river as it bent toward the harbor, and beyond it the Hightower rising over everything.
"How's the schedule treating you?" Gwayne asked. "I call it 'Ormund's grand design for the shaping of young Prince Daeron,' kind of a mouthful, but it gets the point across."
Every morning began with prayers in the Hightower's small sept, kneeling on the stone while the incense made his eyes water. After prayers came lessons; Valyrian with a maester who had the worst pronunciation Daeron had ever heard, history with another who smelled terribly, sums with a third who was kind but sort of dull. After midday he trained in the yard with the master of arms and Ormund's sons. Then more lessons, then evening prayers, then supper, then bed.
"It's fine," Daeron said.
"Ormund drag you to the sept again this morning?"
"I don't mind it." Daeron had learned in these past weeks that it was easier to not mind things than to fight them. If you didn't mind the cold stone under your knees, it stopped bothering you. If you didn't mind that nobody at the supper table asked you about your day, you stopped expecting them to. If you didn't mind that your dragon was an hour's walk away, then maybe the ache in your chest would learn to quiet itself eventually.
Gwayne gave him a look. "You're a terrible liar, nephew. Never play cards."
"I'm not lying!"
"You're not telling the truth either, which amounts to the same thing in most courts." Gwayne tore off a piece of his own pie and tossed it to a gull. The bird snatched it out of the air and screamed for more. "You don't have to like the sept, Daeron. You don't have to like the schedule or the maesters or the bloody turnip soup they serve on fast days. You're allowed to hate all of it."
"I don't hate any of it."
"You know what your problem is?" Gwayne said.
"I have a problem?"
"Several, but we'll start with the main one. You think too much. You're seven years old and you think like a man of forty. You sit in that tower all day, counting every sideways look you earn to convince yourself you don’t belong here." He pointed a gravy-stained finger at Daeron's chest. "Stop it."
"I don't—"
"You do. Your mother did the same thing when we were children. She'd sit in a room and within a quarter of an hour she'd know who liked her and who didn't and who was pretending and who was lying. Makes her an excellent queen, made her a miserable girl."
Daeron looked down at the half-eaten pie in his hands. Gravy had gotten onto his fingers, under his nails, and on his trousers. He probably looked a mess.
"I went to see Tessarion yesterday," he said quietly. "Before the sept. I snuck out through the servants' gate."
Gwayne raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
"The walk wasn't as bad in the dark… the streets were empty, so nobody—" He stopped. Nobody looked at my hair, he had been going to say. Nobody stared or whispered or ran to their great lord. "She made a kind of nest in the rocks, even scorched the ground all around it." He could still smell her as if she was right beside him. "I stayed an hour, then I came back for morning prayers. Ormund didn't know."
"Mmh, good," his uncle said. "Keep doing that."
Daeron blinked. "Sneaking out?"
"Visiting your dragon. I don't care if you have to sneak, climb, swim or bloody well fly to get there. She's yours, Daeron. Ormund can say where she nests, but he can't say what she means to you." He glanced sideways. "And if anyone gives you grief about it, you send them to me."
Daeron ate the last bite of his pie and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Or tried to, anyway—the gravy had gotten everywhere.
Gwayne laughed. He reached over with his thumb and wiped a streak of grease off Daeron's chin, then another from his cheek. It felt like something a father might do, though Daeron's actual father had never done anything of the sort.
With the sunlight behind him, the auburn in Gwayne's hair turned to gold. He had his mother's face, or near enough.