High Tide, Chapter 63: A Faltering Rapport (Patreon)

Fifth Moon, 126 AC

Rhaenys

In her youth Meleys had been considered the fastest and nimblest of House Targaryen’s dragons. And though she had become lazier with age and size, she still lived up to that reputation, serving Rhaenys well as they soared with speed over the battlefield, deftly evading every single volley of arrows with ease.

Whenever they couldn’t evade in time, Meleys would simply breathe out fire to incinerate the arrows into ash without Rhaenys even prompting her. The two of them were experienced and hardened after their battles in Dorne and the Iron Islands where they had faced longbows, crossbows, scorpions, and catapults, none were anything more than a nuisance to a dragon in the end.

The Summer Islanders’ might have a reputation as some of the finest archers in the world, wielding their famed goldenheart bows that were second only to dragonbone, but they had never fought dragons before. The dragonlords of old had never attacked the Summer Islands, not because they were scared of the Summer Islanders, but because they hadn’t seen the need to. After the Ghiscari Wars, Valyria had always been slow to rouse unless directly provoked, its leaders content to enjoy their wealth in decadence and hedonism while playing cutthroat intrigue games with each other.

The Summer Islanders had often struggled to defend their own cities and towns against raiding corsairs despite their advanced ships and goldenheart bows. A symptom of their internal divisions and rivalries perhaps but it was proof of the obvious nonetheless. They were never going to stand a chance against Westeros nor House Targaryen.

Meleys tucked her wings as she dived upon the battlements of the enemy fortress. Not quite like the castles of Westeros but this fortress built in the ziggurats and square shape and tall adorned towers of the Summer Islander style was one of many that were the closest the islanders had to Westerosi-style castles. It was the seat of the Prince who ruled most of Eastern Omboru. One of a few princes who had outright refused to kneel and accept becoming a lord under her family’s rule. The Prince had rejected all of their overtures after the first and had even had his archers loose their volleys at her soldiers. Such behavior was unacceptable.

“Dracarys,” Rhaenys ordered coldly. Within a second, scarlet-pink flames emerged from Meleys’ maw, bathing the fortress walls in fire and burning away the defenders. Once she had strafed all the walls and removed the nuisance of the archers (while they posed little threat to her, one could never be too careful, especially given that some Summer Islanders poisoned some of their arrows), Rhaenys set to work destroying the fortress itself.

While Meleys did not yet have the full destructive power Balerion had unleashed on Harrenhal all those years ago, it was more than enough to burn through all the doors and spread into the fortress. Wood, straw, and everything that wasn’t stone ignited as the fortress began to burn, and when Rhaenys concentrated her dragon’s power in specific sections, she could see the stone beginning to crack, warp, and even melt.

Satisfied with a job well done, Rhaenys withdrew from the fortress to her army’s camp to rest for the day. She gave orders to her commanders and troops to secure the fortress once the fires had burnt out.

Rhaenys would have to use Meleys’ power a few more times over the coming weeks. Though she did not have to outright burn another fortress outright like she had that day, Meleys would reduce to ashes many stubborn goldenheart archers and other foolishly brave warriors wielding swords and slings who would try and slay them. Often times however, once there was a sufficient demonstration of power, the princes would kneel and accept the terms her family offered.

The same terms of fealty Aegon the Conqueror had offered Westeros; kneel and swear fealty, pay your fair taxes and obey the laws, surrender all princely and royal titles, and you will be allowed keep all your other titles, honors, and monies unmolested. Generous terms by all accounts, other conquerors throughout history had not been so kind.

When Omboru was finally pacified in the last week of the fifth moon of 126 AC, Rhaenys left her troops to garrison its towns and castles before she flew back to Walano in the north. She would need to oversee the plans for the conquest of Jhala and the remaining outlying islands with her husband and son and their allies and advisors.

The distance between Omboru and Walano was a mere fraction of the distance between King’s Landing and Dragonstone, a distance Rhaenys and her family would race back and forth on a daily basis. Consequently, it only took around two hours for her and Meleys to cross the Smiling Sea, flying over the Isle of Birds before they reached Walano.

Walano was the single most populous island in the archipelago, having four in ten of every Summer Islander alive living on it. It was also the home of Tall Trees Town, the cultural and religious center of the Summer Islands, the headquarters of its priests, and the unofficial capital of the Summer Islands in all but name. The very same city that Rhaenys now set eyes upon as Meleys approached the settlement.

The massive Talking Trees that surrounded and shaded the city were a lovely sight to behold as ever. They were perhaps the tallest tree Rhaenys had ever seen, far taller than any tree in Westeros, taller than even the greatest pines, ironwoods, and sentinels. She had heard some refer to them as tower trees and indeed that was not an inaccurate description.

Upon the enormous trunks of the great Talking Trees were carved the Summer Islanders’ earliest maps, their histories, their laws, gods’ commandments, and so much more. They were sacred, and of extreme religious and cultural importance to the people of the Summer Islands. This cultural significance and importance was why in each of the previous half a dozen times the Summer Islands had been briefly united before, the uniting princes or princesses would come here to Tall Trees Town to be crowned by the Priests of Love. Some would even rule from the city.

The South Sea Company had been trading with the Summer Islands for decades with Targaryen backing, building trading posts, accruing vast profits, and gaining great influence with the local princes they had traded with, even to the point of forming alliances and helping the princes favorable to them against the princes that weren’t. As a result of this influence and connections, when Rhaenys had planned and then carried out the opening stages of her invasion, the logistics had been relatively easy despite the great distances as the South Sea Company’s existing trading posts and routes had made moving troops into the region much simpler.

Even more importantly, the three princes that ruled Walano from its three major cities, the Princes of Last Lament, Lotus Point, and Talking Trees Town respectively had all agreed to kneel peacefully and support their conquest after extensive secret negotiations due to their long standing relationship with the South Sea Company. As a result of this, Walano had fallen without any fight at all, they had landed their troops welcomed by the locals in each of the major settlements.

Rhaenys knew that many of her soldiers had been lured away for nights of revelry by the local women. It was amusing at best and at worst, it kept morale high so she couldn’t really complain as long as they reported back for duty on time. It was a good and promising sign indicating the willingness of the locals to accept her house’s rule.

The support of such a large fraction of the populace had greatly eased the difficulty of the campaign for their Westerosi troops. Aided and supplemented by the Walano principalities’ supplies and soldiers, they had expanded to take Stone Head, the Isle of Women, the Isle of Birds, and the key shipyards at Koj within a few months of their initial landing. And of course, Rhaenys had just finished up on Omburu while Viserys and Aegon had been busy securing the smaller islands west of Omburu and Jhala.

In exchange for their fealty, the three former princes of Walano, now lords, expected great rewards and positions in the government Rhaenys would be forming over the islands and she did not intend to betray their trust. Good service and loyalty should be rewarded after all. She was currently pondering which of the Walano lords she should name as the Governor of the Summer Islands though she knew it was most likely going to be Prince Jhalabar of Tall Trees Town.

While it might be risky to give the ruler of the archipelago’s cultural and religious capital the administrative rule of the islands, Rhaenys couldn’t help but like the man. He was affable and agreeable and she doubted that he could prove any true threat to her family’s rule over the islands. He was just to be a Governor after all, not a Lord Paramount, and Rhaenys’ family still had dragons. The locals had learned very quickly just how much they should respect the power of dragons. 

Of course, while they were their main supporters, the three lords of Walano were not their only allies in the region. Several princes across the region had built trade relations with the South Sea Company over the years and had agreed to join their cause and give up their princely titles in exchange for the lands of their rivals. Many other princes were quick to kneel once they had a demonstration of the power of dragons.

The local custom of ritual warfare had also proven useful in helping to somewhat peacefully conquer entire principalities or islands. In fact, that was how Koj had fallen. Most of the Summer Islands’ swan ships were built at the shipyards of Koj and the Prince of Koj had leveraged the importance of his islands’ infrastructure to convince Rhaenys to a wager. He would give up his princely title and swear fealty to the Iron Throne as Lord of Koj if her warriors defeated his in sacred ritual combat.

While Rhaenys had been annoyed by Prince Koj’s nerve, Viserys had convinced her to humor him. Why waste unnecessary life when they could do this simply and easily using the locals’ own customs against them? Amused by the idea, Rhaenys had sent in her Kingsguard escort to resolve the battle easily. It was almost like a tourney back home in Westeros, though here they did fight to kill. The Kingsguard won the battle easily and the Prince of Koj had knelt.

While there were other smaller islands to conquer and pacify, all that was really left now was Jhala. The island was the largest in the archipelago so that was not exactly a small task but they were making progress. As she finally landed Meleys in the courtyard outside the fortified house in the city that had been given to her and her husband and son to stay in by Lord Jhalabhar, Rhaenys considered their current plans for Jhala.

While she had returned to Tall Trees Town precisely to plan the conquest of Jhala, it was mostly the specific details of logistics, troop movements, and the future of the island after the war that needed discussing. The actual conquest of the island was all but a foregone conclusion at this point.

Much of their strategy revolved around Prince Jhallos of Golden Head. He was their strongest supporter on the island. The South Sea Company had been trading and working with him for years, they had helped him expand his principality into his smaller neighbors, the islands of Lizard Head and the Bones.

Rhaenys’ envoys were in secret talks with him already, negotiating with him to surrender his title as Prince and swear fealty to the Iron Throne and allow their armies to land in his fief and supply them as they conquered the other principalities on Jhala. She had a feeling his asking price would be Red Flower Vale and she had instructed her diplomats to offer the lush fiefdom to Jhallos if he was stubborn.

Greed never failed to motivate and most any man would agree to swear fealty if his fiefdom was doubled in the process. Especially when the alternative was death by dragonfire. They didn’t need Jhallos after all, his support would simply make things simpler for them.

Once she had dismounted Meleys and tended to her needs, Rhaenys walked into the beautiful gardens attached to the manse. There were dozens of beautiful flowers of different shapes, sizes, and colors, all arranged immaculately in a beautiful pattern. In the distance the towering Talking Trees provided shade from the hot tropical sun, making the air pleasant and cool.

Rhaenys breathed in and sighed contentedly. At times like this, she could almost forget that she was here waging war in a campaign of conquest.

The Summer Islands were an idyllic place, beautiful and calming. They had their dark side as all things did, but one could be forgiven for believing they were nothing more than a peaceful paradise.

And the Summer Islanders were a sensible and smart people. Apart from a few stubborn fools, the vast majority of the Summer Islanders obeyed their princes and priests and once Rhaenys had convinced those to fall in line, the rest of the population had followed suit. It reminded her of the histories she had read of how easy it had been for Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters to convince the lords and smallfolk of the Crownlands and Riverlands to acknowledge them as their rulers.

On a more leisurely and academic discovery, the Summer Islanders’ culture was fascinating and intriguing. The various goods they produced, the sights in their islands, and their plants and animals were all immensely beautiful. It was all very exotic and different, but in a good way. She could foresee a very good future for Westeros and the Summer Islands together indeed.

The only thing she had really found distasteful in the Summer Islands was the extent to which they glorified prostitution. Still brothels were not illegal in Westeros nor was it illegal for the nobility and highborn to partake in the practice if they so wished. Rhaenys found worshipping trees like the Northmen did just as strange and if ‘lovemaking’ was how the Summer Islanders wished to worship their gods, she could care less ultimately.

Unfortunately, Rhaenys knew all too well that others would not feel the same way. The Faith of the Seven considered prostitution and sex outside of marriage a sin and all those prudish and stuck up septas and septons would surely be horrified if they saw for themselves the extent to which the Summer Islanders indulged their carnal instincts.

There had already been a few incidents between the septons that had accompanied their army for Westeros and the local priests and brothels. Rhaenys made a note to herself that her father and her would need to deal with that, up to and including barring the Faith of the Seven’s septons from the Summer Islands if they had to.

Sometimes she wondered if her family hadn’t made a mistake taking over the Faith completely and drawing on its zealousness for their own ends. Aegon the Conqueror and the old Valyrian dragonlords’ disregard for religion had worked well enough for them after all. The increasingly fervent Faith had already caused issues in the Iron Islands, they had to be kept on a tight leash to stop them from bothering the Blackwoods and the Northmen, and now they were trying to start problems in the Summer Islands.

Rhaenys didn’t care who the Summer Islanders prayed to or who they fucked as long as they paid their taxes and kept the King’s Peace but the High Septon and his clergy did not see things that way. Perhaps she should pay them a visit in the Great Sept of Jaehaerys when she returned to King’s Landing, a reminder to behave in the newly annexed Summer Islands and not sour relations with the inhabitants.

The Summer Islanders were sensible, peaceable, and welcoming now, but Rhaenys somehow had the feeling that they would be much less so if their local customs and religious practices were violently denounced and disturbed by the Faith of the Seven. It was one thing of course if the septons and septas were polite and proselytized in peace, understanding that it would take time and patience to change the ways of the locals, but in Rhaenys’ experience they were not.

The last thing they wanted was the Summer Islanders becoming resentful and rebellious like the Dornish had been. Dorne… even after six years Rhaenys still hated to think of Dorne. Even the catharsis she had felt eviscerating all the annoying rebels who had dared to stand against her house had long since passed, leaving only a great headache.

Dorne was everything the Summer Islands were not. Where the Summer Islands were lush and welcoming tropical rainforest, much of Dorne was an inhospitable and dry desert. Where the Summer Islanders were a sensible and reasonable people, the Dornish were psychotic fanatics.

They had spat on each and every attempt they had made to negotiate with them. Where the Summer Islander princes were for the most part open to negotiations and willing to join in exchange for concessions, Rhaenys had seriously promised any Dornish house that joined her side that she would either give them the fiefs of their stubborn neighbors wholesale or even make them Lord Paramounts of Dorne.

Everyone had rejected the offer, even the self-proclaimed Bloodroyals, House Yronwood. Some had even broken guest rights, sending the hands and tongues of Rhaenys’ envoys back to her with mocking taunts. She had had House Wyl destroyed as brutally as she could imagine for that disgraceful atrocity.

It just didn’t make sense to her at all. Even with the bad blood between her house and the Dornish historically, had they not admired her grandfather? Had they not grown to resent House Martell after Morion’s foolishness? And yet seemingly against all odds, they had rallied behind the bloody Martells just to fight them to the end.

Even the fucking smallfolk had joined the fight, helping their lords commit endless atrocities, the breach of guest rights, the poisoning of wells and food supplies, the dishonorable ambushes on soldiers they had supposedly welcomed.

In the end they had bowed, bent, broken, and burnt Dorne into submission but even six years after the war had begun, there was still resistance in the mountains and the deep desert, re-emerging to trouble Daemon and his branch of the family every few months, it was why none of them had come to the Summer Islands with them.

That and also because Dorne was not in a very good state at all. Much of its infrastructure had been destroyed, either by the local rebels or the reprisal of Rhaenys’ family members atop their dragons. The population was nowhere near what it had been before the conquest, even with the region mostly stabilized and more and more settlers arriving from the Reach and Stormlands with every passing year. And it wasn’t turning a profit, the Iron Throne was still funding the Principality of Dorne’s rebuilding efforts and probably would be for many more years to come.

And for all the nominal prestige they had gotten conquering Dorne and finishing Aegon the Conqueror’s great work, it was all for nothing in the end because it was immediately overshadowed by the Velaryons’ ridiculous power grab in Essos forming the Triarchy.

The Summer Islands on the other had had so far been a smooth and easy conquest compared to Dorne and one that was already starting to bring in money and economic benefits. It had done much to restore pride and confidence in House Targaryen’s leadership after the embarrassment of the Triunification and Rhaenys would be damned before she let anyone or anything jeopardize that.

They also served her future goals. The Velaryons had been up to no good trying to make inroads with their own fleets and trading outposts in the Summer Islands ever since they had taken the Basilisk Isles and they had been recruiting thousands of Summer Islanders, exiles of the ritual warfare customs, to settle the Basilisks. Settlers or potential insurgents that would destabilize the Summer Islands to draw them into Velaryon influence?

Rhaenys had been unwilling to wait around to find out. Now that she had almost completed her conquest of the Summer Islands, the Velaryons had been boxed out entirely. Oh sure technically since they were still her father’s vassals, their trading posts and their fleets would be unmolested but with the South Sea Company and a governor of her choice soon to be in power over the Summer Isles, they would have the legal authority to disadvantage the Velaryon traders until they were completely uncompetitive.

And once they had stabilized the region, the Summer Isles would dramatically increase the reach of the Royal Fleet and its vassal fleets, allowing them to project power deep into the Summer Sea against the Velaryon outposts in Naath and the Basilisk Isles and through them their trade routes to the east.

That would come especially in handy when Rhaenys finally ascended the Iron Throne and put her plans to rein in the Velaryons into action. Such reining in need not escalate to war so long as the Velaryons were sensible and the more advantages she had when she pressed the matter, the more likely it would be for them to submit peacefully.

Which was why she hoped the conquest and consolidation of the Summer Isles continued to go smoothly and did not have any unforeseen complications. And while she very much enjoyed the peaceful and pleasing environment of the Summer Islands, she also hoped that she would be able to return home soon.

Westeros might not be as idyllic or deceptively beautiful and peaceful as the tropical paradise islands, but it was home and it was where her family was, her parents, her aunt and uncle, her children and all her grandchildren.

She had nine grandchildren now. Three from Aegon: Aemond, Maelor, and Daenys, and six from Rhaenyra: Visenya, Viserys, Aelyx, Gaemon, Elaena, and little Vaella whom she had never even seen. She had been born only a few months after they had departed from Westeros. Rhaenys missed them all dearly. At the ages they were at, they grew like weeds and every year missed could never be gotten back.

She was also wary of what letters from her family back in Westeros had informed her of; the Velaryons had been visiting Westeros a lot in her and Aegon’s absence. Corlys and Viserra visiting her father, aunt, and uncle in King’s Landing, Baela and Rhaena bringing their Velaryon spawn to family gatherings in Summerhall at Gael’s behest to mingle with Rhaenys’ own grandchildren, the list of meetings was growing.

Rhaenys knew she had better get back soon before anything concerning happened. The Velaryons might have pretended to be cowed by her father’s ultimatum after the Triunification but they remained conniving as ever. All these convenient family meetings when she was away from Westeros most definitely had an ulterior motive and there was no way she was going to let the Velaryons do whatever they wished with her family without her saying anything about it.

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Sixth Moon, 126 AC

Viserra

“You know it’s almost a tradition at this point,” Baelon joked when they walked into the solar, bottles of Tyroshi pear brandy in hand.

Corlys smiled. “Of course. Don’t tell me you want to drink that Arbor swill?”

Alyssa smirked. “No need to be so defensive. One can appreciate both Tyroshi liquors and Arbor wines.”

Aemon brought five cups and set them down on the table in his solar. Viserra set down her bottle on the side of the table while Corlys uncorked his and pour out half a cup for each of them. They all took a seat and sipped their brandy slowly, savoring the taste and swirling it around in their cups.

Soon a conversation started up and they were conversing over the smallest and most random things, doing their best to steer clear of certain topics all of them had an unspoken agreement not to speak of. The purpose of this meeting was to reunite and rebuild ties with old friends and family. Not bicker over politics.

She was sure Corlys and her had the easier of tasks by far. While they had argued with Aemon, Baelon, and Alyssa in the past, they still had an amicable and cordial relationship and they had attempted to reconcile their two families for many years. The same could not be said for her eldest sons whose wives had been taking them and their children to gatherings in Summerhall hosted by their parents.

Viserra knew her sons could handle themselves, but she was sure that it was not easy for them to be in the same place as Daemon and Gael. Interacting with Rhaenyra, Jaehaerys, and Helaena was also likely to be awkward at best. Still they were doing it, for their wives’ sakes and for the family’s.

It was one of the conditions Baela and Rhaena especially had had to forgive Jace and Luke for lying to them. That they had to let them continue trying to rebuild their relationship with their parents and younger siblings. Perhaps they hoped that by reinforcing the ties of kinship, they could take advantage of their parents and siblings’ sentimental affections for them to convince them into remaining neutral at least when the Dance came.

Viserra doubted it would work but as she had been told outright by both Baela and Rhaena, they cared not one whit for her opinion. They might have eventually forgiven Jace and Luke but they were never going to forgive her or her husband. Viserra didn’t really care. She had accepted that she would never have a good relationship with her gooddaughters long ago.

As long as they kept their mouths shut about their plans for the war and fought for the house when the Dance came, no matter who was on the other side, she would not begrudge Baela or Rhaena their ill feelings for her. So long as their plans were not leaked, and she trusted in her sons to prevent that, there was no harm in them trying to convince Daemon and Gael to be neutral she supposed. She was doing the same after all, reuniting with her elder siblings to reinforce their ties of kinship and feelings of sentimentality so they would continue to restrain Rhaenys and Aegon for as long as they lived.

Still, she was a little afraid that it would prove to be a double-edged sword. She knew from experience that sentimental attachments went both ways and while she was blessed to not have to ride her dragon against her elder siblings, she did not think her gooddaughters would have the same good fortune. The last thing they needed was Baela and Rhaena unable or unwilling to fight their parents and siblings if they sided against their house.

And it was not like the topic could be raised directly either. These things required finesse, tact, and subtlety. Much like with Viserra’s own reunions with her elder siblings, she imagined her sons and gooddaughters had to dance around certain topics whenever they were in Summerhall. They wanted to avoid unnecessary arguments and avoid giving anything away to the Targaryens on accident.

They all knew a reckoning of sorts was coming when Rhaenys ascended the Iron Throne, but since they avoided the sensitive topics, they were left uncertain if the Targaryens had fully grasped that war was the likely outcome of Rhaenys’ actions. They could not and would not confirm whether the Targaryens had come to the same realization they had yet, that war was inevitable. It would be foolish to speak frankly about an impending war with people you suspected to be your adversaries in said war.

The Targaryens certainly didn’t seem to be preparing for a Dance the way that they were, and that was good. The less prepared they were, the greater her own house’s chances of survival were. Viserra just wished that things could have been different, but that ship had sailed long ago.

As Aemon eagerly opened the second bottle of brandy, he sighed to himself. “We should really do this more often. You two bring the finest drinks I have ever had each time. It would be a shame to not try all of them.”

Viserra shook her head with a smirk. “You’re the King. Nothing’s stopping you.”

Aemon smiled in response, but it did not reach his eyes. “Jocelyn and Rhaenys complain and nag whenever I have you over. It can be quite tiresome to hear. At least with Rhaenys away, Jocelyn is a little more muted and I have less headaches.”

“I see,” Viserra said simply, letting Baelon change the topic to something else.

They had strayed awfully close to the forbidden topics. Rhaenys’ feelings about House Velaryon were well known to all of them, and they would not discuss them nor would they discuss her little conquest of the Summer Islands that had enraged Jace with the potential threat to the Basilisk Isles and their trade routes.

It was just one of many topics they all knew better than to tread into. Viserra would no sooner press into Rhaenys’s feelings about her house and her actions that appeared to threaten them than her siblings would brook the topic of her children’s own actions in Essos and the wars they had played an indirect role in beginning. They had already had all those arguments and discussions years ago, and now was not the time to revisit them. It would accomplish nothing.

It was a bit of a shame because she was honestly interested in hearing what her siblings had to say about the wars in Essos. She was sure it would have been a productive and thought-provoking discussion had the topic been safe to speak of.

A lot had happened in Essos in the six years that had passed since the Triunification, and while the Triarchy remained a bastion of peace and prosperity, accepting more immigrants and refugees to integrate into its populace with every year, the same could not be said of the rest of the continent.

In Central Essos, the hope that the Dothraki might finally be cast down seemed to fade with each passing year. The Dothraki khalasars were no longer divided, and had instead rallied behind the first Great Khal in over a century, Khal Drogo.

Drogo it seemed was of the opinion that his predecessors were all fools that had failed to properly conquer the Dothraki Sea, only knowing how to destroy the defiant or exact tribute from the submissive. Their Conches had informed them that he had declared his intentions to be very different from the previous Great Khals.

Great Khal Drogo did not seek to defeat the tributaries and restore the Dothraki Sea, the region of Essos where khalasars had had free reign to roam as they pleased, demanding tribute, raping, and pillaging. No, instead he intended to conquer Central Essos properly and install himself and his vassal Khals as direct rulers of the subjugated peoples in their cities, establishing a Dothraki Empire.

With Drogo’s rise, Central Essos would have to brace for decades more of war and bloodshed. Viserra also remembered that her son had dreams of empire of his own, and if they were in any position to pursue those dreams after the Dance, she wondered if they might come into conflict with this Drogo inevitably.

Closer to home on the west side of the Sarne, Essaria had managed to weather the slave revolt against the elites but it was facing dire economic issues as a result, especially since the continental slave trade in the Dothraki Sea was currently on hold as a result of the war there. That same war had also caused tens of thousands of Sarnori to cross the Sarne and flood into Essaria’s territory, burdening the already struggling Free City’s resources immensely. Fear that the Dothraki would cross the Sarne in pursuit of those refugees or greater spoils and conquests was growing rampant.

Though lacking a refugee crisis of their own, Qohor and Norvos were in similarly dire straits to Essaria. They had crushed their slave revolts brutally, so brutally in fact that they now had a severe shortage of slaves and little means to replace them.

Volantis on the other hand, had the opposite problem. In the city of Volantis, slaves had outnumbered the freeborn five to one and their revolt had threatened to overpower the elites through sheer numbers alone. The beleaguered Old Blood had been besieged for almost a year with the Black Wall and had survived by the skin of their teeth, only saved when forces from Volantis’ vassal towns with far smaller slave populations had relieved them. Volantis however could not purge its massive slave population without crippling its economy and so the Old Blood and their allies now slept uneasily, fearing that a new revolt could break out at any moment.

In Pentos the slave revolts had not failed but they had not quite succeeded either. The ratio of freeborn to slave was not so dramatically skewed in the favor of slaves in Pentos as it had been in the leading cities of the Triarchy before their liberation. Before the war had begun, an estimated 45-50% of the population of Pentos had been enslaved, a great number for sure but not one that allowed them to overpower the freeborn by violent force alone.

After an exhaustive civil war that had lasted three years, Viserra’s house had been called in to mediate and broker a peace deal between the slaves and the elites by their kinsmen in the Pentoshi elites, the Narratys and Iranhor families. They had been uniquely suited for this since many of the slaves adhered to the Zaldilaros Creed and so respected them greatly and their ties of kinship to two of the Pentoshi noble families had led the others to trust in them reluctantly as well.

With their mediation, a compromise peace had been agreed to. Slavery was abolished and a new governing conclave was set up made up of a mix of the old Pentoshi Valyrian noble families and the leaders of the slave revolt, letting the situation in Pentos de-escalate into an uneasy truce. House Velaryon as the mediator would be the guarantor of peace between the rival factions, swearing to taking action against either side that broke the agreement.

Unfortunately, despite them not technically breaking the decree Aemon had made after the Triunification, Rhaenys and Aegon, as usual, had seen it as yet another provocation on their part, further worsening relations between their houses now that Pentos was perceived to be squarely under their influence. It was not like they hadn’t anticipated that either. Corlys had tried mitigating that by getting Braavos to mediate alongside them as they had interests in Pentos as well but not even that had placated Rhaenys and her hawkish son.

It was probably a good thing that none of the Targaryens knew that Luke had been offered the title of Prince of Pentos by the Pentoshi nobles. The nobles had likely thought it the best way to protect themselves from the former slaves or Braavosi dominance and perhaps prevent losing their independence in the future when Jace and the Triarchy came calling.

Luke had rejected it though of course. None of them had any interest in dividing their house and its power in such a way and no matter the exact wording of Aemon’s decree, there was a fear that further expansion of any kind would make even Aemon go to war, unable to restrain Rhaenys any longer. They had chosen not to risk it.

The Triunification and the mess in Pentos were why Essos and its wars as a whole were a topic they all shied away from discussing by silent consensus. Even if House Velaryon was not directly involved in many of these conflicts, their formation of the Triarchy had irreversibly entangled them in Essosi politics and they were perceived to have interests in many of these regions and so it would fall into the long list of topics they stayed clear of.

She was drawn back into the ongoing conversation by a particularly clever joke her husband had told that had all of her siblings laughing uproariously. Viserra could not help but smile. Despite their differences and the fact that their houses were destined to war with each other, she still loved her elder siblings.

Alyssa, who she had hated for so long and yet had proved to be her truest sister and dear to her heart in the end, Baelon whom she had idolized since she was a young girl and Aemon, dear Aemon, who had tried so hard to bring about a peace between their houses, for their families. She felt sorry for them. She would feel little guilt putting down their children or their youngest sister Gael if they dared to threaten her family but she was glad that her eldest siblings would not live to see the Dance.

They were old and tired. She could see it in the weariness in their eyes, the wrinkles on their faces, the slowly growing weakness in their bodies. The coughs that had begun to plague Alyssa, the pains in Aemon’s knees, and the aches in Baelon’s abdomen.

The three of them were all younger than Corlys but her husband was hale and hearty in a way they were not. Viserra doubted any of her three eldest siblings had more than ten years to live. When they died, the last restraints keeping Rhaenys and Aegon from waging war on her family would be gone.

It was for this very reason that Viserra was greatly aggrieved and disturbed when she learned that Baelon had passed away only two weeks after that reunion. A burst belly she was told. Whatever the reason for his death, her second-eldest brother’s passing meant that they were one step closer to war. The Dance of the Dragons approached.

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Author’s Note: I had some difficulties writing this chapter which is why it took so long but I hope you all enjoyed it nonetheless! Any better suggestions for the title of this chapter btw? I was struggling to think of a good one. Lmk your thoughts in the comments below or over on the patron channels in the Discord! https://discord.com/invite/NSEwuzpcWm