Chapter 8: Deceiving the Royal Family

"Leave us," my father commanded after all but dragging me into Lord Darklyn's solar. The lord himself had granted the father the use of it for the duration of his stay as he was too busy showing his son the wonders of the tourney to fulfill the minutiae of rulership. Quite unlike Jaehaerys, really.

His knights obeyed without hesitation, herding out what few servants had been in the chamber in the process. The door slammed shut behind the white knights as they resumed their vaunted guard duty, leaving me alone with my father.

King Jaehaerys the First of His Name was not the sort of man given to fits of rage. Never the blind rage that had consumed his uncle, never the vengeful anger that had consumed his grandfather in Dorne, but it would be the height of foolishness to believe he did not get angry.

Even now, with that carefully schooled smile on his face, my father could have been howling with fury on the inside for all I knew. Jaehaerys, ever the man capable of calming feuds stretching back centuries, was inscrutable when he chose to be.

Curse those crow's feet bestowed by age, making it impossible to ascertain the authenticity of that smile.

"Now, I know what you're thinking…" I attempted to head off any possible anger, not even sure what I really wanted to say.

But he had other ideas.

"Sit."

The coldness of the voice made it clear just how false that smile was. I complied, of course, grateful to finally be able to relax my legs. "Which dragon did you claim?"

"I don't know what you-" Again, my father cut me off.

"Vaegon, do you take me for a fool?" he asked icily as I shrunk into my seat. "We could hear its roar as you approached Duskendale, so please do not try to lie to me."

Jaehaerys paused for a moment to see if I had grasped the statement.

"Now I ask again," he said calmly, "which dragon did you take?"

"The Cannibal," I muttered.

"What?" That answer seemed to have truly taken him unaware, given the way his head suddenly tilted to the side and that polite smile disappeared. His shock wasn't really a surprise given I had admitted to attempting what was essentially a very elaborate suicide.

"The Cannibal," I repeated louder this time.

"Seven above and seven hells below." He sank into Darklyn's seat behind the formidable wooden desk, face buried in his hands. He paused for a moment, just massaging his face before he returned his violet gaze to me. "Have you gone mad, Vaegon? What possessed you to attempt such lunacy?"

"He was destroying hatcheries," I began, flashing a brittle smile. "I thought this would help us breed more dragons."

"That…" He sighed, pausing to stare at the desk for a moment. "The hatcheries on Dragonstone do not matter, not anymore. Do you know why I commanded the Dragonpit be completed?"

I did not expect this change in the conversation.

"Because you did not want to leave a massive incomplete construction in the heart of the Seven Kingdoms?" I hazarded a guess, uncertain why he had changed to this topic. Were they related? How could they? It was a massive stone stable for dragons, to quote my great-uncle, so what did it have to do with the Cannibal?

"Because it was meant to wean us off of Dragonstone," he explained.

I did not bother to hide my confusion, prompting my father to elaborate.

"The Cannibal has preyed upon the hatcheries of Dragonstone since the Dragonmont grew active after the Conquest, since my own father was but a lad, not even a third your age. A dozen hatchlings were discovered during the Conqueror's reign alone, almost all killed after my uncle rejected them. 

Since the construction of the pit, we have hatched two, retained two, and know everything there is to know about those two. The pit is meant to supplant the Dragonmont as a source of dragons we can control and guard more effectively."

"I…" Words escaped my mind at that moment. So the Dragonpit was not complete lunacy born of the mind of a madman? "But won't the Cannibal's removal boost the survival of new hatchlings?"

"Another will take his place," he said, waving off my concerns. "A common habit amongst dragons of Old Valyria. The library on Dragonstone contains some texts on the matter. I suggest you read them the next time you visit if you have any desire to learn more about your new mount."

"I will do so," I vowed. More knowledge was always good. Especially when it wasn't the version deprived of magic and other nonrational entities that the maesters preferred.

"I do hope so, but this occasion need not be entirely grim," my father declared, pulling a wineskin from within his robes, ignoring the flagon set on the desk. He filled two cups with its contents and handed me one. "Drink."

"What?"

"Drink," he repeated, raising his own cup in a toast. "You competed in your first melee, boy. That's cause enough for celebration. Second place is not too bad for a boy still two years shy of manhood, especially when facing a knight of the Kingsguard."

"I don't suppose this means I'll earn my spurs today?" I asked, still reeling from the sudden shift in tone. The cup of wine helped numb the whiplash my father decided to bestow upon me, but only barely. The wine was too dry for my tastes, no doubt one of the fortified brews those marcher lords loved so much.

"Since you didn't win the melee, I think not," he said after a moment of consideration. "Depends on how well you perform in the joust."

The joust? Why- oh, that bastard.

"I don't have a horse," I said after a moment's hesitation. My own steed was still in the Sea Drake's stable. "I can't joust without a horse."

"That is unfortunate," Jaehaerys, still the smug bastard, smiled over the rim of his cup. "I suppose that means you will not be able to compete. Still, you can always watch, and I'm certain Lord Darklyn will appreciate your presence at tonight's feast."

"I'll need to buy a horse…" I muttered to myself, ignoring my father's 'suggestion.' "Maybe the master of horse might know someone able to sell one that will allow me to ride it…"

"As would your-wait, buy a horse?" My father only belatedly realized that I was not going to blindly follow his plans. With exaggerated care, he set his cup of wine on the table. "This may come as a surprise, Vaegon, but your stipend is hardly sufficient to purchase both armor from the Street of Steel as well as a horse the night before a joust."

"I have ample coin," I shrugged. My investments remained a secret, then. So my brother could be trusted to keep his mouth shut on some things, thankfully. Well, that was an unexpected surprise. Unexpected, but not unpleasant.

Quite frankly, I was happier to keep that secret than this trip. An enterprising third son was… potentially worrying to the stability of the realm.

"Would you care to share how you came into that coin?" my father asked, brow cocked. "Even after Lord Tyrell, ahem, adjusted your stipend, it would hardly suffice to buy a proper mount for a tournament. Yes, Vaegon, I am quite aware of that little tip you gave his wife. Why else do you think I had you serve as his cupbearer?"

… he knew about that, eh?

And he never asked?

Or even investigated what I was doing with that coin?

"I may have purchased a few inns across King's Landing," I admitted.

When my father already trusted me enough to not investigate what I was doing with my coin, who was I to lie to him?

"And those inns may have started turning a handsome profit. Oh, and the ransoms from the melee, we can't forget about those. I should turn a profit even after ransoming my own armor."

The master of the Andals and the First Men threw back his head and laughed.

"You make it damned hard to stay mad at you, Vaegon." Jaehaerys drained his cup and refilled it with some more of the wine he carried with him. "Discounting your idiocy with the Cannibal, you can be frightening clever for a lad your age. Which inns are yours?"

"The Sea Drake, The Crawling Drake, The Brawling Drake, Singing Drake, Burned Drake, Drunken Drake…" I started listing my investments, before realizing that even I couldn't remember half of their names. 

There was a ledger tucked into a hiding spot back in the Red Keep with all the details, but for the life of me, I could not remember all of them. "… and any other inn with the word drake in the name is likely one of mine."

Yes, I had a genius pattern when naming my inns. Don't be jealous.

"Hard to believe an innkeeper would sell to a mere boy of your age," he commented, "Even one of the royal line." My father put down his cup and stared at me with that piercing gaze of his. "Intermediaries? No, don't tell me, it's Ser Corlys. You spend too much time with him for it to be mere coincidence."

Whatever his follies, Jaehaerys was not considered the wisest of the Targaryen kings, perhaps any Westerosi kings, without reason.

"Mayhaps I have a friend, is that so hard to believe?" I asked, and my father's expression shifted ever so subtly. Telling why it shifted, however, was ever a mystery with an accomplished statesman.

"A friend with ulterior motives. House Velaryon is ambitious, and Ser Corlys doubly so," my father warned. "In his twenties and still unwed, he is anxious for a royal marriage. His house has already been granted one, and yet he thirsts for another."

Ah, yes, my grandmother Alyssa. It was easy to forget that I was a quarter Velaryon myself.

Well, half. Genetically.

Targaryen incest rides to victory.

"I'll be careful," I promised.

Really, what was he expecting me to do? I was his third son. Even assuming a strictly agnatic system of inheritance, Aemon was already a father and Baelon was about to be. My political power was limited than he fears. I might have been able to arrange a rendezvous or two, but a betrothal was out of my capabilities.

"That is all I ask," he reassured me. "Although now that we have had a moment to talk, it is past time we discuss your own betrothals…"

Oh, dear sweet Seven. Not this.

I'd rather he continued skinning me about the damned dragon.

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