Chapter 18: Less Serious Matters

The day after a royal birth was always bittersweet. A new babe was always a delight, mostly in the pure potential they represented, but sometimes, as was the case with little Viserys, they were simply a pleasure to witness and hold.

And judging by the lack of screams echoing through Maegor's Holdfast the morning after I returned from Duskendale, I was eager to see how my newest sibling measured up. They would be inferior, I already knew, since mother was growing older and the babe was a few weeks early, if Elysar's remarks the previous day were any indication.

Fortunately, I was a creature of curiosity, so I did not let some trivial details limit my desire to learn more.

Unfortunately, I had something very much not trivial to handle first: breakfast with my family. Or most of it, anyway. Alyssa had not been cleared to leave bed yet, and Baelon was not one to leave his wife alone with a babe. Mother was still under close watch. Father and Maegelle were, predictably, not present.

Which left me with Daella, Saera, and Viserra for company.

And Aemon.

Huzzah.

"How are your studies progressing, Daella?" Aemon took the lead in directing the idle chatter over breakfast by right of being the only true adult present. He had claimed the seat at the head of the table, father's seat, a seat which would become Aemon's in time, and tried to conduct himself as our father might. "I hear you have been reading to your siblings?"

"Mhm!" The girl in question made a nose of confirmation around the chunk of bread she had crammed in her mouth. Perhaps not the best example of etiquette, but she was still a child. After a few seconds, she managed to extricate her food and elaborated. "Vaegon and Maegelle let me read some of the stories from the Seven-pointed Star!"

"Have they now?" Aemon's gaze drifted over to me, seated at the far end of the table. Did my sisters' decision to sit closer to me than him irritate him? Perhaps, but it was hard to tell. He had not inherited our father's inscrutable smile, but he could manage a clearly artificial facsimile. 

A matter of age, that; Aemon lacked the crow's feet that hid the artificial nature of his smile. Given time, he would no doubt be able to copy father's smile flawlessly.

"We did," I said, gesturing vaguely with my own chunk of bread, topped with a slice of smoked fish. "The maesters do say that participation helps with learning."

"Vaeg!" Saera did not take kindly to not being the center of attention. "I can read too! I can do it next time!"

"If you are certain," I said. "Perhaps the tale of the Mother and the young Hugor will be appropriate…"

"Why not the Stranger?" Viserra asked. Oh, she wanted to participate, did she? Finally, some progress! "I liked the story about the singer and his quest. Are there more like that?"

"Perhaps," I allowed. "Though I will need to ask the Septa about that. She might not appreciate discussing some of the darker aspects of the Seventh Face."

Breakfast continued at much the same pace for a while, with my sisters asking questions and me answering them, while Aemon was left awkwardly trying to direct a conversation he was not part of.

Eventually, though, both food and conversation began to dwindle, and we were all ready to face the day. Naturally, I used the opportunity to visit my mother. I was a caring son, after all, and I had a new sibling to love and appreciate.

At least, that was the plan.

"My apologies, your Grace," the knight of the Kingsguard said, blocking the entrance to the birthing room with his white-armored bulk. For this task, this single knight sufficed, given that he was far and away the largest of his sworn brothers. "No visitors are allowed in the queen's apartments by the Grand Maester's orders."

"And?" I asked. "My mother could use a social visit from her son. Or are you about to tell me that a son's love for his mother is to be obstructed, Ser Crabb?" A knight's vows involved obeying and respecting your father, I knew, so why not your mother?

"Grand Maester Elysar left very clear instructions," Ser Crabb repeated slowly. "In this situation, his orders take precedence. Your presence is not allowed inside the chambers."

Oh good, he was capable of forming his own thoughts and opinions. An admirable quality to have in a guard, to be sure. Unfortunately, that quality ran in opposition to my own needs.

"Do not force me to send for your brother to drag you away, your Grace," Ser Crabb warned, indicating one of the servants traversing the halls of the holdfast. "Perhaps you would be better served in returning to Lord Tyrell for your lessons?"

He made a fair point.

Not that there was much I could do, anyways. Besides, I had no desire to be chewed out by Aemon, so I gave in. Leaving the holdfast, I made my way through the keep's vast halls, past the throne room, and towards the apartments of the Master of Coin.

Lord Martyn Tyrell, the Master of Coin, was nominally the man for whom I squired. I was in that position purely because the Grand Maester realized I already knew how to do basic arithmetic, and promptly passed his duties off to someone who knew what they were doing.

Really, that meant my lessons were with his wife, Lady Florence Tyrell, born Lady Florence Fossoway. She had been the entire reason why Lord Tyrell had been granted the post in the first place, after all.

"Ah, prince Vaegon," the aging lord Tyrell greeted me as I entered his apartments. The lord was seated at his desk, an impressive creation of polished oak, though he had little in front of him save for a stack of letters and a candle melting a stick of golden wax. 

He shared a warm smile, like he did not mind me disappearing for several days without warning. "Florence is in the other room. You know the one."

"Naturally," I answered. I had been to these rooms countless times and knew them better than father's solar. "How fares the Reach?"

"As fractious and quarrelsome as always," the lord answered. "House Florent is reluctant to pay their taxes, Oldtown is slow to deliver, and the marches cite Dornish raids as an excuse to not pay. The same as every year. Hardly anything to worry about. Now go, Florence is whom you're here to see, not this old man."

"Of course," I answered, and left the man to manage a kingdom from the other side of the continent. Perhaps asking for his notes on running a kingdom would prove fruitful. The fact that he was keeping the Reach together without major insurrections was a miracle in and of itself. But to do so without even being in the kingdom he was ruling? To be able to implement that on a wide scale would do wonders for centralizing authority…

"Vaegon," I was torn from my reveries by a middle-aged woman's greetings. Lady Florence Tyrell, born Florence Fossoway, was an older woman, her brown hair liberally streaked with grey. The true brains behind the Master of Coin stood over a table covered in a large map of the Crownlands, with a few smaller scraps of paper in front of her. Several tomes laid open, forming a border around the edge of the table. "Take a look at this."

She slid one of the pieces of paper towards. A broken wax seal still dangled from it, black wax imprinted with a… flail? A letter from house Thorne, then.

At first blush, it was nothing too obvious, a missive from the maester of Thorne Keep addressed to the Grand Maester, dealing with some of the local weather patterns in his lord's area. I did not bother asking why she had access to his correspondence, assuming that he had shared it with the small council.

It was data, after all, and there was nothing harmful about data until you connected the dots.

"Is this the normal amount of rain?" I asked after a moment. Those numbers did not seem quite right. My knowledge of average rainfall for the region was lacking, I was willing to admit, but rain for several days in a row seemed far too high. "What about Stony Sept? Did they report more rain than usual?"

"Nothing from Stoney Sept, but a letter from house Chelsted," she said, sliding over another letter. Right, Stoney Sept reported to Riverrun before King's Landing. There was little reason for that information to be directed here. "They reported a slow-moving storm moving south-east."

"Flooding," I extrapolated. More rain than usual, with the storm following the flow of the river, meant high water. Since it was still early spring, that meant the rivers were still engorged by meltwater. It meant a lot of flooding. "Torrential flooding."

"Good." Lady Tyrell nodded approvingly. "And you know what that means?"

"Lower revenues from the area around the Blackwater Rush." I furrowed my brows as I thought for a moment. Maintaining the same tax rate while the area suffered would only hamper recovery and prolong the crisis. Further steps were necessary. "Send grain and timber to the affected areas. And lower taxes by half to encourage rebuilding instead of abandoning the area."

"Acceptable," she allowed. "Although the crown's taxes for the year will be waived in the Blackwater Rush Valley. A gesture of goodwill."

With a nod, I accepted her superior wisdom. Were this another world, a world with far more information where I could more easily create chart supply and demand, I could have found a tax level that would have minimally impeded the recovery effort. In this world, however, I bowed to her expertise in the field. Even if it might shift the economic landscape more than necessary.

Besides, that still suited me just fine.

There were quite a few breweries along the river, breweries that supplied several inns and taverns around the city. Establishments that I did not yet own. If I timed this well, I might be able to further solidify my hold on that market.

All I needed was coin.

"I may have been a bit hasty in acquiring a dragon," I said after a moment's thought, earning me a questioning look from Lady Tyrell. "The beast does not get along with other dragons, so keeping him in either the Red Keep or the Dragonpit is not an option. And the city is too flammable for my liking."

"That is quite the issue indeed," she admitted. "What do you intend to do about it?"

"Build some kind of shelter beyond the city walls until I can acclimate him to other dragons." How I was going to manage that feat was a question for another day. And for another dragon rider. Mayhaps once Maegelle returned from Duskendale... "Unfortunately, that will require a significant amount of coin."

"What do you have in mind? The crown will not build another Dragonpit."

"Nothing so extreme," I reassured her. "Little more than a particularly large gallery, as for a tourney, but made of stone and with a cover for rain. If I use local clay and stone, I should be able to keep costs down."

"A feasible plan," she fixed me with a steely glare. "But I will need more details before I promise any coin."

"Of course," I said, reaching for a blank piece of paper and the piece of charcoal she liked to use to make notes on the map, already making plans for how I was going to cut corners to skim a little, or a lot, off the funding.

With the matter settled, we were able to move on to the next issue: the sighting of a large dragon near Duskendale and the resulting decrease in tariffs.

Oops.

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And here we have a reminder that Vaegon has a basic understanding of modern economics.

And that Alysanne is not having a good time.

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