Dangerous Women (113 page)

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“Sister,” the King called down from a balcony. Unable to walk, or even stand, he had been carried there in a chair. The hip shattered at Rook’s Rest had left Aegon bent and twisted, his once-handsome features had grown puffy from milk of the poppy, and burn scars covered half his body. Yet Rhaenyra knew him at once, and said, “Dear brother. I had hoped that you were dead.”

“After you,” Aegon answered. “You are the elder.”

“I am pleased to know that you remember that,” Rhaenyra answered. “It would seem we are your prisoners … but do not think that you will hold us long. My leal lords will find me.”

“If they search the seven hells, mayhaps,” the King made answer, as his men tore Rhaenyra from her son’s arms. Some accounts say it was Ser Alfred Broome who had hold of her arm, others name the two Toms, Tanglebeard the father and Tangletongue the son. Ser Marston Waters stood witness as well, clad in a white cloak, for King Aegon had named him to his Kingsguard for his valor.

Yet neither Waters nor any of the other knights and lords present in the yard spoke a word of protest as King Aegon II delivered his half sister to his dragon. Sunfyre, it is said, did not seem at first to take any interest in the offering, until Broome pricked the queen’s breast with his dagger. The smell of blood roused the dragon, who sniffed at Her Grace, then bathed her in a blast of flame, so suddenly that Ser Alfred’s cloak caught fire as he leapt away. Rhaenyra Targaryen had time to raise her head toward the sky and shriek out one last curse upon her half brother before Sunfyre’s jaws closed round her, tearing off her arm and shoulder.

The golden dragon devoured the queen in six bites, leaving only her left leg below the shin “for the Stranger.” The queen’s son watched in horror, unable to move. Rhaenyra Targaryen, the Realm’s Delight and Half-Year Queen, passed from this veil of tears upon the twenty-second day of tenth moon of the 130th year after Aegon’s Conquest. She was thirty-three years of age.

Ser Alfred Broome argued for killing Prince Aegon as well, but King Aegon forbade it. Only ten, the boy might yet have value as a hostage, he declared. Though his half sister was dead, she still had supporters in the field who must need be dealt with before His Grace could hope to sit the Iron Throne again. So Prince Aegon was manacled at neck, wrist, and ankle, and led down to the dungeons under Dragonstone. The late queen’s ladies-in-waiting, being of noble birth, were given cells in Sea Dragon Tower, there to await ransom. “The time for hiding is done,” King Aegon II declared. “Let the ravens fly that the realm may know the pretender is dead, and their true king is coming home to reclaim his father’s throne.” Yet even true kings may find some things more easily proclaimed than accomplished.

In the days following his half sister’s death, the king still clung to the hope that Sunfyre might recover enough strength to fly again. Instead the dragon only seemed to weaken further, and soon the wounds in his neck began to stink. Even the smoke he exhaled had a foul smell to it, and toward the end he would no longer eat. On the ninth day of the twelfth moon of 130 AC, the magnificent golden dragon that had been King Aegon’s glory died in the yard of Dragonstone where he had fallen. His Grace wept.

When his grief had passed, King Aegon II summoned his loyalists and made plans for his return to King’s Landing, to reclaim the Iron Throne and be reunited once again with his lady mother, the Queen Dowager, who had at last emerged triumphant over her great rival, if only by outliving her. “Rhaenyra was never a queen,” the king declared, insisting that henceforth, in all chronicles and court records, his half sister be referred to only as “princess,” the title of queen being reserved only for his mother Alicent and his late wife and sister Helaena, the “true queens.” And so it was decreed.

Yet Aegon’s triumph would prove to be as short-lived as it was bittersweet. Rhaenyra was dead, but her cause had not died with her, and new “black” armies were on the march even as the king returned to the Red Keep. Aegon II would sit the Iron Throne again, but he would never recover from his wounds, would know neither joy nor peace. His restoration would endure for only half a year.

The account of how of the Second Aegon fell and was succeeded by the Third is a tale for another time, however. The war for the throne would go on, but the rivalry that began at a court ball when a princess dressed in black and a queen in green has come to its red end, and with that concludes this portion of our history.

Footnote
The Princess and the Queen, or, the Blacks and the Greens

¹In 111 AC, a great tourney was held at King’s Landing on the fifth anniversary of the king’s marriage to Queen Alicent. At the opening feast, the queen wore a green gown, whilst the princess dressed dramatically in Targaryen red and black. Note was taken, and thereafter it became the custom to refer to “greens” and “blacks” when talking of the queen’s party and the party of the princess, respectively. In the tourney itself, the blacks had much the better of it when Ser Criston Cole, wearing Princess Rhaenyra’s favor unhorsed all of the queen’s champions, including two of her cousins and her youngest brother, Ser Gwayne Hightower.

Copyright Acknowledgments

Copyright

Harper
Voyager

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Publishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by Harper
Voyager
2013

Dangerous Women / Edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.

The author of each individual story asserts their moral rights, including the right be identified as the author of their work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007549405

Version: 2013-10-24

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