Pyke rose from the sea ahead of him long before Damon could make out any true detail of it, a jagged black crown of stone and towers clinging to cliffs the ocean had spent ten thousand years trying, patiently, to tear down. As Dreamfyre carried him closer, the castle's full state became plain enough even from the air. Where once, Damon knew from Varys' reports, a dozen or more ships might have crowded the harbor beneath those walls, now only five remained at anchor, small and scattered against the gray water, a pitiful remnant of what had once been the seat of the Iron Islands' power. Five ships, for a lord who had once commanded the better part of the Greyjoy fleet. It told Damon, more plainly than any report could have, exactly how far Quellon's grip on his own birthright had slipped.
Both dragons announced their arrival the way they always did, Caraxes first, a long, rolling roar that seemed to shake the very cliffs beneath Pyke's walls, Dreamfyre answering a heartbeat later, and together they circled the castle twice, slow and deliberate, wings catching the gray afternoon light, before finally dropping in height and settling onto the open ground just beyond the castle's outer gate, the earth trembling faintly beneath the weight of their landing.
It did not take long for the gates to open.
Quellon Greyjoy emerged with only two guards flanking him, no grand procession, no honor guard befitting a Lord Paramount, only the bare minimum his household could apparently still muster. Damon watched the old lord's eyes find the two dragons first, widening despite himself, something raw and unguarded flickering across his weathered face before he mastered it. Fear, certainly, the same instinctive fear any man felt standing before something so plainly capable of ending him in an instant. But beneath the fear, something else moved too, something closer to grim, exhausted relief, the look of a drowning man finally catching sight of a shore he had almost stopped believing still existed. Quellon's gaze lingered on the two enormous shapes a long moment, taking in the scale of them, the restless shifting of their wings, the low, rumbling breath that still carried faintly on the wind, before he finally forced his attention away from them and toward the man standing between them.
Damon began walking toward him, unhurried, and Quellon straightened to meet him, his own eyes narrowing now with the particular sharpness of a man who had survived a great many dangerous rooms across a long life by learning to read exactly what sort of threat stood before him.
What Quellon saw, Damon suspected, was not entirely comforting. A young king, calm in a way that unsettled rather than reassured, a man who had crossed the width of Westeros on dragonback without so much as an honor guard of his own, a man willing, plainly, to do whatever needed doing, king or not, crown or not. Damon, in turn, studied the man before him with the same careful attention, weighing what he already knew against what two and a half years as king had taught him to look for in every lord he met.
Quellon Greyjoy had been, by every account Damon knew was, a renowned warrior in his youth, feared across the Iron Islands and respected, grudgingly, even by the mainland lords who'd faced his longships in battle. Many considered him the wisest Greyjoy to sit the Seastone Chair since Lord Vickon Greyjoy himself, a rare thing among a bloodline not generally celebrated for its wisdom. He had proven a loyal servant to the Iron Throne across decades, an able and strong lord in his prime, and one of the few voices within the Iron Islands who had genuinely championed reform, a slow turning away from reaving and toward trade, however incomplete that turning had remained by the time his own son chose rebellion over patience. Few had dared speak openly against him in his stronger years. He had been strong-willed, stubborn, fearsome when wroth, a man whose temper, when finally provoked, had been known to end arguments permanently rather than merely settle them.
The man standing before Damon now bore only traces of that reputation. Age had worn him down past what his years alone should have accounted for, his shoulders stooped, his frame gaunt in a way that spoke of sleepless nights and skipped meals rather than simple old age, his face lined deeply enough that Damon found it difficult, looking at him, to picture the fearsome warrior that had been. Three years of watching his own son tear his inheritance apart piece by piece had clearly taken a toll no battle wound ever had.
They closed the last of the distance between them until barely two feet separated the two of them, and Quellon, without hesitation, without a flicker of the pride his younger self might once have carried into such a moment, lowered himself to one knee upon the hard ground.
"Pyke is yours, Your Grace," he said, his voice rough but steady.
"Rise, Lord Greyjoy," Damon said.
Quellon rose slowly, old joints protesting the movement, and gestured to one of the guards flanking him, who stepped forward bearing a small wooden tray, upon which sat a modest loaf of bread and a small dish of salt. Quellon took both himself, breaking a piece of the bread and offering it to Damon along with a pinch of the salt.
"Bread and salt, Your Grace," Quellon said. "Beneath my roof, you are guest as much as King."
Damon accepted both, the old custom familiar enough from two and a half years of court, and together the two of them turned and walked back through Pyke's gates, the dragons remaining where they'd landed, watchful and patient, as castle and king alike disappeared from their immediate sight.
The halls within Pyke proved sparse in a way that struck Damon almost as plainly as the five lonely ships in the harbor had. Where a castle of this size ought to have bustled with servants, guards, the ordinary business of a great house, instead only a scattered handful of people moved through the dim stone corridors, their eyes flicking toward the King with a mixture of fear and exhausted curiosity before quickly looking away again.
Quellon noticed Damon's gaze taking in the emptiness, and answered the unspoken question before it was asked. "Most who could leave have already gone, Your Grace. To kin on the smaller islands still loyal, or simply inland, away from the coast. They know a siege is coming, whatever else remains uncertain, and few saw reason to wait here for my son's ships to arrive and test these walls." His voice carried no bitterness in it, only a tired, practical acceptance. "I kept only those loyal enough to stay, and few enough that feeding them hasn't yet become its own battle."
They reached, eventually, a modest solar near the castle's heart, a single table set with a simple meal neither of them touched, and settled into chairs facing one another across it. For a long while the conversation moved through the practical matters of war, the numbers Balon had gathered, the islands already fallen, the few captains who still held some loyalty to the Seastone Chair and might yet be rallied if the tide turned quickly enough. Damon listened closely, committing each detail to memory the way he committed everything of value, and when Quellon finally paused, Damon asked the question that had sat with him since the smoking wreckage of the mystery fleet some hours past.
"Have you noticed any unusual ships sailing your waters these past few moons, Lord Greyjoy? Vessels flying no sigil, perhaps, moving with purpose rather than simple trade."
Quellon's brow furrowed. "No, Your Grace. Though I'll confess I wouldn't be greatly surprised if pirates had begun testing these waters. I haven't the ships nor the men left to properly patrol them, not anymore, and word of weakness travels as quickly across the Sunset Sea as it does across any court in Westeros."
Damon told him, then, plainly and without embellishment, of the fleet he'd found on his flight here, twenty ships bearing no mark at all, and of the great iron scorpions mounted on their decks, built and paid for with singular purpose.
Quellon's expression darkened as he listened, something between exhaustion and bitter fury moving behind his eyes by the time Damon finished. He let out a long, heavy sigh. "Someone's taken the chance my idiot son's rebellion offered them, and decided a dragon's death was worth paying handsomely for." His jaw tightened. "Who do you suspect, Your Grace?"
"The highest likelihood," Damon said, "is the Free Cities. Some merchant prince, or some council of them, with coin enough to spare and reason enough to want Westeros's dragons gone, or at least diminished." He let that sit a moment before continuing. "The scorpions themselves aren't a great concern, so long as I'm not foolish about how I approach them. But I'd like to know precisely how many your son currently holds, before I decide how best to proceed."
"That is something only those burned men, and my sons, would know; pity you can't ask either."
The conversation continued a while longer, numbers and islands and captains, until finally Quellon set down the cup he'd been turning idly between his hands and regarded Damon with an expression that had shifted, subtly, from weary cooperation into something more searching.
"I'll admit, Your Grace, I find myself surprised you came at all." He studied Damon closely as he said it. "I had assumed, from the silence from King's Landing, that you intended to let the Iron Islands finish tearing themselves apart entirely, let Balon win whatever remained worth winning, and then burn the lot of us, winner included, and install some new ruler over whatever ashes were left. It is, I confess, precisely what I would have done in your position. The Iron Islands' ways, our old gods, our old customs, make us more trouble to govern honestly than we are worth to most kings who've ever sat that throne."
Damon held his gaze steadily. "The Iron Islands remain under my rule, Lord Greyjoy, whatever troubles they cause me. Burning the islands wholesale would send precisely the wrong message to every other corner of this realm I've spent two and a half years trying to convince that the Crown rules through law and patience now, not through dragonfire alone."
Quellon studied him a moment longer, something unreadable moving behind his tired eyes, and then, slowly, understanding seemed to settle over his weathered face. "Then I expect you never received my letters either. Nor did Lord Rodrik ever reach King's Landing, carrying the account I sent with him in place of a raven I no longer trusted."
"I received no letters from you, Lord Greyjoy," Damon said, evenly, without the slightest hesitation. "And no man by the name of Rodrik has ever come before me in King's Landing."
Quellon's eyes lingered on him a moment longer than the answer strictly required, something quiet and searching in that look, the particular scrutiny of a man who had spent a long life learning to recognize when he was being told a careful truth rather than a whole one. Damon held the look without flinching, without offering anything further, and after a long moment, Quellon let the matter go, some private calculation of his own settling quietly behind his tired eyes.
He understood well enough, Damon suspected, watching the old lord's face. Whatever had truly happened to those letters, whatever fate had found Lord Rodrik somewhere on the long crossing to King's Landing, Quellon seemed to grasp, without needing it spoken aloud, that Damon had not created the situation strangling the Iron Islands. He had simply found it already made, an opportunity carved open by Balon's own ambition and his father's own failing grip, and had chosen, in his own time and his own fashion, to take advantage of it rather than prevent it. It was not forgiveness, precisely, that settled over Quellon's expression in that quiet moment. It was something closer to grim acceptance, the acknowledgment of a man too exhausted and too pragmatic to spend what little strength remained to him demanding answers he suspected, correctly, he would never fully receive.
"Well," Quellon said finally, his voice carrying the particular flatness of a man setting a matter down rather than resolving it, "what's done is done, Your Grace. I find I haven't the strength left to fight battles on two fronts."
Damon inclined his head, offering nothing further on the matter, and rose from his chair. "I'll fly out to your son's stronghold before the day is done, to see with my own eyes how many of these scorpions he's managed to gather. Once I have that measure, I'll return, and we can settle on how best to proceed." He paused at the door. "The Lannister fleet is already gathering at Lannisport, Lord Greyjoy. Three days, perhaps four, and they'll be ready to sail. Your islands won't stand alone in this much longer."
Quellon rose as well, bowing his head, something in his exhausted posture easing, just slightly, at the words. "Then I'll pray to whatever gods still listen to a man like me that three or four days proves soon enough, Your Grace."
Damon said nothing further, turning instead toward the gates and the two patient, watchful shapes waiting for him beyond them, already turning his mind toward the flight ahead, and the count of scorpions he needed before this war could truly begin in earnest.