Because of the stone chicken, young Aegon was somewhat dazed and sluggish; because of the five top courtesans, the Imp was left with a deep psychological shadow.
Both of them needed to rebuild their masculine dignity and confidence.
Thus, one night, the apprentice and the mentor once again entered the Garden of Desire in the Great Sept of Divine Grace, hand in hand.
The "Emperor's Blessing" provided by Xaro proved to be extremely effective. With the aid of those pills, both men finally cast off the weight of the past and found a new beginning.
However, this fixed schedule at a fixed hour also gave ill-intentioned people the chance they were waiting for.
If they had stayed within the Great Pyramid, even the Faceless Men would have struggled to break through its many layers of defense.
But the two of them went out at midnight without a single guard at their side.
Dany descended to the second floor from the top. The moment she entered the hall, the stench of blood struck her.
Two stretchers had been placed on the table. Aemon led several healers as they busied themselves around the wounded. A few others stood nearby: the Duck Knight sighed in despair, the dwarf woman Penny wept and wiped her tears, Jiqui craned her neck to gawk like a spectator, and Quentyn frowned deeply, his face solemn.
"The Queen has arrived," they announced, pausing to give her a rough bow.
"Don't mind me. Continue treating them," Dany waved them on and quickly took in the scene.
Tyrion's right palm was cut to the bone, and a deep gash marked his left cheek, as though his skin had been flayed open, almost revealing his tongue inside his mouth.
It was only a flesh wound, not too serious.
At the moment he was half-conscious, moaning under the influence of milk of the poppy.
Aegon, however, was in far worse shape. His face was deathly pale, his eyelids drooping. The luxurious beige robe at his left waist was soaked through with red.
When they lifted the fabric, they saw the truth: the flesh of his left side had been torn open, bruised purple-black, and the blood that flowed was dark violet with a foul stench.
It was obvious. He had been stabbed several times in the left waist, and the blades had been smeared with poison.
"No hope?" Dany frowned and spoke softly.
"Alas!" The Duck Knight covered his face and choked with grief. "I should have been at the prince's side at all times."
Aemon lifted a bloodied cloth to his nose, sniffed it, and said gravely, "There is still hope. I recognize this poison: Widow's Blood mixed with manticore venom.
Widow's Blood is slow-acting, so we can set it aside. As for the manticore venom, if it hasn't reached his heart, there's a chance of neutralizing it. I've already given him the antidote.
Fortunately, the Unsullied patrols were in the city. They discovered it in time."
"His kidney's been shredded," Dany said, covering her nose against the stench of rot.
"No, only the flesh is torn. His organs are intact. Luckily Aegon was wearing wyvern-hide armor," Aemon said with relief.
"Let me see." Dany stepped forward. Indeed, just as Aemon had said, the assassin's dagger had not penetrated deeply. Perhaps believing the poison sufficient, the attacker had not struck with full force.
The prince's organs were only grazed, swollen from the toxin but not ruptured.
"Your Majesty, your skill surpasses ours. Will you perform the surgery for the prince?" Aemon asked.
The word "surgery" had, of course, spread from the Dragon Queen herself.
"Very well. You work on the antidote, I'll clean the wound," Dany nodded, returning to her former trade.
Perhaps thanks to years of sword training, her hands were swift and precise. Though she had not performed many surgeries in recent years, her movements showed no hesitation. She quickly drained the foul blood from the cavity, then used a Valyrian steel dagger to cut away the blackened, necrotic flesh.
When all was done, Dany recalled the blood-type testing technique she had devised with the sorcerous lens. Quietly, she ordered a few guards to draw blood, then secretly transfused it into Aegon.
This technique was her own invention. She had experimented on the stonemen spies she had sent into Astapor, observing rejection reactions after transfusions to develop a method for identifying blood types.
Valyrians themselves had never invented transfusion. In a world where bloodlines were revered, to let another's blood flow into one's body would be to deny one's noble heritage.
They had the potential to discover blood testing, but they had never pursued it.
Even old Aemon had been strongly opposed.
The day Dany proudly shared her discovery with him, the old maester was shocked, then insisted she never make it public, even urging her to destroy the research.
It was obvious—the Targaryens were the greatest beneficiaries of bloodline supremacy.
First, Aemon did not want the family to step down from its pedestal. Second, he feared others might seize Targaryen blood and inject it into themselves to claim its power.
For indeed, Targaryen blood truly held power.
At first, Dany had been swayed by his reasoning. After all, the future of House Targaryen would be her own descendants.
And she remembered well the warning she had received in the House of the Undying, when she crossed time itself to commune with a great Valyrian sorcerer: blood mages were seeking to steal her true dragon's bloodline.
This proved the theft of bloodlines was not mere fantasy—it was a real danger.
So she had heeded the old man's advice, destroyed her notes, and never made the discovery public. Even if she had, it would mean nothing to ordinary folk—they lacked the sorcerous lens required for blood testing.
Later, when she delved deeper into her own blood, she stumbled upon something intriguing: the Valyrians had long ago placed a lock upon their lineage. A higher bloodline could accept blood from a lower, but not the reverse.
In short, Dany could receive blood from others, but ordinary people of the same blood type would reject hers, as though they were incompatible.
They were, in truth, not the same.
The energy level was different.
The Valyrians were the ancestors of blood sorcery. Of course, they would protect themselves from thieves. It made perfect sense.
With this, Dany conceived a new idea: one day, she would design an even stronger lock, reserved for the Targaryens.
After all, science and knowledge march ever forward. Sooner or later, someone would rediscover transfusion.
"The moment I got into the carriage, I sensed something was wrong. The ride was bumpier than usual, and the driver was clearly a novice. In Astapor, all the drivers had been slaves trained to handle carriages, so it was impossible for a novice to appear.
Then, when I lifted the curtain in front to ask a question, I realized the carriage wasn't heading toward the Great Pyramid at all.
That was when I knew I was in trouble."
The dwarf let out a sigh, shook his head with a bitter smile, and said, "There were only two of them, but Prince Aegon had taken two pills and was utterly exhausted. Luckily, an Unsullied patrol heard my cry for help."
By the next day, Aegon's face was still ashen, his lips dark purple, lying unconscious on the bed. The Imp, however, awoke slowly once the effects of the milk of the poppy wore off that night.
"Why weren't you poisoned?" asked the Duck Knight, frowning.
"I told you, there were two assassins." Tyrion looked helpless, though in his heart he prayed to the Seven for protection.
"Two Sorrowful Men," said Dany.
The assassins had tried to flee. They slipped into a dark alley that night but failed to escape the city.
Before dawn, alerted by Astapor's citizens, patrolling Unsullied captured the two suspects.
Within an hour of being thrown into the dungeon, Hatal had extracted all their secrets through torture.
"Sorrowful Men from Qarth?" Tyrion groaned, protesting, "Collateral damage! The assassins were clearly after you, yet we were the ones who stumbled into them. What rotten luck!"
Dany's expression grew strange. She shook her head and said, "You're wrong. They were sent to kill you."
"What? That can't be. How could we have offended them…" Tyrion was stunned.
"Just the two of us?" he asked cautiously.
"Not sure."
"I knew it. After doing so many terrible things, how could anyone not hate me?" the dwarf moaned, covering his face.
"Terrible things?" Dany's voice rose, her expression darkening.
"Well, in the eyes of the coalition, isn't that how it looks?"
The Sorrowful Men were not Faceless Men; they could not change their faces. They disguised themselves as sailors, hired by sea merchants in New Ghis who traded between Slaver's Bay and the coalition forces. Once they reached Astapor, they slipped away from the ship unnoticed.
Originally, the assassins had no chance of approaching Aegon or Tyrion. But those two fools were struck with sudden urges and went sneaking off to the pleasure gardens at midnight.
The Sorrowful Men had no intention of killing them on the spot. Their goal was to force the Wildfire General to reveal the secret of how to stabilize wildfire bombs.
Unlike the Faceless Men, the Sorrowful Men lacked unshakable will. Dany already knew all the secrets of their organization.
That very morning, she mounted her black dragon, taking Morona and Little White, and flew two thousand kilometers to Qarth.
By dawn the next day, they had returned silently to Astapor.
Several days later, terrifying news spread to New Ghis: the millennia-old order of the Sorrowful Men had been reduced to dust; the ancient royal family of Qarth now stood on the brink of extinction; the palace hall once visited by the Dragon Queen was destroyed by dragonfire; among the Thirteen, five of their number perished when their mansions were burned; the Tourmaline Brotherhood and the Ancient Guild of Spicers also met with ruin, their headquarters consumed by dragonfire with not a single survivor; three commercial docks owned by the Thirteen, the Brotherhood, and the Spicers were also set ablaze, igniting half of the Qarth Straits.
"Of course Qarth had scorpions, but not many, only about three hundred," Xaro said in despair, clutching his head.
Just days earlier, when he returned to New Ghis with seventy noble prisoners of war, the whole city had turned out to cheer. Coalition representatives rose to applaud him, and lords and nobles toasted him at the banquet.
Flowers, wine, applause, and praise—he had been at the height of glory.
Now, he looked like a beaten rooster, his head drooping, his face full of misery.
"They only had two dragons and no wildfire. Three hundred scorpions might not have been enough, but it shouldn't have allowed them to burn the city so thoroughly, wiping out Qarth's elite almost without restraint," said Tregar, puzzled.
"Most likely the camel cavalry are to blame," the bald wet nurse replied bitterly. "Qarth's terrain is unique, protected by the Red Waste. It had never faced threats from land, so the camel cavalry serving as the city's guard were nothing but decoration, a ceremonial honor guard. They…"
"They didn't even set up the scorpions, didn't man the engines, and on the night the dragons attacked, those idiots weren't even on watch!"
With a loud thump, War God Yen Kai slammed the letter onto the table, picking up the thread of the conversation with a furious curse.
"That's impossible!" the representatives exclaimed in shock.
Even Dany was stunned. She had only intended to burn down the Sorrowful Men's undefended stronghold, yet when Morona scouted the city, she discovered Qarth had no aerial defenses at all.
(End of chapter)
Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon
https://patreon.com/Glimmer09