The weeks after Driftmark were unlike any Aegon had known. The city's unrest remained, but a new current moved beneath the surface—one Aegon was determined to shape. For years, the Iron Throne ruled by tradition, fear, and precedent, but Aegon saw the cracks as well as the opportunities. If his claim was to mean anything, it must rest not only on dragons and swords but on real loyalty, material gain, and progress.
He began, quietly, with the things that mattered to the people everyone else ignored.
Aegon rose before dawn each day, his hair damp with the faint autumn mist that rolled up from Blackwater Bay. Instead of heading straight for the training yard, he walked the city. Cloaked and hooded, with a pair of trusted knights behind and slightly withdrawn, he watched the dockworkers mend nets, the masons fix a sagging wall, the bakers knead loaves by smoky lamps. He listened carefully when sailors muttered about moldy grain or mothers spat curses about gutter rot.
He took notes—meticulous, terse, and practical. Streets collapsing from years of neglect; bridges in need of repair; whole neighborhoods left shadowed after sundown because lanterns were broken or stolen.
By the time the sun was fully over the Red Keep, Aegon would return to court not just as a prince but with precise plans in hand.
At first, his proposals were met with confusion or skepticism at the council table.
"We have always managed repairs by petition and need," the Lord Treasurer said, waving a dismissive hand at the stack of parchment Aegon carried.
Aegon replied simply, "You've always managed—but never solved." He laid out a plan of labor crews, supervised by trusted knights and paid directly from crown coffers—not through layers of corrupt officials, but straight into the hands of those who actually did the work.
They began with the bridges near the fishmarket, then the shambles near Cobbler's Square. Word spread that the prince himself was seen among workers—overseeing, listening, at times even stripping off his cloak and helping heft stones.
"Fever strikes and filth festers in the gutters," the city's chief healer remarked to him one morning as they walked the smoggy banks of the river. Aegon immediately commissioned a team to clear the most fetid drains and begin a rudimentary sewer: nothing fancy yet, but a marked improvement over cesspits dumping into the open air.
Merchants and lords alike took notice. Some jeered—"Who cares if rabble has clean water?"—but more understood that a city that did not stink and sicken was a city worth living and trading in. The Gold Cloaks, less likely to patrol the worst slums, found their rounds easier as crime dropped with better-lit streets and fewer alleys flooded by filth.
He sent letters up the Kingsroad to Winterfell, offering to buy surplus barley from northern harvests, to be stored in new-built granaries on the city's edge. "Cheap grain in hungry winters wins more loyalty than feasts for fat lords," he told Ser Gyles quietly. The first shipments arrived on crowded carts weeks later, their banners welcomed by grateful smallfolk.
When news came that deep snows had pinched stores in some northern villages, Aegon arranged wagons of southern salt for their use—"Practical trade, not royal gifts," as he told the council. "A hungry North makes for bitter allies. Feed them, and they will remember."
Lord Stark's return letter, written in steady, plain hand, surprised all in the Red Keep: "You see more than most, Prince. When the land grows cold again, remember you are welcome in the North's halls." Such connections were seldom won by threats or gold alone.
Aegon spent hours in the city's forges and carpenter's yards, speaking quietly with inventors and master craftsmen, the kinds of men who were usually paid to build siege engines or gold-leaf armor for tournaments.
He funded the repair and expansion of the city's aqueduct, learning from a young engineer how to shape clay pipes so that water ran clear to all wards, not just the manses of the nobility. He commissioned a new smithy, run by a master armor maker who had lost a hand but could train orphan boys to repair armor and maintain simple machines.
"Show them how to fix things," Aegon said, "not just how to swing hammers. No city that only fights can endure—we must build, repair, prepare."
When a blacksmith's apprentice brought him a clunky but functional design for a new windlass—making castle doors easier to raise and lower—Aegon gave him a small purse and promised him a place in the Prince's company.
Within weeks, the city's watchtowers were fitted with improved hoists and pulleys. "It may mean little now," he said to Helaena as they watched workers assemble crates and barrels with new speed, "but later, when fire comes, the ones who can defend quickly are the ones who survive."
He did not ignore the lords. Aegon made the rounds at feasts and meetings, speaking little but directly—offering small grants for market renovations in the western Reach, sending new lock designs to the gatekeepers in Riverrun, or funding a timbered bridge in Blackwater towns vulnerable to autumn floods.
"A prince who governs himself already governs half the kingdom," Lord Blackwood remarked after a trip to court.
But it was the people—bakers, mariners, healers, and masons—who whispered Aegon's name in the markets, not as a distant lord, but as "the prince who pays, and who listens."
Through it all, Aegon's swordwork never faltered. He fought in the yard with more intensity than ever, often against three opponents at once—determined to hammer lessons into his body as he had into the city.
His instructors noted, "The prince takes a blow, but never gives ground." Even knights who doubted him now watched with grudging respect.
On quieter nights, Aegon met with trusted friends—sometimes Ser Criston, other times old maesters, or foreign merchants who'd braved strange cities across the Narrow Sea—to learn, share maps, and study new designs. He filled notebooks with sketches and ideas: improved portcullis winches, water-propelled mills, fire watches for thatched roofs.
"You're changing the city," one council knight remarked as the riverfront began to bustle with new wagons and wary but hopeful faces.
Aegon only nodded, jaw set. "A wise king makes himself necessary. I want this city to look to me, not just the throne."
By winter's first frost, King's Landing was not healed, but it was changing. Rumors flew to the high towers and the smallfolk alike—of a prince who mended bridges, who paid well, who walked the alleys before dawn and listened to grumbling bakers and scarred stonemasons.
Even those who did not favor his cause now watched with interest. Aegon's network deepened. Noble lords who once doubted him now hedged their bets; distant houses wrote cautious letters of interest; even old enemies admitted, behind cupped hands, that the boy who had been overlooked was becoming a power in his own right.
That evening, as frost bit the wind and torches flickered against cold stone, Aegon sat in the keep's upper gallery beside Helaena. He watched the lamplight glowing beyond the city walls and heard laborers mutter satisfaction as grain bags were stacked by the new granary.
She looked at him, calm and a little sad. "Is it enough?"
Aegon's voice was steady. "It's only the beginning. But it's one thing they cannot take away in council or court—a city that remembers who made it work."
As bells tolled for the evening watch, and dragons settled on the blackened towers above, Aegon Targaryen—relentless, practical, and more determined than ever—no longer waited for the favor of kings or queens. He was building something lasting, stone by stone, day by day—ready for both peace and, if it came, for war.