- 25 AC -
Night had swallowed King's Landing by the time they carried Maegor into his chamber.
Four men had borne his body after two first tried and failed to lift him. Two Kingsguard walked before them and two behind, their hands on their swords as though steel could defend the Prince from what was already inside his blood. But they were tense and worried about another attack. Visenya never left Maegor's side. Grand Maester Gawen followed with his open chest clutched against him, the Valyrian knife still red where he had cut the skin beneath Maegor's jaw.
He had not cut deeply enough to open the windpipe after he realised that he didn't need to.
They laid Maegor upon the bed and stripped away the remains of his wedding clothes. The collar of his black doublet had been torn apart. Dark bruising covered his throat and spread down across the top of his chest in branching purple lines, but the colour had already begun to fade from his lips.
He was breathing.
Each breath was shallow and short, no more than a sliver of air passing through, but it came without a reed in his throat and without Gawen having to cut him open from the outside.
Visenya sat beside him with one hand around his wrist. She felt every beat of his heart through her fingertips and counted the spaces between them.
Gawen listened at Maegor's mouth, pressed two fingers beneath his jaw and then placed a little polished silver mirror before his nose. Mist clouded the metal.
"Again," Visenya said.
The Grand Maester repeated every examination. Maegor's heart remained slow but powerful. His chest continued to rise and fall.
"Well?"
Gawen wiped the mirror on his robe. The old man looked less relieved than bewildered.
"He is alive."
"I can see that. Tell me if he's going to be fine."
Gawen glanced toward the door. Two white-cloaked knights stood beyond it, with another six men guarding the passage. The windows had been shuttered and every cup, jug, candle and plate removed from the room. Even the water beside the bed had come from a sealed vessel carried beneath the Grand Maester's own arm.
"The Strangler is a cruel poison, Your Grace," he said at last. "It makes the muscles of the victim's throat clench tighter than a fist, shutting off the windpipe. The lungs may still work, and the heart may still beat, but no air can reach the lungs, and the victim dies of suffocation."
"I know what it does."
"Then you know that no man usually drinks five cups of it and continues breathing like this."
Visenya's fingers tightened around Maegor's wrist.
"And yet he did."
"Yes."
"How can you explain that?" Visenya asked.
Gawen touched the flesh along Maegor's neck once more. Even unconscious, the muscles beneath it remained powerful.
"From what I can tell here... When the poison forced the inner muscles to clench shut, the Prince forced them to tense as hard as he could. Not wildly. The flesh here, beneath the tongue, pulled upward. These along the sides of the neck braced the small bones and gristle around the windpipe. Others pulled in the opposite direction."
He moved his fingers as he spoke, showing Visenya where each muscle lay.
"The Prince essentially... held his own throat open by force. Only a little, of course, no more than the width of a quill, perhaps less, but just enough. I am not certain how or if the Prince can manage to survive on that little air, but... his heart is already beating very slowly, so... it might be possible."
Visenya stared down at Maegor. The muscles in his neck were like iron cables, pressing the blood vessels outwards and showing the smallest ridges against the skin. Earlier, when it happened at the feast, she had thought the poison caused it all. Now she understood that half the struggle had belonged to the Strangler and the other half to her son.
"He overpowered the poison," she said.
"He forced one group of muscles to hold another open while both were being seized by poison. There should have been tearing, and the gristle should have broken. With the amount of force necessary for such a feat, he should have crushed his own windpipe even if the Strangler did not close it."
Gawen looked at Maegor with confusion and a bit of scholarly fascination.
"I have read accounts of men surviving a taste of the Strangler because they vomited before it dissolved. One Lyseni merchant lived after a maester cut a hole beneath his throat and placed a reed there. Your son swallowed enough to kill three men. He neither vomited nor received the reed. Frankly, this surpasses everything the Citadel thought it knew, Your Grace."
Visenya's thumb moved over Maegor's pulse.
"Will he wake?" she asked.
"His colour is returning, and there are no spasms. If they do not come before morning, I believe he will. He must remain still. No wine, no food and nothing by mouth until I am certain the throat has opened fully."
"You will remain here."
"I had no thought of leaving."
A knock sounded at the door.
Visenya's eyes narrowed. Dark Sister lay on a table within reach, and her hand closed around its hilt before the first Kingsguard admitted anyone.
A young serving woman entered carrying folded linens over one arm. Her brown dress bore no house colours. Her eyes remained lowered as she crossed the room, clearly afraid and nervous.
"Your Grace. Grand Maester."
"What is it?" Visenya asked briskly.
"The King commands you both to the council chamber. Lady Ceryse has been found."
Visenya rose quickly, hearing that the one responsible had been found. She gripped Dark Sister harder.
"Alive?" she asked.
"The men who brought word would not say. His Grace ordered that you come at once. Lord Martyn and the High Septon are already with him."
Gawen looked from the servant to Maegor.
"The Prince cannot be left alone. Someone needs to watch him."
"He will not be," Visenya said.
She looked toward the white cloak standing at the door.
"Ser Corlys, no one enters this chamber until I return. No one, understood?"
"Yes, Your Grace."
"The Grand Maester's assistants may watch from the passage," she continued. "If his breathing changes, one of you comes for Gawen and the other remains here."
Gawen hesitated.
"His breathing has held steady for half an hour," he said. "We can spare a few moments, but no more."
"I will return," she told Maegor.
She and Gawen left together. Ser Corlys pulled the door shut behind them and took his place outside it. The serving woman remained within, forgotten beside the wall with her folded linens, as someone unimportant.
For several moments, she did nothing but continue to set the linens down and prepare them for the Grand Maester when he returned.
The noise of Visenya's boots and Gawen's hurried steps faded along the passage. Beyond the door, one of the guards murmured to another. The coals settled in the hearth with a soft hiss. It was so quiet compared to the chaos that had gotten hold of King's Landing.
The woman placed the linens upon the chair.
"A woman is surprised," she said.
The meekness had left her voice. Her words carried the accent of the Free City of Lorath. A group of islands in the Shivering Sea, near the northern coast of Essos.
She reached beneath the topmost fold of cloth and withdrew a needle no longer than her pinky finger.
"The Strangler has not failed a woman before."
Just after she said that, a chuckle sounded through the room.
.
Back with Arlen, he had taken only one step when a dragon's tail moved across the entrance.
It did not lash or strike at him. The heavy red-black length merely settled between Arlen and the open door, blocking it.
Behind him, what had been a choke turned into a deeper vibration that sounded too human and too deliberate to be the helpless noise of a dying beast.
The dragon was chuckling.
"Cunt prince," a voice repeated. "How brave your mouth becomes when you believe mine has stopped moving."
Arlen's entire body went ice cold all at once, and he started sweating buckets.
The words had been spoken in High Valyrian. The voice was deep and strong.
Arlen turned around to look at what his mind hadn't quite understood yet, but his unconscious feared.
Smaug was no longer writhing on the ground. He lay with one foreleg folded beneath his chest and the other resting across the broken cart. Smoke curled from his nostrils; the muscles along his jaw moved because he was using it to talk. And his yellow eyes burned brighter than before.
"You…" Arlen's mouth opened and closed twice before sound came out. "You can speak?"
"Congratulations. You have a grasp of the obvious."
Smaug drew the charred shoulder closer with one claw. He tore away a strip of flesh, chewed it and swallowed. His throat tightened once around the poisoned meat, then relaxed.
"Until now," Smaug continued, "no one in this little castle has said anything worth talking about."
Arlen reached for the knife at his belt. The blade was scarcely longer than his hand, useful for cutting hide and meat from a carcass but pitiful against scales of a dragon. Arlen knew that, yet the weight of it gave him enough courage to continue breathing.
Smaug watched the knife with amusement and chuckled again.
He could have breathed fire. Arlen saw the glow waiting inside his jaw and felt the heat touch his face from several paces away. The dragon, however, didn't do it. Instead, he lifted his head until it stood above the feeder and opened his eyes wide.
"Come, now. Don't be shy. What was that you said about 'cunts'?"
.
The sound of chuckling began deep in Maegor's chest and rolled slowly up his throat. There was only amusement to be heard, which sounded far too much like the sound that Smaug had made.
The serving woman stopped at the sound and saw the smile on Maegor's face.
Then, he opened his eyes.
"It did not fail," he said. "It worked as intended. Quite a nasty piece of work. I was surprised at the potency. Thankfully, I have great control over my muscles. This actually helped me improve. So thank you."
"A prince lives."
"I'm too young to die, don't you think?"
He sat up and cracked his neck and back and rolled his shoulders slowly.
The woman watched the movements without stepping back. Only the slight shift in her weight betrayed her intent to attack and her wariness of the situation. It would have escaped any ordinary man's notice.
But Maegor was not an ordinary man.
A pale blue image pulled free of her body in his sight. It showed the shoulder turning, the elbow bending and the black needle flashing toward the soft place beneath his ear a heartbeat before her flesh moved.
She shot forward, and with gross speed, Maegor caught her wrist. The needle stopped a finger's width from his neck.
Her other hand came up with a short blade. He grabbed her fist this time. Through a show of dominance, Maegor clenched his own fist, and with a gruesome sound of cracking bones, the entire hand was crushed. The knife fell to the ground, and the woman's arm dropped limply to the side.
He twisted his other hand as well, almost ripping off her other hand holding the needle off, and bending it 180°.
"A woman had hoped the poison left you weaker," she said.
"We don't always get what we want."
Her eyes flicked toward her two wrists without much emotion.
"That is unfortunate."
"Depends on which point of view you're judging this situation."
Up close, the servant's face was flawless. Her skin held the small blemishes and faint sunspots of a young woman who had spent years carrying things through open yards and serving the household. A pale scar crossed one brow.
Maegor saw the truth as clearly as another man might see through a veil. The skin pulled a fraction too late when she moved her mouth. Her cheekbones sat higher beneath it. The jaw hidden below was narrower than the one the face pretended to possess. Fine seams clung around the hairline and behind the ears, invisible to ordinary eyes.
There was a smell as well, faint beneath soap, lavender and living sweat. It smelled of cold skin, dead skin, old blood and the beginning of decay. It was the same smell he had smelled beneath Ceryse Hightower's perfume when she had served him the wine.
"A man knew," the woman said.
"From the moment my 'wife' sat down next to me and started eating."
"A man sees through a face."
"I see through skin. I see the muscles below it, I hear the breath change when a lie is told, I smell the dead flesh you wear on your real face. Your faces may deceive ordinary men, but they are like glass to me."
Surprise was evident in the woman's eyes. She couldn't stop that emotion from appearing.
"Ceryse Hightower was dead before the feast started," Maegor continued. "You took her face and came to me wearing it."
"A man is right."
"Where is the body?"
"Where a woman would usually be."
"Good."
That answer surprised her more than his strength had.
"A prince wanted his bride dead?"
"Of course I wanted Ceryse Hightower dead. I wanted all of King's Landing to watch her attempt to murder me. Do you think I would allow my father to marry me off to an Andal House without my consent? That I would be a piece in their game? Of course not!"
...
"A name was given to the Many-Faced God," the Faceless Man said.
"Two names," Maegor corrected.
"A man knows the names."
Maegor smiled.
"Prince Maegor Targaryen," he said. "That was written upon the first parchment."
The black pool returned to the Faceless Man's thoughts: the water beneath dim candles, a cloaked man coming from Westeros and handing them two names to be killed and offering a lot of gold.
"And Ceryse Hightower. That was written on the second."
The woman searched his face.
"A man at the temple served you."
"Correct, but not that he realised it. I bought him through three others and gave each one to kill the next after their task was completed. I gave him the words he was to say, the two names he was to carry and enough gold to make you Faceless Men agree."
Anyone else would have asked why. Why had he done that? Why make someone pay the House of Black and White to kill himself? Why not just Ceryse?
"A prince placed his own name in the house of death."
Two years earlier, on the day Aegon announced that his son would marry Ceryse Hightower, Maegor had begun to assemble the trap. He had been too young in the eyes of the court to refuse his father without outright killing him, and House Hightower had been too powerful to strike without turning Oldtown, the Citadel, the Faith and most of the realm against the Crown.
So he had done neither.
Maegor hated the Faith and the Andals who brought it with them. He knew what it brought Westeros and how it would weaken House Targaryen and their rule. He hated how Aegon, his father, had been lulled to weakness by them and their quick surrender and his crowning. The argument that the Targaryens were conquerors and had no right to change things like that was void, since the Andals had done the exact same thing.
But Maegor wasn't a mindless brute who had to solve everything with his fists.
The following year, while he and his mother rode Vhagar to Meereen and Visenya's ships sailed east toward Slaver's Bay, one galley broke away from the others beneath the cover of a storm and turned north. A man aboard carried with him two names to Braavos to give them to the Faceless Men and have them try to kill them.
It was also for that reason Maegor went to Meereen. He spent a lot of gold and wanted to get it back. Causing chaos in Meereen was a bonus, and they returned far richer than they had left.
The first name given to the House of Black and White had been Maegor's and the second Ceryse's.
"You could not know when a woman would come," the woman said.
"No. But I have a brain and know how to use it. A royal death carries a royal price. I knew your house would watch me, study my habits and wait for a path that did not pass through my mother's sword or my father's guards. All I had to do was give you a simple, straightforward path: the wedding.
The bride could stand close enough to touch me. She could pour my wine before half the realm, and no guard would stop her. To wear her face, you first had to give her your god's gift. One death opened the road to the other. It was the perfect moment and gave you enough time to prepare what you needed."
"A prince could not know a woman would choose her face."
"I did not, but I knew you would kill her, and I knew you would come for me. I knew this wedding would be the best chance you were ever offered. I wasn't sure how you would do it or if you would truly use her face to get to me, or if you would just kill me and then blame her. But I knew what you had planned when I saw you wear that face."
"You drank the poison knowingly."
"A husband refusing the cup his bride poured would have raised questions. A husband dying from it opened so many chances and finally gave me exactly what I wanted. I am glad that you didn't do it before the ceremony was concluded. Otherwise we wouldn't have gotten the dowry... not that that matters anymore."
"But you did not die."
"I don't need to die to doom House Hightower, and they are doomed. The attempted murder of the Prince of the realm by one of their family members is as good a death sentence as any. Ceryse Hightower poisoned her husband. That is what everyone in court saw."
"Ceryse Hightower is dead," she said.
"That doesn't mean she didn't poison me. On the contrary, that's like admitting she did it."
The Faceless Man studied the creature that stood before him. They had miscalculated the risk involved in accepting Maegor's name.
"Lord Manfred," she said.
Maegor's eyes brightened in delight.
"Now you begin to understand. Very clever. To make this story more believable, I had to arrange something else. I had to make them hate me. A little manipulation made him enter the melee.
I executed the Lord Hightower, Lady Ceryse's father, before the King, the High Septon and half the great houses of Westeros. Now, who wouldn't want revenge for that? The Prince was poisoned, Ceryse Hightower fled and was then found dead? Naturally she killed herself, knowing what awaited her should they get their hands on her. And with that, the picture has been painted."
Everything had been placed so that Aegon would complete the work himself. The King would have to deal with Morgan and Martyn, question every Hightower servant, demand captives and strip Oldtown of the concessions he had made. The High Septon could rage, but the entire court had seen his niece pour the fatal cup. Any defence of House Hightower would look like a defence of treason.
Maegor was now free from the marriage, richer than before and had not only moral, but legal right to go to Oldtown and rain fire upon them. The truth was a bit more complex than that, but Maegor had the bigger picture in mind. The situation was going to get a lot worse for some.
"A name once given belongs to the Many-Faced God," she said. "Gold may buy the gift, but it cannot call the gift back. A woman has received hers. Maegor Targaryen has not."
"Then your work is unfinished."
"Another will come. If that face fails, another will follow. One day a prince will sleep, eat, drink or breathe without seeing death beside him. Valar morghulis."
"Yes, all men must die. And I shall decide when that happens."
Maegor's hand shot forward and lifted the Faceless Man by her throat.
"I have no fear of death. On the contrary, I believe that having the Faceless Men trying to kill me will keep me sharp before I come for you in Braavos and slaughter you all. The choice is yours."
He clenched his fist.
"I thank you. You have done well."
*CRACK*