The sea wind smelled foul on the Blackwater Bay. Aemon stood by the rail of the Dornish galley, watching King's Landing shrink into the haze. Its spires, its soot, its endless noise all were already fading behind the massacre he had accomplished at the docks. He wondered, not for the first time, if it was all worth the cost. The blade through Janos Slynt's forehead had been clean and quick. There had been no satisfaction in it, only necessity. Aemon hadn't done it out of rage, though just seeing man's frog face he earned a thousand deaths, it was more of a strategy, a message carved in his enemies blood and his ruthlessness for the realm and certain Lannisters to see, that the new king was no soft singer with a harp.
He told himself it had been the right thing. Yet, as the waves rolled against the hull, he remembered another field and another fool.
Snow had fallen that day like ashes of his men. He could almost hear it still, the thunderous hooves and the screams of Bolton knights when they clashed with the shields of his bannermen as they were cut down. Ramsay Bolton's smirk, that obscene calm, as he loosed arrow after arrow towards his cousin who was running for his life. When the battle was won, Aemon had driven his fists into the bastard's face until it was unrecognizable. But he had spared him a public death, given that chance to Sansa. Mercy, he'd thought then, mercy for a dog who deserved none.
Now, in the deep reflection of the sea, he saw the error he did then as clear as any. He should have ended Ramsay before the gathered lords, let them see what treachery earned and what justice looked like. If he had, the North and Sansa would have bent easier to his words, remembered the cost of infighting when Night King was already coming for them. Janos Slynt's death should've been the lesson given to them long ago.
The deck creaked behind him beneath soft and measured steps. Aemon didn't turn, he knew that gait.
"It was because of your father and mother," started Oberyn Martell's his voice low and edged, "that my sister and her children died."
Aemon turned his head slightly, catching the Dornish prince's eyes in his own.
"I know," Aemon said quietly.
Oberyn came to stand beside him at the rail, both men facing the dwindling capital. "Thank you for saving me and my family, prince."
"I should be thanking you," Aemon replied, his voice steady. "You saved my uncle and cousin. I care not with what motive, only that you did. I repaid what was owed, nothing more."
The waves crash being the only sound between them. Oberyn's mouth twitched half-smirk and half-grimace. "Dorne will not kne.." he began, but the words died on his tongue.
A sound of wheels rolling over the deckboards turned both their heads. A man in a wheeled chair approached, carried forward by a tall man with a long-axe by his side. The face of the man on chair was thin and soft face making him look older than his years with his knees and legs hidden under a blanket.
"It is good to see you alive, Oberyn," said Doran Martell.
Oberyn's words melted away. He moved swiftly, dropping to one knee before clasping his brother's hand and pulling him into a rough embrace. "Brother," he breathed.
Doran's hand lingered a moment on his shoulder before he turned his gaze on Aemon. "We should speak," he said, voice calm, almost weary. "In my solar, Your Grace."
Oberyn's brows furrowed at the title, surprise flashing across his face, but Aemon only inclined his head.
The cabin was dim, lit by the dull orange of ship-lamps swaying with the sea. Doran sat behind a narrow table, the wood worn and ink-stained. Aemon took the chair opposite. The room smelled of parchment and sweet strongwine.
The door opened again. Oberyn entered with two women following his lead, his two daughters Obara and Nymeria. Behind them came Shiera, her red mask glinting faintly in the lamplight, coming and standing by his left, and a young woman who stood close to Prince Doran.
Doran's fingers tapped once against the arm of his chair. "I had four siblings once," he began softly. "Did you know that, Your Grace?"
Aemon shook his head.
"I am the eldest. I had two more then but both of them died in the cradle." His tone was measured, but beneath it trembled grief long buried. "Years passed before I had another sister, Elia." His gaze flicked toward Oberyn. "And then him. I loved them both more than any in the world."
He paused, eyes hardening like stone. "And then my sister died screaming in the Red Keep defiled, cut almost in half with her skull crushed. Her children butchered beside her. All for the sins of your paternal family."
The silence that followed was solemn, broken only by the groan of ship wood crashing against the waves and the distant cry of gulls. Oberyn's jaw tightened. Even he seemed unsettled by the fury in his brother's voice.
"I have spent my life plotting Tywin Lannister's ruin," Doran continued. "And yet you killed one of his beasts before I could. You took from me the justice I had long prepared. Why?"
Aemon looked into those dark, searching eyes. He could feel the weight of Doran's grief, the ache of years. His reply came quiet, but each word cut any doubts they may have for him.
"She was my mother too."
The words seemed to kill the silence itself, Oberyn blinked as if struck. Doran's hand froze mid-motion on the armrest. Even the Dornish sisters and cousin stood still hearing his words.
"Aegon and Rhaenys were my brother and sister," Aemon went on, voice low but steady. "And so when I found the beast who had done it, pillaging through the Riverlands like a rabid dog, I took his head and his spine with it."
Doran's mouth curled faintly, not quite a smile. "So I've seen. One of Beric's men was Dornish. He sent the head to me said a Targaryen king had done what Dorne could not. His skull now hangs of tallest tower of Sunspear."
Oberyn turned sharply to his brother. "You knew of him," he hissed, "and told me nothing?"
"And what would you have done, brother?" Doran asked, calm again. "Charged at him, spear first? Dorne does not kill a man for being born."
Oberyn's breath caught. For once, he had no reply.
Doran shifted his gaze back to Aemon, eyes deep with something between respect and sorrow. "Tell me Your Grace, would fealty from a chair suffice?"
On Dragonstone
Monford Velaryon sat among a restless court lords of the Narrow Sea, of Crackclaw Point, of Duskendale many pacing and muttering in the hall. Lord Adrian Celtigar's voice rose above the rest. "The King should not have gone alone! The Lannisters—"
"—are fools enough, if they dare to touch him," came a deep voice. Thoros of Myr leaned back in his chair, red robes shining in the light. "I've seen him slew the Mountain. It would take men like Ser Barristan himself to best him. Rejoice in casualty he must have caused them, do not for him."
A contemplating silence followed, uneasy but with less worry then before.
Then the doors burst open. Aurane Waters strode in, with gait no bastard of Westeros can muster, a man beside him whom everyone recognized. They all stood up seeing the man that every boy dreams to become. Ser Barristan Selmy eyes swept the room once, searching for one. When he did not find what he sought, his voice rang clear.
"Where is the King?"
None had time to answer when an early teen boy, Jojen Reed, quiet as ever, lifted his head from the table and answered the Bold, "He is here."