Chapter 52: The Gathering of Great Nobles
Ser Otto Hightower, younger brother of Lord Quenton Hightower of Oldtown, was a man of keen intellect and sharper ambition. For years, he had overseen customs in Oldtown, earning a reputation as a just administrator and a shrewd manipulator.
Whenever a vacancy appeared in King Jaehaerys's Small Council, whispers from Oldtown to King's Landing carried his name. And now, fate had brought him to the capital — not alone, but with his entire brood.
Otto's wife, Lady Lysa Peake, rode beside him. Fair-skinned and buxom, her purple silk gown shimmered beneath the afternoon sun. The Peake family — ancient lords of Starpike and claimants of three castles — had long sought to rise once more in the Reach's tangled hierarchy. Their marriage had been arranged years ago by none other than Queen Alysanne Targaryen herself.
Behind them rode their daughter, Alicent Hightower, barely into womanhood yet already renowned across Oldtown for her beauty and poise.
"Prince Daemon," Lady Lysa said with a honeyed smile, "you are even more handsome than the minstrels claim. When word of your marriage to Princess Gael reached Oldtown, half the maidens of the Reach wept for nights on end — mourning the loss of their silver-haired dream."
Daemon smirked, the faintest glint of amusement in his violet eyes. "Do those maidens include your daughter, Lady Lysa?"
Alicent flushed, her hands clutching her reins. "Your Grace jests. Yet I have always admired the men of House Targaryen. You are... gods made flesh. To ride dragons is to rule the sky itself."
Otto and Lysa exchanged proud glances — their daughter had learned well.
Alicent continued, her voice soft as the breeze, "King Jaehaerys rides Vermithor, the Bronze Fury. Prince Baelon commands mighty Vhagar, largest of all dragons. Prince Viserys once rode the dread Balerion, and you, my prince, bestride Caraxes, the Blood Wyrm. No mortal family rivals such glory."
Daemon gave a lazy half-smile. "Glory has a way of devouring those who reach for it, Lady Alicent."
Otto's ambitions, however, were anything but devoured. He saw in this journey an opportunity — his sons placed as squires in noble houses, and perhaps his daughter nestled within the royal fold itself. With Viserys and Daemon already wed, only Prince Baelon Targaryen, widowed and heir apparent, remained.
If fate were kind, Alicent might one day be queen.
Daemon, however, knew the future that Otto could not — Baelon would not live to inherit. The notion that Alicent might instead ensnare Viserys and birth the children who would one day plunge the realm into war churned in his thoughts like wildfire.
He regarded her pale neck and delicate frame with detached calculation. If I were to draw Dark Sister across that throat now... how much blood would be spared in years to come?
But cruelty was an art, not an impulse. A subtler game could yield greater rewards. Otto Hightower and his daughter could be used — and broken — in time.
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The Hightowers' party joined Daemon's escort along the King's Road, winding toward the reeking gates of the capital. The air grew thick with the smell of sweat, dung, and smoke.
Otto wrinkled his nose. "Seven save us, this city stinks like a midden heap."
Daemon chuckled. "That's the smell of half a million souls, Ser Otto. The perfume of power."
Alicent looked curiously upon the teeming masses. "Oldtown is larger, yet the air there is clean. The streets are paved in stone, and the sewers run deep."
Daemon's smirk faded. "Oldtown has stood for thousands of years. King's Landing is but three generations old — born of conquest, not patience. But mark my words, Lady Alicent... one day this city will eclipse all others."
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At the Red Keep, every corridor teemed with banners, retainers, and visiting lords. Guest chambers overflowed with nobles come to celebrate King Jaehaerys's fiftieth year upon the Iron Throne.
Daemon oversaw the arrangements himself, receiving the realm's great houses one by one.
From the frozen North came Lord Ellard Stark of Winterfell — tall, gray-eyed, and solemn. He arrived with a hundred mounted retainers and the chill of the North clinging to his cloak.
When Daemon escorted him to the Dragonpit, the old lord's expression tightened at the sight of the slumbering beasts within — Caraxes coiled in blood-red fury, Vhagar vast and ancient as a mountain, Dreamfyre gleaming like molten sapphire beneath the torchlight.
"In the North," Ellard murmured, "we still sing of the day King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne came to The Wall upon dragonback. The old men claim the dragons lengthened our summers."
Daemon's lips curved. "Perhaps they did."
Ellard's tone hardened. "Yet not all remember that visit kindly. The New Gift was granted to the Night's Watch at their urging — land that now lies fallow and wasted. A queen's kindness can be a lord's loss."
Daemon inclined his head. "Then perhaps it is time those lands were made useful again. I intend to see the Gift reborn, Lord Stark — for the sake of all the realm."
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The lords of the South arrived soon after.
From the Reach came Lord Mace Tyrell, youthful and polished in green armor chased with gold.
From the Westerlands, Lord Tymond Lannister rode with his famed "Golden Twins," young Jason and Tylan, whose mirrored faces and bright laughter earned every lady's sigh. Daemon noted them with interest — Casterly Rock's heirs were pieces worth cultivating.
The Riverlands sent Lord Glad Tully and Lord Lyonel Strong of Harrenhal, accompanied by his sons Harwin and Larys.
From the Vale came Lady Jeyne Arryn, stern and hawk-eyed, with her regent Yohn Royce at her side.
And from Storm's End thundered Lord Boremund Baratheon, uncle to Princess Rhaenys and ally to the Sea Snake himself. His cloak was splattered with mud and blood when Daemon greeted him beyond the Mud Gate.
"Seven hells, Lord Boremund — what happened?"
Baratheon snorted, wiping blood from his cheek. "Bandits, south of the Wendwater. They dared raid one of my villages. I hunted them down and left twenty corpses rotting in the brush."
His storm-blue eyes burned with challenge. "The songs call you the Prince of Flea Bottom, the scourge of pirates and wildlings alike. Yet your Kingswood crawls with vermin. Can't you keep your own roads clean, Daemon?"
Daemon smiled thinly. "At the moment, my Kingsguard keeps order in the city for the king's jubilee. When the celebrations end, I'll see to your bandits personally. The forests will run red with them before winter comes."
He said it lightly, but his words carried the quiet promise of violence — and Boremund, for all his bluster, recognized it.
---
As the banners of every great house rose above the Red Keep's towers, Daemon stood upon the balcony overlooking the Blackwater Rush.
The twin castles of Ice and Flame, still under construction across its banks, gleamed in the afternoon haze — monuments to his vision, his legacy.
The nobles gathered below, laughing and toasting in the gardens of the Red Keep, oblivious to the storm brewing in the dragon's heart.
A gathering of the great, Daemon thought. And soon... a reckoning of the mighty.
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