The docks at the southern harbour had become Arthur's favourite place on the island when the weather was good. Even compared to the castle the docks felt much better, because that's where the people were.
Arthur sat on the stone wall at the end of the pier with his legs stretched out in front of him, a heel of bread in one hand and a cup of watered wine in the other, around him the harbour bustled with the activity of a fishing village in the middle of a warm afternoon.
Three boats had come in with the morning tide and the catch was being sorted and cleaned on the tables that Orwin's sons had built along the quay, the fishermen working while their wives and daughters packed the cleaned fish into barrels of salt. Children ran between the tables and along the dock, barefoot and sunburnt and shouting at one another.
Mira sat beside him on the wall with Mordred in her lap, the boy propped against her chest with his violet eyes open and tracking the movement of the gulls overhead. Cassie was a few feet further along with Percival on one hip and Morgana cradled in her other arm, talking with Dalla about something involving bread and honey.
Rhaella sat cross-legged on a blanket that had been spread on the sun-warmed planks of the dock, wearing the simple linen dress that Mira had given her and looking more relaxed than Arthur had ever seen her look in the Red Keep. Her silver-gold hair was loose and the sea breeze kept catching it and throwing strands across her face, she kept pushing them back with absent fingers while she watched the children playing.
She looked completely at ease.
The harbour folk had accepted her presence without question. Arthur had introduced her simply as a friend of the family who would be staying with them for a time, and the islanders, who were not in the habit of interrogating their lord about his household arrangements, had nodded and welcomed her. If any of them had noticed the silver hair or the violet eyes or the way she carried herself, they had kept their observations to themselves.
"My lord."
Arthur looked up to find Orwin approaching along the dock with his white beard freshly trimmed and a faintly curious expression on his weathered face.
"There is a ship coming into the harbour, my lord."
Arthur set down his cup and stood and shaded his eyes with one hand to look out past the harbour mouth. The ship was still perhaps half a mile out, a broad-beamed trading cog with a single mast and patched canvas that had seen better days, moving toward the inlet on the afternoon wind.
He knew that ship.
He had arranged for that ship.
Arthur turned to Mira and Cassie with a grin he could not quite control.
"I have a little surprise for you."
Mira's eyes narrowed immediately. "What kind of surprise."
"The good kind. I promise."
The ship entered the harbour and the crew furled the sail as it coasted toward the dock on its own momentum. The mooring lines were thrown and caught and the vessel was hauled in against the pier and the gangplank was lowered onto the dock with a thud that sent a small flock of gulls scattering into the air.
The first person off the gangplank was a boy.
Behind him came a second child, a girl. Behind her came another boy, and another, and then two more girls holding hands, and then a cluster of three children so close in age that they might have been siblings but almost certainly were not, and behind all of them, towering over the lot with a pack on his back the size of a small pony, was the enormous shambling figure of Lunk.
Mira's bread fell out of her hand.
"Oh," she said. "Oh!"
She was off the wall in a heartbeat, Mordred hastily passed into Rhaella's startled arms, and then she was running down the dock toward the gangplank with her skirts bunched in her fists and her hair flying behind her. Cassie was half a second behind her, Percival and Morgana deposited into Arthur's arms so quickly that the silver-haired boy made a squawk of indignation at the sudden transfer, and then both women were at the bottom of the gangplank wrapping their arms around children who were shrieking and laughing and climbing over one another to get to them.
"MIRA, MIRA, MIRA."
"CASSIE LOOK HOW TALL I GOT."
"I MISSED YOU SO MUCH."
"IS THIS THE ISLAND, IS THIS WHERE WE LIVE NOW."
Mira had two children in her arms and a third clinging to her leg and she was laughing and crying at the same time, which she did by alternating between the two in rapid succession so that it was impossible to tell from moment to moment which one she was actually doing. Cassie had knelt down on the dock and pulled four of the smaller ones against her in a group hug that threatened to topple all five of them into the water.
Lunk came down the gangplank last, his huge feet landing on the dock planks with a thud that Arthur felt through his boots. The big man looked around at the harbour and the village and the green hills beyond.
"Big island," Lunk said.
"Yes, Lunk," Arthur called. "Big island."
"Lunk likes it."
"Good. Because you live here now."
The first boy off the gangplank had broken away from the cluster around Mira and Cassie and was now running out down the dock toward Arthur with his arms pumping and his face split by a grin so wide it threatened to meet at the back of his head.
"ARTHUR. ARTHUR."
Jory skidded to a halt in front of him, breathless and vibrating with an excitement that his small body could barely contain. The boy had grown at least two inches since Arthur had last seen him and his face had lost some of its childish roundness, but the eyes were the same ones full of the fierce hero-worship that had been there since the day Arthur had first shown him how to hold a sword properly.
"Arthur, I have been practising every single day since you left, every day, I promise, even when Alys told me to stop swinging the sword, and I can do the guard stance you showed me, the high one and the low one, and I have been running every morning too, all the way around flea bottom and back twice, and—"
"Jory."
"—and I tried to teach the other kids but they didnt want to learn which is fine because it means I am the best one, and—"
"Jory."
The boy stopped talking with visible effort, his mouth still open and ready to resume at a moment's notice.
Arthur looked at him for a moment. Then he set Percival and Morgana carefully down into the padded basket that Rhaella had carried over and crouched so that he was eye level with the boy.
"I am glad you have been practising. Because now that I am a knight I need my own squire."
Jory's mouth closed.
His eyes went very wide.
His whole body went perfectly still. "You mean... you mean me."
"I mean you. If you want it."
"I WON'T LET YOU DOWN." The words came out at approximately twice the volume of normal human speech and Jory's fist punched the air hard enough that the wooden sword in his belt rattled. "I promise, Arthur, Ser Arthur, my lord, I will be the best squire in the whole kingdom, I will train harder than anyone, I will polish your armour until you can see your face in it, I will—"
"You can start by calling me lord or ser and not shouting in my ear."
Rhaella had come closer during the exchange and she stood a few paces behind Arthur with Morgana cradled in her arms and her mouth curved in a smile that crinkled the corners of her violet eyes.
"He is adorable," she said.
Jory noticed her for the first time and went immediately and profoundly red. "I, ah, hello again, my lady, ah—"
"Jory," Arthur supplied.
"Jory," Jory confirmed, having apparently forgotten this information temporarily.
Arthur ruffled the boy's hair and stood, and then he walked down the dock to where the rest of the children from the orphanage had gathered in a loose excited cluster around Mira and Cassie. There were fourteen of them in total, ranging in age from the youngest.
Arthur greeted each of them by name. He shook the older ones' hands and ruffled the younger ones' hair and picked up two of the smallest and balanced them on his hips while they giggled and grabbed at his tunic, and Rhaella stood beside him and held Morgana and smiled at every one of them in turn.
"Where is Alys," Mira asked, looking past the children toward the gangplank.
"She stayed," Arthur said. "She wanted to keep the orphanage running in Flea Bottom, but she will send children to us when she can and I will keep her funded well enough that she never has to worry about coin again."
Mira nodded slowly, and Arthur could see the small private struggle in her face between the sadness of not having Alys here and the respect for the old woman's choice, and after a moment the respect won out and she nodded again.
Arthur turned to one of his men who had been standing nearby. "Escort the children to the new building by the lake. Make sure there is food ready for them and beds made up, and send word to Orwin that we will need an extra hand or two to help get them settled in."
"Yes, my lord."
He turned to his wives and to Rhaella. "Go with them, all three of you. Show them the lake and the forest and the castle, let them run around until they collapse. I will join you later."
Mira looked at arrhur with a sad expression as she knew what this meant.
Arthur gestured to two of his guards, and the men moved to the carriage that sat at the top of the harbour road and brought down a heavy iron-banded chest. They carried it between them down the dock and up the gangplank and set it carefully in the hold of the ship.
"Arthur," Cassie said quietly. "Do you really have to go now."
He let out a long breath and ran his hand through his hair. "I have put it off for two weeks, Cass. I cannot put it off any longer. Every day I wait is another day that they are looking for her and another day that the search gets closer to here. I need to deal with this while I still have the chance to deal with it on my own terms."
Mira reached out and took his hand and squeezed it hard. Rhaella however had gone very still. She stood a few paces back from the others with Morgana and Percival still in her arms and her eyes fixed on the deck planks beneath her feet, the guilt that she carried was visible in every line of her body, in the slight drop of her shoulders and the way her jaw had tightened and the care with which she was not looking at anyone.
Arthur crossed to her and pulled her into a one-armed hug.
"It is going to be all right," he said quietly against her hair.
"If it does not work—"
"It will work."
"Arthur, if it does not—"
"It will work. And even if it doesn't, I will figure something else out. I always do. Trust me."
She nodded against his shoulder and pressed her eyes shut for a moment, and when she opened them again they were wet.
He kissed Mira. He kissed Cassie and he kissed Rhaella, then he kissed each of his children on the top of their heads. Then he turned and walked up the gangplank. He had one foot on the deck when a pair of small boots came clattering up the planks behind him.
Arthur turned to find Jory standing at the top of the gangplank with his wooden sword in his belt and his chin lifted.
"What do you think you're doing," Arthur said.
"I am your squire, Ser. A squire goes where his knight goes. You told me that yourself."
"I told you that in the context of carrying my practice gear across the training yard, not sailing into a city where I might be—" He stopped himself. "Jory, this is not a trip where I need a squire."
"Then you don't need me and I will stay out of the way and you won't even know I am here."
Arthur looked at the boy.
The boy looked back at him.
He chuckled despite himself and shook his head. "Fine. Get on board."
"Yes, my Lord."
Arthur called down to the captain who was checking the mooring lines at the stern. "Set sail for King's Landing."
"Aye, my lord."
The lines were cast off, the sail went up and the cog caught the wind and pulled away from the pier, and Arthur stood at the rail and watched Mira and Cassie and Rhaella growing smaller on the dock, the three of them standing close together with the children around them.
He waved at them.
They waved back.
Then he turned to face the open water.
...
The crossing took less than half a day, but it felt considerably longer when the contents of the chest in the hold could make him either one of the most honoured men in the kingdom or one of the most thoroughly dead. Arthur spent most of the journey sitting on a coil of rope near the bow with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together, his heart beat so hard the entire time that he was surprised it did not wear itself out.
He ran through the plan in his head.
Halfway across the bay, with King's Landing visible as a smudge of smoke and stone on the western horizon, he had a moment of such pure and absolute clarity that it stopped him mid-thought.
What the fuck am I doing.
The words formed in his head fully formed and perfectly articulated, and for a few seconds he considered ordering the captain to turn the ship around. He was sailing voluntarily into a castle full of people who had the legal authority to execute him, carrying evidence of a crime he had committed against the royal family, and his plan, his entire plan, rested on the assumption that his gift would be enough to convince a prince to give up his daughter and a king to forgive a man who had harboured her for weeks.
It was insane.
It was the single most reckless thing he had ever done in his life, and this was a life that included jumping onto the back of a wyvern.
He still pushed through it.
He pushed through it because the alternative was going back to Brightwater and telling Rhaella that he could not save her, and that was not something he was willing to do, and so the fear stayed where it was and he watched King's Landing grow larger and larger until the harbour was close enough that he could make out individual ships at the docks and the red-and-black banners on the walls of the Red Keep above.
The ship entered the harbour and made for an open berth.
Arthur stood and straightened his tunic and checked that Sunset was properly secured at his hip and then he called his four guards over. They were good men, loyal men, men he had hand-picked from the first batch of household guard he had trained on Brightwater.
"Listen to me carefully. If anything happens to me in there, if I am arrested or if I am detained or if I do not come out by this time tomorrow, I want you to take this letter"—he held up a folded and sealed parchment—"back to Brightwater and hand it to Mira. Put it in her hands and no one else's. Am I understood."
"Yes, my lord."
"Good."
He turned to Jory, who was bouncing on his toes beside the gangplank.
"Jory. Listen to me. We are about to enter the Red Keep. There are going to be lords and ladies and princes and princesses and men who take themselves very seriously. You will address every person you are not sure about as my lord or my lady. You will not speak unless spoken to. You will not touch anything. You will not stare at anything. And you will not, under any circumstances, do anything stupid. Do you understand."
Jory nodded so rapidly that Arthur was briefly concerned for the boy's neck. "Yes, Ser. My lord. Yes."
The gangplank came down. Arthur walked down it with Jory at his heels and the guards behind them carrying the chest, and the moment his boots touched the stone he saw them.
Prince Duncan stood at the foot of the dock road in a dark doublet with his hand raised in greeting, and beside him, towering over everyone else in the immediate vicinity by at least a foot and a half, was Ser Duncan the Tall in his white armour and white cloak.
Arthur's chest loosened slightly at the sight of them.
Duncan came forward and clasped his forearm in a firm grip and then pulled him into a brief hug. "Arthur. You bloody fool, where have you been, I was beginning to think you had sailed your island off the edge of the map and I was never going to see you again."
"I have been building a castle and changing nappies, Your Grace. Neither of which leaves much time for social calls."
"Neither of which is an acceptable excuse." Duncan released him and held him at arm's length and looked him over. "You look well, my friend. Bigger, somehow. What are they feeding you out there."
"Fresh air and fish and a great deal of hard work."
Ser Duncan the Tall stepped forward and offered his hand and Arthur gripped it.
"It is good to see you, Dunk."
"And you, Arthur. Truly."
Arthur turned and put his hand on Jory's shoulder and pushed the boy forward slightly. "This is Jory. My squire."
Both Duncans looked down at the boy.
Jory looked up at both Duncans.
The boy's mouth was open and his eyes were approximately the size of dinner plates, and whatever speech he had been preparing in his head had clearly evaporated the moment he found himself standing in front of the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and the Prince who was famous across the realm for punching a man off his horse at a tourney.
"I, ah, it is, my, ah, it is an honour, my, ah—"
"Breathe, lad," Ser Duncan said.
"—my lords, both of you, my lords, I mean Your Grace and my lord Ser, I mean—"
"He is nervous," Arthur said.
"I can see that." Prince Duncan grinned down at the boy with genuine warmth. "Welcome to King's Landing, Jory. Your knight is one of the finest men I have ever known, and if he has chosen you as his squire then you must be something special. Try not to let him get killed."
"Y-yes, Your Grace. I will try very hard, Your Grace."
Ser Duncan the Tall leaned down, which took some time given the distance involved, and extended one enormous finger and tapped the wooden practice sword in Jory's belt. "Is that your weapon, young squire."
"Yes, my lord Ser. I practise with it every day."
"Good lad. We will get you a proper one before you leave."
Jory made a sound that was not entirely human.
Arthur gestured to his guards and they brought the chest forward, the iron bands gleaming in the afternoon light, and Prince Duncan's eyes went to it immediately with the sharp curiosity of a man who had spent his whole life around things that came in locked chests.
"What is in there, Arthur."
"I will tell you when we are inside, Your Grace."
"That is ominous."
"It is important." Arthur paused, choosing his next words carefully as they walked toward the waiting carriage. "I would like to call a meeting, Duncan. The family. Not the small council. Just the family, and no one else."
Duncan's stride slowed slightly. "That is unusual, Arthur."
"I know."
"The councillors will not like being excluded."
"They will survive."
Duncan looked at him sideways. Arthur could feel the prince's eyes on the side of his face, trying to read the thing that Arthur was not saying. After a long moment Duncan nodded.
"Fine. I will arrange it."
"Thank you."
"Arthur."
"Yes."
"You look nervous."
Arthur did not reply to that. He climbed into the carriage and sat beside the chest and stared at the wall opposite and said nothing for the entire ride up Aegon's High Hill.
The Red Keep was simultaneously exactly the same as he remembered and completely different, because the last time he had been inside these walls he had been a squire who owed everything he had to the grace of other people, and now he was walking through the corridors as a lord of the realm with a title and a castle and a family name that men across the entire crownlands knew. The guards recognised him. The servants nodded. A steward bowed so deeply that Arthur was concerned the man might not make it back up again.
Prince Duncan led him to the small council chamber, his guards set the chest down beside his chair and took up positions by the door outside while funcan left to gather the family.
Arthur sat in the empty chamber and stared at the chest and tried to control the hammering of his pulse. If this did not work he was going to be standing in this room as a confessed criminal within the hour, a man who had admitted to harbouring a princess of the blood, and all the goodwill and all the heroism and all the knighthoods in the world would not save him from the consequences.
He could probably fight his way out. Between Sunset and [The World] and the training he had done over the past few years he was confident he could cut through the household guard and reach the harbour, but what then.
War with the crown from a fishing island in the Blackwater?
The Targaryens would send a fleet. They would burn his castle and scatter his people and take his children, and everything he had built would be ash.
The door opened.
Arthur stood.
King Aegon entered first, the red-gold crown on his brow and his eyes already finding Arthur's across the length of the room. Queen Betha walked beside him with her hand resting lightly on the king's arm.
Prince Jaehaerys came next with Princess Shaera at his side. Jaehaerys was not bothering to hide his displeasure at being summoned, his eyes swept the room and landed on Arthur with an annoyance that communicated very clearly that whatever the jumped-up island lord had to say, it had better be worth interrupting his afternoon.
Behind them came Prince Aerys.
Arthur had not seen Rhaella's brother since the day the royal family had returned from Harrenhal, and the young prince had changed. He was taller, leaner and his silver hair was pulled back from his face. He entered the room without acknowledging Arthur or anyone else and took a chair at the far end of the table.
Ser Duncan the Tall took his position by the wall behind the king's chair. Prince Duncan sat in his usual place.
"Lord Pendragon." King Aegon settled into his seat at the head of the table and inclined his head. "I am glad you are here. It has been too long since we have spoken, and I confess your timing is welcome. We could use a friendly face in this castle at the moment."
"Your Grace." Arthur bowed. "Thank you for agreeing to this meeting."
Queen Betha smiled at him with genuine warmth. "You look well, Arthur. Island life agrees with you."
"I wonder why we are here at all surely a mere peasant lord doesn't warrant the attention of the entire royal family," Jaehaerys said.
King Aegon raised one hand slightly. "Lord Arthur is a friend to this family and has proven it at considerable personal cost. He has earned the right to our attention, Jaehaerys, and I will thank you to show him the courtesy he deserves."
Arthur felt the king's words settle over the room, and he thought. 'Shit, that is not going to make this any easier.'
He drew a breath.
"Your Graces. Thank you for hearing me. I know that the past several weeks have been difficult for this family, and I know that what I am about to tell you is not going to make them easier. But I believe you deserve the truth, and I have come here to give it to you."
The room went quiet.
"For the past several weeks the crown has been searching for Princess Rhaella. His Grace himself even wrote to me personally and asked for my help in finding her." He looked at Aegon briefly but the king's face betrayed nothing. "I am here to tell you that she is not missing."
Jaehaerys sat forward in his chair.
"When my wives left King's Landing to join me on Brightwater Isle, Princess Rhaella asked them to take her with them. My wives agreed, and the princess sailed with them to Brightwater, and she has been living under my roof since the day they arrived."
The silence lasted approximately two seconds.
"You—" Jaehaerys was on his feet so quickly that his chair scraped backward across the stone floor with a shriek that made every head in the room turn. "You have been harbouring my daughter. In your castle. For weeks! While we tore this city apart looking for her, while I sent hundreds of men into the Kingswood, while my wife could not sleep for fear that her only daughter was lying dead in a ditch somewhere, you sat on your island and said nothing."
"Jaehaerys—" Prince Duncan began.
"Do not Jaehaerys me, brother. This man stood in this room and accepted a lordship from my father, and then he turned around and stole my daughter and hid her away in his castle and had the gall to—"
"My wife did not steal your daughter," Arthur said, and his voice was level but his hands were trembling slightly beneath the table. "Rhaella came to them of her own free will. She asked to leave. She asked because—"
"I do not care why she asked. She is a princess of the realm and she belongs in this castle and you had no right, no right! To keep her from us, do you understand that, you jumped-up peasant farmer, you self-made little lord with your fishing island and your pretty castle, you are nothing, you have nothing that was not given to you by this family, and you repay us by taking the one thing—"
"JAEHAERYS."
Queen Betha's hand connected with the back of her son's head in a slap that cracked through the chamber and cut him off mid-sentence. Jaehaerys's mouth snapped shut and he pressed one hand to the back of his skull and stared at his mother with a look of absolute outrage.
"Sit down," Betha said, "and let the man speak."
Jaehaerys sat down.
Shaera, who had not spoken yet, leaned forward with both hands on the table. "You will bring her back. That is not a request, Lord Pendragon. You will put my daughter on a ship and you will bring her back to King's Landing and you will do it immediately. She is a princess of the blood and she belongs in the Red Keep, not on some island at the edge of the world playing house with a man and his two wives."
She turned her eyes to Duncan. "Brother. Surely you see this for what it is."
Duncan looked at Arthur. The conflict on his face was visible and painful and after a long moment he let out a breath and shook his head.
"Arthur. I am sorry, my friend. But they are right. Whatever her reasons for leaving, Rhaella is a member of this family and her place is here. She is betrothed, and the betrothal is a matter of state, and keeping her hidden on your island while the realm searches for her is..." He paused. "It is not something I can support. I am sorry."
Arthur had expected that though it still hurt.
At the far end of the table, Aerys had not moved from his languid slouch. He had not spoken during Jaehaerys's outburst and he had not spoken during Shaera's demand. He simply sat there with his eyes fixed on Arthur's face, watching, and there was something in that gaze that Arthur found considerably more unsettling than anything his parents had said.
"I knew you would say that," Arthur said. "I understand why, and I respect the love you have for her even if I disagree with how you have shown it."
He paused.
"Which is why I came prepared to buy her freedom."
Jaehaerys's expression shifted from fury to contempt. "Buy her freedom. You think you can buy a princess of the realm. There is not enough gold in the world to purchase a Targaryen, Lord Pendragon. She is not a horse at a market stall. She is priceless."
"I know she is," Arthur said. "That is why I did not bring gold, I brought something equally as priceless."
He stood and crossed to the chest.
The room went very quiet.
Every pair of eyes in the chamber followed his hands as he unlatched the iron clasps and lifted the lid, the torchlight from the brackets on the wall fell into the interior of the chest and caught on two long cloth-wrapped bundles that lay side by side on a bed of dark velvet.
Arthur reached in and lifted the first bundle with both hands. He set it on the table in front of the king and drew back the cloth.
What was revealed was a sword.
It was three feet of dark rippled steel that seemed to move beneath the surface, the flowing patterns that marked the metal ran from the crossguard to the point. The crossguard was worked in the shape of two dragon wings folding back toward the hilt, which was wrapped in black leather and capped with a pommel of dark steel set with a single deep red ruby.
Valyrian steel.
The room stopped breathing.
Arthur reached into the chest and lifted the second bundle. He laid it beside the first and drew back the cloth.
The second sword was slightly longer than the first, broader across the fuller, with a straighter blade and a heavier crossguard, and the pommel was set not with a ruby but with three small emeralds of a vivid green.
Two Valyrian steel swords.
"House Targaryen once possessed two Valyrian steel swords. Blackfyre was lost when it was carried east by the pretender who took its name. Dark Sister went north with Lord Bloodraven and vanished beyond the Wall. For nearly four decades this family, the blood of Old Valyria, the dragonlords who conquered six kingdoms, has had no Valyrian blade to its name. Every lord in the realm knows this. Every Blackfyre pretender who rides with a Valyrian sword in his hand uses that absence as proof that the true Targaryen line has lost its connection to the legacy of the Freehold."
He looked around the table.
"I am offering both of these swords to House Targaryen. Freely. As a gift. The only price I ask is this. That Princess Rhaella be released from her betrothal and granted the freedom to choose her own future. Nothing more. Nothing less."
Aegon sat very still in his chair.
The king's eyes moved from the swords to Arthur's face and back to the swords, and on that second pass they lingered, and Arthur saw the old man's fingers twitch slightly in his lap.
At the corner of Arthur's vision he saw Jaehaerys lean forward in his seat, the prince's eyes had gone wide, and the fury that had been twisting his face a moment ago had been replaced by something else entirely.
Duncan, on the other side of the table, had risen half out of his chair without seeming to realise it, his body pulled toward the swords on the table.
Even the disinterested prince at the far end of the table had shifted in his seat, and his violet eyes were no longer on Arthur's face, they were on the green-pommelled sword.
Arthur held his breath.
A small, almost imperceptible smile tugged at the corner of King Aegon's mouth.
"My granddaughter is truly priceless," the king said slowly. "And you have brought two priceless treasures for the simple price of her freedom to choose." He paused and let the words settle. "I think that is a good deal. But I am not her father." He turned his head and looked at Jaehaerys. "What do you think."
Jaehaerys could not take his eyes off the swords.
His hand was resting on the table six inches from the nearer blade and his fingers were curled slightly as though they wanted to close around the hilt and were being restrained by the last remnants of his dignity.
"Where," he said at last. "Where did you find these."
Arthur had rehearsed this answer on the boat. "There is a network of caves beneath the mountain on Brightwater Isle. When my quarrymen were cutting the first shafts for the stone quarry, they broke through into an older tunnel system. I explored them personally and found a sealed chamber near the lowest level. The swords were inside, wrapped in oilcloth and stored in a stone box that had been carved with symbols I could not read. I do not know how they got there or who left them. But there they were."
Aegon continued. "Consider what this would mean for the family, Jaehaerys. Two Valyrian steel swords. When Duncan walks into a great hall with Valyrian steel at his hip, and when Aerys does the same, every lord in the realm will see it, and every lord in the realm will understand what it means. The Targaryens have reclaimed their heritage."
Jaehaerys was quiet for a very long time.
The only sound in the chamber was the soft crackle of the torches on the wall and the distant noise of the city beyond the windows.
Then he exhaled.
"The betrothal is broken." The words came out slowly, "Rhaella is free to marry whom she wishes. She may come and go as she pleases."
Shaera turned to look at her husband, though the argument that formed on her lips died there when she saw the expression on his face. Whatever Jaehaerys was feeling in that moment, it was beyond her ability to challenge, and after a long tense moment she pressed her lips together and folded her hands in her lap and said nothing.
Jaehaerys reached forward and took the ruby-pommelled sword from the table. He drew it from its sheath and held it up to the torchlight. He turned the blade testing its balance and its weight.
He looked across the table at his son.
Aerys had already risen from his chair and took the second sword, the green-pommelled one, and drew it from its sheath with a smooth motion.
Aerys held the sword up and looked at it for a long moment.
"Wildfyre," he said.
A chill ran down Arthur's spine from the base of his skull to the small of his back, so sudden and so cold that he had to lock his jaw to keep his face from showing it.
Prince Duncan took the ruby-pommelled sword from his brother's hands and carried it to the head of the table, where he laid it on the wood in front of the king with both hands.
"Father. The king should carry a Valyrian steel sword. Every Targaryen king has since the Conquest, or tried to. Blackfyre sat across the lap of every man who ruled from that throne for a hundred years, and its absence has been felt by every king who has ruled since it was lost."
Aegon looked down at the sword though he did not move to pick it up.
"My fighting days are long behind me, Duncan."
"Then it is not for fighting, it is to repair the reputation that losing our swords have done to us."
Aegon studied his son's face for a long moment. Then he looked at the sword. Then he reached forward and lifted it from the table.
The hilt settled into his hand and the king's fingers closed around the leather grip, and something shifted in his face that Arthur had never seen there before, as though a piece of the old man that had been missing for a very long time had suddenly slid back into place.
"Vaelyrys," Aegon said quietly.
Duncan's eyebrows rose. "Father?"
"The sword's name. Vaelyrys. It is old Valyrian. It means the oath that was sworn before the flame." He turned the blade slowly in the torchlight, watching the patterns move through the dark steel. "It seems fitting."
From the far end of the table, Aerys held up his own blade, the green steel catching the light, the emeralds glowing.
"And mine is Wildfyre," the young prince said again, and this time there was a small smile on his face.
Arthur forced himself to nod.
The king set Vaelyrys down on the table beside his crown and turned his attention back to the room. "Then we are agreed. The betrothal is dissolved. Rhaella is free to choose her own path. Lord Arthur, you will inform my granddaughter of this decision, and you will tell her that her family loves her, and that she is welcome in this castle whenever she wishes to return, and that no word of anger or reproach will greet her if she does."
"I will, Your Grace."
"And I hope you will extend an invitation to visit Brightwater. I have heard a great deal about this castle of yours and I find myself curious to see it with my own eyes."
"Of course, Your Grace."
Arthur bowed before he walks towards the door and stepped through it. Arthur walked six paces from the door, turned the corner into a small alcove between two pillars where no one could see him, and pressed his back against the stone wall.
His hands were shaking.
His whole body was shaking.
He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor with his knees drawn up and his arms resting on them and his head hanging between his shoulders.
Then he started to laugh.
"It worked," he whispered to the empty corridor. "It actually worked. Gods help me, it actually worked."
He sat there for another minute, letting his heartbeat settle, and letting the reality of what he had just accomplished sink in properly.
Then he pushed himself up off the floor, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, straightened his tunic, and walked back down the corridor toward the harbour.
He had a ship to catch.
He had a princess to tell.
(AN: So Arthur has managed to convince the royal family that Rhaella should be allowed the freedom to act as she wishes. I mean come on two Valyrian steel swords, how could they refuse. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)
(An: Timeskip next chapter)
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