The climate of Braavos is a study in misery: fog is an insult, rain is a grievance, and freezing rain is a slow death. On this rare afternoon in 290 AC, however, the city offered a reprieve of clarity. The air was sharp, carrying the brine of the Narrow Sea over the high stone walls of the noble district.
Six years had passed since the flight from King's Landing. To the common eye, Viserys Targaryen was a ghost in a borrowed house, a remnant of a fallen dynasty. To the boy himself, the world was merely a board being reset. The "Long Summer" had settled over the known world—a decade of false security that would let the usurper Robert Baratheon grow fat while the realm forgot the sting of winter.
Viserys stood in the garden of the manse with the Red Door. It was a sprawling property, though they occupied it as tenants, not masters. Within these walls, the loyal Ser Willem Darry lay dying. With every labored breath the old knight took, the wolves drew closer. The servants, sensing the end of their paymaster, no longer bothered to hide the greed in their eyes or the hushed conspiracies in the hallways.
Viserys knelt by a patch of damp earth near a cracked tile. His movements were fluid, devoid of the frantic energy one might expect from a boy of fourteen. He studied a cluster of seven mushrooms. They were pale, almost luminous, save for the underside of their caps, which bore stains the color of congealed blood.
He did not see a holy number. He saw an opportunity.
He slid a gloved hand beneath the stems, plucking them with a surgeon's care. Poison was a tool of the desperate and the disenfranchised, and at this moment, Viserys was both. He tucked the lethal harvest into his pocket just as a heavy footfall crunched on the gravel behind him.
"Enjoying the weeds again, Your Majesty?"
The steward was a soft, Graft-swollen man with a smile that never reached his eyes. The title "Your Majesty" was spat rather than spoken—a mockery wrapped in the thin veil of service.
Viserys rose slowly, his silver-gold hair catching the pale sun. He did not flinch. He did not offer the steward the satisfaction of a temper. He simply looked through the man with the violet eyes of Old Valyria, cold and unnervingly still.
"The flora is predictable, Steward," Viserys replied, his voice a calm, melodic baritone. "Unlike men, a plant does not pretend to be anything other than what it is."
The steward's smile faltered, a flicker of unease crossing his fleshy face. He opened his mouth to retort, but the boy had already turned away, moving toward the house with a predatory grace that suggested he was the one doing the hunting.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of old parchment and impending rot. Viserys made his way to the chambers of his niece, Rhaenys. The girl was a stark contrast to the Targaryen archetype—olive-skinned and dark-eyed, a daughter of Dorne. She sat on a low divan, her fingers buried in the fur of a one-eared black cat.
"I heard them, Viserys," she said without looking up. Her voice had a hollow, distant quality. "I was the cat in the corner when they spoke of the gold. They mean to wait until Ser Willem's heart stops. Then they take the coin and leave us to the streets."
Viserys leaned against the doorframe. The world believed Rhaenys Targaryen had died beneath a Lannister cloak in the Red Keep, but reality was more fluid. She was here, a skinchanger in the making, her mind often drifting into the senses of the strays that prowled the manse. Beside her, little Daenerys slept—a dreamer of another sort.
"They mistake our age for impotence," Viserys said, his gaze fixed on the lemon tree visible through the window. "That is the only advantage they will ever give us."
"What do we do?" Rhaenys asked, her grip tightening on the cat.
Viserys produced one of the mushrooms. In the dim light of the room, it looked like a pearl. "You will stay with Daenerys. Ensure she does not leave this room. I will handle the kitchen and the cellar."
Rhaenys looked at the fungus, then at her uncle. She saw no hesitation in him, only the cold, analytical iron of a king who had already weighed the cost of a life and found it negligible.
"My father said the dragon must have three heads," she murmured, ruffling the cat's fur. "If he hadn't been so obsessed with that prophecy, we might be in Sunspear now. Or Tyrosh."
"Your father played with rhymes and stars," Viserys said, his silhouette sharp against the light of the Red Door. "I intend to play with steel and fire. Let the historians argue over how we began; I only care how we finish."