Dangerous Women. Part I

“These are foul times,” Lord Mooton said, “and it is a foul choice this queen has given me. The girl is a guest beneath my roof. If I obey, Maidenpool shall be forever cursed. If I refuse, we shall be attainted and destroyed.”

To which his brother answered, “It may be we shall be destroyed whatever choice we make. The prince is more than fond of this brown child, and his dragon is close at hand. A wise lord would kill them both, lest the prince burn Maidenpool in his wroth.”

“The queen has forbidden any harm to come to him,” Lord Mooton reminded them, “and murdering two guests in their beds is twice as foul as murdering one. I should be doubly cursed.” Thereupon he sighed and said, “Would that I had never read this letter.”

And up spoke Maester Norren, saying, “Mayhaps you never did.”

What was said after that is unknown. All we know is that the maester, a young man of two-and-twenty, found Prince Daemon and the girl Nettles at their supper that night, and showed them the queen’s letter. After reading the letter, Prince Daemon said, “A queen’s words, a whore’s work.” Then he drew his sword and asked if Lord Mooton’s men were waiting outside the door to take them captive. When told that the maester had come alone and in secret, Prince Daemon sheathed his sword, saying, “You are a bad maester, but a good man,” and then bade him leave, commanding him to “speak no word of this to lord nor love until the morrow.”

How the prince and his bastard girl spent their last night beneath Lord Mooton’s roof is not recorded, but as dawn broke they appeared together in the yard, and Prince Daemon helped Nettles saddle Sheepstealer one last time. It was her custom to feed him each day before she flew; dragons bend easier to their rider’s will when full. That morning she fed him a black ram, the largest in all Maidenpool, slitting the ram’s throat herself. Her riding leathers were stained with blood when she mounted her dragon, Maester Norren records, and “her cheeks were stained with tears.” No word of farewell was spoken betwixt man and maid, but as Sheepstealer beat his leathery brown wings and climbed into the dawn sky, Caraxes raised his head and gave a scream that shattered every window in Jonquil’s Tower. High above the town, Nettles turned her dragon toward the Bay of Crabs, and vanished in the morning mists, never to be seen again at court or castle.

Daemon Targaryen returned to the castle just long enough to break his fast with Lord Mooton. “This is the last that you will see of me,” he told his lordship. “I thank you for your hospitality. Let it be known through all your lands that I fly for Harrenhal. If my nephew Aemond dares face me, he shall find me there, alone.”

Thus Prince Daemon departed Maidenpool for the last time. When he had gone, Maester Norren went to his lord to say, “Take the chain from my neck and bind my hands with it. You must need deliver me the queen. When I gave warning to a traitor and allowed her to escape, I became a traitor as well.” Lord Mooton refused. “Keep your chain,” his lordship said. “We are all traitors here.” And that night, Queen Rhaenyra’s quartered banners were taken down from where they flew above the gates of Maidenpool, and the golden dragons of King Aegon II raised in their stead.

No banners flew above the blackened towers and ruined keeps of Harrenhal when Prince Daemon descended from the sky to take up the castle for his own. A few squatters had found shelter in the castle’s deep vaults and undercellars, but the sound of Caraxes’s wings sent them fleeing. When the last of them was gone, Daemon Targaryen walked the cavernous halls of Harren’s seat alone, with no companion but his dragon. Each night at dusk he slashed the heart tree in the godswood to mark the passing of another day. Thirteen marks can be seen upon that weirwood still; old wounds, deep and dark, yet the lords who have ruled Harrenhal since Daemon’s day say they bleed afresh every spring.