The Witch & The Dragon ‖ HOTD × HP

Chapter #19 - A Kingdom on Edge

Present Time

Red Keep, King's Landing

By the stroke of noon, when the Sept's bells spilled silver notes across King's Landing and cookfires turned the air warm with onion and fat, the city had already remade yesterday into legend.

"They say the Valyrian queen squatted in the dust and played knucklebones with Flea Bottom brats," a fishwife swore at the Hook, gutting a blue-gray mackerel clean as a prayer. "Let the littlest win, then showed him how to cheat better than his brothers."

"Aye, and her scribes followed like crows," her husband added, nodding toward a pair of dark-cloaked Valyrians at the quay, ink-stained fingers flicking across wax tablets. "Asking after coughs, rents, broken roofs—writing every misery down like it were coin to be counted."

"They asked after the midwife," said a dockhand with a split nail, "wrote her name, asked how much she charges for birthed babes and for burying the ones that don't take breath. Wrote that too."

In the alleys off Ropemakers' Row, a tanner told a cooper that the queen's people had stopped at every threshold: How many sleep here? How many eat meat this week? Who owes, and to whom? A boy with a bad leg said one of the Valyrians took the measure of his crutch and promised a better one from the castle smiths, then pressed an apple into his palm "for now."

Near the Mouth, where the Sweetwater meets the filth, the story had already grown teeth.

"She near killed a pit master," swore a swaggering youth outside a chalked doorway—one of those illegal fighting dens where boys fought for coppers and men bet silver. "Went nose-to-nose when the man said the children were his. She asked the names of the boys. He didn't know a one. That's when the queen smiled like a drawn knife."

"She didn't draw steel," corrected an older washerwoman, "but I saw her hand twitch like she could've. Then a tall red-haired fellow stepped between them, laughing as if they were friends. But his eyes weren't laughing. And then the queen said—quiet as a prayer—if I hear a child screams beneath your floor again, I will burn the floor, and your door, and your purse, and your name."
The washerwoman shivered, though the sun was kind. "The man bowed. Bowed."

Up on the Street of Silk, the telling ran saucier.

"The queen's got a mouth like a bravosi sailor," giggled a perfumed girl at the Velvet Net, swinging a bare calf over the balcony rail. "Said one of our regular lords snores and cries after—right into his wine. Told us we charge too little for consolation and too much for silence." She winked at her friends. "Then she taught us a song about a 'Hand who can't keep his fingers off what isn't his.' The whole room roared."

"She tipped," said another, counting coins by lamplight fondly. "But not for secrets. For time."

Out by the Ginger Quill, three guards took their wine in the shade and wrestled with what they'd seen.

"Unseemly, is what it is," one said, shifting in his mail. "A queen eating street squid on a stick with dockmen? Dancing like a mummer in a tavern?" He tried to sound scandalized. It came out uncertain.

"She paid first," another replied, amused. "Every vendor. Took the burnt crust, gave the soft middle to the children. That's why the crowd followed her."

"And the princes," murmured the third, eyes narrowing in disbelief. "That was them, cloaks and hoods or no. The one-eyed one kept to the edges, watching. The elder laughed, gods help me, laughed with the redheads. If the Hand hears it, he'll chew rocks."