Chapter 13: The Great Tourney of Dragonsreach Part 1
125
-Rhaenyra Targaryen-
Syrax didn't wait for Rhaenyra to dismount before the pudgy dragon dragged its huffing form to the steaming hot vibrant blue waters pooled amidst the hills north of The Blue Keep. The old she-dragon, Dreamfyre, spent her days here and today her rider joined her to greet the arriving royals. The Crown Princess held on to her saddle as Syrax dunked it muzzle in the drink and greedily sucked its fill before rearing back and collapsing with its chin on the water's edge. She heard a deep rumbling chortle and to her horror espied the approaching massive golden form, crawling along the ground on forelimbs thick as her dragon's thighs.
"Down boy." her half-brother called out to his dragon as it eyed hers.
She felt dread realizing the size of it, now grown longer than her own. All that extra length gave the mutant freak more structure to pack on muscle, titanic slaps and stretches that rippled and bulged under its beautiful golden scales. At his master's command, Sunfyre ceased his approach and wandered away before taking off into the sky from a near standstill, using its freakish limbs fling itself into the air, causing the ground to shake.
Only her husband's dragon dared to call out against the disturbance, Caraxys as ornery in the presence of Sunfyre as Daemon near Aegon. The other older and more powerful dragons, Dreamfyre and the mighty Vhagar remained at ease and napped beneath the heat of the southern sun, and atop the heat of one of the massive hot springs scattered around Aegon's lands. The smaller dragons, those of her sons and her step daughter, all gave the aggressive Sunfyre a wide berth, spreading out amidst the hills where shepherds and drovers delivered regular game for them to hunt and feast on. Of the young dragons, only the blue Tessarion dared to remain in the Gold Dread's presence. Perhaps the link to his brother Daeron gave it some security the others lacked.
Rhaenyra took several deep breaths while she trembled from the danger-rush leaving her body, her shaking causing her half brother to scale her dragon and help her with the dismount. If Syrax had any issue with another dragon's rider climbing on her, she was too tired from the flight from Highgarden to voice it.
Prior to seeing her younger half sister for the first time since her wedding, Rhaenyra pitied the girl forced to bring six children into the world in less than three years by a husband known throughout the kingdoms as the most tyrannical lord in Westeros. Now, seeing her again, the crown princess hated her younger sister. She expected to see a worn down cow, but instead the same process that softened her own exceptional looks turned the ugly duckling into a swan. Taller, stronger, leaner, bustier. Her more common facial features hardly mattered under the silky expanse of her creamy skin and thick lustrous hair she seemed to have no end of styling to manage with a heavy braid on one side of her face and the rest of her hair drawn and bound over her other bare shoulder.
Time enacted a cruel reversal that the Realm's Delight felt self conscious at the sight of Alicent's simple and plain spawn. The way Helaena filled her blue silk dress made Rhaenyra's skin crawl. Suddenly, she remembered Aegon's hands holding hers and her hip, and extracted herself from him. Her half brother stood taller than near any man in Westeros, and possessed a physique beyond any other. Much like his freakish dragon, his muscles moved under his skin like bands of twisted steel, and the arms that emerged from his green and gold brocade short sleeved tunic were like none she'd ever seen before, like a strong man's thighs coming down from rounded shoulders that filled his shirts in a mesmerizing way. The vein that bulged over his bicep even at rest drew her eye up and down the powerful limb, to forearms that rippled with his every hand gesture, and those hands, like bear paws on a man's wrists with fingers long enough to possibly circle her entire waist even now after five children.
As Rhaenyra embodied the peak of feminine beauty, Aegon did so for the masculine. Had he only been born a decade prior, he would be hers. The perfect man for the perfect woman, but then, she would not be who she is. She would not be the Crown Princess, the next Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. As much as she found Aegon pleasing of form, she wouldn't trade away her power and status for any man.
The thought of that day, with the crown on her head and the Iron Throne under her ass, she didn't long for it, not at the price of her father's life, but what little life did the man have left to live for. He ordered this outing of the Royal Family to attend a tourney celebrating the birth of his new grandson and granddaughter, with the expectation that this would be the final time he leaves the Red Keep. He desired to once more look upon his own work, before his failing health removed the capacity forever.
Her half-brother stood as the biggest threat to that transition of power, and Rhaenyra feared him for it, but simultaneously believed him to be the least likely to initiate such a move. As much jealousy she felt seeing the Blue Keep for the first time, she felt a simultaneous relief to see him removed from his mother and grandfather's direct influence. Without them whispering treasonous poison into his ears, she felt secure in her ascension. Few, possibly not even herself, cherished and honored her father as much as her half-brother. He obeyed Viserys II Targaryen's every command, despite how it may run counter to his own desires and nature. He bowed to their father's authority, and soon he would bow to hers. Soon he would be under her, and inside her.
As much as she delighted in her marriage to her uncle, nothing the man did - however skilled and artful - ever completely quashed her fascination with Aegon. She desired him, and soon enough, she would have him, no matter how pretty her half-sister became, her husband would someday warm his Queen's bed, and her couch, her table, and her bath.
"Sister, brother." she tersely greeted the pair after gathering back up her fortitude.
"Your family arrived safely an hour back. The King and Queen arrived yesterday with your youngest children." Aegon informed her tersely.
Rhaenyra bristled at the reminder that her husband, stepdaughter, and oldest sons left her behind in the air, tired of keeping Syrax's pace. Her dragon lacked both the flight speed and the stamina of the others, and preferred its nest to long flights, needing to make several stops to eat and rest along the way from the capital.
"The let's begin the journey." Rhaenyra commanded and her brother whistled loudly with his fingers in his mouth.
Three saddled zorses galloped in response to the call.
"Where is the wheel house?" the crown princess looked around the hills, pools, and streams as if one silently approached.
Rather than answer, her half-brother lifted her up by her hips and into side saddle position on one of the large beasts, before handing her the reigns, and any complaints she made fell on deaf ears as he performed the same for his sister-wife, who smiled with her too wide mouth brightly. He then leapt onto his own, controlling his fall with his hands and shoulders, then barked a command and all three horses began trotting. She hardly remembered a time she felt more helpless than now, in the wilderness atop a steed clearly controlled by someone else.
"Where are your guards?" Rhaenyra questioned as they continued on and saw no one else in the hills with them.
"Why would we have guards?" Helaena asked, the simpleton seemingly unaware that even on your own lands safety is not a guarantee, "My husband is here. There is no greater security."
Oh, she is simply delusional. Rhaenyra might bring up the risk of robbers with bows or crossbows, but her half-sister would simply claim that Aegon would draw his sword and cut the projectiles down in the air, or even catch them with his bare hands. Her brother certainly wore enough gold on his wrists and fingers to possibly deflect them. The pair wore enough wealth on them that none would ever wonder of their status.
Once she gained faith in the surefootedness of the zorse, Rhaenyra gained an appreciation of the natural beauty of Dragonsreach, the lands possibly the most fertile and picturesque in the whole of the Reach, a land known for its bounty and perfect landscapes, and the sight of the Blue Keep in the distance at the very least matched the grandeur of Highgarden's profile. They passed by several small farms on their way into the town that now existed at the foot of the Blue Keep, each of them distinct from the other, but complimentary in design, each one of an alternating pattern dictated by her brother, who ruled theses lands with such tightfisted control that the smallfolk couldn't even build their homes without his express approval and according to his plans.
Those who went against her brother, in architecture or any other matter, came against a Lord's justice so notoriously draconian that hundreds of men chose the Wall in the last two years, rather than submit to his judgement. Her courtiers never lacked grain for the rumor mill on the topic of her half-brother and his lands. She half expected the town below the keep to be a place of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but instead, she found it beautiful. The slope down from the promontory that jutted above the harbor her father built - and the cliffs around it - bore stone and plaster buildings, some as tall as four stories, with red clay tiled roofs. These housed thousands of people, and the town still had much room to grow.
Guests from most of the Kingdoms filled Dragonsreach to its current capacity and beyond, with enough tents around the stadiums to look like an invading army. Everyone knew this was the King's last big hurrah. Her father loved tourneys and he intended for this one, held at the site of his grand achievement, to be the biggest ever. Her heart burned at the prize money on offer, nigh embezzlement of the Crown's funds straight to her brother's pockets. He won every joust, melee, and archery contest hosted by the crown in the last handful of years, treating the treasury like the personal Bank of Aegon, ever awaiting him to don his spurs and make a withdrawal.
Her husband swore it a conspiracy, no matter how many knights loyal to her faction he left lying in the mud, and that now that he could finally compete in the lists against his nephew, the Rogue Prince would at last prove that his hated rival Ser Criston Cole and his like lost purposefully to her half-brother. She thought him mad on the subject, and wondered how he would manage to get Caraxys to tilt with him, because on a horse, with a lance, Aegon knew no equal.
He'd done the same at Lannisport and Old Town that he did in King's Landing, sweeping the prizes of any tourney worth his attention into his coffers, all to subsidize his many construction projects and pay the fees of the many hundreds of knights he retained. Very few sworn to Aegon now possessed holdfasts of their own, leaving the vast majority of the army he builds waiting for the day Dorne gives him leave drawing their funds directly from his gold, and even with his many lucrative ventures outside his lands, the Lord of Dragonsreach levied some of the heaviest taxes in the Kingdoms on his smallfolk.
As they entered his town, Rhaenyra kept looking around for people run down and left destitute by her brother's rule, but after a time of only seeing orderly and clean streets, and orderly and clean people about their work, she understood that Aegon got rid of those people quickly, and likely many of them ended up sentenced to the Wall or forced into hard labor somewhere out of sight.
It didn't take an eye for detail to pick out all the beautiful features of the town, with statues, arches, and fountains spaced regularly throughout, along with murals, flower beds, and other pieces and places methodically laid out so that people were never far from something worth seeing. It all made her skin crawl. So artificial, so forced. It may look nicer and smell nicer than King's Landing, but all that order came at the cost of a legitimate spirit of life amongst the people. Everyone looked so comfortable and at ease, not at all like the capital, her home city so filled with chaotic and vibrant humanity.
People made way for them, often shouting down the streets at others to do so as well. Only the knights in service of her half-brother looked happy to see them, and the smallfolk seemed afraid, as if consequences would come swiftly if they made a poor move in her Aegon's presence. They lacked the natural awe of normal folk encountering royalty, but instead radiated the uncomfortable dread of those fearing a tyrant's ire. She remembered vaguely how her husband cleaned up the capital of rampant criminality in her youth, but looking at her half-brother's smallfolk, she couldn't imagine them gaining the guts to step out of line.
It filled Rhaenyra with even more determination to get Aegon firmly within her… control.
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Rhaenyra "Were are the poor people?"
Helaena "What are poor people? Is that something you have on Dragonstone?"
Rhaenyra "People who have less than they need to live comfortably."
Helaena "Oh, how terrible. We don't have those here."
Rhaenyra 'Aha! Proof that Aegon gets rid of poor people!'
Aegon 'My lands are so productive. Look around, no poor people. This is what proper administration looks like! Wait a minute, what are those smallfolk doing standing around staring at us? They must need more work. Just another task for the most helpful and benevolent Lord in the Seven Kingdoms.'
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