Seeing the gloom on everyone's faces, the old maester quickly tried to lift their spirits. "We don't need to envy or be jealous—Westerosi people are resilient and never stop striving!"
"But if she manages to defeat the Allied Forces, unify Essos, and establish a Targaryen empire akin to ancient Valyria, why should we reject such a great ruler?"
"To be blunt, with what she's accomplished, forget Tommen or Cersei—even Aegon the Conqueror pales in comparison, doesn't he?"
The one speaking was a dark-haired man with olive-toned skin. He wore a fur-trimmed coat, embroidered on the chest with three black scorpions.
Laughing Baelor shot a glance at the stone-faced Garlan beside him and scolded, "Ser Arlon Coggle, what nonsense are you spouting?"
"Nonsense?" Ser Coggle sneered. "I'm speaking plain truth! The Dornish have never hidden their hostility toward the Lannisters. But someone has to sit the Iron Throne, and a Targaryen is far better than Cersei Lannister or some child king."
"How would Sunspear, all the way in the central deserts of Dorne, even hear news about that woman?" Archmaester Perestan asked with a troubled expression.
"Spear Tower is a trade port no weaker than Oldtown. We're not fools—more than one sailor has spoken of the Targaryen and her dragons. How could we ignore it? Sixteen years ago, our king was a Targaryen too!"
"She can't possibly defeat the Allied Forces. That's common sense. One person can't take on the entire world," Perestan said confidently.
"Maester, if she fails, then she'll just have to abandon her noble cause of freeing slaves and return home to inherit the Iron Throne!" Dany said with a peculiar expression.
"Eh? What do you mean?" the old maester asked, startled.
"She has dragons. Four of them. Even if the Allied Forces take Slaver's Bay, can they stop her from fleeing on a dragon? But with the whole world against her, where else can she go?
Only home—Westeros.
The Allied Forces might even support her return, because she has dragons, prestige, and a chance to flip the board. If the Mother of Dragons obediently returns to King's Landing to vie for the throne, the slave masters would welcome it with open arms."
"Th-this… what are we supposed to do then?" Dany's analysis was logical and well-founded, leaving the old maester deeply anxious.
If she wins, she'll return with a million-strong army, cloaked in glory.
If she loses, she'll ride a dragon home and settle for the Iron Throne.
Are we of the Seven Kingdoms doomed to live in her shadow forever?
A glint of cold light flashed in Dany's eyes as she said darkly, "We could call upon the Faceless Men."
Her low voice brought instant silence to the room. The orange flicker of torchlight cast eerie shadows on their faces, their expressions strange and unsettled. Eyes shifted silently, glances exchanged, but no one spoke.
"Ahem." Baelor cleared his throat a few times, smiling lightly to change the subject. "Tonight is a banquet celebrating the tournament. Let's leave unrelated topics aside."
"Jester, come tell us a joke."
Music struck up, and laughter rang out. The hall lit up again with splendor, as if the grim discussion had never happened.
The next morning, although the tourney grounds had not yet been dismantled, most of the noble participants were already preparing to depart. Baelor returned to the city to continue supervising warship construction, while Garth Hightower stayed behind to recruit free riders.
News of the female knight "Laila" winning the tournament championship spread like wildfire through the city. As Dany led her horse back to the Quill and Tankard, she heard a handsome blond bard with blue eyes playing a harp in the inn's main hall. He was singing the tale of the "Greatest Female Knight of All Time" in a melodious voice, surrounded by a crowd of apprentices and merchants listening with rapt attention.
Dany also spotted a few familiar faces—black-skinned Larissa in her usual male disguise, her little gang of friends, the crippled Morland, and the chubby, dim-witted Rooney.
But Petyr was nowhere to be seen.
What made Dany frown was the sight of Rosie—the barmaid known as the "flower of the tavern" and Petyr's girlfriend—being embraced by a handsome blond youth.
Though he wore a green-and-gold striped silk outfit instead of a maester's gray robe, the four metal links on the string around his neck clearly marked him as a novice maester.
A novice from a wealthy family.
Had someone stolen Petyr's girl?
Didn't quite seem like it. Rosie's expression was sorrowful, her eyes red as if she'd been crying. She clearly wasn't happy about resigning herself to fate—becoming a tavern maid like her mother.
"Ah! Ser Laila!"
Just as Dany was puzzling over it, a serving girl spotted her and shouted out loud.
Immediately, everyone in the hall turned to look. Even the bard stopped singing, clutching his harp and hurrying over to Dany with stars in his eyes.
"Oh, noble knight! Let me be your personal squire. I shall chronicle your legend and make your deeds known to all!"
In Slaver's Bay, Dany had dealt with far too many handsome minstrels trying to offer themselves to the queen. She had long grown used to it.
Effortlessly, she tossed him a gold dragon and said with a light smile, "I like your song—but I don't need a traveling bard."
Then, under the protection of a white knight, she pushed past the buzzing "fans" and returned to the rear courtyard.
She didn't linger in the inn. After a quick wash and change into fresh underclothes—still wearing her armor—she left through the back gate and headed across the stone arch bridge, making her way toward the renowned Citadel.
In theory, the Citadel's core areas did not admit women, nor did it accept female apprentices. But rules exist precisely to be broken by those with privilege.
Daughters of House Hightower, noble ladies of the great houses, even royal princesses—all had been welcomed and honored by the maesters at the Citadel.
Dany, under her current alias "Waters," certainly didn't qualify. But last night, she had received an invitation from Archmaester Perestan to discuss matters of trade imbalance with the Citadel's economists.
Uh, the old maester was frightened by the terrifying fact that over ten million gold dragons had been lost by the Seven Kingdoms in just fourteen years. This morning, he even went out of his way to visit her camp and remind her not to break her promise.
Through her observations over this period, Dany found that aside from their inexplicable hostility toward her, the Citadel had otherwise behaved competently.
They generally fulfilled their duties—whenever a problem arose, they actively sought solutions. Whether they succeeded or not was another matter, but their proactive attitude was commendable.
The Citadel sat right beside the Honeywine River, separated from the Quill and Tankard by only a stone arch bridge. It took less than ten minutes to reach the main gate.
It resembled a modern university in some ways. The stone-reinforced gate was wide enough to allow three carriages to pass side by side. On either side stood a tall green sphinx—lion's body, eagle's wings, serpent's tail. One had a man's face, the other a woman's.
These sphinx statues were known as Valyrian Sphinxes. Both the sculptures themselves and the custom of placing sphinxes at entrances originated in ancient Valyria.
To the left of the stone path beyond the gate was a scribe's desk, behind which sat five or six grey-robed clerks. They wore chain links, though not enough to form a full chain necklace—indicating they were assistant maesters.
A dozen Oldtown citizens were gathered there. Some were having letters written, some elderly folks were loudly dictating their wills, others held letters and asked the assistants to read them aloud, and a few were simply there to watch the commotion out of boredom.
▁L▁a▁t▁e▁s▁t▁ ▁n▁o▁v▁e▁l▁ ▁o▁n▁ ▁6▁9▁ ▁B▁o▁o▁k▁ ▁B▁a▁r▁ ▁F▁i▁r▁s▁t▁ ▁R▁e▁l▁e▁a▁s▁e▁!
To the right side of the path was a row of bookstalls laid out on the ground, reminiscent of college seniors setting up stalls near the BBS boards to sell used books, CDs, magazines, tennis rackets, and basketballs before graduation.
Dany took a closer look. They were all second-hand books—storybooks, history books, biographies, travel journals.
She squatted down and flipped through a few. Ninety percent of the books were written by maesters, and seventy percent of them were about House Targaryen—The Cruel Reign of Maegor, Secrets of the Dragonknights, Rhaenys's Lover...
Curious, Dany opened Rhaenys's Lover, and was nearly shocked out of her senses.
Aegon the Conqueror had two wives—his sister Visenya and his younger sister Rhaenys. Visenya was the official consort, while Rhaenys was his true love (probably).
The book claimed that for every night Aegon spent with Visenya, he would spend ten nights with Rhaenys to make up for it. However, Rhaenys was often surrounded by handsome young men, and whenever Aegon was with Visenya, Rhaenys would indulge in the company of her lovers.
"Heavens above, how is this kind of book not banned?" Dany asked the old apprentice selling books.
The book was clearly old. Once-white parchment had turned a pale yellow, and the binding stitches along the side were missing a few threads, with some pages falling out.
This book certainly wasn't newly written—and House Targaryen had only fallen sixteen years ago.
The elderly man in grey robes looked quite old himself, with a white beard and hair, wearing silver-rimmed spectacles. Around his neck hung a rope strung with four or five chain links.
An old apprentice.
"Why would it be banned?" the old man asked, puzzled.
"It has so many scenes of Queen Rhaenys with her lovers."
"But it's all true," the old apprentice replied calmly. "These are firsthand accounts from the people involved. How could it be wrong? Besides, Aegon himself condoned his sister's affairs. Back then, all the nobles in King's Landing knew about it. In fact, it even started a trend among noble widows of keeping singers and poets as lovers."
Dany tossed the book aside with a blank face and spent two copper coins to buy a hand-drawn map of the Citadel.
The Citadel had been built along the Honeywine and had expanded continuously over thousands of years. Its internal layout was extremely complex—some towers were even built on small islands in the river. Without a map, most newcomers would get lost.
Moreover, the Citadel wasn't solely a place for maesters—it was a full-fledged academic city, including septs and church-run schools.
Though the Citadel didn't admit female apprentices, it didn't completely cut off women's access to learning. The church schools were specifically intended for septas.
However, church schools were rarely centers for academic research. They mainly trained literate governesses for noble households.
Walking along the winding riverside road, Dany passed several stone statues of Targaryen kings—famous monarchs like Aegon the Conqueror, Jaehaerys the Wise, Daeron the Young Dragon, and Daeron the Good.
And then there was the half-destroyed statue of "the Mad King" Aerys.
Aerys wasn't a purely incompetent ruler—his life resembled that of Li Longji, brilliant at first, then a sharp decline.
In his early years, he was sharp-minded, charismatic, and worked diligently with Tywin to reform the kingdom's ills.
That period saw Westeros at peace and thriving—almost like an otherworldly version of the "Golden Age of Kaiyuan."
Back then, the Citadel had genuinely built a statue in his honor. Who could have foreseen how much he would change later?
Dany and Barristan arrived at the gate of the Steward's Tower just in time to see a middle-aged apprentice in his forties being dragged out by two assistant maesters, howling in protest.
Barristan stopped a tall, thin maester passing by and asked, "What happened?"
"Thion was caught stealing Maester Wyllin's waffles."
(End of Chapter)
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