Chapter 22: The Viceroy's Task
The docks of King's Landing were a place of forced and fearful order. Under the unseen, ever-present gaze of the being on the hill, the usual chaos of sailors, merchants, and fishwives had been replaced by a quiet, efficient hum. It was here that Queen Rhaenyra came to bid farewell to her son and her Hand, not as a conqueror sending forth a war party, but as a warden signing out her most valuable prisoners.
The Velaryon fleet, what remained of it after the costly war, was a proud sight, its banners with the silver seahorse snapping in the wind. But the pride felt like a hollow echo of a bygone era. Lord Corlys Velaryon stood on the gangplank of his flagship, his silver hair braided with black ribbon in mourning for the princes and princess he had outlived. Jacaerys stood beside him, clad in black leather, his face a stony mask of resentment.
"The tides are turning, Your Grace," Corlys said, bowing to his Queen. "We should make way."
Rhaenyra reached out and took her son's hand. His was cold and stiff within her own. "Jace," she said, her voice low and urgent, for his ears only. "Listen to Lord Corlys. He has sailed these seas his entire life. He knows how to navigate storms, both real and political. Survive. That is your only duty to me now. Survive and come home."
"To what?" Jace replied, his voice a bitter whisper. "This cage? To learn how to be a good slave? Vermax is gone, Mother. The best part of me is gone. What is left to survive?"
"What is left is a kingdom," she insisted, her grip tightening on his hand. "A kingdom of people who are looking to us. Your people. They need a prince, not a martyr."
Jace pulled his hand away, his eyes filled with a pain she could not soothe. "They need a god, it seems. And they already have one. I am superfluous." He turned without another word and strode onto the ship.
Rhaenyra then faced the Sea Snake. "Keep him safe, my lord," she pleaded.
Corlys's weathered face was grim. "I will look after the boy, Your Grace. The Stepstones I know. Their currents, their reefs, their pirate coves. This new master of ours… him I am still learning." He bowed once more. "We will fulfill the god's command."
Rhaenyra watched as the flagship pulled away from the dock, a knot of dread tightening in her stomach. She was the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and she had just been forced to send her heir and her Hand into a war she did not declare, on the orders of a being she did not understand. She had never felt less powerful.
The Red Keep was now her domain, but it felt like a borrowed house. She held her first Small Council meeting in a chamber that still seemed to hold the ghosts of her enemies. Lord Corlys's seat was empty. Jace's place beside her was empty. She was surrounded by the wary faces of new allies and old rivals, all of them now her subjects.
"My lords," she began, her voice gaining strength as she settled into the familiar rhythms of rule. "With the war concluded, the realm must be rebuilt. Lord Stark, the North paid a heavy price in grain and men to support my cause. The crown will see you are repaid, and the taxes from your lands will be halved for the next three years."
Lord Cregan Stark, a man of few words and fewer smiles, gave a curt nod. "The North is grateful, Your Grace. And… we are relieved the fighting is done. The winters are hard enough without southern wars." He glanced nervously towards the window, towards the hill. "Though it seems one winter may have been replaced by another."
Jason Lannister, his golden doublet seeming less ostentatious in the somber room, cleared his throat. "Your Grace, a delicate matter. My House, in its… misguided support for the previous regime, expended a vast fortune. A fortune that, I am told, vanished from the Blackwater. If the crown has any knowledge…"
"The crown has knowledge only of its own emptiness, Lord Jason," Rhaenyra said, her tone sharp but not unkind. "The beast on the hill consumes what it wishes. Gold, it seems, is on its menu, along with armies and dragons. Your fortune is gone. Consider it a tithe to our new god."
The lords shifted uncomfortably. This was the new reality. Debts, claims, grievances—they all seemed petty and meaningless now. They were debating the placement of furniture in a house that could be demolished at any moment.
As they spoke, a quiet, insidious presence made itself known. A thought, not a voice, slid into the mind of a lesser lord from the Reach who was loudly complaining about Blackwood men raiding his lands.
"Your neighbor's sheep are not yours to steal, Lord Costayne. Return them. The scales of ownership are easily perceived. And easily… balanced."
Lord Costayne went white as a sheet. He clamped his mouth shut, his eyes darting around the room in terror, wondering if anyone else had heard the private, chilling rebuke. They had not. But the subtle shift in his demeanor, the sudden sweat on his brow, was noted by everyone. The god was listening. It was paying attention to the smallest details. And it was enforcing its own brand of perfect, terrifying order.
In another wing of the Red Keep, the old guard contemplated their own obsolescence. Otto Hightower, now merely the father of the Dowager Queen, sat in his solar, staring at a map he could no longer influence. Larys Strong entered without knocking, leaning heavily on his cane.
"A fascinating new era, my Lord Hightower," Larys said, his voice a dry whisper. "The old levers of power—wealth, armies, alliances—are broken."
"There are no levers left, Lord Larys," Otto said, his voice brittle. "Only a foot upon our necks. We are relics. The game is over."
"Oh no, my lord," Larys corrected him, a strange, academic curiosity in his eyes. "The game is not over. The board has simply been… elevated." He gestured vaguely towards the window. "Every power has a desire. Even a god. The old king desired peace. The new queen desires legitimacy. This god… it desires order. Tidiness. Efficiency."
"And what is your point?" Otto asked, tired of the Clubfoot's riddles.
"My point, my lord, is that a man who can provide a god with what it desires becomes a man of influence. One cannot bribe it with gold or sway it with promises. But one can… be useful. One can be the most efficient tidier of the messy affairs of men. One can anticipate its desires and present it with a pleasingly orderly kingdom. In a world ruled by a silent god, the man who can best interpret its silence will become its most favored priest."
Otto stared at Larys, a flicker of understanding dawning in his weary eyes. The Clubfoot was not thinking of survival. He was thinking of promotion. He was already playing the new game, while everyone else was still mourning the old one.
Krosis-Krif observed it all from his silent throne. The departure of the Velaryon fleet. The nervous posturing of the Queen's court. The subtle scheming of the Clubfoot. He found it all… quaintly amusing. He was a being who now contained the memories of conquerors, queens, and dragon-killers, and he was watching children squabble over the rules of their nursery.
His human mind, the cunning, psychopathic core of his being, was bored. Absolute power was a certainty, and certainty was dull. He needed stimulus. He needed to interact with his experiment.
His vast consciousness drifted, sweeping over the city like an unseen wind. He focused on the details. He felt the vibrations of a baker in the Street of Flour using a weighted thumb to short-change a customer. A whisper entered the baker's mind alone.
"The loaf is light. The scales are unbalanced. Correct it."
The baker, a fat man named Symon, yelped and dropped the loaf as if it were burning coal, his heart seizing in his chest. He looked around wildly, then with trembling hands, he grabbed another, larger loaf and thrust it at the confused customer, refusing payment.
Krosis-Krif's consciousness drifted to the docks, where a pair of goldcloaks were extorting a fisherman.
"The law protects. It does not steal. Return the fish."
The two guards froze, their hands dropping from their swords, their faces turning the color of curdled milk. They threw the silver coins back at the fisherman and fled, abandoning their posts.
These were small things. Petty acts of order. But they were amusing. And they were a message. Every citizen who experienced or witnessed these small, private miracles of terrifying justice would spread the tale. The god was not just on the hill. The god was everywhere. It was omniscient. It was absolute. The fear, the awe, the raw psychic energy of a million people coming to terms with true omniscience—it was a far more refined and satisfying meal than any army had ever been.
Weeks passed. An unnatural peace settled over the Seven Kingdoms. The lords returned to their keeps, their disputes unresolved, too terrified to press their claims. Rhaenyra ruled a kingdom that was strangely, perfectly, terrifyingly orderly.
Then the raven came. It was from Lord Corlys, bearing the seal of the Velaryon fleet. Rhaenyra gathered her council, a knot of fear in her stomach. Cregan Stark and Jason Lannister had remained in the city, fascinated and terrified observers of the new regime. They stood with her as she broke the seal and read the letter aloud, her voice trembling slightly.
"Your Grace," it began. "We reached the Stepstones three days ago. We prepared for a great naval engagement with the combined fleet of the Triarchy. We found… a graveyard."
A murmur went through the council.
"The fleet was there, but it was wreckage, burned and shattered at anchor. We sailed on to the primary harbor of Tyrosh, expecting to find the city fortified. The city itself stands untouched. But the harbor… Your Grace, I do not have the words. It is no longer a harbor. It has been melted. Every ship, every dock, every warehouse has been fused into a single, seamless sheet of obsidian glass, miles wide. It is as if the god on your hill reached out a finger and stirred the very stone and sea into a burning soup."
The lords in the chamber stared at each other, their faces pale.
Rhaenyra continued, her voice barely a whisper. "The survivors—and there are few—are mad with fear. They speak of no warning. A shadow fell upon them from the highest heavens, a shadow so vast it blotted out the midday sun. A voice spoke in their heads, in their own tongues, and said only one word: 'Tidy.' Then a fire hotter than any sun fell upon their fleet. Our new god did not just send us to do his work, Your Grace. He had already done it himself, before we even arrived. We are not a fleet of war. We are a cleanup crew, sent to sweep up the ashes of a war that was over before it began."
She let the parchment fall from her fingers. The silence in the room was absolute. Jacaerys had been sent to learn a lesson about power. The lesson was that their greatest fleets, their most celebrated commanders, their very wars were a trivial afterthought to the being that now ruled them. Its power was not limited to Westeros. Its whim was global law.
Rhaenyra looked out the window at the shadow on the hill. She was Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. But she, and all of them, were living in a very small gilded cage, in a world that was rapidly and terrifyingly becoming one being's personal, well-ordered property. And it had just begun to tidy up the neighborhood.