blood and bone and brains remained. Thus died the Lord of Air, his skull crushed by one of the very cobblestones he had helped the king lay down. Even then, his assailants were not done with him. Before they ran, they ripped off his fine clothes and cut off all his fingers to lay claim to his rings.
When word reached the Red Keep, Jaehaerys Targaryen himself rode forth to claim the body, surrounded by his Kingsguard. So wroth was His Grace at what he saw that Ser Joffrey Doggett would say afterward, “When I looked upon his face, for a moment it was as if I were looking at his uncle.” The street was full of the curious, come out to see their king or gaze upon the bloody corpse of the Pentoshi moneychanger. Jaehaerys wheeled his horse about and shouted at them. “I would have the name of the men who did this. Speak now, and you will be well rewarded. Hold your tongues, and you will lose them.” Many of the watchers slunk away, but one barefoot girl came forward, squeaking out a name.
The king thanked her, and commanded her to show his knights where this man might be found. She led the Kingsguard to a wine sink where the villain was discovered with a whore in his lap and three of Lord Rego’s rings on his fingers. Under torture, he soon gave up the names of the other attackers, and they were taken one and all. One of their number claimed to have been a Poor Fellow, and cried out that he wished to take the black. “No,” Jaehaerys told him. “The Night’s Watch are men of honor, and you are lower than rats.” Such men as these were unworthy of a clean death by sword or axe, he ruled. Instead they were hung from the walls of the Red Keep, disemboweled, and left to twist until they died, their entrails swinging loose down to their knees.
The girl who had led the king to the killers had a kinder fate. Taken in hand by Queen Alysanne, she was plunged into a tub of hot water for a scrubbing. Her clothes were burned, her head was shaved, and she was fed hot bread and bacon. “There is a place for you in the castle, if you want it,” Alysanne told her when her belly was full. “In the kitchens or the stables, as you wish. Do you have a father?” The girl gave a shy nod and admitted that she did. “He was one o’ them bellies you cut open. The poxy one, wi’ the stye.” Then she told Her Grace that she wanted to work in the kitchens. “That’s where they keeps the bread.”
The old year ended and a new year began, but there were few celebrations anywhere in Westeros to mark the coming of the 60th year since Aegon’s Conquest. A year before great bonfires had been lit in public squares and men and women had danced around them, drinking and laughing, whilst bells rang in the new year. One year later the fires were consuming corpses, and the bells were tolling out the dead. The streets of King’s Landing were empty, especially by night, the alleyways were deep in snow, and icicles hung down from the rooftops, long as spears.
Atop Aegon’s High Hill, King Jaehaerys ordered the gates of the Red Keep closed and barred, and doubled the watch on the castle walls. He and his queen and their children attended sunset services at the castle sept, repaired to Maegor’s Holdfast for a modest meal, and then retired to bed.
It was the hour of the owl when Queen Alysanne was awoken by her daughter shaking her gently by the arm. “Mother,” Princess Daenerys said, “I’m cold.”
There is no need to dwell on all that followed. Daenerys Targaryen was the darling of the realm, and all that could be done for any man was done for her. There were prayers and poultices, hot soups and scalding baths, blankets and furs and hot stones, nettle tea. The princess was six, and years past being weaned, but a wet nurse was summoned, for there were some who believed that mother’s milk could cure the Shivers. Maesters came and went, septons and septas prayed, the king commanded that a hundred new ratcatchers be hired at once, and offered a silver stag for every dead rat, grey or black. Daenerys wanted her kitten, and her kitten was brought