beneath the cowl of his embroidered cloak.
Lord Unwin Peake could no longer contain himself. “Who is this?” he demanded, pushing forward. “Who are you?” The boy threw back his cowl. As the sunlight glittered on the silver-gold hair beneath, King Aegon III began to weep, throwing himself upon this boy in a fierce embrace. Oakenfist’s “treasure” was Viserys Targaryen, the king’s lost brother, the youngest son of Queen Rhaenyra and Prince Daemon, presumed dead since the Battle of the Gullet, and missing for nigh unto five years.
In 129 AC, it will be recalled that Queen Rhaenyra had sent her two youngest sons to Pentos to keep them from harm’s way, only to have the ship taking them across the narrow sea sail into the teeth of a war fleet from the Triarchy. Whilst Prince Aegon had escaped on his dragon, Stormcloud, Prince Viserys had been taken. The Battle of the Gullet soon followed, and when no word was heard of the young prince afterward, he was presumed dead. No one could even say for a certainty which ship he had been on.
But though many thousands died in the Gullet, Viserys Targaryen was not one of them. The ship carrying the young princeling had survived the battle and limped back home to Lys, where Viserys found himself a captive of the grand admiral of the Triarchy, Sharako Lohar. Defeat had left Sharako in disgrace, however, and the Lyseni soon found himself besieged by enemies old and new, eager to bring him down. Desperate for coin and allies, he sold the boy to a certain magister of that city named Bambarro Bazanne, in return for Viserys’s weight in gold and a promise of support. The subsequent murder of the disgraced admiral brought the tensions and rivalries amongst the Three Daughters to the surface, and long-simmering resentments flared into violence with a series of murders that soon led to open war. Amidst the chaos that followed, Magister Bambarro thought it prudent to keep his prize hidden away for the nonce, lest the boy be wrested away by one of his fellow Lyseni, or rivals from another city.
Viserys was well treated during his captivity. Though forbidden to leave the grounds of Bambarro’s manse, he had his own suite of rooms, shared meals with the magister and his family, had tutors to instruct him in languages, literature, mathematics, history, and music, even a master-at-arms to teach him swordsmanship, at which art he soon excelled. It is widely believed (though never proved) that Bambarro’s intent was to wait out the Dance of the Dragons, and then either ransom Prince Viserys back to his mother (should Rhaenyra emerge triumphant) or sell his head to his uncle (should Aegon II prove the victor).
As Lys suffered a series of shattering defeats in the Daughters’ War, however, these plans went awry. Bambarro Bazanne died in the Disputed Lands in 132 AC when the sellsword company he was leading against Tyrosh turned against him over a matter of back pay. Upon his death, it was discovered that he had been enormously in debt, whereupon his creditors seized his manse. His wife and children were sold into slavery, and his furnishings, clothing, books, and other valuables, including the captive princeling, passed into the hands of another nobleman, Lysandro Rogare.
Lysandro was the patriarch of a rich and powerful banking and trading dynasty whose bloodlines could be traced back to Valyria before the Doom. Amongst many other holdings, the Rogares owned a famous pillow house, the Perfumed Garden. Viserys Targaryen was so striking that it is said Lysandro Rogare contemplated putting him to work as a courtesan…until the boy identified himself. Once he knew he had a prince in hand, the magister quickly revised his plans. Instead of selling the prince’s favors, he married him to his youngest daughter, the Lady Larra Rogare, who would become known in the histories of Westeros as Larra of Lys.
The chance encounter between Alyn Velaryon and Drazenko Rogare at Sunspear had provided a perfect opportunity to effect the return of Prince Viserys to his brother…but it is not in the nature of any Lyseni to make a gift of anything that might be sold, so it was first necessary that Oakenfist come to Lys and agree to terms with Lysandro Rogare. “The realm might have been better served had it been Lord Alyn’s mother at that table rather than Lord Alyn,” Mushroom observes, rightly. Oakenfist was no haggler. To secure the prince, his lordship agreed