all thoughts. no sleep.

𝔠𝔥𝔞𝔭𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔳𝔦: 𝓌𝒶𝓍𝑒𝒹 𝒸𝒶𝓃𝓋𝒶𝓈𝑒𝓈

He simply collided with the pages of the book…

Because it was on his face and Daeron did not know how else to delineate the sensation of waking from a dreamless sleep. One moment there was a merciful, black nothingness and the next there was a strange passage of text before him:

…younger brother cast her down and slew her… …proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor…

His faculties were stalled and had no sense of how much time had passed. The grey print swam over yellowing pages, unfocused, before it resolved:

…dark arts, torture, and necromancy… …a reign of terror…

Well, that’s unsettling. He peeled the book off his face—the grisly thing must have belonged to his Uncle Aerys. His neck was in ruins and the ache was creeping down his spine, but something warm and dense seemed to anchor him in place. He blinked, shifted his gaze downward, and saw a large shadow atop his chest had taken a solid, velvet form. It was Nightpaw, Egg’s black tomcat. Daeron accepted his situation with the grace of a man who knew when he was outmatched and was prepared to embrace his neck’s undoing when a sound spooked Nightpaw away. It wasn’t the sound of the wind rattling the window. The rain was still persistent but faint. No— footsteps. Several pairs, urgent, from below. 

He patted the floor for his wineskin — the stone was dry, the wineskin gone. Someone must have taken it. He would need to make his way to — another round of footsteps, heavy, from somewhere down the corridor. He rolled off the window sill, his head swimming as he stood, and made his way down to the first landing of the library. 

He opened the door and looked right down the corridor. The hurried footsteps were gone. Daeron shrugged it off—out of hearing, out of thought—then stole away to the southern end cellar. 

⋆⋅ ☾⋅⋆

It must have been to Maekar of House Targaryen's profound displeasure that he had inherited a castle with two cellars. Daeron's grandfather— the second Daeron of his name, the good— no —the better Daeron, the Daeron who had the decency to build things worth inheriting —had possessed a well-documented appreciation for a dense book and an expensive vintage to accompany it. Daeron found no fault in capitalizing on what had been set before him. It was, if anything, a filial obligation. He drew his hood up and set forth.

The small mercy was that the cellar in the far southern end had not been tainted by dreams of rats. The small unkindness was that the path to it required cutting through the grand gardens that faced the Great Hall and past the small rookery and the maester's quarters — where his father, as of late, had been spending a conspicuous amount of time. “Oi!”

Daeron ducked down behind a column-shaped hedge. Wet footsteps started toward him, so he crawled — with some urgency and no dignity — through the soaked earth. "M'lord?" Gunter loomed over him, rain dripping off the edge of his hood. "I won't ask what possessed you to crawl through mud, but I would like to know where you're crawling to. And can I join you?" Daeron raised a hand. Gunter lifted him to his feet, was kind enough not to mention he looked like shit, and they continued on.

They were nearing the small rookery when Daeron noticed the brazier had not been lit. He stopped.

"It's an hour or two before supper. Why are the braziers not lit?"

"Short on staff," Gunter said. "Did you hear your father?"

"You know very well that I try not to."

"Well, m'lord, anyone showing signs of the damp's been dismissed. With coin, at least."

Daeron regarded this. It was, he had to admit, the sensible thing. He had seen what happened to the Allyn boy in the yard — the lad had been clearly unwell and should have been resting, not swinging a blunted sword at a prince who didn't want to be there either. But something gnawed at him. He could not name it, which was the worst kind of gnawing, because a man could not ignore a thing he could not identify. Once they reached one of the many open arch-ways of the southern corridor, he told Gunter they would need to be discreet. Gunter received this information with the steady nod of a man who had been discreet on Daeron's behalf many times before. Summerhall was quiet enough that footsteps carried — which was, for once, a kindness. Plenty of time to duck behind the hedge fencing or into one of the empty rooms that lined the passage. A door creaked behind them. They both jumped and scrambled behind the hedges.

Through the gaps in the foliage, Daeron could make out two pairs of guards leaving the lower hall, hauling what he presumed were two large bodies— each wrapped in a tied sack of waxed canvas. He glanced at Gunter. Gunter shook his head. He had no idea either.

"Your Grace, you must have a herald go to town and warn —" It was Maester Melaquin. He came into view looking as though he might faint on the flagstones.

"Gather your wits." His father stepped into the corridor. "Has anyone survived the cough without turning? Has anyone turned without coughing? Anyone? Or would you have me crack the skull of every fucking wretch who contracts a damp in the lung or runs a fever? I won't put a town to terror over something we don't even know is certain. I won't do it."

Gunter leaned in. "Did your father just kill —"

"I don't fucking know," Daeron whispered. "The man is capable of a great many things."

"When you are able, maester." Maekar looked down at the trembling Melaquin. "A knight from Blackhaven requests an audience. No doubt he brings more wonderful tidings." Then he stalked off.

Daeron found, surprisingly but not for the first time, that he had lost his thirst for expensive vintages. And by the look of the maester, he was not the only one disinclined to further the ire of his father.

"M'lord, the rain's letting up. Maybe we should rid ourselves of this place?"

Daeron nodded. "Get the horses ready."

⋆⋅ ☾⋅⋆

They had not spoken since the gatehouse.

The trail through the foothills was narrow and wet, and neither rider was in any particular hurry to arrive at a destination they had not agreed upon. Daeron suspected this was because the shape of what had been inside those canvases was still sitting behind both their eyes.

He was hearing his father's voice — crack the skull of every fucking wretch — and he was trying very hard to file this under things he did not need to think about, which was a system that had served him well for nineteen years and was now, he suspected, reaching its capacity. Their horses moved at a walk through mud. The canopy above them dripped. Daeron’s hands were not steady on the reins. Gunter broke first. “Two bodies.” “I saw.” “In sacks.” “I also saw that.” “Waxed canvas. That’s what you use when you don’t want what’s leaking—” 

“Gunter.” “Right.” A pause. “M’lord, maybe we should see the maester. The young one from the North. He was here as a stand-in for Melaquin while he was traveling. He's been in Summertown the whole time — might know something about what's going on." Daeron blinked. “You mean Maester Albertbert?” Gunter looked at him with an expression of a man who was fairly certain that was not the name. “Ah! Bertbert. Right. That’s what I said.” It was still wrong.  “Aye, him.” Gunter grunted, producing a pipe from his doublet. With practiced ease, he packed it, lit it with a flint, drew twice to get it going, then passed the pipe across the gap between the horses. 

Daeron, impressed by the casual skill, took the pipe. The smoke was warm and sweet and settled into his chest like a hand pressing gently on something that had been clenched too tight. “He might have a better understanding,” Gunter continued, “of whatever the fuck is truly afoot, m’lord.” Daeron exhaled. The smoke curled up through the wet canopy and disappeared.  

"I am trying," Daeron said, "not to give my father further cause to crack my— our skulls. Worse, a foot whipping. That is the full extent of my ambition at present."

Gunter nodded slowly. "You know he told the staff to keep watch on you."

"Of course he did." “Guards at the door. Servants in the keep. The whole arrangement.” Gunter took the pipe back and drew on it. "Though, if I'm being honest, m'lord, we're so short of hands right now I don't think anyone noticed us leave. Half the kitchen's been dismissed. The one of stableboys is gone. Do you know how to saddle? Because I had to saddle both horses myself." "You're telling me my father's surveillance has been undone by a staffing shortage."

"That's about the shape of it, m'lord."

Daeron considered this. It was, in its way, the funniest thing he had heard all week, and also the most unsettling, and he found he could not separate the two. He took the pipe back.

"What is happening," he said, and it was not entirely a question. The smoke left him in a long, slow breath. "What in the seven fucking hells is happening."

Gunter had no answer for this. He was wise enough not to invent one.

They rode on. The trail crested a low ridge and began to descend toward the road that ran along the foothills — the main track between the Boneway and Summertown, wide enough for carts, rutted deep by years of traffic. From the ridge, Daeron could see it winding through the valley below, pale mud against dark scrub.

It was not empty.

He pulled up. Gunter pulled up beside him.

There were people on the road. Not a handful— a column, stretching back around the bend and out of sight, moving north. Merchants with laden mules. A young priestess in muddied red robes. A family on foot— father, mother, three children, the youngest carried. A pair of women in Dornish silks, now rain-stained and heavy, walking with the fixed expressions of people who had been walking for too long. Hedge knights with gaunt horses. A wagon with a broken axle being pushed by four men who clearly had not stopped the argument about whether to abandon it.

All of them heading the wrong way.

Dorne was south. The Boneway was south.

Daeron nudged his horse forward. Gunter followed.

They intercepted a man near the front of the column— lean, weathered, with a lute case strapped across his back and the resigned air of someone who had made peace with his doomed schedule.

"You there," Daeron said. "Where are you coming from?"

The man looked up at him. Took in the horse, the cloak, the bearing. Made a correct assumption. 

"Blackhaven, m'lord. Been stuck there two days on account of the rain. Before that I was meant to be at Yronwood by the fortnight." He adjusted the lute case on his shoulder. "I'm a minstrel. Was booked to play for Lord Yronwood's son’s nameday. Good coin, too."

"Was?"

"Dorne's shut the Boneway, m'lord." The minstrel said it the way a man said a thing he had already said too many times. "Sealed it. No one in, no one out. Prince's orders, so they say. We got to the pass and they turned us back — the lot of us, merchants, pilgrims, everyone. Didn't matter who you were or what business you had. The Dornish had spears across the road and they were not in a negotiating temper."

Daeron looked at the minstrel. Then he looked past him.

The column went on. Around the bend, up the road, more were coming— on foot, on horseback, in carts. He could not see the end of it. Two hundred souls, perhaps more, all of them funneling north because the south had closed its door, and there was only one place on this road for them to go.

Summertown.

─── ⋆⋅ ☾⋅⋆ ───

𝔠𝔥𝔞𝔭𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔳𝔦𝔦: 𝒶 𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑒, 𝒶𝓇𝓂𝑒𝒹 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒽𝑒𝓁𝒹

He stood over the washbasin and scrubbed his hands with vinegar until the skin stung…

Then rinsed them with boiling water. Fire was in their blood, but blood could carry corruption all the same. He repeated the process once more before he changed into fresh garments. 

He made for the Great Hall. It was the proper place for the Prince of Summerhall to receive visitors and hear reports, and in times like this a man needed to hold on to what was proper. The rest of the castle was coming apart; he would not let the heart of it do the same. 

Maekar took his seat at the high table. Lorcan stood to his right, solid and silent as ever. To his left Maester Melaquin had gone statue-still, the only way the man seemed able to keep from shaking. By the doors waited Pate with two guards. The master-at-arms stood with his thick arms folded across his chest, face set, patient. The man would hold, no matter what word came through that hall.

The knight from Blackhaven had been waiting since before the incident in the lower hall. Someone had fed the man and found him a place to dry his cloak. He looked presentable enough — as close as his thick build would allow.

Heavy-set, thick through the chest and shoulders from bread and honest labor rather than the lists. Straw-colored hair, redder at the roots. Low brows over eyes set too close, bridged by a dark ridge of hair that gave his face a look of permanent, earnest concentration.

“Ser Patrek Starstaff,” Lorcan announced. “In service to Lord Dondarrion of Blackhaven.”

The knight approached and dropped to one knee.

“Rise,” Maekar said. “Speak.”

Ser Patrek rose. He cleared his throat — not from nerves, but with the careful pause of a man who knew his tongue would tangle and had learned to give it time.

“My p-prince. I bring word from Lord Dondarrion and the maester of Blackhaven.” He steadied himself. “I was meant to arrive two days ago. The rains on the mountain road made s-sure of my d-delay.”

“Noted,” Maekar said. “What word?”

“D-Dorne has closed the passes, my prince. The Boneway and the Prince's Pass. Both."

Maekar waited.

"This was done a s-s-sennight ago."

Maekar’s jaw tightened. A sennight ago the Red Keep had sent word of the sickness and he received it. Less than a sennight ago he had been sitting in the Small Hall, waiting for his eldest son to drag himself home from whatever gutter or whore he had chosen for the evening.  

“The passes are held with s-spears, my prince. Lord Dondarrion sent a rider to treat with them and they turned him back. It is not a crossing any longer. It is a l-line, armed, and h-held.” “They barred the pass.” Maekar regarded this. A line held by Dornish spears meant the Prince of Dorne had decided what was spreading across the Seven Kingdoms was far worse than the cost of isolation. Grave enough to risk starvation over infection. 

“What of trade?” Lorcan asked. 

“C-ceased. Passes and ports. Lord Dondarrion bids me tell you that the Marches m-must now look to the Reach and the Stormlands for supply.” Ser Patrek worked his mouth, he chewed the inside of his cheek. “He does not s-say so directly, but the meaning is plain enough. If the sickness spreads further, r-resources may not hold.” 

The hall fell quiet. Every man in the hall let the words settle. 

“What else, ser?” Maekar asked. 

Ser Patrek’s eyes shifted. The earnest concentration on his face grew heavier.

“T-there have been i-incidents at B-Blackhaven, Your Grace.” Ser Patrek took a deep breath. “Men and women fall ill. Some catch the cough and recover. Some p-perish, as expected of a strong fever and c-cough. Others—” He stopped. “They d-die — or we believe they die — and then they do not stay dead. T-they go mad.”

Maester Melaquin and Lorcan exchanged a glance. They understood exactly what the knight was alluding to. Pate stood motionless.

Ser Patrek continued. “A violent i-infliction, my prince. Lord Dondarrion lost ten guards to one dead man.” Ser Patrek’s voice stayed steady, though it cost him. “The S-Stranger lost its grip a-and rose moments later.. He went mad and attacked the men nearest to him before they understood what was happening… t-ten were dead or bitten.”

Pate unfolded his arms. It was the first movement the master-at-arms had made since the audience began.

“The others who fell ill,” Melaquin said carefully. “Those who turned violent — did they all present with a cough beforehand?”

Ser Patrek’s brow furrowed. “I c-cannot say with certainty, maester. Some did. Some — I don’t recall hearing of a cough for all of them. But it happened fast, and I was not the one t-tending to the sick—”

“Has Lord Dondarrion taken measures?” Maekar cut in. 

“He has, my prince. Those s-showing signs a-are quartered apart. Violent ones are dealt with.” Ser Patrek said this without flinching, which told Maekar something about the man. “But we cannot t-tell which of the sick will turn violent and which will simply die. Even some had recovered.”

“Some?”

“A few, my prince. More than a few. Which makes the whole matter—”

“Uncertain,” Maekar said.

“Just so, my prince. B-But Maester Edwyn m-may have kept a closer account than I did.” Ser Patrek reached into his cloak and produced a rolled parchment sealed with the lightning bolt of Blackhaven. “He asked that I deliver this to the m-maester of Summerhall. He has thoughts on the matter that he preferred to put to ink.”

Maester Melaquin stepped forward and took it, his hands not entirely steady.

He broke the seal and read in silence. The hall waited.

Maekar watched his face. The maester’s eyes moved across the text, stopped, then moved again—slower this time.

“What does it say?” Maekar asked.

Melaquin looked up. His voice was flat. “The Maester Edwyn believes there may be two distinct maladies at work, Your Grace. Not one sickness presenting with different severity—but two. Two afflictions moving through the same population at the same time, sharing similar early signs but progressing toward very different ends. One is barely survivable. The other—”

He did not finish.

He did not need to. The chambermaid had coughed, burned with fever, and recovered. Allyn had shown no cough. He had simply declined, then risen with milky eyes and teeth that sought flesh.

Two sicknesses wearing the same mask.

“He also writes,” Melaquin continued, “that he plans to send his findings to the Citadel and hopes they will provide further counsel.”

Maekar’s jaw tightened. The Citadel. The same archmaesters who had dismissed the sickness that plagued the realm as a severe damp. He said nothing.

“Is there more, ser?” Lorcan asked Ser Patrek.

The knight straightened. “My prince. Blackhaven is turning away the travelers. Those who were caught on the road when Dorne sealed the passes—merchants, pilgrims, common folk—Lord Dondarrion cannot take them in. He will not risk more s-sickness in close quarters.” He paused. “They are being sent north, my prince. And the only holding of any size between Blackhaven and Storm’s End is—”

“Summertown.”

Ser Patrek took a step back and set his gaze down.

Maekar looked toward the tall windows. Through the painted glass the gardens lay grey and wet. The rain had thinned to mist.

Hundreds of people were coming up the Boneway. Some coughing. Some not. No way to tell which carried the sickness that killed and which carried the sickness that made the dead walk.

He thought of the fire iron in the lower hall. The weight of it.

He could not do that two hundred times.

Maekar turned to Lorcan.

𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭, 𝐢 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐨𝐜 𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐢 𝐚𝐦 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲