Chapter 4: IV: The Honeymoon(s) Begin(s

IV: The Honeymoon(s) Begin(s)

The wedding had ended in bloodshed. Erich Penrose was an old marcher lord, and everyone knew that for one of their lot to live to see old age meant fierceness and a certain relentlessness in everything - be it a small quarrel, a feud with a neighbour, or the ancient hatred towards the Dornish.

So, for old Erich, "a lesson in honour and decorum" meant a dagger stabbed in the back of Ser Barquen. He did not care to admit it, save he invited the king's wrath, but his smug face in the following days told the truth for him. Aerys' entreaty to not quarrel with the Dornish was taken as a suggestion, but in the opposite direction - a Caron, if the rumours were right, had taken the chance to avenge himself on a Wyl cousin who had slain his brother, almost thirty years ago, when the Young Dragon had been killed in Dorne. Another two or three Dornishmen had been killed, and three Stormlanders too. In the end, the king punished neither party, for the losses were equal in number.

The Lord Peake was incensed at the death of his kin, and had blamed the prince Aerys for inflaming the passions of the guests, though he did not dare to accuse him of plotting the man's murder himself. In the end, though he had previously advised Aerys to not prolong his tour of the Free Cities overmuch, king Daeron now advised him otherwise - to remain longer across the Narrow Sea, and let the Peakes misunderstand it as a temporary exile.

Aerys' anger towards the Peakes had not lessened though. While Ser Barquen was dead, Aerys had desired to take his life himself. But there were plenty of Peakes alive to kill instead. The events of the feast had soured the Peakes on House Targaryen, and doubtlessly when the time came they would join arms with Daemon - and then Aerys would strike hard, hopefully with the marcher lords of the Stormlands allied and backing him, and Starpike, Whitegrove and Dunstonbury would fall, and he would do his best to dispossess and extinguish their wretched house. 

He now had a castle of his own - but Rhaegel and Maekar did not, and he supposed he could try to persuade the king to give Dunstonbury to a Manderly cousin, just to drive the stake deeper in the hearts of any Peake that would live to see that day.

Now he and Aelinor were in Braavos, where the Sealord had graciously offered them his hospitality. And the Sealord was quite eager to please a son of the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms that, as Aelinor had told him giggling one night, having heard it from the servants, he had ordered his First Sword to rough up a few bravos to admit when meeting him, that the Princess Aelinor was the most beautiful woman in the world.

Aerys was grateful for it, for he knew how particular the bravos were about their courtesans, and when asked, he would not admit a more beautiful woman than his own wife. And now, it seems the Sealord had graciously made sure that no bravo will challenge him for it, and end up skewered by the white cloak that was shadowing them.

While the weather was not particularly pleasing, Braavos had enough wonders to enjoy, foremost the Titan and its arsenal. While once that famed arsenal had dedicated its works to building war galleys and other warships to further Braavos' military might, now it was a time of peace. So day by day, caravels and carracks and herring busses came from it, soon put to their purpose - to ensure the utter commercial domination of the Shivering Sea.

Since the spring that followed the Winter Fever, in exchange for the loans that Cregan Stark took from the Iron Bank to feed his people, the Lord of Winterfell and his Karstark kin had agreed to allow the Braavosi to fish the abundant herring near the Grey Cliffs and salt it on those shores. That was the beginning of Braavos' Golden Age, after it had abandoned the quarrels of the Narrow Sea after the Dance.

Of course, the deal was not so one-sided, for the salt to cure the fish and the wood for the barrels came from the North. And before returning to Braavos, the fishermen were to offer their wares in the Karstarks' fish market - near which a city, though not yet rivaling White Harbour, had spawned, so the North could purchase as much as it needed to feed itself, though merchants from the Vale, the Riverlands and the Crownlands also came to purchase fish. And the taxes for these sales were evenly split between Winterfell and Karhold, both pleased with the situation, as was Braavos. The only ones displeased were the Ibbenese, who had been cut off from this lucrative trade. But neither the Northmen, nor the Braavosi cared for their displeasure, and furthermore, an unspoken agreement was reached, that left whaling to Ibben.

The fish trade was not the only way that the Braavosi ensured their dominion and made coin from that cold sea. Timber and furs, and sometimes amber came down the White Knife from the Wolfswood, purchased at White Harbour by the Braavosi, along with most of the wool that the Northmen spared for commerce, the latter worked into fabrics and dyed in Braavos, to be sold to other polities of Essos.

 Lorath had been whittled down to a protectorate, made to swear "eternal friendship and peace", in exchange for choice ships being allowed to fish and trade beyond their own shores, without needing to fear Braavosi war fleets.

Further east lay their greatest rival, the island of Ibben, with which they battled over fishing grounds and the greatest prize of those shores - the delta of the Sarne. For now, Braavos was ascendant.

Morosh was taken from Lorath and served a different purpose. Sarys and Saath were forced to accept Braavosi factors, who had built a quarter of their own in the city. Though the once mighty kingdoms of the Tall Men never returned to their former splendour, and were now tributaries to Dothraki khals, those lands were bountiful enough to allow much grain to be purchased by Braavos - who had great stockpiles of it, to ensure they would never starve, and to make massive profits when winter came.

A more risky endeavour, though enormously profitable for those returned from it, was Braavosi's own spice trade. Being shut from trading in the Summer Sea by the Three Sisters and Volantis, First Daughter of Valyria, some merchants financed merchant caravans to go through the Dothraki Sea, past Vaes Dothrak and the Bone Mountains to YiTi and to acquire those much desires spices, in exchange for silver, who the YiTish craved. The silver was acquired from the North too, and many Northern warriors had eagerly offered themselves to escort these caravans to YiTi and back to Morosh in exchange for quite large wages.

Aerys did not remember this from the books, which gave him a measure of worry. But he could not dwell on this overmuch, though he was now convinced that Maekar should not be wasted on a Dayne wife. While Daeron was in negotiations for an Arryn wife for Rhaegel, there were not yet plans for his youngest brother.

Aerys planned to convince his father that he should be married to a woman of the North, for the Northmen seemed to have closer ties with Braavos than with the South. Be it a Stark, Karstark, or Manderly, a maiden of either of those houses would be a fitting bride for Maekar, and would not have a meagre dowry.

They also visited many of the mummer houses, when there was a play of some worth, and the masters of these houses had suddenly commissioned playwrights to write plays inspired from Westerosi history. Aelinor had been delighted by those, or rather delighted to point out the many inaccuracies that the playwrights had written due to their vague knowledge of the lands beyond the Narrow Sea.

Meanwhile, Aerys delighted in using whatever Shakespeare quotes he still remembered in conversations with the mummers after the performance, only for their fawning lot to introduce them in later performances. He laughed as he heard mummers attributing the monologue of Hamlet to Helaena Targaryen, the actress playing her loudly declaiming "To die, to sleep, no more, and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache.." before the mummery of her death. Or a Braavosi playing the Sea Snake proclaiming to an actress in a silver wig, supposed to be the Princess Rhaenys: "My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep…".

Of course, these were only short quotes, being all that Aerys remembered having not read most of the Bard's play, or watched adaptations, save for his historic plays.

He had also visited the House of the Red Hands, the city's great hospice, where one could hire healers. He had hired three himself, but not only for his stay, for he had taken them into his own employ, to bring them back with him to Summerhall.

They had had the opportunity to attend the festivities of the Unmasking, having sailed to Braavos at the right time of the year. There were ten days of revelries, and they had to wear masks until the midnight of the tenth.

It was on one of those days that one of the courtesans approached him at a ball, going by the name of the Black Pearl. Aerys knew who she was of course, though she was under the mistaken assumption that he was not aware of her.

The Black Pearl, the first of many of her line, was the daughter of Aegon IV and his fourth mistress, the pirate Bellegere Otherys. Perhaps she was angered that since Aerys had begun his visit too many bravos claimed Aelinor as the most beautiful woman (only in Aerys' hearing though), a title she claimed as rightfully her own.

The courtesan, or fancy whore, as Aerys called her internally, had tried to charm him, right under the eyes of his wife. But Aerys was pleased with his wife, and desired no other, so his response was quick and cutting:

"I have no desire to speak with the third most beautiful woman in this room, when I have the most beautiful one at my arm, aunt Bellenora."

The courtesan lost her composure for a moment, but only for one. Soon she smiled again, and with honeyed words, addressed him again:

"I did not expect you to know me, nephew. But surely you would not desert me now, not when I so eagerly desire to know of my kin in King's Landing? It would be most discourteous."

Aerys tried to speak, but Aelinor's grip of his arm grew tighter for a moment, and she spoke: "Oh, but I myself am your kin too, we are second cousins, and I am most eager to get to know you. Let us leave men to their serious talks, and let us discuss lighter affairs. I would have you join me in a tour of the gardens, though I beg of you to give me a moment with my husband to discuss a trifling matter."

Aelinor turned towards him, and hidden from the courtesan's sight, gave him a small, lithe dagger, one which Aerys had gifted to her for her own protection. He tried to refuse the weapon, but Aelinor insisted. In a whisper, she said: "Keep it for the night, Aerys. I know why you gave me, but I fear that if I hear one word from her that expresses her desire for you, I stab that whore, kinslaying be damned."

Having said that, she turned towards Bellenora, and, with a wide smile upon her face, linked hands with her and led her to the gardens.

"It seems that your wife has her well in hand." said, from behind him, the Sealord, with a smirk upon his face. "Now let us discuss our "serious matters"."

The serious matters ended up being the Sealord giving him a tour of his menagerie, explaining to him how he had acquired his exotic beasts.

In the end, Aerys extracted a small amount of pleasure by seeing the Sealord's face fall when he asked whether he kept in the same menagerie the three dragon eggs acquired by Braavos more than a century ago. The Sealord was quick to change the topic of the conversation, though when he and his wife left, an ornate and old chest was given to them as a gift, "a token for our long and continuing friendship with the Seven Kingdoms", according to his words.

He had a fair guess of what was inside, though he wondered why he had not tried to extort his father of an exorbitant amount of gold for it. But perhaps Braavos' Northern trade was profitable enough that the people of this city did not wish for any new tariffs or other obstacles against the trade flowing freely between the two polities.

When they went to their rest for the night, Aelinor had asked him why he told his bastard aunt that she was only the third most beautiful woman there: "I wanted to irritate her. And the ball has been over without her having the occasion to question me about it. In truth, I do not care about the beauty of any woman beyond yours - but my aunt will be left to wonder who that second woman was for a long time after we leave. It serves her well."