Title: The Contingency
Title: The Contingency
Year and Month: 92 AC, 4th Moon
The four years following the ratification of my "Unwritten Treaty" were a period of unprecedented tranquility and subtle consolidation. The realm, guided by the steady hand of my father, prospered under the reforms I had secretly architected. The betrothals were celebrated, Lord Corlys took to his new role as Master of Ships with a vigor that doubled the royal fleet's efficiency, and the simmering succession crisis seemed to have been entirely averted. To the lords of Westeros, it was the golden autumn of the Conciliator's reign. To me, it was the quiescent phase of a long-term hostile takeover, a period of strengthening the company's fundamentals before the inevitable, scheduled market corrections.
I was now eleven, on the cusp of manhood in the eyes of the world. My public persona was firmly established: Prince Aeryn, the Scholar Prince. I was quiet, unnaturally bright, and spent most of my time in the library with Septon Barth or with the master-at-arms, where my serum-enhanced body allowed me to master the sword with a speed and precision that was attributed to Valyrian grace. I was respected, if seen as a bit of an oddity. My twin Gael was my opposite, a ray of sunshine beloved for her simple kindness and laughter, a perfect human shield for my own cold, calculating nature.
Beneath this placid surface, my true work continued. My 'lessons' with Barth were now high-level strategic discussions on everything from agricultural policy in the Reach to the fortification of the Dornish Marches. I had become the King's ghostwriter, his secret partner in the intricate business of governance. My nights were spent in the sky, linked with Balerion. The Black Dread, his body now fully revitalized and humming with power, was my ultimate intelligence asset. We patrolled the coastlines, observed the movements of suspicious ships, and kept a silent, watchful eye on the great houses. I was the realm's secret, sleepless guardian, not out of altruism, but because instability was a threat to my long-term investment.
I knew, with the chilling certainty of a historian reading his own timeline, that this peace was about to be shattered. The year 92 AC was marked in my mental ledger with a skull and crossbones. It was the year my eldest brother, the heir to the Iron Throne, Prince Aemon, was destined to die.
The news, when it came, arrived on the wings of a raven from Tarth. A small fleet of Myrish pirates, long a nuisance in the Stepstones, had grown bold, sacking a port on the eastern coast of the island. Aemon, in his capacity as Prince of Dragonstone and protector of the Narrow Sea, had taken his fleet to deal with the threat personally. It was a standard police action, nothing that should have troubled the heir to the throne.
But I knew better. I knew that on that island, a single, lucky crossbow bolt fired from a wooded hill would find its way under his gorget and into his throat. A pathetic, ignominious end for the Prince of Dragonstone.
When the raven's message was read in the Small Council chamber, there was concern, but no alarm. My father dispatched orders for Aemon to be cautious and to make a swift example of the pirates. My brother Baelon, ever the warrior, chafed at being left behind, wanting to fight at his brother's side. My mother, Alysanne, began to worry, as any mother would.
I, however, felt a cold, calm sense of inevitability. This was a scheduled event. A necessary one. My Unwritten Treaty had already laid the groundwork for the succession to pass smoothly from Aemon's line to Baelon. Aemon's death, while a personal tragedy for the family, was a crucial step in my long-term plan. My objective was not to prevent it. To do so would be to introduce a variable I could not control, to alter a timeline that, in this specific instance, served my ultimate purpose. My objective was to manage the fallout, to control the narrative, and to ensure the transition was seamless and absolute.
For a week, a tense quiet fell over the Red Keep. And then the second raven arrived.
I was in the library with Septon Barth, ostensibly translating a Valyrian text on legal precedents, when the summons came. We were to attend the King in the council chamber immediately. I saw the look on the messenger's face, the pallor, the fear. I knew.
We entered a room frozen in grief. My father, King Jaehaerys, sat on his chair at the head of the table, not slumped, but rigid, as if turned to stone. The message lay on the table before him. He was staring at it, but his eyes were seeing something a thousand leagues away. My mother stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders, her face a mask of unspeakable sorrow, tears tracing silent paths down her cheeks. Baelon was there, his fists clenched at his sides, his face contorted in a mask of rage and disbelief. Lord Corlys Velaryon, whose wife Rhaenys had just lost her father, was grim and silent. The air was thick with a grief so profound it felt like a physical weight.
"Aemon… is dead," my father said, his voice a dry, cracking whisper. He did not sound like a king. He sounded like a broken old man who had outlived another of his children.
The details were exactly as the histories had recorded. A crossbow bolt, fired from hiding, after the main battle was already won. A cruel, random act of fate.
While the room swam in a sea of emotion, my mind was a hub of cold calculation.
Asset lost: Prince Aemon.
Status of Heir Apparent: Vacant.
Contingency Plan: Activate.
Next in line: Prince Baelon.
Action Item: Solidify Baelon's position, manage the Tarth situation, prevent any power vacuum.
Baelon let out a roar of pure anguish. "I will go to Tarth! I will burn the Myrmen from that island until nothing remains but ash and bone! I will take Vhagar and…"
"No." Jaehaerys's voice cut through his son's rage, weak but absolute. "You will remain here. You are the heir to the Iron Throne now, Baelon. Your place is beside me." He looked at his son, his eyes filled with a new, terrible fear—the fear of losing the only one he had left.
This was the first problem. My father's grief was making him cautious to the point of paralysis. Baelon, as the new heir, needed to be seen as strong, decisive. He needed to be the one to avenge his brother. To hold him back was to make him look weak, to make the Crown look weak. Furthermore, the pirates on Tarth could not be allowed to survive. They could not be allowed to boast that they had slain the Prince of Dragonstone. The story had to be that they had awoken the dragon's wrath and been utterly annihilated for their insolence.
I needed to act. But I was an eleven-year-old boy, standing silently in a room of grieving giants. I could not give orders. But I had an agent who could. An agent of unimaginable power.
That night, as the Red Keep mourned, I went to my chambers. Gael was weeping in her bed, attended by our mother. I feigned my own silent grief, a performance of sorrow that was utterly convincing. But once I was alone, I closed my eyes and reached out across the sea.
The King's eldest son is dead, I projected, not with sadness, but with cold, hard clarity. Justice has not been served. A contingency is now in effect. We fly. Now.
There was no argument. There was no hesitation. The bond between us was absolute. In the deepest dark of night, from the cavern of the Dragonmont on Dragonstone where he had been laired, the Black Dread emerged. He did not roar. He did not draw attention. He was a mountain of shadow detaching itself from the greater shadow of the volcano, a silent angel of death ascending into the storm-wracked sky.
The flight to Tarth was a blur of wind, sea spray, and focused rage. It was my rage, channeled through the vessel of the dragon. I was not angry about Aemon's death. I was angry at the inefficiency, at the untidy variable the pirates represented. They were a loose end, a liability on the balance sheet, and they had to be liquidated.
We arrived over the island known as the Sapphire Isle in the pre-dawn gloom. Through Balerion's eyes, which saw the world in gradients of heat, the pirate encampment on the eastern coast was a festering sore, a cluster of warm tents and cookfires in a wooded cove. Aemon's fleet, now leaderless, blockaded the bay, but they were hesitant to assault the woods where the pirates were dug in.
I would not be so hesitant.
High, and silent, I commanded. We circled once, a mile above the island, a black speck in the swirling clouds. I assessed the terrain, the wind direction, the disposition of the enemy forces. They were confident in their position, arrogant in their victory.
Full burn. Maximum temperature. Descending pattern. Sterilize it all.
Balerion dove. He fell from the sky not like a dragon, but like a meteor, his wings tucked in, a silent, streamlined projectile of black vengeance. The pirates saw nothing, heard nothing, until the sky itself tore open above them.
The fire of the Black Dread was not the orange flame of a lesser dragon. It was a vortex of black and silver energy, so hot it turned sand to glass in an instant. It was not fire; it was annihilation. I did not direct him to burn the tents. I directed him to burn the cove. He swept from one end to the other, a slow, methodical pass, his ancient throat unleashing a torrent of god-fire that vaporized trees, boiled the very seawater, and turned the pirate fleet in the bay into floating pyres. The stone of the cliffs themselves cracked and glowed cherry-red under the onslaught.
It was over in less than a minute. A forested cove teeming with hundreds of men was transformed into a smoking, glassy crater. There were no survivors. There were no bodies to count. There was nothing left but the wail of superheated wind and the smell of ozone. The men on Aemon's ships could only stare in horror and awe at the absolute, terrifying power that had been unleashed. They did not know where it had come from. In the dark and the storm, all they saw was the sky catching fire and the world ending for their enemies.
I had Balerion circle once more, high above the devastation, an unseen god reviewing his handiwork. The contingency was complete. The pirates were eliminated. The narrative was now under my control. The story would not be that the Prince of Dragonstone was killed by a lucky shot from a common pirate. The story would be that the pirates had awoken a fury from Old Valyria itself, a power not seen in a century, and had been erased from existence for their hubris. The authority of House Targaryen had not been weakened by Aemon's death; it had been reinforced in the most brutal way imaginable.
I returned to my body in the Red Keep just as the sun was rising. I was physically and mentally exhausted, but my mind was clear and sharp. The clean-up operation was complete.
Two days later, Prince Baelon, unable to bear his grief and inaction any longer, defied his father. He mounted his own dragon, Vhagar, and flew to Tarth, intent on revenge. He arrived to find a scene of utter devastation that left even him, a seasoned warrior, shaken to his core. The sailors from Aemon's fleet told a confused, terrified story of a black shadow, a storm of fire from the heavens. Baelon, knowing that only one dragon in the world was called the Black Dread, could only have come to one conclusion, but it was a conclusion so impossible he could not speak it aloud. He took credit for the act, as was his right as the ranking prince. He returned to King's Landing not just as the avenger of his brother, but as the wielder of unimaginable power, further cementing his new position as heir.
In the throne room, he knelt before our father. "The Myrmen are no more, Father. I have burned them from the earth."
Jaehaerys looked at his son, then his eyes, full of a new and dawning suspicion, flickered towards me where I stood in the crowd of courtiers. I met his gaze, my face a perfect mask of childish solemnity. He knew Baelon had not left King's Landing until after the devastation had occurred. He knew Vhagar's fire was not the black fire of legend. He knew there was only one power in the world capable of such an act. He could not prove it. He could never speak of it. But he knew he had not just lost one son and gained another as heir. He knew that his youngest, his quiet, scholarly boy, had just independently commanded the single greatest weapon in the world and carried out a flawless black operation without leaving his room.
The King's grief was still a raw, open wound. But as he looked at me, a new emotion mingled with it. Fear. Not the fear of a father for a strange child, but the fear of a king for a power that was rapidly growing beyond his comprehension, let alone his control. The contingency had been a success. The succession was clear. But the balance of power within our secret council of three had just shifted, irrevocably.