Snowball dragged a tattered sailcloth to the prison cell, then pulled it over himself like a shroud, leaving only two pale, unglossed eyes peering out into the darkness.
Time crept by. A gusting wind whirled across the waters, waves crashing thunderously against the ship's deck. Out of the storm a cloaked figure climbed aboard, hauling himself up by the great rivets hammered into the hull.
Through Snowball's eyes, Drogo instantly recognized him: Jon Connington. The fox he had been waiting for.
The exiled Hand moved like a prowling cat, crouched low upon the deck. Panting, he darted his head from side to side to be sure he was unseen. Then he crept to his goal.
Clinton stepped upon the stool used to pass meals through the vent, peered inside, and whispered:
"Princess, wake. Wake, Princess."
His call first stirred the silver mare within, then the woman herself, wrapped tightly in blankets. She stirred, moaning muffled sounds.
The noise startled him. "Princess, are you ill?" he asked in alarm.
The only answer was the same muffled moan.
He concluded she must be sick. The cell was damp, the air dank—no place for a woman. She could easily fall to chills or fever.
The exiled Hand had no medicines on him. His cloak was soaked with seawater; to give it her would only draw suspicion. Helpless, he realized he could not aid her.
Unsullied prowled the ship by the dozen. Discovery was a breath away. He pressed on quickly:
"Princess, I have made terms with the Shroud King. Endure a few more days. When the fleet reaches the Sorrows, you shall be free—and reunited with your true nephew."
With that, he gave her no more words, but slipped from the stool, judged the surge of an oncoming wave, vaulted the railing, and vanished into the seafoam.
The roar of the surf cloaked his escape from the Unsullied's ears.
With Snowball's strength, Drogo could have drawn their eyes and seized Jon Connington then and there. But he wanted the greater catch, and so let him go.
So the boy Aegon yet lives. Kerry's confession was true.
At the Consul's palace in Volantis, Drogo severed his bond with the white lion, turned to the slumbering, wasted Daenerys beside him, and sank into thought.
From Kerry, whom he had caught in correspondence with Connington, he had learned much that chilled his heart.
Many Golden Company men had seen it: in the bay of Qarth, the exiled Hand had carried Aegon away, and made Bronn drink his blood.
Kerry revealed how Aegon, grievously burned, yet clung to life—because Jon Connington, already doomed, had caught greyscale in the Sorrows.
Greyscale Drogo knew. In the damp climes of this world it struck children: fingers first went numb, toes blackened, sensation lost. Then the numbness crept up arms or legs, flesh hardening, cooling, calcifying, crumbling. The skin greyed like stone.
Worse than greyscale was its pestilent cousin, the grey plague. The signs alike, but it spread like pestilence, leaping from body to body.
When stoneflesh reached the face, blindness followed; when it entered the marrow, the organs, the victim was doomed. Few lasted ten years.
So Connington's tainted blood, heavy with greyscale, might dull Aegon's pain, might even turn his flesh to stone to slow his dying—granting him borrowed time.
Knowing the fleet must pass the Sorrows, Drogo had searched the tomes of Oldtown's maesters for cures.
They spoke of limes, mustard poultices, boiling baths—or prayer, sacrifice, fasting. Worthless all, the last absurd.
Two harsher remedies remained. One: cut away the infected limb. A few were saved; most watched the grey return elsewhere, their hope dying.
The other: carve out the hardened flesh piece by piece, an agony few survived, fewer still cured. Most preferred to perish rather than suffer such torment.
Yet there was one strange boon: children who endured greyscale were never sick again. Their bodies, scarred with scaled skin like dragonhide, were proof against other ills. But the scars marked them cursed, as despised as the tear-tattooed slaves.
Such a disease could never be tolerated. Rulers had driven nearly all sufferers into the ruins of the Sorrows, to fester and die.
There the Rhoyne overflowed, fog lay year-round, no crop grew. The abandoned, half-dead stone men turned bitter, loathing the warm-blooded world.
Each year Volantene consuls sent ships laden with food, rowed by condemned men. Each year, without fail, the crews returned only as stone men themselves.
Why cursed? Once the Sorrows had been fair and fertile. But Valyria and Volantis had coveted it, hanged its lord Ghael in a gilded cage, mocked him as he called the Mother Rhoyne to shield his folk.
That night the river rose like his dying curse, drowning every invader.
Trapped beneath the waters, never to know sun nor rest, their breath rose as mist.
From then on, the cursed land knew a master—the Shroud King.
Some say the Shroud King is Ghael himself, risen from his watery tomb. Others that the crown passes from king to king of the isles. Still others whisper of a witch, that she births greyscale with her curse, that even stone statues tattooed by her hand rise to life.
Such tales, and such truths, gnawed at Drogo's mind.
Tens of thousands of stone men thronged the Sorrows. And Connington and the boy Aegon had struck their pact with the Shroud King.
Drogo had no choice but to tread carefully.
He could not give up a thousand warships—they were his hope of conquest in Westeros. And only the wide Rhoyne through the Sorrows could carry ships so deep of draft. He must brave the cursed waters.
Stone men were slow, blind in late affliction. What troubled Drogo most was not they, but Aegon.
In the House of the Undying he had seen a vision: countless stone hands stretched upward, clawing toward a stone dragon clutching a silver mare.
That dragon, he felt sure, was Aegon—perhaps truly of Targaryen blood.
Once, he had crowned Viserys Targaryen with molten gold, slaying the would-be conqueror, the true heir of Aegon.
So he knew not all who bore the dragon's blood were fireproof. Only Daenerys—and he himself.
The Unburnt were two: himself and Daenerys.
So the boy who near perished in dragonflame—he might yet be Rhaegar's son, Daenerys's true nephew.
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🐉 Dragon King of Ice and Fire
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