Margaery wept openly. She had loved her grandmother. And not only her.
"Myrcella had become like a sister to me," my wife said, taking my hand. I felt her tears fall warm upon my palm.
Tommen, lost and alone, stepped closer, and I drew him to my chest with my free arm.
"Our little sister, Joff… she's gone…" The grief in his voice was such that it near tore my heart in two.
Myrcella… everyone loved you. Everyone, without exception. And now you were gone. By now, I could understand how men in Westeros cherish the women they love, how they guard them and hold them dear. And now I could understand Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark in the moment when Lyanna died.
It was a day of mourning.
Then a solemn, majestic sound drifted over the capital. The bells of the Great Sept of Baelor began to toll, the sept having suffered little during the battle. For reasons I could not name, a shiver ran down the spines of those who listened. It seemed as if the whole world had stilled…
Yet a cold, vengeful fury was slowly driving out all grief and sorrow. The Martells—bitches. And Daenerys—that bitch! A filthy, rabid bitch! No one will ever forgive you for this!
***
We had all considered that perhaps Daenerys had not intended to resort to such "draconian" measures. But the Martells were there—cunning, treacherous bastards, no less ruthless than any of us. You could expect the vilest moves from them.
And we got exactly that.
The Faceless Men could have solved the problem, yet they did not. Mathis Rowan, during his first stay in Braavos, had gone to the House of Black and White and set a price on Daenerys Targaryen's head. It was a dishonorable move, but the death of one person could have saved thousands of others. An ugly thing, and far from knightly.
And it came to nothing…
The Faceless Men gave no explanations, no reasoning. The last time Rowan brought five hundred thousand to the Iron Bank, they themselves took the initiative—found him, returned half the sum for the contract, and demanded that he take back the name—Daenerys Targaryen. The other half they kept, saying it had gone to cover their expenses.
The Faceless Men are not a cure-all for every ill. Their abilities are impressive, yet plainly not without limits. And so they failed to kill Daenerys. I suspect one of their killers may have died, and that the dragons surely helped the Stormborn remain alive.
The Martells themselves had not been idle either. Once, Orm's service managed to neutralize a fake Gold Cloak. Another time, my bodyguards cut down a Kingsguard who failed to give the proper sign and answered the password incorrectly. Only after his death, when his face changed, did it become clear that he was not Rolf Keith, but someone entirely unknown.
It seems all of us tried to use the Faceless Men, traded blows, and ended up where we started. That meant the matter had to be resolved by other means. And so Daenerys made her move—may she burn in hell for it!
We had something to answer with. I placed particular hope in the "greenery." Once I had learned to travel with this ability more or less successfully, I realized that visiting places or people in the present—not the past—could offer an incredible advantage. One could uncover secrets, eavesdrop, spy…
Unfortunately, I quickly realized that things were not so simple, and that there were significant limitations. No matter how hard I tried, I could not reach Essos or, for example, the Summer Islands. Other continents and islands were closed to me.
I could exist within the "greenery" only in Westeros—and even then, not everywhere. The south and Dorne were beyond my sight, and the farthest place I managed to reach was Highgarden. Even there, it was difficult to remain.
I still had not discovered how Bran Stark had managed to reach so far south and witness what happened in the Tower of Joy at the moment Jon Snow was born. Perhaps the Three-Eyed Crow had helped him, or some other factor had been at play.
In time, through trial and error, I determined that a reasonably deep and reliable plunge into the "greenery" was possible along a rough line from Storm's End to Casterly Rock. was possible along a rough line from Storm's End to Casterly Rock. Anything farther south proved weak and unstable. The farther north one went, the more the "greenery" revealed its strength.
I never managed to see Daenerys and her dragons while they were in Dorne. And I was not ready for them.
After some thought, I believed I had found the answer to why this was so. The "greenery" was tied to the weirwoods. In the south, there were hardly any left. The three weirwoods in Highgarden were dry and dying—they helped me very little. In the North, though, such trees were plentiful, and there it came easily to me.
Another crucial factor was time.
An hour spent within the "greenery" equaled an hour in the real world—and sometimes, for reasons I did not fully understand, stretched even longer, like a drop of honey hanging from a branch.I might spend an hour in the past, yet where my body lay, an hour and a half—or even two—would pass.
(End of Chapter)
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