The Streets of King's Landing.
The sun rose over a city that had transformed overnight.
The narrow alleys and broad thoroughfares of King's Landing were now plastered with two official proclamations, each bearing the heavy wax seals of the King and the Small Council.
The first was a bill of indictment: Grand Maester Orwyle, in collusion with Princess Rhaenyra, had poisoned the King and forged a false will. By the grace of the Seven, the treason had been thwarted.
As municipal criers shouted the news to the illiterate masses, crowds gathered, their murmurs buzzing like a disturbed hive.
"King Viserys... poisoned?" an old fishwife gasped, clutching her shawl.
"The criers say the Princess did it," a blacksmith's apprentice whispered.
"Because she was angry about the succession."
A fat baker nearby snorted. "The Realm's Delight? Poisoning her own father? It doesn't sit right."
"Delight?" a sharp-faced woman sneered.
"She birthed three bastards without shame. A woman like that is capable of anything. She belongs in the Seven Hells!"
"But the Maesters are involved too?" someone questioned.
"The Faith supports Prince Aegon," another pointed out, gesturing toward the spires of the Great Sept.
"I saw the High Septon's carriage at the Red Keep yesterday."
Suddenly, a gravelly voice cut through the debate.
"I heard a different tale. They say the King was poisoned by his own son."
The air turned frigid. Every head turned to the speaker: a ragged, scarred vagrant.
Realizing his error, the man tried to slip away into the crowd.
"Who said that? Stand forth!"
Captain Frey of the City Watch, patrolling nearby, spurred his horse forward. His face was set in a smile, but it was a smile made of ice.
"Slandering the Prince, are we?"
He reined in his horse, looking down at the dozens of commoners now frozen in terror.
"No one wants to point him out? Fine. Cut out all their tongues."
The crowd erupted in panic as the guards drew their steel.
"Mercy, Captain! It wasn't us!"
"It was him! That one!" a scrawny tailor shrieked, pointing at the vagrant trying to scramble away.
Frey gestured. Two soldiers lunged, dragging the man toward the crier's platform like a sacrificial lamb.
"I only heard it from others!" the vagrant wailed.
Frey kicked him squarely in the stomach. As the man curled into a ball, Frey addressed the crowd.
"This man is a spy for the rebel Rhaenyra, sent to spread lies. The kinslayer is the Princess!"
He signaled his men. They didn't use daggers. To ensure the lesson was sufficiently bloody, one soldier forced the man's jaw open while the other pulled his tongue forward.
With a sickening crunch, the soldier slammed the man's jaw shut with the force of an iron boot.
The man let out a gargled scream, blood spraying across the cobblestones as half his tongue fell to the ground, twitching.
Frey surveyed the trembling crowd with predatory eyes.
"Why didn't you report him immediately? Are you all traitors too?"
"We didn't know, my Lord!"
"He was just standing there!"
"It sounds like a lack of patriotism to me," Frey mused, his eyes narrowing as he looked for a profit.
"Take them all. I'll interrogate them in the dungeons."
A merchant among the group fell to his knees.
"Captain! I can... I can be patriotic! I have two Gold Dragons to prove my devotion!"
Frey's eyes brightened. "Bring him here. And take the rest anyway!"
As the wails of the arrested faded, the city began to react.
Those with wits left the taverns and rushed to the markets. Grain, flour, salt beef, and chickpeas were snatched up in a frenzy.
"War is coming," a merchant whispered to his peer in an alley.
"The harvests in the Vale were poor, and the Riverlands... grain is already up thirty percent."
"Then we buy from the Reach. As long as we have coin, we have life."
On the city walls, the old banners of the Red Dragon on black had been hauled down.
In their place, the Gold Three-Headed Dragon of the Greens snapped in the wind, a golden predator watching over a city of secrets.
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