Viserys
The solar smelled of beeswax and old wine and the faint sweet rot of the river that crept through the walls when the wind turned south. Viserys sat in the chair his grandsire had sat in before him, with his legs stretched toward the hearth and a cup balanced on his knee. The fire had burned to a low crawl. Servants had come twice to build it up and he had waved them off both times, because the warmth was enough and because he did not want anyone else in the room.
Daemon leaned against the window ledge with his arms folded and his ankles crossed. He wore a black doublet with the collar unlaced, and his silver hair hung loose past his jaw. There was a bruise along his left cheekbone where the sand had caught him on the second fall, and a scrape across the bridge of his nose that he had not bothered to clean. Dark Sister stood propped against the wall beside him, still in its scabbard.
Between them sat a platter of cold meat and bread and a second jug of wine that was already lighter than it had been when the servants brought it. The hour was late, and the keep had gone quiet around them, the halls emptied of courtiers and the yard emptied of squires, and for the first time in days they had no audience.
Viserys drank and watched his brother over the rim of his cup. Daemon had not spoken in some time, and he stood at the window and looked out at the city's lights and ran his thumb along the bruise on his cheek.
"You could have that looked at," Viserys said.
Daemon's thumb stopped. "It is a bruise, brother. I have had worse from a pillow."
"You have had worse from your own horse," Viserys agreed. He set the cup down and reached for a piece of bread and tore it in half and held one half out. Daemon took it without looking and bit into it and chewed.
The fire ticked, and a log settled and sent a scatter of sparks up the flue.
"So," Viserys said, "are we going to talk about it, or shall we pretend it did not happen?"
Daemon's jaw worked on the bread, and he swallowed and brushed the crumbs from his fingers and folded his arms again.
"What is there to talk about?" he said. "I rode against a man in borrowed plate and he put me on my arse. Twice. Then I drew Dark Sister and he took it from my hand and held me in the air and asked me to yield. In front of an audience."
He rolled his neck until something cracked. "A fine afternoon."
“You’ve killed men for far less.” Viserys could not help the laugh that came, and he pressed it down into a cough but it escaped anyway, short and warm, and Daemon shot him a look.
"You laugh," Daemon said.
"I do," Viserys said, and did not apologize. "You should have seen your face when he caught your wrist. You looked like a man who had reached into a kennel and found the hound was bigger than the door."
"The hound was bigger than the bloody kennel," Daemon said, and his mouth twitched in spite of itself. He looked away again, to the window, and was quiet for a moment. "I was told that he held Breakbones with one hand. Can you imagine? I don’t think even Aegon the Conqueror could’ve managed that."
"No, I don’t think he would’ve," Viserys said. "Orys Baratheon, perhaps."
"Perhaps," Daemon agreed.
He pushed off the ledge and crossed to the platter and picked up a strip of salt beef and studied it. "I have fought corsairs in the Stepstones for years now. Pirates and slavers and Triarchy captains who trained with Myrish swordmasters. I have burned ships from dragonback and waded through surf with Dark Sister in my hand and killed men who would have killed me without the courtesy of an introduction. I thought I knew what strength was."
He bit into the beef and chewed once, slowly.
"That knight taught me something I had forgotten," he said, quieter now. "The world is large. Very large. And I have spent too many years relying on Caraxes instead of my own sword arm. A man on a dragon feels like a god, and then he meets another man on foot who can hold him with one hand, and the godhood falls away rather quickly."
Viserys watched him; Daemon's face had gone plain and slightly sour.
"If Ser Tolan were not sworn to House Darkwood," Viserys said, "I would have offered him a white cloak."
Daemon looked up from the beef. "You would put that man in the Kingsguard?"
"Without hesitation."
Daemon made a sound in his throat, and then he reached past the beef to the small clay dish that sat at the edge of the platter, beside the salt. He pinched a measure of the greenish powder between his fingers and brought it to his nose and sniffed, and then he touched his tongue to it.
His face changed at once.
"Gods," he said, and reached for his wine. He drank deep and wiped his mouth and looked at the powder on his fingers. "What is this stuff? I have been tasting it in everything they have served us since I arrived. Everything. The soup, the stew, the roasted mutton, even the damned bread, and now I find it sitting beside the salt."
Viserys sat up straighter in his chair, and a grin spread across his face.
"Darkwood Powder," he said. "Have you not heard? It is the talk of every kitchen in the city."
"I have heard the name a dozen times and understood it less with each hearing," Daemon said. He wiped his fingers on a cloth and let it drop. "It tastes bitter. And strange. Like someone ground up a seabed."
"Because you tasted the raw stuff, you fool," Viserys said, and laughed loud enough that his cup rocked on the arm of his chair. "You do not eat it from the dish. The cooks use it in the cooking. A pinch in a pot, a dusting on a roast. It does not change the flavor; it makes the flavor more itself. The beef tastes more like beef. The broth tastes richer, deeper, as if it had simmered for a day longer than it did. My cooks have ordered three dozen barrels of the stuff from that little village on the bay, and I am told they are already asking for more."
Daemon raised an eyebrow. "From where?"
"Velton," Viserys said, and he surprised himself with the fondness in his own voice. "The same house that gave us the Titan. Lord Forrest Darkwood's daughter dried the algae from their bay and ground it fine and put it in a pot and now half the Crownlands will not eat a meal without it."
He lifted his cup. "Wait until the feast tomorrow evening. You will taste it on the food, as the cooks intend it, and you will understand. Every dish they set before you will taste as if the gods themselves seasoned it."
"T’is been some time since you spoke of anything with such fondness," Daemon said.
"Food is the folly of men and it shall be mine," Viserys replied, still grinning. "Sit down. Eat something. And for the sake of all the Seven, do not lick the powder from the dish again; you look like a cat that swallowed brine."
Daemon dropped into the chair across from him and stretched his legs and reached for the wine, and for a while neither of them spoke.
Rhaenyra
The feast on this evening was smaller than the others had been, the tables drawn closer together and the candles fewer, and the hall held a loose and easy warmth that the grander nights had not allowed. Men sat where they liked instead of where the steward placed them. Musicians played something slow from the gallery, and the wine had been flowing long enough that the laughter came readily and the voices rose without ceremony.
Rhaenyra sat near the end of the high table with Daemon to her left and a cup of Arbor gold in her hand. Her uncle had his chair tipped back on two legs and his boots crossed at the ankle, and he was speaking low enough that only she could hear.
"The boy has his mother's chin," Daemon said, gesturing with his cup toward the far end of the hall where Queen Alicent sat with Prince Aegon in a chair too large for him beside her. The child was four, round and soft, and he sat with his legs kicking the air beneath his seat and his fingers smeared with butter. "And her appetite, from the look of it. He will be broad before he is tall. Mark it."
Rhaenyra pressed her lips together and looked down at her plate, but the smile got through anyway.
"He is four, uncle," she said, though she didn't really mean it.
"I was four once," Daemon said. "I did not look like a dumpling with a crown."
The laugh escaped her before she could stop it, and she covered her mouth with the back of her hand and glanced down the table to be sure Alicent had not heard. The queen sat with her spine pressed straight against the back of her chair, her gown a deep green, her hands folded around a cup she had barely touched. She spoke to a septa who stood at her elbow and nodded at careful intervals.
"And the other one," Daemon went on, tipping his cup toward the cradle that sat behind the queen's chair, where the wet nurse held a small bundled shape against her breast. "Aemond was it? I have seen prettier dogs. I wonder if he is indeed my brother’s son or the son of a white hound."
Rhaenyra snorted into her wine and set the cup down and wiped her eyes and shook her head. "You are terrible."
"I am only being honest," Daemon drank and set his own cup down and leaned closer, his voice dropping another step. "And the queen. Seven save me. She sits there in her green as though she were carved from a hedge and plucked from the garden and placed there against her will. One has to wonder if, like hedges, insects do not permeate the bodice beneath the green."
Rhaenyra's shoulders shook, and she pressed her hand to her mouth again and breathed through her fingers until the worst of the laugh had passed. It was wicked and she knew it, and she would not have traded it for any amount of propriety.
Daemon reached across the table and refilled her cup from the jug without being asked, and she took it and drank and watched the hall over the rim. Father sat at the center of the high table in conversation with Lord Lannister, his face ruddy from wine and laughter, his crown slightly askew. He looked happy, and she was glad of it.
The feast went on, and the candles burned, and Rhaenyra kept thinking about Amelia Darkwood. Her healer.