On his third morning on Dragonstone, Jon woke to water striking stone.
For a moment he was aboard Tern again. Then he saw red light upon the coverlet and a gull passing the window.
Wylla sat in the embrasure with a torn cuff upon her lap. She put it aside and brought his breakfast nearer.
"Did you sleep?"
"Until the sea woke me."
"The sea has been there all night."
"It waited until I was comfortable."
She smiled and gave him the broth. Across the harbour, men were raising a sail. He wondered whether Robb had reached Winterfell, and how much Theon would let him tell of Runestone without interrupting.
"I miss them," Jon said.
Wylla looked back from the chest. "So do I."
She sat beside him until he had finished eating. When Aries arrived with his boots, she took one look at the mud upon them and sent him out again.
Wylla took his clean shirt from the chest and caught a loose button before it fell.
"That can wait," Jon said. "Are there women still here who served in the castle before? Or daughters of the old servants who want work?"
"Some of both. One of the laundresses has been here longer than Ethan. Her daughter helps when there is enough washing to pay her." Wylla laid the shirt across her knees. "There are women in Blackburn who would come back for steady wages."
"Will you speak to them? We shall be opening rooms that have been shut for years. I want people who know the castle, and others you can teach."
She looked up. "How many?"
"Enough to do the work. Take on those already here who are willing, and hire more if you need them." He drew his chair nearer. "I want you as my housekeeper. The chambermaids and laundresses will answer to you. Rooms, bedding, linen—you know what is needed better than I do."
Wylla turned the button in her fingers. "And when a captain borrows six blankets and brings back four?"
"He answers to you as well."
"I should like to hear you say that before them."
"You shall. Ethan will give you the keys and find quarters for the new servants. Settle their wages with Abel. Your own will increase with the office."
"Then I had better begin asking." She rose, taking the button with her. "After I have mended this. You will lose it otherwise."
Ethan was waiting in the passage. The castellan had the village returns beneath his arm, with a folded slip protruding from almost every leaf.
"The maester has the old count and the names of everyone brought ashore," Ethan said.
"Then let us see who has been missed."
The five headmen were eating by the hall fire. Tobin, headman of Blackburn, had pulled his stool close enough to dry his boots. Ormond of Eastcove kept a wrapped roof tile beside his bowl. Merren, Cinderwell's headman, sat with Dake of Wyrm's Rest, while Qarl of Saltcliffe watched a servant carry away the last of the fish.
Jon took the chair at the end of their table rather than climbing to the high seat. Arthur stood behind him until Wylla told a servant to bring another stool.
"We will settle what cannot wait," Jon said. "Then I want Merren and Dake to show me their villages. I have seen Blackburn and Eastcove. Saltcliffe comes tomorrow."
Ormond touched the tile. "And the houses, my lord?"
"Any family beneath a roof Otho judges unsafe goes into other lodgings today. Abel will pay for them."
The headman's mouth tightened. "We have been waiting three years."
"I saw the lanes yesterday. Patching roofs will not give carts room or keep foul water from the doors. You will have new homes. First I must settle where they stand."
Otho unwrapped the piece. "The kiln roof is the first repair. Your carpenter and mine can set the beams. Keep everyone out until they have."
Ormond agreed to that. He left the tile upon the table.
Maester Stewart spread the old count and the landing return. Jon checked that each soldier, officer, craftsman and family appeared only once.
"Still the old count underneath," Jon said.
"Corrected as far as the headmen know. My clerks will begin visiting the houses today, with Bram and Torr."
"Names, ages and the work they know. I want it finished before the council in seven days."
"Four writers cannot cover the farms as well," the maester said.
"Tomas, choose eight of the household who write a clear hand. They report here after breakfast."
Tomas glanced towards Gawen, whose bound arm rested against his chest. The knight nodded.
"Leave me enough for the escorts," Gawen said.
"You will have them. Maester, divide the writers between the villages. The headmen supply guides for the lanes and outlying cottages. Check castle and camp against their rolls."
"And men at sea?" Qarl asked.
"With their households, and marked away. Read every entry back."
Tobin rubbed his beard. "Some will think you mean another levy."
"There is no new tax. They have my word."
The maester moved his returns aside for the castle books. Abel laid his own accounts beside them; Perkin, the legion's quaestor, brought Hewyn's pay roll.
"The boat levies are in the iron chest," the maester told Abel, setting down its key.
Jon drew their books together. "Abel, my income and expenditure; Maester, Dragonstone's books. Work out what comes in, what we expect to receive and what must go out. I want the figures before the meeting."
"We shall have them," Abel said.
Perkin had marked two names upon the roll. Hewyn bent over his shoulder.
"Back with their centuries yesterday," the commander said.
"Then they draw with them." Perkin amended the entry and gave Abel the sum for the next issue. Jon checked it before leaving them to settle the transfer.
Dake had been waiting to speak. Eight northern soldiers had bought grain at Wyrm's Rest and paid fairly. Two households had sold them sacks set aside for sowing.
"The green straw round the mouths tells us which," he said.
"It tells your people," Hewyn answered. "It told mine nothing."
"The sellers knew," Jon said. "How much has been eaten?"
"Two sacks opened. Most remains."
"Return the sound grain and recover its price. Ethan will replace what was eaten with seed. The sellers keep their remaining sacks for sowing. Hewyn, camp purchases go through your quartermaster."
Dake nodded, satisfied enough to stop picking at the straw upon his sleeve.
Merren's complaint was water. Cinderwell's lower basin ran thin when the castle drew heavily. Jon asked how the castle well could affect it.
"Because it is fed from our spring, my lord." Merren glanced at the maester. "I put dye in the upper basin last summer. It reached the castle buckets before evening."
Jon set down his cup.
Ethan's letters had said well; Jon had pictured a separate shaft. Otho drew the water plan nearer.
"Show us when we reach Cinderwell," Jon said. "For today, the castle's washing waits until the village has filled its jars. Keep the ships' drinking casks for the sick."
Qarl's three missing boats came last: Sweet Moll, Three Brothers and Grey Petrel, taken for Stannis's fleet. Their charge remained against Saltcliffe though none had returned.
"Find the levy," Jon told Ethan. "They will not keep paying for boats the Crown took away."
Qarl thanked him. Jon told him to have the salt boilers and boat owners ready tomorrow. Outside, the maester was dividing the twelve writers between the villages while Gawen settled the escorts.
* * *
Tobin caught them at the harbour before they mounted.
Grain and empty casks filled two carts jammed nose to nose above the quay. Shipmen waited with sacks upon their shoulders while the carters argued.
"Every morning," Tobin said.
Jon walked between the wheels. The grain cart could not back far without striking the corner of a smokehouse. Beyond the casks, a flight of steps took half the width of the lane.
"Who uses those rooms?" he asked.
"A netmaker below. His daughter and her husband above."
Jon had the empty casks lifted off and the lightened cart turned against the wall. Then he marked the stair and smokehouse upon his sketch. More berths would be wasted if cargo could not leave them.
Salt had split the facing beside the sound berth. Farther out, waves rocked a fishing boat through a gap in the harbour arm.
Otho put his rod against a loose stone. "We can mend this piece without closing the landing."
"Make it safe," Jon said. "And have the pilots measure the water along the broken arm. I want the fallen stone marked, not merely the depth above it."
South of the quay, sheds crowded a long slope. While Otho measured, Jon drew a wider harbour road, room for stores beside it and new house rows above the cart traffic.
Tobin followed his gaze. "There are boats pulled up behind those sheds."
"I will see them before anything is moved."
He joined the harbour road to his street sketch. Blackburn's houses would be rebuilt around the routes and working ground the port required.
Before mounting, he gave Hobb a drawing of the chessmen Aries had been asking for. The carpenter turned it over, judged the little figures and promised to find suitable offcuts.
They left Tobin settling his carters and rode inland with Merren. Dake had gone ahead to Wyrm's Rest to see to the returned grain.
Cinderwell's heaps of cut stone gave way to green gardens around a fold in the mountain. Bean poles leaned over low walls. Women worked linen in troughs below the village, and water ran beside the road in a cut lined with fitted stone.
Merren took them past the houses to the spring.
Jon dismounted before Bucephalus could push among the waiting jars. A girl lifted two away from his hooves and stared at the white lock above Jon's brow. Her mother pulled her aside, but he asked her to leave the jars where she had been filling them.
"I want to see which runs first."
The upper basin overflowed through two lips. One fed the village. The other entered a covered course bending towards the castle. A third channel lay choked with pale deposits and earth.
"That is where we lose it," Merren said, pointing beyond the covered course.
Above it, a retaining wall bowed beneath wet turf. Otho worked his rod into the hollow at its foot and brought it out muddy.
"The footing is washing away."
"Can you open the old channel?" Jon asked.
"After the wall is held. Open it now and we may bring that end down."
Merren's daughter showed them where water rose through a crack after rain. She had been told to keep the goats away because one had broken a leg there. Otho followed her downhill and altered the line he had begun drawing.
Jon traced the branches upon his sketch. He had drawn the castle and village supplies apart in Winterfell; now he joined them. Any new demand would reach back to this basin. Its losses mattered as much as the water flowing from the spring.
"Send for props and a mason," he told Otho. "Carry the seep clear before anyone disturbs the wall."
Below the spring he marked new housing ground, the clean-water course and a workshop approach clear of both. Merren showed him which gardens flooded and where carts could turn.
At a shed, the headman brought out three pieces of rusty stone.
"From the northern cut. It never yielded much; we sold a few loads to the castle smith before the workings slipped."
Jon felt the weight with pleasure. Water moving through volcanic rock could leave rich deposits; the old cut deserved more than Merren's few cartloads. He wanted samples from the seam itself.
"Who worked it?"
"Two still live here. One cannot climb now."
"Then I shall hear him here. The other can take us to the cut later in the week. Keep these apart from anything gathered elsewhere."
Merren fetched a sack. Jon sent it to Noll with a household man; Otho stayed to explain the shoring to the village mason.
Wyrm's Rest lay in a sheltered hollow beyond the ridge. The barley stood thickest there, with beans nearer the houses and cattle grazing below a belt of wind-bent trees. Dake met them at a field edge where his sons were arguing over the returned seed sacks.
One wanted to repay the soldiers at once; the other insisted that some of the grain was missing.
"Weigh it first," Jon said. "Then you will know what to repay."
Dake sent one for the balance. The other went to find the man who had sold the grain, muttering that everyone had known where the sacks belonged yesterday.
Jon knelt between two barley strips and worked the earth in his fingers. Damp held beneath the dry surface. It smelled familiar enough to bring his first father's boots to mind, clods falling from them onto a kitchen floor and his mother ordering them outside.
He rubbed the soil from his palm more slowly than he needed to.
Dake took him to the lower field. Rain stood there after the upper ground had dried, but a drain along its foot would discharge into another family's grazing.
"Where does the water leave that hollow?" Jon asked.
"Through the stones beyond the cattle. Unless they clog."
"Show Otho when he comes. We start at those stones."
Jon followed the hollow with his eyes. Draining one field would gain him nothing if the water drowned the next. The outfall had to be clear before he brought men here to dig.
They walked the strips, talking of seed, winter fodder and the plough teams shared between households. Dake reckoned close to six hundred acres went under the plough, with perhaps half as much again in meadow and grazing. When Jon asked whether that included the farms beyond the ridge, the headman stopped to count them upon his fingers.
"Some of them. I would have to ask about the far side."
Jon put a mark beside the figure. On the rising ground he could see barley growing thin over stone; below, the deeper soil carried a crop almost to his waist. Acreage alone would tell him little unless he knew which sort he had. He drew the ridge and the watercourse, then asked Dake to walk the boundary with him.
Otho caught them there, leading his horse. He had left the mason setting props beneath Cinderwell's wall. Jon showed him the two hollows and waited while he measured the fall between them.
Above the fields stood the queen's barn, three walls and a rowan growing where grain had once lain. Its beams had long since gone into village roofs. Otho tested the surviving floor piers and found one settling towards the damp ground.
Dake pointed to the trees above the spring. "There is timber."
"And roots holding that slope," Otho said. "I would leave those standing."
Jon drew a cart court by the barn, with room for threshing and stores. New house rows would stand on drier ground above it. He asked Dake for paid hands after harvest.
"After," the headman repeated.
"After. I have soldiers who can dig. I did not come to take the sickles out of your fields."
They ate at Dake's house beneath a beam polished dark by generations of smoke. His youngest daughter brought Jon a bowl and remained close enough to hear what he thought of the cheese. He asked for another piece. She carried that news to her mother at once.
Before mounting, Jon added the deeper soil, the stony strips and the wet ground beneath the barn to his sketch. In his first life a farm had been worked with the whole holding in view. Here the same plough teams served households whose strips lay scattered across the hollow. He had watched a team cross one man's ground to reach another's while a third waited. He could do better with land he owned outright. He began joining the fields upon the page, leaving their boundaries visible beneath his new lines.
* * *
That evening Ethan took him into the rooms behind the Stone Drum's inner door.
The wing-shaped key resisted at first. Jon lifted it slightly, felt the wards settle, and turned it with his sound fingers. A servant pushed the shutters open. The bed hangings stirred in the draught, shedding dust upon a chest carved with dragon scales.
"Prince Rhaegar's rooms," Ethan said. "When he was here."
Arthur went straight to the window without waiting for Ethan to show him the room. His hand settled upon the sill.
A broad bed, a desk darkened along one leg, a stool with its covering split at the seam. Jon had expected something that would make the man easier to imagine. A pale rectangle showed where a writing box had stood upon the desk. He looked at it longer than he needed to.
"Did he work here?" Jon asked.
"Sometimes." Arthur touched a shallow nick in the window frame. "He would have this open in weather that sent the servants to fetch heavier cloaks."
Ethan took the servant into the adjoining room to lift the old covers. Jon remained by the desk.
"What are you looking for?" Arthur asked quietly.
Jon considered the question. "Something he left."
The knight's gaze moved over the bare shelves. "Most was carried away."
Jon ran a thumb along the desk's edge, feeling an old repair beneath the lip. Arthur waited beside him. After a while Jon took his hand away and followed Ethan into the next room.
The bath beyond the bedchamber had survived better. It was sunk into black stone, with tarnished copper showing beneath its rim. The floor felt warm through Jon's soles, though the room had no fire.
Otho joined them with a lamp and crouched beside a bronze cover. Ethan told him a blocked pipe lay behind it; a smith had found soot when he opened it years before.
"Then that may carry heat rather than water," Otho said.
Jon held his hand beneath the second opening. Nothing came from it.
"We will trace both," he said. "After Cinderwell has its supply."
Mors met them in the gallery with the instrument store's new key and Callum at his heels. Inside, cedar boxes stood clear of the damp upon stone feet. Otho lifted out a measuring chain; Callum reached for a copper tube.
"Let Mors loosen that cap," Jon told him. "There may be drawings inside."
They carried the sound tubes upstairs. The first skin showed the old harbour, its soundings and the road joining the villages.
Jon marked one watercourse for Otho to measure; its line differed from what they had seen.
The next drawing showed a narrow landing beneath the western cliffs. Steps descended through an opening concealed by a hooked spur of rock.
Ethan bent over it. "I have no stair there upon my chart."
"Is the landing still used?"
"By fishers, perhaps. That shore is easier seen from a boat."
Tobin was still helping the maester with Blackburn's lanes. They called him over; he recognised the landing.
"The queen's steps. Old people said a queen could come ashore there while her enemies watched the harbour."
"Which queen?" Aries asked.
Tobin scratched his beard. "Depends which old person you asked."
Tobin tapped the road above the landing. "I have complained to Ethan about that path. Casks and cloth come through. Travellers too, with no baggage, and men with cudgels beside them. None passed my quay."
Jon leaned over the chart. "Recently?"
"This summer. Before that as well." Tobin looked towards Ethan. "I never caught a boat."
"I sent men along the cliff," Ethan said. "They found an empty path. No one would give them a carrier's name."
"Qarl knows that coast," Jon said. "I will ask him tomorrow. Have Halren copy the landing for Voss."
* * *
On the fourth morning Jon rode to the camp with Arthur and Otho before taking the coast road to Saltcliffe.
At the camp, First Century was opening passages through its ranks. Malcolm's spearmen held their long shields close while Gerralt's swordsmen came through the gaps with round shields and blunted steel. On the uneven ground, the left passage narrowed. Two men struck shoulders, checked, and let the next pair past before following.
Heward called the halt from his garron. His bad leg lay clear of the stirrup.
"Who moved the rear file?"
Malcolm pointed to one of his decani. The man came forward reluctantly.
"Why?" Heward asked.
"The hollow was deeper than I thought. I wanted their feet clear of it."
"And left Gerralt half a passage. Walk it together."
He waited while the two officers did so, then sent them back to their men. The next attempt went more smoothly. Jon stayed through a third, watching the newer soldiers measure themselves against men who had been drilling since the Old Watch.
Hewyn joined him by the ditch.
"I am making you primus pilus," Jon told Hewyn. "Senior centurion of the First Cohort. Malcolm and the others keep their centuries."
Hewyn took a moment before answering. "I'll need to know how far you mean to take it."
Jon looked along the tents housing his six hundred men.
"Five thousand five hundred in the First Legion when it is complete."
Hewyn turned towards him; Arthur and Heward drew nearer.
"All foot?" the campidoctor asked.
"No. Two thousand shield infantry. Thirteen hundred heavy swordsmen. Seven hundred and fifty archers and crossbowmen between them."
"And the rest?"
"Horse and the men who keep the army moving. Seven hundred and fifty riders, most of them heavy. Two hundred engineers and engine crews. The last five hundred for healers, armourers, wagons and the rest. They belong in the count as well."
Hewyn looked back at the men drinking beside the nearest standard.
"There are scarcely that many people upon the island."
"There will be more. I will recruit beyond it."
Heward shifted in his saddle. "I have men here who can scarcely keep ten recruits in order. Where am I to find officers for that many?"
"Put your steadiest men over the newer recruits. I want to see which can teach a ten before we give them a hundred."
Arthur rested a hand upon his saddle bow. "For the horse you will need more than recruits. The riders must know their work before you can teach them to work together."
"Knights, men-at-arms, men who have served upon the road," Jon said. "Some from the North. Others from wherever we can find them."
"And horses bred to carry them," Arthur replied. "Ralf must have a say before you promise seven hundred and fifty saddles."
"Ralf shall choose the horses. And we keep these six hundred drilling while we train recruits. They must give me officers for later legions too—four thousand five hundred men in each."
Heward watched Malcolm reset his ranks. "I know where I'll start."
Henly and Emrick's twelve engine men were cleaning fittings. Jon examined a rusted pin set aside for Noll, then left the crews to their engines.
Otho caught up beside Perkin's pay table. He needed labour for the spring, the unsafe quay and the kiln roof.
"Two centuries' worth at any one time," Jon told Hewyn. "Change the parties. One whole century stays ready; the rest keep their drill and camp duties. Otho names the skilled men he needs to retain longer."
"My masons cannot begin afresh every morning," Otho said.
"Give Hewyn those names today."
At the horse lines, Ser Vaelor Scales was watching Aleyx ride a turn Arthur had set for him. The boy came round too fast, corrected, and tried again without being told. Scales opened his mouth to call him back.
"He knows what went wrong," Arthur said. "Let him mend it."
The two garrison commanders were waiting beyond the horses. Torven carried the northern return; Marros had his island men upon a separate sheet. Ethan stood between them.
"Put the watches together," Jon said. "Marros commands the garrison. Torven is his lieutenant. Men from both rolls at each post, until they know the whole castle."
Ethan looked briefly at Jon, then drew the two sheets nearer.
"My men know the upper stairs," Torven said. "Some have never stood the sea gate."
"Then I will go round it with you," Marros answered. "And send a serjeant who knows the landings."
"Bring Ethan one watch roll," Jon said. "Abel receives one return for the pay. Scales and his squire are with the field force now. Do not leave them upon both."
Torven marked their names. Gawen's household remained apart; Tomas would keep its drill while the knight healed. Marros began explaining the sea gate to Torven as Jon mounted. Ethan joined the riders at the coast road with the missing-boat levy.
* * *
Saltcliffe announced itself by smell before they saw the roofs.
Fish hung in rows above the shore, their split bellies silver-grey in the light. Smoke crawled low beneath the cliff. Children stood beside an overturned boat to watch the riders, but one girl lost interest when a gull made for the fish she had been told to guard. She drove it off with a length of rope.
Qarl met Jon at the bend. The headman had changed his sealskin cap for one with a sounder seam.
"Your salt boilers first," Jon said.
The woman beside the nearest pan did not stop raking when they entered. She told a boy to close the lower draught, waited until he did it properly, and then wiped her hands upon her apron.
Qarl began to explain the salt rent.
"I have the accounts," Jon said. "I want to see her work."
The woman glanced at Arthur, then back at the young face beneath the white lock. Arthur leaned against the doorpost and waited.
"Then mind that step, my lord," she said. "It shifts."
He stepped over it.
The pan had been patched so often that one edge sat higher than the other. She showed him where crystals caught, where the fire ran too hot, and the basket through which she strained the brine. Cleaner salt fetched more at the castle, but another boiling ate fuel and time.
"Could you sell more of the clean sort?" Jon asked.
"If I made it for the price they offer, I would be burning my bed before winter."
Otho crouched at the fire mouth. She came round to show him the channel beneath the pan, talking more freely now that someone was looking where she pointed.
Jon asked the boy to bring a day's dry fuel. He laid the bundles beside the shed, then the salt they expected from them. The comparison went into Jon's book. So did the wet wood stacked against an open wall and the distance from the landing to the pan.
The woman corrected his drawing of the fire beneath the pan. Outside, Jon sketched the salt sheds, curing yards and a cart road behind the shore. He placed replacement house rows above the works, linked by lanes that left the boats' approach clear.
He took two samples in folded cloth and had Otho measure the pan.
"I want you at the meeting," Jon told the salt boiler. "Bring those figures."
Qarl glanced at the pan. "Who will tend this?"
The woman looked at her boy. "He can mind it until I return."
"Then we shall hear you," Jon said.
Outside, Tommen the sailmaker had spread a torn sail between stones. Three boat owners had claims upon the next roll of cloth. He showed Jon the lengths he needed before Qarl could move them on.
"Ethan found the levy," Jon told the headman as they walked. "The charge upon the missing boats will end. The maester will send the households copies."
Qarl stopped. For the first time that afternoon, his thanks seemed to come without calculation.
Jon let him finish before producing Halren's copy of the western coast.
"Show me the queen's steps."
The headman's hand paused above the skin.
"Round that point, my lord. You cannot see them from here."
He led them west along the shore. Beyond the last drying racks, the path rose beneath a shelf of dark rock. Gulls crowded the ledges above it, quarrelling over places scarcely wide enough for their feet. Their cries echoed beneath the overhang.
Jon stopped.
Outside the shelter, white streaks ran down the rock towards the water. Under it, where the cliff bent inward, the droppings had gathered in a broad, uneven bank. It stretched beneath the overhang for a good twenty paces. Feathers stood in the crust. A broken nest lay half buried at its edge. The smell caught in his nose before he stepped nearer.
"Mind your boots," Qarl said. "It is foul under there."
Jon picked up a length of driftwood and pressed its broken end into the bank. The fresh surface gave way to older brown-grey layers. He scraped a little clear. There was more beneath.
Guano.
He remembered ships carrying Peruvian bird dung across oceans to feed tired fields. Rain would have washed much of the goodness from an exposed deposit. Here the rock roof reached beyond the bank, and the shelf stood above the weed and wreckage left by the sea.
He thought of the fields he had walked with Dake, and how much manure the island's cattle could provide. This would need trying in a small patch first. Strong manure could spoil a crop as readily as poor ground could starve one.
"Have the birds always nested here?"
"As long as I remember."
"Other places like it?"
Qarl looked along the cliff. "Two farther east. The lower one gets the sea in winter."
Jon handed the wood to Otho.
"See how deep it lies against the back. Measure the shelf as well."
Otho tested the footing before stepping beneath the overhang. Arthur remained beside Jon, watching the birds lift and settle as the man disturbed their shelter.
Jon marked the place and told Qarl to send a small sack from the dry bank to Dake. The first trial would need very little. He returned to Halren's drawing.
"The steps are beyond there?" Jon asked.
"Aye, my lord."
The headman's voice had tightened. Jon closed the book.
"But boats can land?"
"At the right tide."
"And put cargo upon the western road without passing Blackburn?"
Qarl looked back along the path towards the village. "A cask sometimes. Oil. Wine."
"Tobin saw cloth. Men too."
"Travellers miss their ships."
"Then why did the men walking beside them carry cudgels?"
The headman did not answer at once. Above them, a gull dropped from its ledge and sailed round the point.
"I did not see them, my lord."
"Give Ethan the names of the carriers you know."
"I would not accuse a man—"
"I asked who carries the casks." Jon folded the drawing. "He can answer for what is in them."
Qarl named two local men and a Lysene who came by sea. Ethan took the names. Jon went as far as the lower turn, where a fall of stone had narrowed the path to a crumbling ledge. Arthur tested it with his boot, then shook his head.
They would need to approach by water. From where Jon stood he could see only rock beyond the western point. A boat might have been lying there without showing a foot of sail to the village.
* * *
On returning to the castle, Jon sent Voss round the point with a local pilot. Marros put a man on Qarl's road, and Hewyn chose four grown spearmen for a concealed shore watch. Jon went through the first census sheets with the maester.
The house visits had found people the rent books missed, and a child entered twice. Tobin settled which house she belonged to while Jon examined the additions.
Voss returned before supper with wet boots and a scrap of fine cloth caught beneath a landing ring.
"The steps have been cleared this summer," he said. "Fresh cuts in the brush. A place to drag a boat above the water. No one there when we looked."
"Room for a ship?"
"A boat. Perhaps two. Anything larger stays outside, which is what interests me." He laid the cloth down. "My pilot knows the Lysene Qarl named. He has seen him take cargo off a larger vessel beyond Driftmark. Says the Lysene answered to another man aboard her."
"Did he know the ship?"
"No. I have his description."
Ethan brought the names Qarl had given them. One carrier had already gone west after speaking with the headman. Marros's watcher had followed him as far as the fork above the smokehouses.
"Let him keep following," Jon said. "Quietly."
Mallador and Pease came in with the other two spearmen. Voss showed them the upper path and the places from which they could see the cove without standing against the sky. Hewyn settled the signals: two nightjar calls for a boat; one thin whistle for chains or blood.
"See what they carry," Jon told them. "Do not fight for a cask of wine. If someone is about to be killed, help him. Otherwise call the others before closing the path."
When they had gone, Voss tapped the landing upon the drawing.
"The boatmaster could be buying from raiders, or landing their cargo for a share. I have seen both in the Stepstones."
"And the men ashore?" Ethan asked.
"They need never set foot aboard the ship that took it."
Jon looked again at the scrap of cloth. Two island carriers and a boatmaster might be all they could catch here. The men buying the cargo, and those taking it at sea, could be long gone before anyone on Dragonstone knew their names.
"Then we need the boatmaster alive if we can take him," he said. "And whatever he keeps his reckoning on. I want to know whose cargo comes next."
* * *
On the fifth morning Ormond waited beside Eastcove's clay pits while a carpenter braced the kiln roof. The potter and his daughter had laid out clay and fired pieces beneath an awning.
She broke a grey lump across its pale seam. "Too much of that and the tile splits."
"The red shrinks," her father said. "It needs mixing."
Jon compared the sound tiles with the failures. He rubbed the palest chip and asked where its clay came from. The daughter pointed beyond the working face.
"Keep a basket apart. I want it washed and tried by itself."
He pocketed the chip and sketched a small firing chamber with thicker walls.
Otho marked the old pit's edge beneath the brambles. Jon followed a clay barrow into the village; its wheel caught a drying rack, sending the potter's daughter hurrying to steady the tiles. Another barrow blocked the well path.
Jon opened his book upon a wall. He drew the pit, watercourse and receiving yard, placing clay sorting and washing above settling basins. Covered mixing sheds led to forming benches, potters' wheels and drying houses.
"Your second shed crosses the old workings," Otho said.
Jon moved it uphill, extending the covered way. The daughter showed him tiles drying beneath three separate roofs; he widened the sheds. Beyond them he drew three large kilns opening onto their own lane, with loading courts, access to the flues and room for another kiln. He gave the fuel yard a separate entrance and placed sorting and packing stores beyond the cooling ground.
The lime burner called them over to a spoiled batch. Jon took samples, then watched dust blow across the yard and moved the shell-burning ground clear of the pottery sheds on his drawing.
Ormond followed him to the lane. "And the houses nearest the kiln?"
"All replaced." Jon looked along the roofs. "The rest as well."
"My brother's house is sound." Ormond pointed along the row. "He laid half those stones himself."
"Then he stays in it until his new one is ready. The roads and workyards must have room, Ormond."
The headman's mouth tightened. He looked from his brother's doorway to the black-coated men waiting behind Jon. One called to Otho in a broad northern voice, asking where to put the rod. Ormond watched him cross the lane before looking back at Jon.
"Even the sound houses."
"Yes."
Ormond lowered his hand. He stood aside when Otho came through, but his stare followed the rod until its end touched his brother's wall.
From the bank, Jon traced the Blackburn road and the path to the boats. He drew an outgoing cart road from the packing stores, joining the main road beyond the houses, clear of incoming clay and fuel. Beside the works he sketched new house rows and rear yards, a street wide enough for laden carts to pass, shorter lanes, a market and access to the water. The drains ran downhill away from the well.
Otho brought the chain. Ormond followed, studying the ground rather than the page.
"The smoke comes this way in winter." He pointed across the lower slope. "You would put them beneath it."
Jon moved the houses uphill. "Measure from that wall."
Ormond took the chain when Otho offered it. He held it where he was told, his face still set, and looked back towards the houses whenever the men moved the line.
The resentment was plain whenever Ormond looked at the northerners. Jon did not think he would leave the matter there. The man knew Eastcove well, but there were others who knew it too. If he began hindering the rebuilding, Jon would replace him.
The old cottages remained faintly drawn beneath the new streets. Every one would go, but not before Jon had somewhere to put its household. He worked until the bank's shadow crossed his boots.
Before mounting, he returned to the pale clay the potter's daughter had set aside. He compared it with his chip, then added a second small room beside the trial kiln. The red clay would make walls and roofs. He turned the finer piece once more before putting it away.
They reached Blackburn with clay drying upon their boots. Otho sent his assistant back to the castle with the measuring rods, but followed Jon into the shipwright's shed. Qavo had laid two short battens across a trestle. Moro held one end while his father bent the other, judging the curve. Naella moved the pieces aside for Jon's drawings.
Jon laid out the ship drawings in order, hull sections beside the plan of the decks.
Qavo followed the deck beams across the first section, then bent closer to examine the fighting deck above.
"Where are the rowing benches?" he asked in High Valyrian.
"There are none."
He looked up. Jon waited. Qavo examined the drawing again, then flattened it upon the trestle with his palm.
"You said fighting ships."
"I did."
"A merchant can wait for a wind. An enemy will not." He pushed the drawing towards Jon. "Put a galley here. She can cross your bow, turn under your stern, choose where to grapple. What does your captain do? Pray?"
Naella translated. Otho bent closer. "Both without oars? Then all this weight above the water—decks, men, armour—and those masts. We brace a wall against less than the wind will put upon this."
Qavo waited for the translation, then tapped the upper deck. "That is what troubles me."
Jon drew it back.
"Show me where you would put your rowers."
Qavo marked a line with his nail. "Here. Bring this deck down and give them ports along the side."
"And use the room I need for stores and soldiers. You would give me a broader galley." Jon set a finger upon the lower deck. "I have galleys. These ships must carry men farther, with enough food to keep them fit when they arrive."
"I have brought men home in galleys."
"Then tell me where this hull will fail. We will mend the design. We are not putting oars back into it."
Jon laid the rigging sheet beside the hull. He had studied fighting carracks in his first life, their square sails forward and lateen aft. He could picture one heeling under a press of canvas far more readily than Qavo could read it from charcoal. He turned the sheet so the shipwright could follow the masts down into the sections.
"The forward sails drive her. The after sail helps us balance the rig. We place the masts to suit the hull, and carry less canvas when the wind strengthens." He traced the fuller section beneath the waterline. "Her weight goes down here. Stores and ballast low. No great wooden towers piled at either end."
"The mast steps must carry down into sound framing," he added in Common. "And the deck beams must hold the sides together. Otho, I want you and Qavo to examine those joints."
"You still have no answer for a calm," Qavo said.
"Boats to tow her. Anchors to warp her where the bottom allows. Neither will make her dance round a galley. In a calm we defend her sides, and her captain avoids being caught there when he can. Under sail, with room to work, we fight on different terms."
Qavo shook his head. "You ask a great deal of your captains."
"Yes. We will train them." Jon flattened the curling sheet. "I want two ships. Before we cut their frames, you and I will settle every section. Mark the joints you distrust and the timber you need. We begin with those."
Naella gave Otho the terms.
"And if she lies badly in the water?" Otho asked.
"Then we alter her before soldiers go aboard. We trial the first hull under sail, with ballast standing for her load, before the second is too far along to change."
Naella repeated that. Qavo remained silent, then reached for the charcoal.
"This stern," he said. "Begin here. That rudder needs more than the timber you have given it."
Jon turned the sheet. "Show me."
They worked until Naella brought food. By then Qavo had marked two joints he would not trust and changed the position of a mast. He had sound covered timber, but not enough long pieces for two keels. Nor could he build large hulls among the fishing boats. Jon took him down the southern slope to see the ground he had sketched two days before.
Qavo paced the shore, then called Moro to stand where the shingle fell away. He sighted along the slope and asked for measured depths beyond it.
"I have sent the pilots," Jon said.
"Bring me their figures before you clear this." Qavo pointed inland. "And I want to see how you mean to bring the timber down."
Jon added the question beside Otho's measurements. Qavo took the ship sheets back to his shed. He was still shaking his head when he called for another batten.
William was less willing to be interrupted.
Lady Merryweather's clock stood open upon William's bench, the commission she had requested at the feast. He stopped its weighted bar after several beats.
"The bearing tightens when the room cools," he said. "I want another night before I change it."
Perrin had taken Perkin's place beside the order book. A Braavosi captain waited with a letter offering fifteen hundred dragons for two trained men and drawings enough to begin making clocks in his employer's city. There would be twenty dragons more upon each clock sold under Jon's name.
Jon read the offer while William went back to the bearing. Fifteen hundred would buy a great deal of what lay upon his table downstairs. Two trained men gone would leave empty benches here, and he knew how long it had taken to fill them.
"He may buy clocks to sell," Jon said. "The men and the drawings remain here. Perrin, answer him courteously."
The captain began arguing the value of the offer. William moved the open case away from his elbow and covered the exposed wheels.
"Perrin has the prices," he said. "And the dates I can finish them."
Jon drew Perrin aside. "The enquiries from Essos—the ones that reached us in the North. Have you kept them together?"
"Pentos, Myr and Tyrosh. Two merchants asked more than once."
"I made them wait until we were settled here. They have waited long enough. Answer them now. Take William's prices and the dates he can promise, and see which will place orders." Jon glanced back at the open clock. "We shall need the money more than ever."
"And if they offer what the Braavosi offered?"
"The same answer. They may buy the clocks."
* * *
Hobb brought the chessmen that evening.
He had used timber left from Tern's repairs. A knot had given one horse a broad, crooked head. Aries held it beside the lamp.
"Bucephalus."
"He will be offended," Jon said.
"Not if we let him win."
Hobb laughed and took the stool Jon offered. Hewyn joined them after seeing the shore men relieved, and stayed long enough to lose a bishop while explaining why he had not lost it.
When Arthur asked Jon to come to Ethan's solar, Aries was teaching Hobb how a knight moved. He had fetched beans to mark the path. The sailor was pretending to understand less than he did, making the boy show him again.
Ethan closed the solar door. A short list of shipmasters lay beneath the lamp.
"Arthur says I may speak plainly," he began.
"You may," Jon said. "I know who my parents were. Father and I spoke before I left Winterfell. He knows Arthur and I have discussed it."
Ethan looked towards the knight, then slowly back to Jon.
"All these years," he said.
He stopped there. His crooked hand lay open upon the table. Jon put his own beside it.
"You kept the island for me."
Ethan turned his hand beneath Jon's and gripped it carefully. "Then you know why I came."
"I do."
Arthur drew a chair near. Qavo had once shared a roof in Myr with Viserys and Daenerys, but that was years ago. Later reports came through passing ships; none placed them with certainty now.
"Then we need someone who can find them," Jon said.
"Denys knows two of these masters," Ethan replied. "Both trade with Myr. One knew the quay where Qavo lived."
Arthur offered to go if they found no trustworthy man. Jon shook his head.
"Your face is known. Have Denys choose the captain. He asks quietly while he trades. If they need food or lodgings, he can pay for them. Enough for passage as well, should they need to leave."
"For here?" Ethan asked.
"Not until we know where they are and who is watching them."
He thought of Robert's ships in the Gullet and the men who still remembered silver-haired children in these rooms. Finding them would be difficult enough without promising a refuge he could not yet conceal.
Arthur took a clean sheet. They needed a question that would persuade Viserys the message came from someone who had known him before the flight. He began writing, crossed out the first attempt, and sat a while with the quill above the page.
Then he smiled.
"He refused his letters one morning," he said. "His nurse asked whether he wanted to write to Rhaegar."
"What did he say?" Jon asked.
"That he wanted Rhaegar to know he had been good."
"Had he?" Ethan asked.
"Not that morning." Arthur bent to the page. "But he wrote it himself before he was done."
Jon watched him finish the question. He had thought so often of the man Viserys would become that it took an effort to hold another picture beside it: a boy at a desk, labouring over a letter to his brother.
* * *
On the sixth day the pilots' soundings took them back to Blackburn. Qavo and Otho checked the shore while Tobin found a net shed's owner. He cleared their measuring line, then showed Jon where boats came ashore. Jon moved a proposed storeyard, keeping that access open.
At Eastcove, Ormond had cleared the lane for Otho's chain. He gave the master short answers. When a northerner laughed at something his companion said, Ormond turned sharply towards them. Jon looked up from his drawing and caught the headman's expression before Ormond faced the cottage doors again. Jon widened the packing-store turn while an assistant measured the housing ground.
That evening the five village drawings covered Jon's table. Every village house would be replaced, each new settlement laid out around its roads, lanes and workyards. He numbered the first building grounds; families would move before their old rows came down. Eastcove's kilns would make much of what the rebuilding needed. Otho's latest measure narrowed its outgoing road against the watercourse. Jon shifted the packing store and tested the turn again with his straightedge.
Wylla came in with the laundress's daughter carrying dry linen. Her mother was showing two other women the rooms above the lower yard. The work had begun without Jon having to leave his table.
Gawen followed them to the doorway. "My men need six more blankets."
"Then ask Wylla, and tell her where the last six went."
The knight turned to her. "They are at the lower post."
"Now I know," she said, and Jon caught her smile.
After they left, he turned the drawing towards Otho. "We can measure that corner before going to the farms."
Otho checked the line, then nodded. Jon poured him the last of the wine. Beyond the shutters a man called the night watch.
They measured that turn early on the seventh day, then joined Dake at the outlying farms. While Otho worked the chain, a farmer led Jon to a sunken boundary stone. Jon cleared the grass and asked how long the adjoining strip had lain untilled.
That evening he brought the drawings to Abel. Some works would compete for the same carts and skilled hands; others could begin together. Blank spaces remained where timber and tool prices should have been.
"Find what can be bought here and what must come from the mainland," Jon said. "Send the enquiries while Otho finishes measuring."
"The answers will not all come by tomorrow."
"I know. But they can be on their way. I want men at work as soon as the council rises."
On the eighth morning, Merren's miner took them into the northern ravine.
Merren's miner led Jon, Arthur, Otho and Bennard up the ravine on foot, correcting his older companion's hearth-ash plan twice.
A dark band ran through rusty stone. It broadened beyond a fall of scree, then vanished where the old working had collapsed.
"Best loads came from there," the miner said.
Bennard stayed clear of the overhang. "Before that fell?"
"Aye."
Jon gathered samples for Noll. He marked a route towards the intended loading ground, keeping spoil and carts clear of Cinderwell's water.
Otho traced the ground with his rod. The easiest cart road went towards the spring.
"Then find another," Jon said.
They went on to the flooded quarry. Green-black water covered the lower workings. Above it, dark glass showed through the rock in shining bands. The miner brought Jon a loose piece from the old spoil and waited while he examined it.
"Children gather the smaller pieces."
Jon wrapped the sharp edge before putting it away. The Wall returned to him with the feel of the glass: boxes under cover, trained hands shaping points, captains who understood why ordinary iron would not be enough. He wrote a separate note and closed the book before the miner turned back.
No one went into the lower workings. A trickle ran down the far face though no rain had fallen since the previous afternoon. Otho wanted to know what fed it before promising men they could empty the quarry.
At the burned mill farther east, they found nettles in the race and a wheel pit full of leaves. Bennard climbed down to examine the old sockets while Jon waited for the neighbouring farmers.
One said the stream ran all summer. Another said it had failed when his eldest was born. His eldest, a broad-shouldered young woman, said the miller had dammed it that year to mend the race.
They argued until the father remembered the repair.
Jon followed the race uphill while Otho measured the fall. At Miller's Run, running water already worked his bellows and hammer. Here it ran unused past blackened walls. He would need thousands of swords and suits of armour as the legion grew; the castle smithy could not supply them.
"Another Blackworks," he said to Bennard. "A new wheel for the hammerhouse. Smelting furnaces, forges and armourers' shops here on the island."
Bennard climbed out of the pit. "The furnace bellows will need their own drive. You cannot stop them whenever the hammer needs mending."
"Then leave room for it, and the grinding stones. Measure the water and the fall before we settle the wheels." Jon pointed beyond the burned wall. "How much sound ground is there?"
Otho took his rod along the bank. Jon followed, tracing an approach wide enough for ore and charcoal carts. The drinking supply at Cinderwell was another matter; this stream offered power. Slag and forge washings would need somewhere other than its bed.
"Bring Noll here tomorrow," Jon told Bennard. "I want his furnace needs beside your hammerhouse measurements, and his findings on the ore. We can buy iron for the forges while the mine is opened."
Bennard nodded and called Otho back to examine the lower bank. Jon drew the race and the first wheel in his book, leaving ground beside them for the works to grow. Above the sketch he wrote Blackworks.
The ride home took them past Wyrm's Rest again. Dake's sons waved from their own barn, where they were lifting the seed sacks onto dry boards. At Cinderwell, props held the damaged wall and the seep ran clear of its foot. A woman filling jars pointed out where the lower lip had kept flowing that afternoon.
Jon dismounted. The basin rose even as the woman filled her jar. He sent a rider ahead to the maester: tomorrow, the castle's draw must be measured at the same hour as the village's. He wanted the figures together, not two separate assurances that the water ran well.
* * *
On the ninth morning, the maester brought the completed returns to the Painted Table.
The headmen had answered for every house their guides could find. The last disputed entry concerned a fisherman who slept at his sister's when his boat was ashore. The maester had checked it himself.
Castle and camp were checked against their rolls. Sailors remained marked away; passing crews were counted apart.
"Four thousand six hundred and eighty-four of the old inhabitants," the maester said. "Seven hundred and forty-six newly come. Five thousand four hundred and thirty in all."
Jon checked the corrections. A mother's trade had been added; a child now had a name beside the widow's entry.
Abel arrived while Jon was checking the last names. He laid his accounts beside the maester's volumes and opened their finished reckoning between them. Castle lands and houses, market rents, dues on small cargoes and anchorage, payments from the vassal houses: Jon followed each source into the total. Abel's figures carried the clocks through materials, wages and delivery to the money received and the payments still expected.
They had used the last full year's receipts and the orders now in hand to judge the coming year. Dragonstone's ordinary revenues stood at eighteen thousand dragons; the clocks brought the expected income to thirty thousand two hundred and forty. Against that they had set seventeen thousand four hundred and forty for the castle, garrison, cohort, household, ships and workshops at their present strength.
Jon checked the sum beneath them. "Twelve thousand eight hundred left over the year."
"If trade holds and the payments come when they should," Abel said. "Some of that money will not reach us until after harvest."
The maester showed him the dates. Jon followed them back to the drawings at his elbow, the new Blackworks among them, considering which purchases would fall due first. By the time Abel left, he had changed the order of two sheets and written the sum upon the one he would take into the meeting. Tomorrow the headmen, masters and officers would see what the week's work had produced.
He spent the rest of the morning copying his selected drawings into the Common Tongue. Otho came up twice, once with a corrected distance and once to make Jon move a mark the width of a fingernail. They checked the last of the figures against the completed count. When the ink was dry, Jon set the drawings beneath a pair of flat stones and pushed his chair back.
Wylla found him there and persuaded him to walk with her before the noon meal.
Aegon's Garden lay sheltered behind the castle's mass. Wild roses had pushed through a thorn hedge, and the shade beneath the dark trees smelled of pine. Wylla stopped to ask the herb cutter about a plant growing beside the wall. Jon waited with Arthur while Aries tried to persuade Munin to surrender a piece of bread.
Beyond the garden, the sept doors stood open. Jon went in as the keeper was cleaning wax from a stand. The carved gods wore layers of old paint. A chip beneath one figure's robe showed dark wood.
"Ship timber," the keeper told him when he bent to look. "From the masts that brought the Targaryens out of Valyria."
Aries forgot the crow. "These came from there?"
"The wood did. So the old accounts say."
Jon looked at the painted faces again. He had passed the door twice without knowing what stood within it. Wood carried across a sea that no longer had the same shores, cut into new shapes and painted by hands born long after the men who had sailed with it.
He touched the unpainted edge with one finger, then stepped back to let the keeper finish.
Outside, Dragonmont rose above the roofs. Vapour drifted from its flank and broke apart in the wind. Jon had ridden round it all week, searching its slopes for water, stone and good ground. He had yet to enter a single place where its dragons had lived.
"How far to the old lairs?" he asked Arthur.
The knight followed his gaze. "The lower ones? We could be there well before the light goes."
"Then let us go after we have eaten."
Arthur looked at him. "Have you finished with Otho?"
"Until tomorrow. If I put another drawing before him now, he may throw me out."
Aries had stopped beside them. "Inside the mountain?"
"As far as we can see our way," Arthur said. "I will ask Marros which paths the herders still use."
Jon sent Aries to tell Tomas to choose ten men and bring lights and rope. The boy was halfway across the garden before Wylla called him back to collect the bread Munin had abandoned.
She watched him go again, then turned to Jon. "You will eat first."
"I said we would."
"I heard you. I am making sure you heard yourself."
He offered her his arm for the walk back. She took it, though she kept him long enough beside the herb cutter to ask her second question.
* * *
Tomas brought ten of the household to the mountain road after the noon meal. They wore black cloaks over their working coats. Two carried lanterns and spare candles; another had a coil of rope. Arthur waited beside Jon, his grey-white cloak lifting in the wind, while Aries arrived with the food Wylla had packed.
They went on foot. The hammering at the castle faded beyond the first shoulder of rock. Pines bent towards the sea, their roots exposed where rain had washed earth from the path. Above them, vapour streamed from a fissure and blew apart. Its sour smell reached Jon in gusts; between them he could smell the warm pine needles underfoot.
The old approach was wide enough for a wagon. On its seaward side, broken paving lay halfway down the slope. Jon followed the sounder edge, looking at the ruts worn into the stone. Meat had come up here once. Sheep, cattle, horses perhaps, enough to feed creatures that could carry a knight in armour above the clouds.
He tried to picture the men leading those animals towards the caves. The cattle would have smelled what waited for them.
Arthur had spoken to Marros about the lower lairs. Herders still used the approach, though few went beyond the daylight. At a fork they took the path beneath an overhanging wall, and the entrance appeared so abruptly that Aries stopped in front of him.
The opening rose through the cliff in a ragged arch. One side bulged inward; the other had split away, exposing black stone beneath a crust of grey. A pine grew out of the fallen rock. Jon could have put a house beneath the arch and still left room above its roof.
Warm air touched his face.
Tomas sent two men ahead with a lantern. Jon followed across a sloping shelf where rain had carried grit towards the mouth. Something pale rolled beneath his boot. He stopped.
A sheep's jaw lay at his feet, the back teeth still fitted in their sockets.
There were more bones against the wall: ribs, a hornless skull, the split shaft of a larger leg bone. One rib was scorched along its curve; another ended in a splintered break. Pale fragments showed where rain had scoured away the dust. Farther under cover they lay dark among feathers and the dry pellets of newer inhabitants. Jon stepped round a heap of them and found another beyond it.
"They ate here," Aries said.
Jon looked up into the chamber. "For a very long time."
His voice came back from somewhere beyond the light. He waited for the echo to die.
The roof rose beyond the lantern's reach. A broken seam of dragonglass caught the light along one wall; beneath it, rough stone gave way to a smooth, dark sweep longer than a horse. Deep grooves ran beside it. Jon spread his hand across one and found he could not span its width.
He looked back. The men at the entrance stood small beneath the arch, with room for many more beside them. He had spent the week judging what a cart or a company could pass through. A creature had needed all this room for its own body.
"Vermithor laired in this mountain," he said.
Arthur came to stand beside him. "After the Old King died."
"And Silverwing. The king and queen gone, their dragons still here."
The histories had taken him from Jaehaerys's reign straight into the quarrels that followed. Here he imagined the years between: keepers still bringing food, an immense creature turning at footsteps, and the rider who never came up the path again.
One of the men passed the forward lantern to Aries. He lifted it towards the grooves. "Was this his?"
"I cannot tell," Jon said. He took his hand away. "There were six dragons living wild or without riders here when the Dance began. And others before them."
They passed under a low fold in the chamber wall. Beyond it, daylight fell through a split high overhead, lighting a bank of old rubble. A narrow passage descended to their right; straight ahead the floor broadened into another hollow. Water had drawn white lines down the stone. Somewhere underneath them it dripped steadily, each drop much louder than it ought to have been.
One of the guards called Tomas over.
A black curve projected from the rubble. Jon first took it for a root, until the lantern showed a row of smaller bones behind it. He knelt beside them. The curve ended in a broken joint; farther back, among pale animal ribs, lay a narrow jaw with two dark teeth still set in it.
"A dragon?" Tomas asked.
Arthur took the other lantern and crouched opposite Jon, holding it low to show the jaw.
"Dragonbone," he said.
Jon brushed grit from the broken joint with his glove. The dark colour ran through it; it was not soot upon a pale bone. A slender piece curved back beneath the rubble, and beside it lay the short, knotted links of a spine. He found no skull. Several bones disappeared beneath stone too heavy to shift by hand.
The Cannibal had eaten young dragons and eggs. These might be remnants of a meal, or of a hatchling that had never left the mountain. Jon could give them neither a name nor a cause of death.
He had been imagining wings large enough to shade the castle. This creature might once have fitted in his arms. He eased his boot away from the scattered pieces before standing.
"Mind where you step," he said as he rose.
Beyond the rubble, cut footholds climbed to a shelf. A bronze ring remained beside the lowest, green around its setting. Arthur tested the ascent. Jon followed sideways, keeping his weight upon his legs when a reach pulled at his ribs. Above, a shallow chamber opened along one side into the larger cavern. Warmth came through his soles. Low basins hollowed the floor, their bottoms filled with earth and broken stone.
"The hatcheries were beneath the mountain," Arthur said. "They were still finding eggs here in King Aerys's time."
The room was high enough for men but too low for a grown dragon. Jon could picture keepers bending over the hollows. He looked for some surviving fitting or inscription that might tell him whether they had.
Something beneath the lip of the nearest basin caught the lantern light.
Jon bent down and settled upon one knee. A curved piece lay half buried in the grit. He drew off a glove, brushed grit away and worked his fingers beneath it. Carefully, he lifted it into his palm.
Its inner face was smooth. Along the jagged edge he could see the thickness of the shell; the dark-red outside bore rows of tiny overlapping scales. Dust lay in the grooves between them.
"Arthur."
The knight lowered himself beside him. Jon rubbed away the dust with his thumb. A coppery gleam travelled along the scales as he tilted the fragment towards the lantern.
Aries leaned over his shoulder. "Is it an egg?"
"Part of one." Jon's voice had gone quiet.
He laid the red fragment upon his folded glove and searched the hollow. Another red piece came free, then a smaller chip. Beneath a flat stone lay half the curved side of a second egg, smoke-grey with green along its scales. A crack ran from rim to rim. When he lifted it, the two pieces separated in his hands.
For a moment he could only look at them.
Perhaps someone had come here each morning to see whether the shell had split, and one day found a wet snout and a furious little mouth. Or the eggs had broken with nothing alive inside.
Jon wanted to put the pieces together and know which had happened.
Tomas shifted behind him. "Shall I fetch the bag?"
"Your cloaks," Jon said, looking up. "Take them off and spread them here. All of you. Find every piece of dragonshell you can. Under the ledges, in the cracks, wherever we go. Even the little pieces. We are taking them back."
Clasps clicked. The household men unfastened their cloaks and laid them with the clean sides uppermost. Tomas left two men watching the approach and brought the others onto the shelf in pairs. Jon put the grey pieces upon the first cloak and showed them the scales.
"That is what you are looking for. Keep the pieces from each hollow together."
Jon picked up his glove and closed his left hand around the first red fragment. That piece he would carry himself.
Aries set down his lantern and knelt beside him. With a twig he drew a chip from a crevice. Gold showed beneath the dust.
Soon the men were calling to one another across the shelf. One found fragments under a spill of earth at the back of the chamber. Another lifted a broken shell caught between two stones, its blue surface dulled almost to black. Tomas stopped a man from tipping his finds onto the rest and folded a corner of his cloak between them.
Aries picked up his lantern when they moved into the next chamber. A split overhead admitted a thread of daylight. More animal bones lay against the far wall; a large skull had lost its lower jaw. Behind it, grit held red and cream-coloured chips. Jon crouched to gather them, passing each to Aries. A guard lay flat to reach beneath the ledge and came out with dust in his hair and three pieces cupped in his hand.
They searched until the light had moved the width of Jon's boot. Dust greyed their knees; another glint beneath a pebble brought them back each time they thought they had finished.
Beyond that chamber, steps continued downward. Hotter air rose from below, carrying a bitter smell. Arthur held his lantern over the first turn. Jon looked past him into the dark, then back at the bundles they had already gathered.
"Another day," he said.
On the way out Jon stopped beside the little dragon's bones. Arthur held the lantern while he sketched their position beneath the shelf. He wrote a few words in English beside the drawing, then closed the book. The bones remained where they had found them.
Outside, the wind cooled the sweat beneath his collar. The household laid their bundles upon level ground while Tomas passed around the food. Arthur stood with Jon at the edge of the path. Far below, the castle's carved dragons crouched above the harbour. Beyond them stretched the sea, bright enough to hide the distant shore.
Jon thought of the timber in the sept, carried out of Valyria before the Doom. Those ships had brought living dragons too. He looked from the cave mouth to the sea, wondering what the ruined cities still held that men had failed to carry away.
Arthur would object the moment he heard the name. Jon kept it to himself.
"I want the maester to find the old sailing accounts," he said. "Charts as well, if there are any worth keeping."
Arthur glanced at him. "For Qavo?"
"For an expedition. In time."
The knight looked down at the crowded harbour. "You will need ships first."
"And men who know their work." Jon turned the fragment within his palm. He meant to have both before he named the destination. For now, there were old accounts to find and ships to build.
Behind them, Tomas called for the men to lift the cloaks. They gathered the corners into loose bundles, keeping the larger pieces from knocking together. Aries had tied his own small collection in the linen that had held their bread.
Arthur glanced at the burdens, then at the fragment Jon still held.
"What will you do with it all?"
Jon rubbed his fingers over the piece he had found first. Dust came away from the little scales. In the afternoon sun, red deepened beneath his touch and copper shone along the edges.
"I don't know yet."