"Five Unsullied men remain with you when I am not," said Jaehaerys. "I don't think they will send assassins soon, but I will not take any chances."
Daenerys nodded distractedly. It was still difficult for her to accept the face hidden beneath Rhaegar's mask. She loved her older brother dearly, and it was hard to believe everything Jaehaerys said.
"You got what you wanted," she said. "Besides, you could have a second wife," she added at the end, looking at him suspiciously.
"Lyanna told you," he teased her, seeing her sad expression. "It's... a small possibility, I hope I never have to," he approached her cautiously.
"It doesn't bother me that you're marrying her. I'm used to seeing Rhaegar with two wives," she admitted. "But... why did I have to find out from Lyanna?" she accused him.
"I didn't expect her to say anything," he admitted, not wanting to lie to her.
"Were you planning on telling me?" She looked for the truth in his face. "Of course not," she snorted.
"I can keep Visenya away from the dragon. The normal thing would have been for them to form a bond when they met, like us," he said, appeasing her. "I won't marry her."
"You don't seem to understand, love." Her voice remained sweet, even when she was hurt. "It bothers me that you didn't consult me," she said, taking him by the cheeks.
"Aren't you upset about the second wife?" he asked.
"No. I might even want you to marry her," her cheeks flushed red. "The dragons should remain among us, our family," she said. She didn't seem uncomfortable with the idea of him having another wife.
"I decided on the spot," he confessed, "it was a request from Lyanna. I didn't have time to consult you. What was I supposed to say? Something like, 'I'm marrying someone else, I'll ask the carpenter to make a bigger bed,'" he tried to joke. He watched the corners of his wife's lips turn up.
"It would have been better than silence," she said, pulling away from him. "I'll go with your Betrothed. At least she's fun," she said, separating herself from him.
Brandon and the five Unsullied followed her. The northerner gestured with his hand, palm facing the sky and fingers bent as if holding a stone. Then he moved his lips, articulating: "She's got you by the balls."
Jaehaerys felt like training with the twins soon. It had been a while since he had used his staff.
"Is it fun, Torrhen?" he asked the twin who remained at his side.
"Not at all, my prince," he said. Jaehaerys looked at the expressionless face of his guard. He scrutinized it for a while but found not the slightest hint of a smile.
Rhaegar said that volcanic ash would soon reach King's Landing. He had sent letters to Viserys asking him to fill ships with it. Jaehaerys had to send Drakkars to King's Landing; the ships carrying it could not enter the Blackwater, not without risk.
He needed to review the logistics of the construction. The workers had brought the excess stone to the walls. Soon, he could begin to tear down the Hall of a Hundred Fireplaces. He would have to order the construction of a small house for old Whent before demolishing her tower.
Rhaegar gave him three hundred thousand golden dragons more. It wasn't that he was short of money; the sale of perfumes and other products had left him with a good amount of gold. In the four months since the dragons were born, he had spent nearly two hundred thousand. That still left him with a million dragons or more.
The Drakkars continued to be produced, and he now had a small fleet of twelve of them. Half were stationed. Although he received letters from lords of the riverlands asking to buy or rent some of them to trade at King's Landing, he agreed to lease the ships, as he did not have enough sailors to handle all twelve.
Jaehaerys began to receive a quantity of barley each month, courtesy of Lord Randyll. Sam had turned out to be a blessing. The boy had lost several pounds and his figure had slimmed down. He was still overweight, without a doubt, but he had shown improvement.
He used the barley to recreate whiskey. He did not know the exact procedure, only that it was a progression of fermentations and distillations. He remembered that the product used was malted barley. To do this, he needed to soak the barley and let it germinate. From there, he had to proceed by trial and error. In the end, after malting, he dried it in the sun. He mashed it in hot water, and after the mash, he removed the malt residue. Then he wanted to ferment it.
Medieval fermentation was poor; the ideal was to use a pure yeast culture. But all the yeasts he could imagine separating were contaminated with bacteria. In a fermentation process, bacteria could release acidity that would sour the taste of the whiskey. In the end, he obtained yeast from grapes by placing them in a solution of sugar water. They were still mixed with bacteria in a low concentration, but it worked.
The prince thought about the need for agar to isolate microorganisms. He discarded the idea for the moment.
After fermentation, he proceeded to distill it. The first distillation was almost toxic, smelling like rotten eggs, unfit for drinking. At that point, he restarted the process, believing that the bacteria had ruined everything.
The next time he reached that stage, he got the same taste. The answer to the problem came from Dany when he was complaining about the process.
"What if you distill it again?" was an innocent question. "If distillation is for purification, couldn't it be purified further?" she said when he looked at her frowning.
The second distillation was successful, but not initially very effective. However, he noticed that the extracted liquid was divided into three parts: the first was highly toxic, the third was oily, and the second was the most beneficial of all. However, the rotten smell persisted. Now he had a theory.
It was contaminated with sulfur, and during fermentation, sulfated compounds could be generated. Until then, he had used glass flasks for distillation. Glass had been one of the first things he worked with, which is why the process was so refined. He had five glassmakers under his command, loyal northerners.
He thought about obtaining a precipitate by reacting sulfur with copper, leaving a piece of copper in the tube emerging from the flask. It worked, but only to a limited extent.
Taking a risk, he decided to change the material of the containers to copper, so that it would react during the first distillation process. In his memories, he recalled seeing copper stills, which were closed containers with a tube protruding from the top. Then they spiraled down.
The liquid inside the container was heated until it evaporated, traveled through the tube, and condensed, forming drops that then fell into a container. He had seen them once in college when he was studying chemistry. He saw a picture, but no one ever told him what they were for.
"Professor Wilson was always lazy," he complained.
This time, the whiskey was drinkable. But it was harsh, more like aguardiente than the whiskey he remembered. It needed to be aged for years.
All he could do was wait, so he left it in a wooden barrel. He had to find people he could trust with the process. He immediately thought of former slaves, like at his other distilleries.
The processes of creating perfumes, oils, scented soaps, and shampoos were left in the hands of slaves. They were not taught the principles; only the procedure was taught. The former slaves were extremely loyal, whether out of habit or gratitude. Their quality of life had significantly improved; they were now free people.
Jaeaherys thought about having people swear allegiance before a weirwood. But it would be tedious, and he didn't know if it would apply to those who didn't believe in the gods of the forest.
'I could make contracts with runes,' he thought. 'Not many know how to write,' he said, saddened.
Now he thought about the runes. In his need to use them to detect the assassins, he had begun to look for ways to detect malice. Even nullify poisons. He could sew runes into Dany's clothes to give her protection. As he walked toward the central towers, he saw something that bothered him again.
"Did they try to burn the arcian tree again?" He frowned as he gazed at the fire surrounding the weirwood tree. 'Who would dare? Ah!' He looked at the hunched figure. He had no concerns about the weirwood; if Melisandre couldn't burn it, others couldn't.
"Your old bones were cold, Lady Whent?" he asked the old witch. The former Lady of Harrenhal gave him the perfect excuse to expel her from the castle.