The ten men Kaelen brought to King's Landing were not knights. They were predators, their life stories told in the scars on their skin and the cold, watchful stillness in their eyes. Aaryan met them not in the Red Keep, but in the cavernous, salt-scented dark of a warehouse by the Blackwater Rush, a property now owned by the Bank of the Rock.
There was Garr, a grizzled Ibbenese whaler whose knuckles were thick as walnuts and who could navigate by the stars in a storm. There was Loras, a ranger from the western hills whose silence was as profound as the forests he once stalked. And there was Qarl, a sellsword from the Disputed Lands with a fondness for poisons, his smile as thin and sharp as the needles he kept hidden in his sleeves. They were a collection of ghosts and killers, loyal to nothing but the promise of a fortune that could wash away the blood of their pasts.
Aaryan unrolled the charts he had acquired from the Alchemist, the strange coastlines of the Smoking Sea illuminated by a single lantern.
"The maesters will tell you that Valyria is a demon-haunted ruin, a place from which no man returns," Aaryan said, his voice a low command in the vast, dark space. "The maesters are wrong. It is a treasure house. The vaults of the dragonlords are still there, filled with Valyrian steel, with gold beyond counting, and with secrets lost to time."
He let his gaze pass over each hardened face. "The stories also say a dragon guards this treasure. I am paying you an obscene amount of money to find out if the legends are true." He paused, letting the weight of the word 'dragon' settle. "The steel, the gold, the secrets—they are yours to plunder. A finder's fee. The dragon… the dragon is mine."
A low murmur of greedy, fearful excitement went through the men. It was a madman's quest, a suicide mission. It was also the kind of legend that could make them kings.
But the legend would have to wait. As Aaryan returned to the Red Keep, two ravens were waiting, their messages arriving within an hour of each other. The first was from Rennifer at the Crag, the ink smudged from the haste of his writing. The second was from Kaelen's network in Lannisport.
Aaryan read them both, a cold, dangerous calm descending over him. The trap had been sprung.
Rennifer's message was a confession and an ultimatum. Lord Westerling, a weak man by nature, had broken under Dornish pressure. He had admitted that the Master of Coin had cut off the weapons supply. In response, the Dornish had given him a choice: resume the shipments within the fortnight, or they would expose his treason to the Crown themselves, ensuring the ruin of his house.
The second message was a single, chilling fact. The Dornish agent, Vorian Sand, had vanished from Lannisport. At the same time, the Ironborn ship, the Sea Vulture, had been spotted sailing south, its course set for the coast of Dorne.
It was a coordinated, elegant maneuver. The Dornish were creating a political crisis for him in the west, forcing his attention onto the trivial fate of House Westerling, while their new Ironborn allies sailed to establish a new, more secure supply route. They thought they had him trapped between scandal and impotence.
They were wrong. They had simply given him a target.
He summoned his key agents to the solar: Kaelen, his new chief auditor Symon, and the Alchemist, who had been brought to the Red Keep under the cover of darkness. A great map of the Westerlands was spread on the table.
"They believe they have me in a bind," Aaryan said, his voice cutting through the tension. "If I expose Westerling, Dorne denies everything and the West is thrown into chaos. If I do nothing, they win. If I secretly resume the shipments, I am a traitor." He looked at the faces of his men. "We will do none of those things. We will not react to their trap. We will set our own."
His finger tapped the coastline south of the Crag. "We will give them what they want. A shipment of weapons, delivered to a place of our choosing. And when their Ironborn friends arrive to collect it, we will be waiting."
The orders came like hammer blows, each one shaping the pieces of his new, deadly design.
To his ten dragon hunters, gathered again in the warehouse, he gave a new mission. "Your voyage to Valyria is postponed. You are the ten most dangerous men in my service. You will travel to the Crag, in secret. Infiltrate the castle. Be my ghosts in its walls. You are my insurance against any surprises."
To Rennifer, a raven flew west. "Play the part of the terrified bureaucrat. Advise Lord Westerling to agree to the Dornish demands. Tell them a shipment is being prepared. The exchange will take place in the Widow's Cove, two weeks from tonight."
To the Alchemist, he gave a more sinister task. "I require a shipment of flawed goods. I want scorpion bolts with hairline fractures that will shatter on impact. I want sword steel that has been improperly quenched, so it will break against the first parry. I want crossbow strings treated to snap in the damp sea air. I want a shipment of weapons that looks perfect but will fail catastrophically when it is needed most. Can you procure such things?"
The Alchemist's pale eyes glittered. "My lord, it would be my distinct pleasure."
Finally, he turned to Kaelen. "You are no longer my bodyguard. You are my general. Take command of the Warden's Men. Once the exchange point is set, I want every high-ground, every wooded path, every rock and dune around the Widow's Cove filled with our men. I want a ring of silent steel around that entire bay. No one is to be seen until I give the signal."
His pieces were in motion. The grand, world-spanning hunt for a dragon had been put on hold for this more immediate, more intimate act of extermination. He was not just reacting to a threat. He was orchestrating a massacre, designed to cripple two of his enemies in a single, decisive stroke.
He stood before the map long after his men had gone, his mind a cold engine of calculation. The Dornish and the Ironborn thought they were clever. They thought they were dealing with a coin-counter, a politician.
"They wanted to force my hand," he whispered to the empty room, his finger tracing the rugged coastline of his domain. "They will learn what happens when a lion is forced to show its claws."