The Breaker of the Oceans, Chapter 42

Otto Hightower left the royal benches when the recess bell died and the crowd began to thin. He preferred corridors to stands, stone to shouting. The yard behind him emptied by degrees as men went hunting for food and shade. Servants moved in lines from the kitchens with baskets and casks. The smell of meat and smoke drifted under the arches and clung to the tapestries. He walked until the noise faded behind a bend and the air tasted of brine.

He had not gone looking for her. He would have denied it to anyone who asked. Yet he placed himself on a route he knew she would take if she were returning from wherever she vanished when she left the platform. Down a long passage cut through the shoulder of the keep. Past a rack of spears polished to a dull silver. Past arrow slits that showed a hard blue line of sea against black stone.

She came into view without escort at first, which gave him a measure of unease before he saw the two figures that kept pace behind her—Soren Alson at her left shoulder, and another black‑harnessed killer on the right. The Einherjar wore no house colors. Their armor drank light. Their eyes went past him, as if he were a column or a door. Legendary warriors, said to be akin to the Kingsguard. Otto wondered if that was even remotely close to the truth. 

Hela Greyjoy did not rush. She moved with the steadiness of someone who had never been forced from a hall by any man. Her hair lay dark over her shoulders and the plates at her collar lifted and fell with an even breath. The green in her eyes did not gleam or flare; it was there, set behind the iris, steady as a lantern behind thick glass. Otto had stood within arm’s reach of dragons; the body knew to mark such things. The body did not forget.

He set his hands together at his waist and bowed a fraction, enough to name rank without offering supplication.

“Lady Hela,” he said. “A moment of your time, if you would be so kind.”

The Einherjar kept walking until she raised two fingers and let the hand fall. They stopped and took a half step back into her shadow.

She looked him over without hurry. No courtesy smile. No attempt at charm.

“You have a moment,” she said. “Speak.”

He gestured toward a side door where a narrow gallery looked over the lower court. The sea pushed a cold breath through its windows. He would not be overheard there. She turned her head a degree toward Soren Alson.

“Wait outside,” she said.

Soren nodded once. The other man did the same. They retreated to the arch and took position as if they had grown out of the jambs.

Hela stepped into the gallery without asking leave. Otto took the place opposite her, keeping space between them that he judged sensible. He had no wish to test the reach of her hand.

“I will be brief,” he said.

“You may speak as long as you wish,” she said. “I will leave when I am done.”

It was not insolence in the tone. It was a fact. He inclined his head.

“The spectacle is well managed,” he began. “Your father has a gift for order. The tournament will be remembered.”

She looked past him to the court below. Carpenters were setting new posts at the edge of the sand. The sound rose and fell in the shaft of the gallery like a pulse.

“Men like games,” she said. “It pleases them to watch flesh meet wood and not die.”

“You do not sound pleased.”

“I am not displeased.”

He decided to cut away from small steps. They seldom served in talks such as this.

“I would speak plain, Lady Hela. Not as a courtier. As a man who must think about what keeps a realm from tearing itself apart.”

“Then speak that way.”

“You and I both know the question facing the succession of this crown,” he said. “You do not need me to describe it.”

“I do not.”

“Still, I will put it to words so we are not speaking at angles,” he said. “The King named Rhaenyra his heir. The realm expects otherwise. If the King dies without a proper settlement, banners will rise. I would be a poor Hand if I did not work to prevent that.”

“You will fail,” she said.

He kept his hands still. “Perhaps. It is my duty to try.”

“You worry about ‘the realm’ because your family lives inside something fragile,” she said. “You use words to hold it up. Words do not hold weight. Power does.”

“The first wall is always power,” he said. “It is not the last wall. We have laws and customs to bear the weight after the swords are sheathed. Without them, you get a market that never opens because every day begins with a raid.”

“Then your market deserves to close.”

He let the remark pass. She was not baiting him; she had no need. Otto expected such words to come from an Ironborn Barbarian and he’d been right in his expectations. He adjusted the line of his next question.

“What is a king, in your view?” he asked. 

“Anyone who can take whatever they want and keep what they’ve taken,” she said.

“Not more?”

“What more is there? A man declares himself. If he does not have the strength to keep his words, he is not king. If he has it, the words become truth. ”

“And a queen?”

“The same,” she said. “I care nothing for the shape of the body.”

It annoyed him that she spoke as if she were above such matters. The annoyance was old and familiar; he had felt it around ambitious women before. They always underestimated what tradition could do to them. Yet he could not ignore the press of the air around her. Her presence was like that of a dragon. Though his mind resisted, his body could not contain the strange fear it felt just standing in her presence. A dragon. It was not quite the same thing but it drove the same signal into the nerves. Otto had to suppress the urge to shudder.

“Strength builds kingdoms,” Otto said. “It does not run them. Aegon flew with his sisters and made offers with dragons at his back. He did what no one else could do. But once he burned Harrenhal and knelt the falcons and the stags, he did not hold Westeros by circling it every harvest. He created laws and edicts. He left those laws to men who would outlive him. And soon they became tradition. That is the work I do. It is not pretty. It is necessary.”

“You think I do not know what Aegon did?” she asked. “The songs leave out that he put men to the sword when their words did not please him. When he had trouble, he did not hold councils. He mounted Balerion. His legacy is not parchment. It is death–a kingdom built upon the deaths of his enemies.”

“Death is but a tool,” Otto said. “It is not a tax code. It will not feed cities. It will not dock ships. I do not deny the need for fire and blood. I deny the worship of them.”

“Then we do not disagree,” she said.

Her voice did not rise. It did not need to. Men like him produced volume to fill space. She produced nothing and still filled it. He kept his replies calm.

“You will indulge me if I press the question that matters,” he said. “You have met the prince. You have met the princess. You have seen their company. If the time comes—if swords are drawn in the name of heir and successor—where will you stand?”

She smiled then, very faint. It did not touch her eyes.

“You are not the first today to look for that answer,” she said. “The prince tried to find it in the yard.”

“He is not my prince as such,” Otto said. “Daemon Targaryen is hardly worthy of the title.”

“You came here with him,” she said. “You will work with whoever brings you the seal.”

“That is my curse and my calling,” he said.

“Your curse is thinking you can plan a storm away,” she said. “Your calling is to be crushed under a wave while believing you are a rock.”

He felt heat in his face that he did not often feel. She had a way of making simple statements and leaving no handles on them. His mind reached for the usual hooks and found none.

“You did not answer me,” he said.

She looked past his shoulder to the slit of sea.

“I will answer you,” she said. “Violence is the supreme authority from which all forms of authority is derived. Your King’s peace rests on the last use of it, and the next. Aegon’s crown rests on the ashes he left. Your laws are the shape of those ashes.”

“You ask me where I will stand if your realm breaks,” she went on. “I will stand where the crown sits. That is all. Bring me a crowned head. I will respect the crown, but I have no respect for claims. To the victor go the crown.”

He searched her face. “You make no claim to rights but to results.”

“Rights are little more than words spoken and words written,” she said. “Power matters.”

“Then there is nothing that binds you before the matter is decided.”

“Nothing binds me to your quarrel,” she said. “If you want a binding, win.”

“You call it our quarrel, not the realm’s.”

“I care little for your squabbles,” Hela said. “Quite frankly, I’m surprised the realm’s so invested in it.”

“I will put the question another way,” he said. “Do you think blood should decide succession?”

She shrugged. The plates at her shoulders shifted and settled. “My beliefs stand firm. Power decides succession. Blood decides almost nothing.”

“You think little of bloodlines.”

“I think little of most things, to be fair,” she said. 

He acknowledged her point with a small tilt of his head. 

“Then we are settled for now,” he said.

“We are settled until the crown falls,” she said.

He looked down through the window slit. The sea struck the rocks below without pause. It was steady and without drama from this height. The roads to the yard teemed again; the recess was ending. Men moved with purpose toward the sand. The crier’s bell would be calling them back soon.

He cleared his throat. 

“A last thing,” he said. “Do you think the man who sits the throne must be a soldier?”

“No,” she said. “He must be able to kill soldiers. That is not the same thing.”

“How would you judge that in a prince?”

“Put him near a line where killing is required and see if he walks over it,” she said. “Not a tourney line. A real one.”

“And if he will not cross it?”

“Then give him a library and a city with clean streets and a steward who can cross lines for him,” she said. “Keep him out of wars.”

“And if the realm still needs him to stand?”

“Then find someone else and call him Hand,” she said.

He studied her for a moment. 

“You are not a queen,” he said.

“I am not.”

“You have no wish to be one?”

“No,” she said. 

“You would be an effective queen,” he said. It was half compliment, half probe.

“I would be a butcher with a crown,” she said. “It would be a waste of both.”

He believed her. He also believed she could be made to stand on one side of a fight with the right bind. That bind would not be talk of right or law. It would be something she could not ignore. He searched his mind for something that might suit and found his thoughts drawn to the simplest of instruments: marriage.

The idea came with the ease of a blade finding a sheath. Aegon needed ballast. He needed coin and ships. He needed a shadow that made lesser men step aside. This woman brought all of it by existing. She had no hunger for court. That could be negotiated. She had a hunger for power. That could be given. The Faith would balk. The King might balk. Helaena would be an obstacle. Yet many obstacles that looked hard grew soft under heat. If the price of the realm’s peace was a match that silenced half its enemies, he would pay it in words and patience and pressure.

He kept his face still. He would not voice the thought here. He would need to build it in rooms with doors that shut well. He would need Alicent. He would need to move slowly. He would need to find a way to approach Valon without losing ground. He would have to test whether this woman could be flattered by the only thing that had a chance of pleasing her: a crown that did not command her, but called her equal.

He inclined his head to end the talk.

“You have given me more clarity than most,” he said. “You have my thanks, Lady Hela.”

“You were not tedious,” she said. “That is rare.”

He allowed a breath of humor to pass through him. “I will take the compliment.”

Soren Alson fell beside her without her looking. The other man did the same. They did not glance at Otto as they passed. They moved toward the stair that would carry them back to the yard. The recess bell sounded again, far off. Men began to cheer as if pulled by a rope.

Otto stayed where he was until the last of the footsteps faded. The gallery felt cold. He placed a palm flat on the stone sill of the window and felt the damp in it. He had spoken with queens and pretenders and high septons. He had been coughed on by kings and threatened by their brothers. He told himself he did not frighten easily. He did not use the word now; it was not the right one. He did not stand in fear of her. He stood with the caution he had learned near a dragon’s open mouth. The air had weight. The body kept score.

He straightened his cuffs and set his face back into the line he wore in council. His steps took him toward the stairs that would return him to the benches. On the way he tallied the parts of the plan that had arrived in his head. He would speak with Alicent at dusk. He would put questions to the maesters about any consanguinity that would cause trouble. He would feel out Valon with a remark that looked like idle praise of alliances. He would ask the kitchens to send the King a particular broth that soothed the man’s gut so the evening would not be ruined by pain. Small steps that smoothed larger ones.

He did not know yet whether the King would accept the bargain he was beginning to shape. He did not know whether Aegon would bridle or strut. He did not know whether Hela would consent to any design involving a throne. He knew only that the thought had come clean and strong and that it lit a path through a dark corridor.

Marry Aegon to Hela.