The next day Lord Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake, knelt before Queen Alicent as she sat upon the lower steps of the Iron Throne, as proxy for her son, and there pledged the king his loyalty and that of his house. Before the eyes of gods and men, the Queen Dowager granted him and his a royal pardon, and restored him to his old place on the small council, as admiral and master of ships. Ravens went forth to Driftmark and Dragonstone to announce the accord…and not a day too soon, for they found young Alyn Velaryon gathering his ships for an attack on Dragonstone, and King Aegon II preparing once again to behead his cousin Baela.

   In the waning days of 130 AC, King Aegon II returned at last to King’s Landing, accompanied by Ser Marston Waters, Ser Alfred Broome, the Two Toms, and Lady Baela Targaryen (still in chains, for fear she might attack the king if freed). Escorted by twelve Velaryon war galleys, they sailed upon a battered old trading cog named Mouse, owned and captained by Marilda of Hull. If Mushroom may be trusted, the choice of vessel was deliberate. “Lord Alyn might have shipped the king home aboard Lord Aethan’s Glory or Morning Tide or even Spicetown Girl, but he wanted him seen to be creeping into the city on a mouse,” the dwarf says. “Lord Alyn was an insolent boy and did not love his king.”

The king’s return was far from triumphant. Still unable to walk, His Grace was brought through the River Gate in a closed litter, and carried up Aegon’s High Hill to the Red Keep through a silent city, past deserted streets, abandoned homes, and looted shops. The steep, narrow steps of the Iron Throne proved impossible for him as well; henceforth, the restored king must needs hold court from a carved, cushioned wooden seat at the base of the true throne, with a blanket across his twisted, shattered legs.

Though in great pain, the king did not retreat to his bedchamber again, nor avail himself of dreamwine or milk of the poppy, but immediately set to pronouncing judgment upon the three “dayfly kings” who had ruled King’s Landing during the Moon of Madness. The squire was the first to face his wroth, and was sentenced to die for high treason. A brave boy, Trystane was at first defiant when dragged before the Iron Throne, until he saw Ser Perkin the Flea standing with the king. That took the heart from him, says Mushroom, but even then the youth did not plead his innocence nor beg for mercy, but asked only that he might be made a knight before he died. This boon King Aegon granted, whereupon Ser Marston Waters dubbed the lad (his fellow bastard) Ser Trystane Fyre (“Truefyre,” the name the boy had bestowed upon himself, being deemed presumptuous), and Ser Alfred Broome struck his head off with Blackfyre, the sword of Aegon the Conqueror.

   The fate of the Cunny King, Gaemon Palehair, was kinder. Having just turned five, the boy was spared on account of his youth and made a ward of the Crown. His mother, Essie, who had presumed to style herself Lady Esselyn during her son’s brief reign, confessed under torture that Gaemon’s father was not the king, as she had previously claimed, but rather a silver-haired oarsman off a trading galley from Lys. Being lowborn and unworthy of the sword, Essie and the Dornish whore Sylvenna Sand were hanged from the battlements of the Red Keep, together with twenty-seven other members of “King” Gaemon’s court, an ill-favored assortment of thieves, drunkards, mummers, beggars, whores, and panders.

Lastly King Aegon II turned his attention to the Shepherd. When brought before the Iron Throne for judgment, the prophet refused to repent his crimes or admit to treason, but thrust the stump of his missing hand at the king and told His Grace, “We shall meet in hell before this year is done,” the same words he had spoken to Borros Baratheon upon his capture. For that insolence, Aegon had the Shepherd’s tongue torn out with hot pincers, then condemned him and his “treasonous followers” to death by fire.

On the last day of the year, two hundred forty-one “barefoot lambs,” the Shepherd’s most fervid and devoted followers, were covered with pitch and chained to poles along the broad cobbled thoroughfare that ran eastward from Cobbler’s Square up to the Dragonpit. As the city’s septs rang their bells to signal the end of the old year and the coming of the new, King Aegon II proceeded along the street (thereafter known as Shepherd’s Way, rather than Hill Street as before) in his litter, whilst his knights rode to either side, setting their torches to the captive lambs to light his way. Thus did His Grace continue up the hill to the very top, where the Shepherd himself was bound amongst the heads of the five dragons. Supported by two of his Kingsguard, King Aegon rose from his cushions, tottered to the pole where the prophet had been chained, and set him aflame with his own hand.

“Rhaenyra the Pretender was gone, her dragons dead, the mummer kings all fallen, and yet the realm knew not peace,” Septon Eustace wrote soon after. With his half-sister slain and her only surviving son a captive at his own court, King Aegon II might reasonably have expected the remaining opposition to his rule to melt away…and mayhaps it might have done so if His Grace had heeded Lord Velaryon’s counsel and issued a general pardon for all those lords and knights who had espoused the queen’s cause.

   Alas, the king was not of a forgiving mind. Urged on by his mother, the Queen Dowager Alicent, Aegon II was determined to exact vengeance upon those who had betrayed and deposed him. He started with the crownlands, sending forth his own men and the stormlanders of Borros Baratheon against Rosby, Stokeworth, and Duskendale and the surrounding keeps and villages. Though the lords thus accosted, through their stewards and castellans, were quick to lower Rhaenyra’s quartered banner and raise Aegon’s golden dragon in its stead, each in turn was brought in chains to King’s Landing and forced to do obeisance before the king. Nor were they freed until they had agreed to pay a heavy ransom, and provide the Crown with suitable hostages.

This campaign proved a grave mistake, for it only served to harden the hearts of the late queen’s men against the king. Reports soon reached King’s Landing of warriors gathering in great numbers at Winterfell, Barrowton, and White Harbor. In the riverlands, the aged and bedridden Lord Grover Tully had finally died (of apoplexy from having his house fight against the rightful king at Second Tumbleton, Mushroom says), and his grandson Elmo, now at last the Lord of Riverrun, had called the lords of the Trident to war once more, lest he suffer the same fate as Lords Rosby, Stokeworth, and Darklyn. To him gathered Benjicot Blackwood of Raventree, already a seasoned warrior at three-and-ten; his fierce young aunt, Black Aly, with three hundred bows; Lady Sabitha Frey, the merciless and grasping Lady of the Twins; Lord Hugo Vance of Wayfarer’s Rest; Lord Jorah Mallister of Seagard; Lord Roland Darry of Darry; aye, and even Humfrey Bracken, Lord of Stone Hedge, whose house had hitherto supported King Aegon’s cause.

Even more grave were the tidings from the Vale, where Lady Jeyne Arryn had assembled fifteen hundred knights and eight thousand men-at-arms, and sent envoys to the Braavosi to arrange for ships to bring them down upon King’s Landing. With them would come a dragon. Lady Rhaena of House Targaryen, brave Baela’s twin, had brought a dragon’s egg with her to the Vale…an egg that had proved fertile, bringing forth a pale pink hatchling with black horns and crest. Rhaena named her Morning.