Thus was the peace made between the young king and his former Hand, and sealed that night by a feast in the great hall, where Lord Rogar sat beside Queen Alyssa, man and wife once more, and raised a toast to the health of Queen Alysanne, pledging her his love and loyalty before all the assembled lords and ladies. Four days later, when Lord Rogar departed to return to Storm’s End, Queen Alyssa went with him, escorted by Ser Pate the Woodcock and a hundred men-at-arms to see them safe through the kingswood.*

   In King’s Landing, the long reign of Jaehaerys I Targaryen began in earnest. The young king faced a score of problems when he assumed the rule of the Seven Kingdoms, but two loomed larger than all the rest: the treasury was empty and the Crown’s debt was mounting, and his “secret” marriage, which grew less secret with every passing day, sat like a jar of wildfire on a hearth, waiting to explode. Both questions needed to be dealt with, and quickly.

The immediate need for gold was resolved by Rego Draz, the new master of coin, who reached out to the Iron Bank of Braavos and its rivals in Tyrosh and Myr to arrange not one but three substantial loans. By playing each bank against the others, the Lord of Air negotiated as favorable terms as might be hoped for. The securing of the loans had one immediate effect; work on the Dragonpit was able to resume, and once again a small army of builders and stonemasons swarmed over the Hill of Rhaenys.

Lord Rego and his king both realized that the loans were a stopgap measure at best, however; they might slow the bleeding but they would not stanch the wound. Only taxes could accomplish that. Lord Celtigar’s taxes would not serve; Jaehaerys had no interest in raising port fees or bleeding innkeeps. Nor would he simply demand gold from the lords of the realm, as Maegor had. Too much of that, and the lords would rise up. “Nothing is so costly as putting down rebellions,” the king declared. The lords would pay, but of their own free will; he would tax the things they wanted, fine and costly things from across the sea. Silk would be taxed, and samite; cloth-of-gold and cloth-of-silver; gemstones; Myrish lace and Myrish tapestries; Dornish wines (but not wines from the Arbor); Dornish sand steeds; gilded helms and filigreed armor from the craftsmen of Tyrosh, Lys, and Pentos. Spices would be taxed heaviest of all; peppercorns, cloves, saffron, nutmeg, cinnamon, and all the other rare seasonings from beyond the Jade Gates, already more costly than gold, would become still costlier. “We are taxing all the things that made me rich,” Lord Rego japed.

   “No man can claim to be oppressed by these taxes,” Jaehaerys explained to the small council. “To avoid them, a man need only forgo his pepper, his silk, his pearls, and he need not pay a groat. The men who want these things desire them desperately, however. How else to flaunt their power and show the world what wealthy men they are? They may squawk, but they will pay.”

The spice and silk taxes were not the end of it. King Jaehaerys also brought forth a new law on crenellations. Any lord who wished to build a new castle or expand and repair his existing seat would need to pay a hefty price for the privilege. The new tax served a dual purpose, His Grace explained to Grand Maester Benifer. “The larger and stronger a castle, the more its lord is tempted to defy me. You would think they might learn from Black Harren, but too many do not know their history. This tax will discourage them from building, whilst those who must build regardless can replenish our treasury whilst they empty theirs.”

Having done what he could to repair the Crown’s finances, His Grace turned his attention to the other great matter awaiting him. At long last, he sent for his queen. Alysanne Targaryen and her dragon, Silverwing, departed Dragonstone within an hour of his summons, after having been apart from the king for nigh on half a year. The rest of her household followed by ship. By this time, even blind beggars in the alleys of Flea Bottom knew that Alysanne and Jaehaerys had been wed, but for the sake of propriety the king and queen slept separately for a moon’s turn, whilst preparations were made for their second wedding.

The king was not disposed to spend coin he did not have on another Golden Wedding, as splendid and popular as that event had been. Forty thousand had witnessed his mother marry Lord Rogar. A thousand came together in the Red Keep to see Jaehaerys take his sister Alysanne to wife again. This time it was Septon Barth who pronounced them man and wife, beneath the Iron Throne.

   Lord Rogar Baratheon and the Dowager Queen Alyssa were amongst those standing witness this time. Together with his lordship’s brothers Garon and Ronnal, they had made their way back from Storm’s End to attend the ceremony. But it was another wedding guest who excited the most talk: the Queen in the West had come as well. Borne on the wings of Dreamfyre, Rhaena Targaryen had flown in to see her siblings wed…and to visit her daughter Aerea.

Bells rang throughout the city as the rites were concluded, and a flight of ravens took wing to every corner of the realm to proclaim “this happy union.” The king’s second wedding differed from his first in one other crucial respect; it was followed by a bedding. Queen Alysanne, in later years, would declare that this was at her insistence; she was ready to lose her maidenhead, and she wanted no more questions as to whether she were “truly” married. Lord Rogar himself, roaring drunk, led the men who disrobed her and carried her to the bridal bed, whilst the queen’s companions Jennis Templeton, Rosamund Ball, and Prudence and Prunella Celtigar were amongst those who did the honors for the king. There, upon a canopied bed in Maegor’s Holdfast in the Red Keep of King’s Landing, the marriage of Jaehaerys Targaryen and his sister Alysanne was consummated at long last, sealing their union for all time before the eyes of gods and men.

With secrecy finally at an end, the king and his court waited to see how the realm would respond. Jaehaerys had concluded that the violent opposition that had greeted his brother Aegon’s marriage had several causes. Their uncle Maegor’s taking of a second wife in 39 AC, in defiance of both the High Septon and his own brother, King Aenys, had shattered the delicate understanding between the Iron Throne and the Starry Sept, so the marriage of Aegon and Rhaena had been seen as a further outrage. The denunciation thus provoked had lit a fire across the land, and the Swords and Stars had taken up the torches, along with a score of pious lords who feared the gods more than their king. Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaena had been little known amongst the smallfolk, and they had begun their progress without dragons (in large part because Aegon was not yet a dragonrider), which left them vulnerable to the mobs that sprung up to attack them in the riverlands.

   None of these conditions applied to Jaehaerys and Alysanne. There would be no denunciation from the Starry Sept; whilst some amongst the Most Devout still bristled at the Targaryen tradition of sibling marriage, the present High Septon, Septon Moon’s “High Lickspittle,” was complaisant and cautious, not inclined to wake sleeping dragons. The Swords and Stars had been broken and outlawed; only at the Wall, where two thousand former Poor Fellows now wore the black cloaks of the Night’s Watch, did they have sufficient numbers to be troublesome, were they so inclined. And King Jaehaerys was not about to repeat his brother’s mistake. He and his queen meant to see the land they ruled, to learn its needs firsthand, to meet his lords and take their measure, to let themselves be seen by the smallfolk, and to hear their griefs in turn…but wherever they went, it would be with their dragons.