His days were as empty as his nights. Though he had been born upon an island and now lived upon another, Androw did not sail or swim or fish. A failed squire, he had no skill with sword nor axe nor spear, so when the men of the castle garrison trained each morning in the yard, he kept to his bed. Thinking that he might be of a bookish disposition, Maester Culiper tried to interest him in the treasures of Dragonstone’s library, the ponderous tomes and Old Valyrian scrolls that had fascinated King Jaehaerys, only to discover that the queen’s husband could not read. Androw rode passably well, and from time to time would have a horse saddled so he might trot about the yard, but he never passed beyond the gates to explore the Dragonmont’s rocky paths or the far side of the island, nor even the fishing village and docks beneath the castle.

   “He drinks a deal,” Maester Culiper wrote to the Citadel, “and has been known to spend entire days in the Chamber of the Painted Table, moving painted wooden soldiers about the map. Queen Rhaena’s companions are wont to say he is planning his conquest of Westeros. They do not mock him to his face for her sake, but they titter at him behind his back. The knights and men-at-arms pay him no mind whatsoever, and the servants obey him or not, as they please, with no fear of his displeasure. The children are the cruelest, as children often are, and none half so cruel as the Princess Aerea. She once emptied a chamberpot upon his head, not for anything he did, but because she was wroth with her mother.”

Androw Farman’s discontent on Dragonstone only grew worse after his sister’s departure. Lady Elissa had been his closest friend, mayhaps his only friend, Culiper observed, and despite his tearful denials, Rhaena found it hard to accept that he had played no role in the matter of her dragon eggs. When the queen dismissed Ser Merrell Bullock, Androw had asked her to appoint him commander of the castle garrison in Bullock’s place. Her Grace had been breaking her fast with four of her ladies-in-waiting at the time. The women burst into laughter at his request, and after a moment the queen had laughed as well. When Rhaena flew to King’s Landing to inform King Jaehaerys of the theft, Androw had offered to accompany her. His wife refused him scornfully. “What would that serve? What could you possibly do but fall off the dragon?”

Queen Rhaena’s denial of his wish to go with her to Storm’s End was but the latest and the last in a long string of humiliations for Androw Farman. By the time Rhaena returned from her mother’s deathbed, he was well past any desire to comfort her. Sullen and cold, he sat silent at meals and avoided the queen’s company elsewise. If Rhaena Targaryen was troubled by his sulks, she gave little sign of it. She found consolation in her ladies instead, in old friends like Samantha Stokeworth and Alayne Royce, and newer companions like her cousin Lianna Velaryon, Lord Staunton’s pretty daughter Cassella, and young Septa Maryam.

   Whatever peace they helped her find proved short-lived. Autumn had come to Dragonstone, as to the rest of Westeros, and with it came cold winds from the north and storms from the south raging up the narrow sea. A darkness settled over the ancient fortress, a gloomy place even in summer; even the dragons seemed to feel the damp. And as the year waned, the sickness came to Dragonstone.

It was not the sweating sickness, nor the shaking sickness, nor greyscale, Maester Culiper pronounced. The first sign was a bloody stool, followed by a terrible cramping in the gut. There were a number of diseases that could be the cause, he told the queen. Which of those might be to blame he never determined, for Culiper himself was the first to die, less than two days after he began to feel ill. Maester Anselm, who took his place, thought his age to blame. Culiper had been closer to ninety than to eighty, and not strong.

Cassella Staunton was the next to succumb, however, and she was but four-and-ten. Then Septa Maryam sickened, and Alayne Royce, and even big, boisterous Sam Stokeworth, who liked to boast that she had never been sick a day in her life. All three died the same night, within hours of one another.

Rhaena Targaryen herself remained untouched, though her friends and dear companions were being felled one by one. It was her Valyrian blood that saved her, Maester Anselm suggested; ailments that carried off ordinary men in a matter of hours could not prevail against the blood of the dragon. Males also seemed largely immune to this queer plague. Aside from Maester Culiper, only women were struck down. The men of Dragonstone, be they knights, scullions, stableboys, or singers, remained healthy.

Queen Rhaena ordered the gates of Dragonstone closed and barred. As yet there was no sickness beyond her walls, and she meant for it to stay that way, to protect the smallfolk. When she sent word to King’s Landing, Jaehaerys acted at once, commanding Lord Velaryon to send forth his galleys to make certain no one escaped to spread the pestilence beyond the island. The King’s Hand did as commanded, though not without grief, for his own young niece was amongst the women still on Dragonstone.

   Lianna Velaryon died even as her uncle’s galleys were pushing off from Driftmark. Maester Anselm had purged her, bled her, and covered her with ice, all to no avail. She died in Rhaena Targaryen’s arms, convulsing as the queen wept bitter tears.

“You weep for her,” Androw Farman said when he saw the tears on his wife’s face, “but would you weep for me?” His words woke a fury in the queen. Lashing him across the face, Rhaena commanded him to leave her, declaring that she wanted to be alone. “You shall be,” Androw said. “She was the last of them.”

Even then, so lost was the queen in her grief that she did not realize what had happened. It was Rego Draz, the king’s Pentoshi master of coin, who first gave voice to suspicion when Jaehaerys assembled his small council to discuss the deaths on Dragonstone. Reading over Maester Anselm’s accounts, Lord Rego furrowed his brow and said, “Sickness? This is no sickness. A weasel in the guts, dead in a day…this is the tears of Lys.”

“Poison?” King Jaehaerys said in shock.

“We know more of such things in the Free Cities,” Draz assured him. “It is the tears, never doubt it. The old maester would have seen it soon enough, so he had to die first. That is how I would do it. Not that I would. Poison is…dishonorable.”

“Only women were struck down,” objected Lord Velaryon.

“Only women got the poison, then,” said Rego Draz.

When Septon Barth and Grand Maester Benifer concurred with Lord Rego’s words, the king dispatched a raven to Dragonstone. Once Rhaena Targaryen read his words, she had no doubt. Summoning the captain of her guards, she commanded that her husband be found and brought to her.

Androw Farman was not to be found in his bedchamber nor the queen’s, nor the great hall, nor the stables, nor the sept, nor Aegon’s Garden. In Sea Dragon Tower, in the maester’s chambers under the rookery, they discovered Maester Anselm dead, with a dagger between his shoulder blades. With the gates closed and barred, there was no way to leave the castle save by dragon. “My worm of a husband does not have the courage for that,” Rhaena declared.