Departing Oldtown, Dreamfyre took the queen northward, first to Highgarden, then to Crakehall and Casterly Rock, whose lords had welcomed her in days gone by. Nowhere had a dragon been seen, save for her own; not even a whisper of Princess Aerea had been heard. Thence Rhaena returned to Fair Isle, to face Lord Franklyn Farman once again. The years had not made his lordship any fonder of the queen, nor any wiser in how he chose to speak to her. “I had hoped my lady sister might come home to do her duty once she fled from you,” Lord Franklyn said, “but we have had no word of her, nor of your daughter. I cannot claim to know the princess, but I would say she is well rid of you, as was Fair Isle. If she turns up here we shall see her off, just as we did her mother.”

   “You do not know Aerea, that much is true,” Her Grace responded. “If she does indeed find her way to these shores, my lord, you may find she is not as forbearing as her mother. Oh, and I wish you luck if you should try to ‘see off’ the Black Dread. Balerion quite enjoyed your brother, by now he may desire another course.”

After Fair Isle, history loses track of Rhaena Targaryen. She would not return to King’s Landing or Dragonstone for the rest of the year, nor present herself at the seat of any lord in the Seven Kingdoms. We have fragmentary reports of Dreamfyre being seen as far north as the barrowlands and the banks of the Fever River, and as far south as the Red Mountains of Dorne and the canyons of the Torrentine. Shunning castles and cities, Rhaena and her dragon were glimpsed flying over the Fingers and the Mountains of the Moon, the misty green forests of Cape Wrath, the Shield Islands, and the Arbor…but nowhere did she seek out human company. Instead she sought the wild, lonely places, windswept moors and grassy plains and dismal swamps, cliffs and crags and mountain glens. Was she still hunting for some sign of her daughter, or was it simply solitude she desired? We shall never know.

Her long absence from King’s Landing was for the good, however, for the king and his council were growing ever more vexed with her. The accounts of Rhaena’s confrontation with Lord Farman on Fair Isle had appalled the king and his lords alike. “Is she mad, to speak so to a lord in his own hall?” Lord Smallwood said. “Had it been me, I would have had her tongue out.” To which the king replied, “I hope you would not truly be so foolish, my lord. Whatever else she may be, Rhaena remains the blood of the dragon, and my sister, whom I love.” His Grace did not take issue with Lord Smallwood’s point, it should be noted, only with his words.

Septon Barth said it best. “The power of the Targaryens derives from their dragons, those fearsome beasts who once laid waste to Harrenhal and destroyed two kings upon the Field of Fire. King Jaehaerys knows this, just as his grandsire Aegon did; the power is always there, and with it the threat. His Grace also grasps a truth that Queen Rhaena does not, however; the threat is most effective when left unspoken. The lords of the realm are proud men all, and little is gained by shaming them. A wise king will always let them keep their dignity. Show them a dragon, aye. They will remember. Speak openly of burning down their halls, boast of how you fed their own kin to your dragons, and you will only inflame them and set their hearts against you.”

   Queen Alysanne prayed daily for her niece Aerea and blamed herself for the child’s flight…but she blamed her sister more. Jaehaerys, who had taken little note of Aerea even during the years she had been his heir, chided himself now for that neglect, but it was Balerion who most concerned him, for well he understood the dangers of a beast so powerful in the hands of an angry thirteen-year-old girl. Neither Rhaena Targaryen’s fruitless wanderings nor the storm of ravens Grand Maester Benifer sent forth had turned up any word of the princess or the dragon, beyond the usual lies, mistakes, and delusions. As the days went by and the moon turned and turned again, the king began to fear that his niece was dead. “Balerion is a willful beast, and not one to be trifled with,” he told the council. “To leap upon his back, never having flown before, and take him up…not to fly about the castle, no, but out across the water…like as not he threw her off, poor girl, and she lies now at the bottom of the narrow sea.”

Septon Barth did not concur. Dragons were not vagabond by nature, he pointed out. More oft than not, they find a sheltered spot, a cave or ruined castle or mountaintop, and nest there, going forth to hunt and thence returning. Once free of his rider, Balerion would surely have returned to his lair. It was his own surmise that, given the lack of any sightings of Balerion in Westeros, Princess Aerea had likely flown him east across the narrow sea, to the vast fields of Essos. The queen concurred. “If the girl were dead, I would know it. She is still alive. I feel it.”

All the agents and informers that Rego Draz had engaged to hunt down Elissa Farman and the stolen dragon eggs were now given a new mission: to find Princess Aerea and Balerion. Reports soon began to come in from all up and down the narrow sea. Most proved useless, as with the dragon eggs; rumors, lies, and false sightings, concocted for the sake of a reward. Some were third- or fourth-hand, others with such paucity of detail that they amounted to little more than “I may have seen a dragon. Or something big, with wings.”

   The most intriguing report came from the hills of Andalos north of Pentos, where shepherds spoke in fearful tones of a monster on the prowl, devouring entire flocks and leaving only bloody bones behind. Nor were the shepherds themselves spared should they chance to stumble on this beast, for this creature’s appetite was by no means limited to mutton. Those who actually encountered the monster did not live to describe him, however…and none of the stories mentioned fire, which Jaehaerys took to mean that Balerion could not be to blame. Nonetheless, to be certain, he sent a dozen men across the narrow sea to Pentos to try to hunt down this beast, led by Ser Willam the Wasp of his Kingsguard.

Across that selfsame narrow sea, unbeknownst to King’s Landing, the shipwrights of Braavos had completed work on the carrack Sun Chaser, the dream Elissa Farman had purchased with her stolen dragon’s eggs. Unlike the galleys that slid forth daily from the Arsenal of Braavos, she was not oared; this was a vessel meant for deep waters, not bays and covers and inland shallows. Fourmasted, she carried as much sail as the swan ships of the Summer Isles, but with a broader beam and deeper hull that would allow her to store sufficient provisions for longer voyages. When one Braavosi asked her if she meant to sail to Yi Ti, Lady Elissa laughed and said, “I may…but not by the route you think.”

The night before she was to set sail, she was summoned to the Sealord’s Palace, where the Sealord served her herring, beer, and caution. “Go with care, my lady,” he told her, “but go. Men are hunting you, all up and down the narrow sea. Questions are being asked, rewards are being offered. I would not care for you to be found in Braavos. We came here to be free of Old Valyria, and your Targaryens are Valyrian to the bone. Sail far. Sail fast.”

As the lady now known as Alys Westhill took leave of the Titan of Braavos, life in King’s Landing continued as before. Unable to locate his lost niece, Jaehaerys Targaryen proceeded as he always would in times of trouble, and gave himself over to his labors. In the quiet of the Red Keep’s library, the king began work on what was to be one of the most significant of his achievements. With the able assistance of Septon Barth, Grand Maester Benifer, Lord Albin Massey, and Queen Alysanne—a foursome His Grace dubbed “my even smaller council”—Jaehaerys set out to codify, organize, and reform all the kingdom’s laws.