It was Septon Barth who first proposed a different name. “The Tyrells of Highgarden are descended from stewards,” he reminded the king, “but the Reach is broader than the westerlands, with a different sort of wealth, and young Martyn Tyrell might prove a useful addition to this council.”

Lord Redwyne was incredulous. “The Tyrells are dolts,” he said. “I am sorry, Your Grace, they are my liege lords, but…the Tyrells are dolts, and Lord Bertrand was a sot as well.”

“That is as it may be,” Septon Barth admitted. “Lord Bertrand is in his grave now, however, and I am speaking of his son. Martyn is young and eager, but I will not vouch for the quality of his wits. His wife, however, is a Fossoway girl, the Lady Florence, who has been counting apples since she learned to walk. She has been keeping all the accounts at Highgarden since her marriage, and it is said she has increased House Tyrell’s incomes by a third. Should we appoint her husband, she would come to court as well, I do not doubt.”

“Alysanne would like that,” the king said. “She enjoys the company of clever women.” The queen had not been attending council since the death of Princess Daenerys. Mayhaps Jaehaerys hoped that this would help bring her back to him again. “Our good septon has never led us wrong. Let us try the dolt with the clever wife, and hope that my leal smallfolk do not beat his head in with a cobblestone.”

   The Seven take and the Seven give. Mayhaps the Mother Above looked down on Queen Alysanne in her grief and took pity on her broken heart. The moon had not turned twice since Princess Daenerys’s death when Her Grace learned that she was once again carrying a child. With winter holding the realm in its icy grip, the queen once again chose caution and retired to Dragonstone for her lying in. Late that year, 60 AC, she was delivered of her fifth child, a daughter she named Alyssa after her mother. “An honor Her Grace would have appreciated more had she been alive,” observed the new Grand Maester, Elysar…though not in the king’s hearing.

Winter broke not long after the queen gave birth, and Alyssa proved to be a lively, healthy child. As a babe she was so like her late sister, Daenerys, that the queen oft wept to behold her, remembering the child she had lost. The likeness faded as the princess grew older, however; long-faced and skinny, Alyssa had little of her sister’s beauty. Her hair was a dirty blond tangle with no hint of silver to evoke the dragonlords of old, and she had been born with mismatched eyes, one violet, the other a startling green. Her ears were too big and her smile lopsided, and when she was six playing in the yard a whack across the face from a wooden sword broke her nose. It healed crooked, but Alyssa did not seem to care. By that age, her mother had come to realize that it was not Daenerys that she took after, but Baelon.

Just as Baelon had once followed Aemon everywhere, Alyssa trailed after Baelon. “Like a puppy,” the Spring Prince complained. Baelon was two years younger than Aemon, Alyssa nearly four years younger than him…“and a girl,” which made it far worse in his eyes. The princess did not act like a girl, however. She wore boy’s clothes when she could, shunned the company of other girls, preferred riding and climbing and dueling with wooden swords to sewing and reading and singing, and refused to eat porridge.

An old friend, and old adversary, returned to King’s Landing in 61 AC, when Lord Rogar Baratheon rode up from Storm’s End to deliver three young girls to court. Two were the daughters of his brother Ronnal, who had died shivering together with his wife and sons. The third was Lady Jocelyn, his lordship’s own daughter by Queen Alyssa. The small frail babe who had come into the world during that terrible Year of the Stranger had grown into a tall young girl of solemn mien, with large dark eyes and hair black as sin.

   Rogar Baratheon’s own hair had gone grey, however, and the years had taken their toll of the old King’s Hand. His face was pale and lined, and he had grown so gaunt that his clothes hung loose upon him, as if they had been cut for a much larger man. When he took a knee before the Iron Throne, he had trouble rising back to his feet, and required the help of a Kingsguard to stand.

He had come to ask a boon, Lord Rogar told the king and queen. Lady Jocelyn would soon be celebrating her seventh nameday. “She has never known a mother. My brother’s wives looked after her as much as they were able, but they favored their own children as mothers will, and now both of them are gone. If it please you, sires, I would ask you to accept Jocelyn and her cousins as wards, to be raised here at court beside your own sons and daughters.”

“It would be our honor and our pleasure,” Queen Alysanne replied. “Jocelyn is our own sister, we have not forgotten. Our blood.”

Lord Rogar seemed much relieved. “I would ask you to look after my son as well. Boremund will remain at Storm’s End, in the charge of my brother Garon. He is a good boy, a strong boy, and he will be a great lord in time, I do not doubt, but he is only nine. As Your Graces know, my brother Borys left the stormlands some years ago. He grew sour and angry after Boremund was born, and things went from bad to worse between us. Borys was in Myr for a time, and later in Volantis, doing gods know what…but now he has turned up in Westeros again, in the Red Mountains. The talk is that he has joined up with the Vulture King, and is raiding his own people. Garon is an able man, and leal, but he never was a match for Borys, and Boremund is but a boy. I fear for what may befall him, and the stormlands, when I am gone.”

That took the king aback. “When you are gone? Why should you be gone? Where do you mean to go, my lord?”

Lord Rogar’s answering smile showed a glimpse of his old ferocity. “Into the mountains, Your Grace. My maester says that I am dying. I believe him. Even before the Shivers there was pain. It has gotten worse since. He gives me milk of the poppy, and that helps, but I use only a little. I would not sleep away what life remains to me. Nor would I die abed, bleeding out of my arse. I mean to find my brother Borys and deal with him, and with this Vulture King as well. A fool’s errand, Garon calls it. He is not wrong. But when I die, I want to die with my axe in my hand, screaming a curse. Do I have your leave, Your Grace?”

   Moved by his old friend’s words, King Jaehaerys rose and descended from the Iron Throne to clap Lord Rogar by the shoulder. “Your brother is a traitor, and this vulture—I will not call him king—has vexed our marches long enough. You have my leave, my lord. And more than that, you have my sword.”

The king was true to his word. The fight that followed is named in the histories as the Third Dornish War, but that is a misnomer, for the Prince of Dorne kept his armies well out of the conflict. The smallfolk of the time called it Lord Rogar’s War, and that name is far more apt. Whilst the Lord of Storm’s End led five hundred men into the mountains, Jaehaerys Targaryen took to the air, on Vermithor. “He calls himself a vulture,” the king said, “but he does not fly. He hides. He should call himself the gopher.” He was not wrong. The first Vulture King had commanded armies, leading thousands of men into battle. The second was no more than an upjumped raider, the minor son of a minor house with a few hundred followers who shared his taste for robbery and rape. He knew the mountains well, however, and when pursued he would simply disappear, to reappear at will. Men who came hunting him did so at their peril, for he was skilled at ambuscade as well.