Chapter 42.3- The Seadragon's Roar

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Perhaps I should have made him suffer more before I killed him, I thought to myself as I looked at the stack of communications that had been exchanged between one of my most trusted Captains and a certain Ravandyr Morello of the Stepstones. Of course, they hadn’t figured out cement. They hadn’t even been close to managing it. But if they had.

Fuck, if they had. That would be one of my greatest advantages given over to the enemy, and all of it happening under my nose. I wouldn’t have noticed if Parvello wasn’t so meticulous. Because the fool hadn’t just been shortchanging me. He’d been workin g the miners like slaves to produce even more and more of the limestone just so he had sizable amounts to steal. And all in my name. He had treated those people terribly and done it in my name.

That would have to be the first thing I did. I would have to convince the people that Stevron was a rogue element and that I did not mean for them to be treated thus— to be forced to mine day in and day out, to be beaten when they did not meet arbitrary targets, to be starved. With each tale Declan told of what they had done— though he was careful to make his role in the events seem as small as possible— my blood boiled hotter and hotter.

This made one thing clear. I could not just appoint people because father had trusted them and because Vaemond felt they were trustworthy and leave things alone because they seem to be going well. Stronger monitoring systems. I was going to have to visit each island at least once a moon— maybe more often for the more important ones— if I wanted to make this work. Maybe later I could find some way to have other people doing the checking-in, but now it was clear that the only one I could trust in this Kingdom was me.

Well me and Laena, but she had returned home a moon ago to spend time with Mother, and seemed unlikely to be returning. I’d really put my foot in my mouth the last time we’d spoken, hadn’t I? I would make things better when next we saw, but as I could see now, I had bigger problems on my plate than how my teenage sister felt about things. Especially when she was being so illogical about things.

“Milord?” Declan called, and I froze as I noticed the letter I was clutching had begun to smoke. I doused the fire that had built independently of my control by dumping a pitcher of water on the letter.

“Let us go, Declan. I would speak to my people.” I said.