GOT: P Chapter 16

They called it the Fishmonger's Gate when she was little. It still smells like it: brine, rot, piss baked flat by sun, but worse now, layered with too many dirt and shit, not enough water to wash the street.

Rhaenys stands off the Fishmonger’s Gate with a hood low and a hired cart at her back. The cart creaks under bales and nets and three baskets of yesterday’s crabs no one wants. Two men with her, who is still loyal to her from the day they met her. The one who broken their chains from their worst days.

Anyway.

She keeps her chin down and her hands together so she won’t wring them. It doesn’t help. They shake anyway.

The line outside the gate is thin and mean. People aren’t queuing to get in; they’re trying not to be noticed trying. Goldcloaks on the parapet and at the arch. The doors are closed and barred.

“Gates will remain shut, by the King's order! Step back!”

No one steps forward. Two step away.

Our men try anyway because their captain wants to. Kellan is the older one, grey in the beard, shoulders notched by years of roping the sailing cloth. Toms is younger and soft. They walk toward the arch like they’re just another pair with nothing to hide. Kellan speaks with hands open, points to the baskets like that might change the world. A goldcloak shakes his head without even looking, then lifts his spear butt to send them back. The second goldcloak doesn’t bother speaking; he just taps the haft against the door in a dull rhythm that says the same thing: no.

Kellan and Toms come back empty and sheepish, eyes anywhere but Rhaenys. “Tide,” Kellan says, small. “We’ll try on the turn.”

Rhaenys swallows. “Aye.” Voice steady, hands not.

Her hands won't stop shaking.

Anger, fear, relief: useless mix. Home is here.

Mother. The way Elia would rub circles at her wrist when breath ran short. Father, always half-absent even when he smiled. She closes her hand hard enough that the old scar at the thumb twinges and lets the faces pass. Not now.

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Updrafts start once the ovens hit full burn. I wait for the shimmer to build over the rooftops, then step off the mast.

Climb straight, no circles. Gulls learn fast; they tilt away when I flare. Good. Less chatter in the air.

Full-grown now, wingspan to a man’s shoulder and then some, neck dark red toward soot, eyes gold. Bigger than I was, smaller than I need to be.

I wait.

Head down only to check below: ugly shelters, smoke, more men, more and more.

Anyway.

Don't cast a shadow that matters. Don't give a reason to look up. People don't. Sky is background and I'm just a part of background for now.

Over the street, over the tiled ridge, over the patch of broken slate a mason never fixed. The city is the same shape it was when I hatched into it and not the same at all.

I take the merlon I want on the first try, smoke-black stone beside a thin chimney that's still cooking. Soot creeps into feathers. Good. From the yard below I'm just another burned thing on a burned wall. No heads turn. A bell claps somewhere to the east; feet shuffle; life keeps happening.

Then what I didn't expected to see. Well at least not this conicidence.

Ned Stark. Fresh. The blood hasn't crusted to brown yet. Flies know their work.

Early and late at the same time. That's the thought. Sympathy tugs; I let it. Honor didn't buy him sense, or maybe it did and the price was his neck. It's this game. You sit, you stand, you lose something either way. Shit happens.

No speeches. I mark the angles: guards, changes, how many heads, how many empty points waiting. The wind pushes. I let the push speak.

Below me sits the city that taught me a lot I never got to know or never cared to know. I came into this world stupid in a small body. Still small, still a bird, just hotter and meaner when I need to be.

I take one last look across the roofs and fold off the stone, silent. Back to the mudflats and the cart and her waiting. Back to the person who matters.