The great doors shut out the last of the light and sound. The vast hall of black stone sank into a suffocating silence, broken only by the crackling of logs in the fireplace. In the empty space, the sound seemed especially harsh.
King Kolen Tysso still stood with his back to the door, like an ageless statue of a reef, enduring the storm raging silently within him. Firelight flickered across his broad back, shifting between light and shadow. Before him, the spoils gleamed enticingly in the flames—gold coins, silks, jeweled goblets—but now they gave off a cold, mocking air, as if they were the sharpest possible rebuke to this "victory." All he had gained in exchange for his son's recklessness and the safety of the entire archipelago were these lifeless trinkets—and a future that demanded stronger defenses.
His low voice, heavy with iron and blood, sounded slowly, as though he were speaking to himself—or to the hall of black stone, which had borne witness to countless generations of House Greyjoy's glory and sins:
"Pillage... it's instinct, etched into the bones of the Ironborn. It's the way the Drowned God gave us to survive..." His voice sounded especially weighty in the silence. "But stupidity! Arrogant stupidity! It'll eat away at our ship's timbers like a worm, from the inside, and in the end... doom the entire archipelago!" He fell silent for a long while. The firelight played over his tightly pressed lips and deep-set lines. At last, his words gave way to an almost inaudible sigh, heavy with complicated hopes for his eldest son and stern admonishment. "Baron, my son... I hope the waves of Howling Cape can truly... wash the arrogance from your head."
"Daggmo." Kolen's voice returned to its customary cold command. He still hadn't turned around. "Sit!"
Cracked Jaw Daggmo, the old pirate who terrified his enemies at sea, looked unusually ill at ease. He nervously rubbed his calloused, scarred hands together and swallowed before carefully pulling out the heavy wooden chair opposite King Kolen. Its legs scraped across the stone floor with a shrill rasp that rang out in the deathly quiet hall. He sat stiffly, his back ramrod straight and his hands on his knees, like a prisoner awaiting judgment. There was none of the ferocity he showed when raiding at sea. He stole a glance at the king's mountain-still back, then quickly lowered his eyes.
"Now," Kolen finally turned around, slowly. His weathered, hawk-sharp eyes glinted in the firelight, cold and oppressive, as they fixed on Daggmo. "Pour out every drop of seawater, every breath of wind, every reef you encountered on this 'voyage'! From beginning to end! Don't leave out a single word!"
"Yes, Your Grace!" Daggmo took a deep breath, struggling to suppress his nerves. His rough voice rang through the empty hall as he began his long and detailed report.
Cracked Jaw Daggmo took a deep breath, as if trying to force all the tension from his lungs. His rough voice rose in the silent hall of black stone, where the only sound had been the crackling fire.
"It all... started when young Baron got hold of that merchant ship's route map at the Salty Blood tavern. It marked the route and schedule of some fat merchants—spices, silks, jewels... Young Baron's eyes went red. He was like a shark that had smelled blood. Of course, I was just as thirsty and hungry—maybe even more so." He licked his cracked lips. "So I gathered the crew, stocked water and food, and waited for the tide to take the Hao Yin out to sea. As for young Yulon, we only brought him aboard because he threatened to tell on Baron before the Hao Yin set sail."
Daggmo paused, as if weighing his words. "After young Yulon came aboard... he just sat there reading that battered old book of his, as though he didn't care about anything. Young Baron made the call to attack, and he didn't object. He only... only asked, 'The map doesn't mark any escort ships, water depths, or hidden reefs. Father taught us that raiding takes axes and knives—but brains, too.'"
King Kolen sat with his back to him, utterly still. Yet the dancing firelight seemed to pause for an instant on his broad shoulders.
"Young Baron wouldn't listen, of course. He called him a brat who didn't know shit and settled on the plan." Daggmo continued, "Before we actually made our move, young Yulon... did a few... strange things."
"Speak!" Kolen's voice was like a cold reef.
Daggmo lowered his voice, a note of bewilderment creeping into it. "After we took prisoners, young Baron and the rest of us were eager to start working on them and pry their mouths open. Axes, skinning knives—we'd use whatever hurt the most! But young Yulon... he was different."
As Daggmo described the interrogation, he couldn't help sounding impressed by its "efficiency," though the method had instinctively sent a chill through him.
"He was like... like someone filleting a fish, Your Grace. He didn't rush to chop off their fingers. First, he circled the three prisoners, looking at their hands, their clothes, even the old scars on their bodies! He spotted the three-sided arrowhead scar on the mercenary's shoulder. Then... he used this!" Daggmo unconsciously touched his belt. "Not a knife—rust! He scraped a handful of rust off the deck and... and pushed it right into that old wound on the mercenary's shoulder! Gods, you should've heard him scream! It was worse than having his fingers chopped off! The mercenary broke right away and told us the number and positions of the guards. He even mentioned that the servants were unarmed!"
Kolen still had his back turned, but Daggmo felt the weight of his silent attention grow heavier.
"The most impressive part was how he questioned them separately! It was young Yulon's first time at sea, his first raid, and definitely his first interrogation, but he was more practiced and thorough than us old pirates." Daggmo stressed the point. "Young Baron questioned one, I questioned another, and he questioned the third. They asked the same things: number of ships, cargo, guards, heading... Then they compared all three accounts, like fitting planks together! Your Grace, you know how it is. Question them separately, and if their stories don't match, someone's lying! We'd never... done that before."
Daggmo paused, seeming to recall a raid so efficient it had been almost cold-blooded. "The way he treated the prisoners..." He remembered what Yulon had said to them at the end. "He gave those half-dead bastards water and crouched in front of them. His voice was cold as ice as he told them what would happen if their information was false—how they'd be skinned, cut up, and fed to the maggots. Then he said that if everything went smoothly, he could keep them alive... The way he said it—it wasn't a threat. It was... just a fact they couldn't escape. And one of them was so terrified he blurted out 'ghostfire'! That was information Yulon managed to squeeze out of him on top of everything else!"
"If we hadn't known beforehand, the Hao Yin would've charged in, that servant boy would've set everything alight, and we'd all have ended up roasted like fish!" Daggmo's voice held both dread and a trace of relief.
"Once we'd settled on the route and the time to strike, we got to the ambush site early. Young Yulon had a few Ironborn take a small boat and feel their way along the bottom of the narrowest stretch of Widow's Pass." A glimmer of recollection flashed in Daggmo's one good eye. "He wasn't checking where the reefs were—we know that place well—but the currents! Which reefs would emerge at low tide and be high enough to stand on, which channels would flood at high tide and become dead ends! He even had Grenn mark down the locations of the strongest whirlpools... At the time, we all thought he was overdoing it. In a sea fight, who cared about currents?"
"And during the attack?" Kolen finally spoke, his voice giving nothing away.
"Young Baron was ferocious. He was the first to jump aboard the merchant ship and killed the lookout with one strike." Daggmo hurried on. "Old Wick led the men into the cargo hold and dealt with the ghostfire. He did a fine job, too. But... young Yulon had arranged some of the details." He swallowed. "He had the men who'd sounded out the currents lie in wait on the reefs exposed at low tide, armed with poisoned arrows coated in owl droppings! The position was hard to reach, and the current was so strong the merchant ship never would've thought anyone could be hiding there! Their arrows flew silently, and worked beautifully! He also had Grenn's men block the exits of those channels that would flood at high tide, instead of the main deck. Sure enough, two guards tried to escape by jumping overboard, ran straight into the flooded channels, and drowned in those dead ends..."
"And there was the little girl..." Daggmo hesitated, but said it anyway. "Lysa. Young Baron picked a Salt wife, as was the custom, but young Yulon took the youngest one, a girl from Pentos who was thin as a reed. He said she wouldn't be a Salt wife, but a maid. We all laughed at him for trying to order a girl around before he'd even grown hair... But later, on the ship, I heard the little thing muttering to him in some language we couldn't understand, and young Yulon was learning it, too! The accent... it was strange, like a snake hissing or a dragon growling... They said it was High Valyrian."
"High Valyrian!"
Daggmo's voice gradually faded. He felt he'd already said too much about the strange, cunning boy. He glanced up furtively. King Kolen still had his back to him, like an ageless black reef, the firelight dancing across him. The hall was dead silent, save for Daggmo's own labored breathing and the crackle of burning wood.
After a long while—so long that Daggmo was nearly suffocating—Kolen's low voice finally sounded, heavy with thought.
"Acting like someone filleting a fish... examining enemies like patterns in the wood... using their weaknesses instead of relying on strength... questioning them separately, then comparing their accounts... even currents, old scars, and the human will to survive can all become blades..." He seemed to be summing it up, or turning these unfamiliar traits over in his mind. "...And he even knows to learn High Valyrian."
King Kolen finally turned around. His hawk-sharp eyes were as keen as blades in the firelight as they pierced Daggmo. "Daggmo, tell me: why would an Ironborn, a Greyjoy, need any of this?"
He spoke with a hint of a smile. "You seem... to value Yulon quite highly?"
"Of course. Yulon is the king's son."
"Is that all?"
Daggmo was struck speechless. A chill climbed from the soles of his feet. He opened his mouth, but in the end he could only lower his head in fear, not daring to meet the king's gaze, which seemed able to see through everything.
"In the storm, young Yulon seemed possessed by the Drowned God, as if he could command the sea. I saw him put on the crown of the Grey King..."
Only the spoils still gleamed silently in the firelight, cold and uncanny, while a silence as deep as the sea filled the hall.
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