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A Song of Blackjack and Hookers (chapter 39)
🕑 Added 2025-09-16 10:22:03 +0000 UTCSolomon
The last time he cared to look into a mirror, he could hardly recognize the thing looking back at him. He had become one of the things that went bump in the night, a horror movie pretending to be a man.
The last time… in the past tense as if he wasn’t still.
The color might have been returning to his skin, and the green had almost gone from his eyes, but all that meant was that he could better play pretend. Peel back the curtain and the thing he had become was still there, his head yearning to split open again and feast on the very marrow of the world.
The more reasonable part of him was still shaken at how close he had come to the point of no return. It was easier to forget now that some semblance of silence had been returned to him, but by the time he put himself back together like some Lovecraftian jigsaw puzzle, there was more outside of him than in.
The other part only regretted the necessity. If it had once cost him ten drops of blood for every drop of sorcery, then with every part of him devoured like an ouroboros, the calculus had changed, and he was loathe to part with it.
Still, he played his cards well in the time he had them. Just as Lann the Clever had stolen Casterly Rock from the Casterlys, so had he stolen it from the Lannisters. If the singers knew, they might have sung of how he sheathed himself in it like he had sheathed himself in his however many times removed granddaughter.
It was watching one Margaery Tyrell slowly turning into a garden that drew him to the thought.
Though not only her, the Valyrians, the Rhoynar, even the children of the forest… they had all invested themselves into the world, and so made some part of it their own. At least until their hubris had consumed them.
The Rhoyne was now the domain of the grey plague and the Fourteen Flames the domain of the Doom.
A soft knock sounded at the door, returning his attentions to the present.
Maegon looked upon the brother he hated for all of a breath, slumped against the wall and staring at nothing in particular with the one eye still left to him. He hadn’t lied when he said he could keep the other.
He would have crawled into Maegon’s own head out of habit. The hungry, slavering thing that he was recoiled at being denied, his third eye shifting unpleasantly.
Still, he smiled. “Maegon. Or should I say Heir Laessaryon?”
The nobleman soon fell to a knee and bowed his head, his silver hair a waterfall that kissed the once pristine marble floors, now smeared in yellow. “I made a promise also. I am yours until my last breath.”
The display tickled a part of him pink. “I never asked for fealty.”
“Yet I would still give it.”
Hmm, some part of it perhaps was genuine gratitude, but the rest? Fealty went both ways.
“So be it.” Maegon took his offered hand. “Though I wonder what that makes me. The Old Blood swear fealty only to the triarchs.”
“We once swore fealty to the dragonlords.”
“Touché.” He couldn’t even joke about how he had not a drop of Valyrian blood in him for his new eye.
Maegon scratched at a smooth cheek. “Maena and I have agreed on a private ceremony.”
“I would not miss such a happy affair,” he promised easily.
Maegon touched a hand to his heart for it, and they soon parted. He had a priest to speak to.
The slaves of Laessaryon protested at him spurning a palanquin, and loudly. Sometimes he missed when they still lived in fear of him.
If the Old Blood thought less of him for it, he would consider it a mercy.
Walking, even breathing, all of it had become a chore. He hadn’t any interest in keeping such bad habits.
The acolytes at the Temple of the Lord of Light stared at him as he stalked its majesty, the thousand scents of incense and spices and char filling his lungs. The Fiery Hand in their shiny red armor and orange robes similarly watched as he passed into where their high priest spent most of his days in contemplation.
No bed or seat, not a single comfort, only a flame tall as a man that blanketed everything in smoke and soot. It stirred at his entrance, and so did the stick of a man watching with a lidless stare.
“You have succeeded as I said you would,” the priest said simply.
“I thought you’d say that. The Lord of Light has blessed us both today.”
Where the slaves of R’hllor in Volantis proudly showed tattoos of red and orange and yellow flames on their cheeks, this one took it ten steps further, inky flames smearing across every part of his features except his kindly eyes.
They turned on him with a smile most rueful. “I shan’t question why he has touched the most stubborn of his servants. The god works as he wills.”
A smile touched his own lips. Solomon thought it an honest travesty that R’hllor’s Fool was not another of the priest’s many titles. It certainly fit him more than hot nonsense like Flame of Truth or Light of Wisdom.
“If I hadn’t, there wouldn’t be a soul here to call you out on it.”
There was not a whisper of R’hllor to find, and he had tried. They were slaves to a dream, not a god.
But even dreams had power…
“You think less of the Old Blood for their pride,” the priest mentioned, “and yet you arm and armor yourself in your own.”
A laugh caught in his throat. “How uncharitable of you. I would not be here if that were true, walking the same steps and breaking the same bread.”
Benerro looked at him bemused. “You have never told me why you come.”
He toyed with his yellow sleeve, the feel of it somewhere between silk and paint. It had grown fat on the blood of the high and low alike.
“A second opinion,” he answered honestly.
The priest breathed a creaky chuckle for it. “There are many that would name it folly to hear a slave whose master you so mistrust.”
Sometimes it fascinated him how someone could be so filled with certainty. He had died and lived again and still he crawled with doubt.
The temptation to crawl into Benerro’s head and take a look was maddening.
“You are not without pride yourself,” he said instead. “At worst you would speak only the truth you want me to hear.”
The priest’s thin lips smiled. “As you do?”
“Is that you trying to shame me?”
“I would sooner wrestle an elephant.” The priest looked into the flames again, their glare reflected in his eyes. It amused him to see them turn almost yellow for it. “The night is almost upon us now. Azor Ahai will follow, ever its shadow.”
He squinted through the smoke. “And?”
“All I see of you is yellow. No more, no less.”
The cards had shown him much the same…
The Sun. The Magician. The Fool. Always those three, if not in that exact order.
“In time R’hllor might show me more. It is not my place to say.” A quiet moment passed as one of the acolytes brought in more wood to feed the flames, her skin like burnished bronze. Until Benerro spoke again. “I might however say that certain elements of the Old Blood have grown weary of you.”
He waved it away. “I will be gone within a fortnight.”
“I see. I will miss our conversations.”
Solomon returned a smile. “Though so you don’t think me too selfish…” He produced a slip of parchment, passing it into the priest’s soot-stained hands. “You might find it amusing.”
He lived to stir the pot.
Outside, he wandered Volantis for a time. It had been months since he could indulge some whimsy, and everywhere he looked, a slave looked back.
It was a city ripe for a harvest, a part of him whispered. He could see it if he stayed, the Black Walls, the streets, all of it run red with blood and smeared in yellow. Perhaps he might even rename it Carcosa.
Or a sword might find his heart instead. The thing that he was, he might survive it, but even hubris as his had its limits.
And there already was a Carcosa here…
His eyes turned to the east. It was there, on the other side of Essos, past Yi Ti and Asshai, past even the Shadow Lands.
How could he not see it for himself?
He found himself stalking through the harbor after a time, breathing in that salt-stained air. He wondered if Varys would take the bait, but it didn’t seem like he would. Disappointing.
His Grace joined him, beak wet with fish guts, and together they returned to the Black Walls and the manse within. There he took in his parchment kingdom as an ironborn princess had named it, all of it bent to a singular purpose.
It was a wonder he was still sane.
He turned to His Grace with a merchant’s smile. “What are you in the market for?”
His Grace didn’t answer him, and that was answer enough. At least he waited patiently as he pored through his parchment kingdom.
It wasn’t hard to find a parrot in Volantis after that. All that was left was a tithe of blood, and his hosts were happy to provide.
“Maim,” His Grace croaked. “Kill. Burn.”
…Not quite his tempo.
It took two more parrots and the death of a day until he could say that he was satisfied.
“Maim!” His Grace screeched. “Kill! Burn!”
Solomon wiped away a tear of pride. “Perfection.”
A crown of red feathers had also graced him. It was very dashing.
The next morning found him staring into the mirror again. The sun had left its mark on him for the first time in months, and the green had vanished from his eyes. He quirked his lips into a smile, human, not a horror carving across his cheeks.
It was only when his third eye splayed open that the illusion shattered, red as blood and yawning vertically instead of horizontally.
Monster, some part of him whispered. Divine, the other argued.
He could see every scratch the mirror had ever suffered. Every chip of paint.
“Monster,” His Grace repeated. “Divine.”
Plucking another mirror from all the yellow, he stared into its black depths with all three of his eyes. It was time to see how much he could get away with.
He crawled in through the glass, into the mirror world he had carved with blood and thought. He went first to the queen he crowned, in the godswood that her garden had already devoured almost a third of.
The yellow roses stirred his heart. They were his and hers and beautiful, and so was she, the flower that would swallow the world if she could.
He had almost crawled into her head when his own began to pull apart far away in Volantis. Instead he placed a kiss upon her brow.
Next he went to the queen that was and will be. He saw her with her ladies-in-waiting, all of them teary-eyed as a tyrant demanded their lifeblood. Cersei had taken his request as a divine command.
The part of himself that he left in Casterly Rock responded to his presence. Not enough to give him form and substance, but enough to smear a yellow kiss across her pouty lips.
Her golden brows knocked together in confusion, but she understood when she touched her lips and saw. A magnificent smile took her as she sighed. “Solomon…”
He left her to her work to visit his children. He watched them sleeping for a time before vanishing in a yellow smear.
He next swept across the red sands to Sunspear, where a princess played with poisons, a snake for a teacher. Her brother in another room smothered in shadows tormented what was left of Ser Amory Lorch.
What Oberyn had done to him could fill several pages of the Geneva Conventions.
Another princess nearer to him was doing the unthinkable for an ironborn. Reading. Balon Greyjoy would have had a heart attack on the spot if he saw.
At the end, he visited a diamond in the rough.
She was somewhere in the riverlands now. He could tell by her awkwardly bathing in a river.
Westeros might not know it yet, but the legend of Brienne of Tarth would surpass even the likes of Galladon of Morne or Serwyn of the Mirror Shield. Just as soon as she maybe stopped taking suspicious swords from black-hearted sorcerers.
She hadn’t even so much as questioned his motives…
He retreated after a sigh, crawling back out of the mirror. In the other, the green had returned to his eyes, the third weeping yellow.
He closed all his eyes until the silence returned. Now he knew.
He had promised to see Maegon and Maena married, but that was tonight. It was only noon.
“Noon,” His Grace repeated.
Xhobarro returned to feed and water the husk of a man still staring into space, and he took that as an opportunity to leave. The lord and lady of the house he saw wandering the manse not unlike ghosts.
One Maegor Laessaryon was far and away in Volon Therys with his cousins.
Asha still looked miserable when he found her. Like a kid made to eat their brussel sprouts.
He took a peek over her shoulder. Trading manifests. She also smelled of blackberries.
“Your father would be horrified,” he teased. An honest day’s work was his Kryptonite.
Her black eyes looked up at him. “He won’t hear it from me. Should I worry he will hear it from you?”
No boytoy. Must have abandoned her to her misery.
“You know he will not hear you about the Crow’s Eye,” he said instead. “He will try to avenge himself against the Starks as soon as Robb Stark reaches the Vale.”
A scowl struck her. “He will not suffer a usurper. Not when he is like to keep his crown this time.”
“Your uncle is a world away. The Jade Sea may as well be across the Sunset Sea.”
She avoided his eyes. It wasn’t hard to tell why.
“I would not have you turn him into…”
“You are still his daughter. I understand.”
Her black nails dug into her palms as she huffed. “I’m not a girl of three-and-ten. He has always loved his crown more.” They weren’t her words but her mother’s.
“Then allow me to brighten your day with a gift.”
A puff this time. “I am not some simpering greenlander lady to—”
He had already taken her hand. He would need some parchment for what he had in mind, so it was back to his parchment kingdom.
It took a few tries to get the ink to do what he wanted. Too much and it tore out of the parchment messily. Not enough and the ink would move as sluggish as molasses.
“It’s ready.”
The ironborn princess continued lounging on his bed. “Oh?”
The ink and yellow blood again soaked into the parchment in Baratheon style. He touched her temple last, whispering the words of binding.
Asha gave him her patented tomboy stare as she waited for him to explain.
“Chart a course in your head.”
“Hmm…” Her lips parted as what she imagined was smeared across the parchment in ink that seemed alive.
“It should save you time,” he teased.
Her brows furrowed again, a pair of heavy breasts smearing across the parchment for it as she laughed. Very prominent nipples. “Guess who’s.”
“Bessie?”
The joke went right over her head as she continued. “One of Nymsie’s Valyrian cousins. Their grandfather must have confused a cow for a dragon.”
He watched as she went for an encore. He might have created a monster.
The sun soon set on Volantis.
Maegon and Maena already waited for them in the conservatory when they arrived, sparkling like the stars above them. It was a king’s ransom in jewels adorning both of them, amethysts for the groom and diamonds for the bride. The twin rivers of silver hair sprawling down the back of them only made them seem more otherworldly.
Being something of a sorcerer himself now, he could say without much doubt that they were the product of sorcery.
Oberyn as well as his daughter and her mother were the last to arrive, or fashionably late as the Dornish prince insisted.
While Nymeria had taken after her father, it wasn’t hard to see the Valyrian in her when its source, one Meraena Nayaesson, stood next to her. They even rocked matching braids, one black and one silver.
Mmm… he wanted to give them each a pull. His libido had returned, it seemed.
“I believe we’re short a priest,” Asha snarked from her seat.
Maegon met his eyes, a question and a statement there.
He saw no reason to refuse him. A first time for everything.
Soon he joined the bride and groom, his yellow raiment trailing after him along the stones.
“I am new to weddings so Valyrian,” Oberyn admitted cheerfully. “Is it usually a sorcerer?”
“Not at all,” Meraena answered as he took their hands in his.
The pageantry called to him. Soon all three of his eyes opened, the night receding with it.
He drank in their reactions like a fine wine. The horror. The terror. The awe.
Where Maegon’s heart beat calmly, Maena’s beat like a hummingbird as a monster held her hand. That she persevered and spoke her vows was a point in her favor.
Finally, he bid Maegon to kiss his bride. He did.
