Chapter 8: The Serpent's Fang and the Price of Shadows
The sight of Joss Hood, loyal, bull-strong Joss, slumped against the slime-slicked canal wall, his face a mask of blood and bruises, his breath ragged, ignited a furnace in Viserys's core. It was a rage colder and more potent than any childish tantrum, the fury of a monarch whose sworn man had been struck, the indignation of a strategist whose carefully laid plans were threatened by brutish thuggery. For a fleeting, terrible moment, the image of three bone claws, long and razor-sharp, erupting from his own small knuckles and tearing into Volantene flesh, was overwhelmingly vivid. He felt the familiar itch, the deep ache in his bones, the siren call of the power thrumming beneath his skin.
But Alistair Finch, the seventy-three-year-old ghost in the machine, slammed down hard on the impulse. Overt violence was a fool's game, especially for one so young, so ostensibly weak. Witnesses, retaliation, the unraveling of every carefully constructed secret – the price was too high. He was playing a long game, and Vorro, the Volantene captain, was merely an obstacle, a particularly ugly rock in his path that needed to be circumvented or, preferably, made to remove itself.
"Joss!" Viserys's voice was a sharp exhalation as he knelt beside the groaning man, his small hands surprisingly gentle as he assessed the damage. A split lip, a rapidly swelling eye, likely a few cracked ribs from the guttural gasps Joss emitted. Not life-threatening, thanks to Joss's own formidable strength and perhaps the Volantenes' desire to merely intimidate, but debilitating enough.
"Prince… Viserys…" Joss coughed, wincing. "Vorro… his curs… They said… Narbo's luck runs out soon… and his little silver-haired helper…"
"Hush, Joss," Viserys commanded, his tone calm despite the inferno within. "Save your strength." He helped the larger man to sit up, his own surprising strength carefully modulated. "Can you walk, if I support you?"
The journey back to the house with the red door was slow and agonizing. Morrec, who had been out on a futile search for day labor, met them halfway, his usually impassive face contorting in a rare show of fury at the sight of Joss. Between them, Viserys and the grim Morrec managed to get Joss home.
The small household was plunged into a new level of fear. Lyra, their quiet, steadfast wet nurse who had become a sort of surrogate mother to Daenerys, turned pale at the sight of Joss's injuries. Daenerys, now a bright, observant five-year-old, clung to Viserys's tunic, her violet eyes wide with a fear that mirrored his own carefully suppressed rage.
"Who did this, Viserys?" she whispered, her small voice trembling. "Why are they hurting us?"
Viserys smoothed her silver-gold hair, his touch surprisingly gentle. "Bad men, Dany. Jealous men. But they will not hurt us again. I promise you." He looked into her eyes, trying to project a confidence he didn't entirely feel, but knew she needed to see. He was her rock, her shield. He could not afford to show weakness.
While Lyra and a reluctant Morrec tended to Joss's wounds – Viserys subtly guiding them to clean the cuts properly, to bind the ribs tightly, his knowledge gleaned from Alistair's studies of battlefield medicine – Viserys's mind was already dissecting the problem of Captain Vorro. He was a physical threat, a brute who understood only violence and intimidation. Trying to reason with him or buy him off would be seen as weakness, inviting further aggression. Therefore, Vorro had to be removed from the equation, preferably in a way that served as a warning to others.
His first step was information. The spiderling's web, woven from the whispers of street urchins and the disgruntled gossip of dockworkers, needed to be activated with a new urgency. For the next few days, while projecting an image of a worried but otherwise normal child, Viserys became a phantom. He used the small coins he had painstakingly saved, not for food, but for information. He sought out his key 'assets' – a scrawny, one-eyed boy named Kipp who knew every rat-run in the Purple Harbor, a talkative old woman who mended nets by the fish market and heard all the sailors' boasts, a disgruntled former crewman of Vorro's whom Viserys had once helped with a disputed wage claim.
He moved through the city like a whisper, his enhanced senses his greatest allies. He shadowed Vorro's movements from rooftops, his small, agile form melting into the shadows of Braavos's distinctive architecture. He listened to the Volantene's loud, drunken pronouncements in dockside taverns, his understanding of the coarse Valyrian dialect nearly perfect. He learned Vorro's routines: his preferred brothel, his gambling dens, the corrupt customs official he met with on the Quiet Isle. He discovered Vorro was deeply in debt to a shadowy Lysene moneylender known only as the 'Silk Weaver,' and that his ship, the Wave Scythe, was poorly maintained, its hull rumored to be riddled with shipworm. He also learned Vorro was planning a significant smuggling run in the coming weeks – slaves, disguised as common cargo, destined for one ofr the more discreet estates in the Disputed Lands. Slavery was anathema in Braavos; if discovered, the penalty would be severe, not just for Vorro, but for anyone associated with him.
Alistair Finch's mind sifted through the data, seeking the critical vulnerability. Direct violence against Vorro was still too risky for Viserys to orchestrate personally without exposing himself. The Braavosi City Guard were notoriously unpredictable, sometimes zealous, sometimes corrupt. The Sealord's justice was a distant, ponderous machine.
The plan that began to form was multifaceted, designed to ruin Vorro through a cascade of his own failings and vices, amplified by precisely placed, anonymous information. It was a plan that required patience, precision, and a complete lack of sentimentality.
His first move was subtle. He knew Vorro was a cheat at dice. Through Kipp, he arranged for a rumor to reach the ears of a notoriously violent pit fighter who frequented the same gambling den as Vorro – a rumor that Vorro had been boasting of fleecing the pit fighter specifically. A small spark, hopefully to ignite a larger fire that would at least cause Vorro some physical discomfort and public humiliation, unrelated to Viserys.
Next, he focused on the Wave Scythe. Through another urchin, he had a small, carefully crafted note, written in blocky, childish letters on cheap parchment, delivered to the harbormaster's deputy – a man known for his diligence and dislike of foreign captains who flouted Braavosi regulations. The note, unsigned, merely suggested that the Wave Scythe might be "less than seaworthy" and a "danger to other vessels in the lagoon." An official inspection, if thorough, would reveal the shipworm damage, potentially grounding the ship or requiring costly repairs Vorro couldn't afford.
The riskiest part of the plan involved the Lysene moneylender, the Silk Weaver. Viserys had learned the Silk Weaver was becoming impatient with Vorro's mounting debts. He needed to give the moneylender a reason to call in the debt immediately and forcefully. This required more direct intervention.
He tasked Morrec, the grimmest and most intimidating of their remaining protectors, with a simple, anonymous delivery. Viserys prepared a small package. Inside, on a piece of sailcloth, he meticulously copied, from memory, several damning entries from Malatso's private ledger – not related to Malatso himself, but detailing illicit deals Malatso had brokered for other merchants, including one that directly implicated a minor associate of the Silk Weaver in a smuggling venture that had gone sour, costing the Weaver a significant sum. Alongside this, he placed another anonymous note, suggesting that Vorro, in his cups, had been boasting of knowing such secrets and might use them if pressed too hard for his own debts. It was a complex piece of misdirection, designed to make the Silk Weaver believe Vorro was a dangerous liability who knew too much and might betray others to save himself.
"Give this to a beggar near the Silk Weaver's counting house on the Isle of the Gods," Viserys instructed Morrec. "Tell the beggar to deliver it to the Weaver's chief clerk, and that it contains information vital to his master's interests. Then disappear. No one must see you." Morrec, his face like a granite cliff, merely nodded. He asked no questions. Perhaps he no longer dared to. Or perhaps he implicitly trusted the strange, cold fire he saw in his young prince's eyes.
While these seeds of chaos were being sown, Viserys maintained his routine. He continued his "accounting" work for Narbo the Lysene, whose business, under Viserys's guidance, was genuinely flourishing. Narbo, oblivious to the storm Viserys was orchestrating, was full of boisterous gratitude, often pressing extra coins or delicacies into Joss's hands for "the little silver genius." This continued income was vital, not just for their survival, but as a smokescreen for Viserys's less savory activities.
Daenerys was his anchor to some semblance of normalcy, though their normalcy was anything but. She was now old enough to sense the heightened tension in their household. She saw Joss's lingering bruises, Morrec's increased vigilance, Viserys's quiet intensity.
"Are the bad men gone, Vizzy?" she asked one evening, using her childish nickname for him, her small hand resting on his arm as he meticulously sharpened a small knife he'd acquired – ostensibly for mending fishing nets, but in reality, another tool in his hidden arsenal.
"Not yet, little dragon," he said, his voice soft. "But they will be. Serpents cannot thrive where dragons rule, even if the dragons are small and hidden." He was careful with his words, instilling in her not fear, but a sense of their inherent superiority, their destiny to overcome adversity. He needed her to be brave, not just for her own sake, but for his. A terrified, panicky sister would be a liability he couldn't afford.
The pieces of his plan against Vorro began to fall into place with a satisfying, if somewhat unnerving, precision. The pit fighter, enraged by the (false) rumors of Vorro's mockery, confronted the Volantene captain in the gambling den. The resulting brawl was brutal. Vorro, though a large man, was no match for the trained fury of the pit fighter. He was left battered and humiliated, his reputation among the denizens of Braavos's underbelly taking a significant hit.
A few days later, the harbormaster's men, acting on the anonymous tip, conducted a surprise inspection of the Wave Scythe. The shipworm damage was found to be extensive. The ship was declared unseaworthy and impounded until repairs could be made – repairs Vorro, now nursing fresh wounds and a lighter purse, had no hope of affording. His planned smuggling run of slaves was indefinitely postponed.
The final blow came from the Silk Weaver. Morrec's delivery had its intended effect. The Lysene moneylender, already nervous about Vorro's debts and now believing him to be a dangerous loose cannon, moved swiftly and ruthlessly. The Silk Weaver's enforcers – far more formidable and discreet than Vorro's thugs – seized what few portable assets Vorro possessed. They didn't kill him; the Silk Weaver preferred his debtors alive, if miserable, on the off chance they might someday repay. But Vorro was ruined, his ship gone, his credit destroyed, his crew deserting him.
Within a fortnight, Captain Vorro, broken, beaten, and impoverished, was forced to sign on as a common deckhand on a rusty trading cog bound for the Basilisk Isles, a place from which few men of his station ever returned with their fortunes intact. He was gone from Braavos, a nonentity.
No one connected the downfall of the Volantene captain to the quiet, silver-haired boy who helped Narbo with his ledgers. Narbo himself celebrated Vorro's ruin with drunken glee, attributing it to bad luck and the captain's own dissolute habits. Joss Hood felt a grim satisfaction, his bruises slowly fading. Morrec remained silent, though Viserys thought he saw a flicker of understanding in the depths of the old warrior's eyes.
Viserys allowed himself a moment of cold, internal triumph. He had faced a direct physical threat and neutralized it without unsheathing his own true weapons, without exposing himself or his family to undue risk. He had used information, misdirection, and the greed and violence of others as his tools. Alistair Finch would have approved of the strategy, if not perhaps the increasingly murky morality of it all.
But the victory was not without its price. The effort had drained him, not physically, but mentally. The constant vigilance, the intricate planning, the weight of responsibility, were immense burdens for a mind housed in a boy's body, even one enhanced by the serum. He had also glimpsed the darkness within himself, the capacity for cold, calculated cruelty, and it was a sobering revelation. He was becoming what he needed to be to survive, to reclaim his birthright, but the path was undeniably shadowy. He thought of Ser Willem Darry's dying plea for him to be a "good king." The concept seemed more distant, more abstract, than ever. Justice, he was learning, was often a luxury the powerless could not afford. Power itself was the only true arbiter.
With Vorro gone, a measure of peace returned to their small household. Viserys redoubled his efforts with Narbo, whose business was now attracting more custom, his association with the "lucky" silver-haired accountant becoming something of a local legend in their small commercial circle. The income was still modest, but it was steady, reliable. Viserys was meticulously saving every spare copper, hiding it in a new, more secure location – a loose stone in the flooded cellar where he practiced with his claws. He knew this was just the beginning. Braavos was a stepping stone, not a final destination.
His information network was also growing more sophisticated. He was learning to filter information more effectively, to identify reliable sources, to cross-reference rumors. He was becoming a miniature spymaster, his urchins his unwitting agents, the alleyways and canals of Braavos his domain.
Daenerys continued to be his most precious, and most complex, charge. She was a bright, spirited child, quick to laugh, but also possessing a core of Targaryen willfulness that Viserys recognized and respected, even as he carefully shaped it. He began to teach her to read the common Westerosi script, using the tattered books Darry had left behind. He told her of their ancestors, not just Aegon the Conqueror, but also of Good Queen Alysanne, of Baelor the Blessed, and even of the tragic Dance of the Dragons, carefully editing the narratives to emphasize loyalty, sacrifice, and the enduring strength of their bloodline. He was arming her, not with steel, but with knowledge, with a sense of destiny that he hoped would bind her to him irrevocably.
One afternoon, as he was painstakingly copying a map of the Free Cities from a borrowed scroll – a skill Alistair had possessed and Viserys was diligently relearning – Daenerys leaned over his shoulder, her finger tracing the outline of Westeros.
"Is that home, Vizzy?" she asked, her voice small.
Viserys looked at the familiar shape of the continent that had been stolen from them. "It was, little dragon," he said. "And it will be again. But first, we must become strong here. Strong enough that no one can ever hurt us or take what is ours again."
He was no longer just the Beggar King's son, fleeing in the night. He was Viserys Targaryen, the Third of His Name, the architect of his own destiny, weaving a web of shadows and secrets in the heart of Braavos. The serpent's fang had struck, and its venom was beginning to work. The price of operating in those shadows was high, but it was a price Viserys was increasingly willing to pay. For himself, for Daenerys, and for the throne that awaited them across the Narrow Sea.