Chapter 29: Chapter 24: StudyingChapter Text
"The Citadel is located upriver on both sides of the Honeywine. Men and women gather there from all over Westeros to learn, study, and forge a maester's chain."
-Excerpt from a textbook published in 200 AC
106 AC, Oldtown
I didn't realise how much I missed school until now. It was nostalgic, waking up in the mornings, trudging half-awake to class, forcing myself to pay attention to what the lecturer was saying, copying down notes. Trudging to the next class, doing the same things, before breaking for lunch. Returning for another bunch of classes after lunch until the sun set. Then it was a matter of exercising until dinner, before heading back to the manse for the night.
Then it was free time, to do anything we wished. Rhaegar and Daenys preferred to revise what they learnt during the day, while Laena would take our dragons out for a flight. I on the other hand, spent this time learning sorcery. It was interesting. Proper sorcery, like what the Valyrians used, and not what mysticism the roadside hedge wizards performed, was properly grounded in theory and numbers. There was much background learning and calculations involved.
For example, even to perform a simple spell like making fire in my fingertips required me to know how big a flame I wanted, how much oxygen I could funnel into it, and what type of fuel I wanted to turn my mana into. I picked it up quite quickly. It was something like programming, where I had to know which commands did what. The good news was that my older brother did game design and programming in polytechnic, and you picked up a lot through sheer osmosis when you lived in the same room as him for decades. I wasn't very competent, but I at least knew the broad strokes.
As such, I could now light candles when I entered a room with a wave of my hand. And extinguish them with a snap of my fingers. I could boil water just by touching the kettle, and could make myself immune to heat and cold, which was very useful, given that it was winter.
Still, it wasn't mere parlour tricks I was after. While I could throw a fireball, it wasn't as effective as you'd think. Ser Jessamyn shrugged it off during our evening sparring sessions, using her cloak to take the flame, while Ser Jonquil dodged it with contemptuous ease. One time, she even smashed the damn fireball with her mace, ripping it into ribbons.
I'd figured out illusions, mostly, but glamours were proving more difficult. You see, illusions were a trick of the light, I bent or warped light to make images, and overlaid it onto the real world. Glamour was more mental than physical. It essentially made people hallucinate or imagine things that weren't there. The thing was, the mind was subjective and strange. What worked on one person may not work on the other, and those with sufficient strength of will could break free.
Bindings were simple enough, though. I worked out how to cast a binding contract, and tested it out on Daenys. She now had to pray before eating dinner, and refusal to do so led to her left hand slapping her on the face. This sounded evil, but the pious girl already prayed before every dinner anyway, so the binding was basically a nonissue. Nevertheless, I still worked out how to free her from it two days later. The main issue with bindings was making them strong and long lasting enough that the bound couldn't break free from it too quickly.
A large part of it came from the illusion of power. Let's take Oscar Tully and Daenys Fyre as examples. Oscar Tully definitely didn't respect me or think me his superior, uncouth and unsavoury lout that he was, so any binding I put on him would be weak, given how little authority he thought I had over him. On the other hand, my cousin was obedient and respectful, and saw me as the authority figure in her life, hence any binding I put onto Daenys would be far stronger than anything I tacked onto Oscar, even if I used the exact same contract.
Queen Visenya combined glamours and bindings to keep Maegor in power, using them to beguile and enthrall men and beasts. I was looking to do the same. Mind-control was my fourth most desired superpower, after flight (Magically doable, but more trouble than it was worth), teleportation (Magically impossible) and shapeshifting (Possible, if I were willing to surrender my humanity in the process) respectively.
Still, none of these were my main focus. What I spent the majority of my time practicing on was—
The study door slammed open, a snow-soaked Laena tromping in. I sighed and flicked a wrist at her, tapping the mass of residual dragonic mana wafting off her for power, before evaporating the water and warming my girlfriend up.
"Did I ever tell you how much I love that you're literally a witch?" Laena asked with a soft moan of pleasure, sitting down next to me in my sinfully comfortable chair. Essentially a great bowl of wood filled with cushions, it was decadently soft, and I actually slept better in it than my own bed.
"You know you could also learn sorcery right?" I reminded her, stroking her hair as I spoke. "You've got the power for it."
"Maybe in the future, Rhae. I'm already swamped trying to keep up with all the lessons. I don't know how you can do it." She groaned, nuzzling closer to me.
"You'd be surprised at the breadth and depth of topics I learnt." I told her. "In my world, studying like this was considered normal from a very young age. After a while, you get used to learning new things."
"Pooh. Your world sounds horrid." Laena complained. "How can anyone stand it? Just sitting around all day studying?"
"It's a meritocracy." I told her. "Traditionally speaking, those whom study the hardest get the highest paying jobs. So children are made to study hard by their parents, whether they want to or not."
"Right, you have to because there are no more highborn and you're all smallfolk. Instead you have merchant companies above you." Laena remembered. "I'd like to see it one day. Sounds so wonderfully weird."
"I'll see what I can do." I told her. Maybe I could call up a few illusions of Earth for her to see. That might work.
We might have gotten lost in chatting for a while, but Rhaegar poked his head in and asked if either of us could help Daenys and him with their studies, and the two of us reluctantly pulled ourselves off the chair.
———
The Citadel taught twenty-one subjects, and I attended each and every one of them.
The first day of every week, I learnt Administration, History, Religions and Politics & Statecraft.
The second day was outdoors in practicals, such as Smithing & Metalworking, Animal Husbandry, Ravenry and Wildlife & Nature.
The third day was the longest, with Warcraft, Engineering & Construction and Cultures & Languages in the day, while Astronomy and Astrology (Apparently they were separate topics. Who knew) was held at night.
The fourth day was for Finance & Accounting, Alchemy, Medicines & Healing and Magic, chosen specifically because these were easy topics I could learn while sleep deprived from the previous night. In fact, Uncle Vaegon didn't care that I slept through his lessons, as I'd demonstrated that even while half-awake, I could still performs the sums thrice as well as anyone else.
And finally, the fifth day was Geology, Agriculture, Philosophy and Geography.
At first, my companions — Laena, Rhaegar and Daenys— tried to keep up with me in all lessons, but after a while they were forced to drop out, unable to keep up with my pace. I didn't blame them.
My pace was considered breakneck by Westerosi standards, which meant that it was fairly hardworking by UK standards. Which in turn, meant it was average by Singaporean standards. Tiny nation of education fanatics, my homeland was. The culture shock when I went to a boarding school in the UK was real. Three-quarters of they taught in Junior College was covered in Singapore's GCSEs.
Laena was present for anything that had to do with practicals or the outdoors, spread over the week.
Rhaegar preferred learning hard sciences like engineering and construction, or alchemy.
Meanwhile Daenys liked the subtler humanities, like religion or history.
It was around this time that those currying my favour would send their children to join me in studying in the Citadel, but none of them could keep up with my pace. At first they sent their handsome sons to try woo me, but after a while those jocks would get bored with studying or realise that my interest in them was nil, so they typically went back home swiftly. The second attempt using more bookish boys were better, but there was a boundary. I considered them friends, but not enough to let into my inner circle. The third attempt was actually the best, using bookish girls.
After seeing how the male students harassed the females, I wasn't able to resist taking them under my wing and protection. The Citadel was still distinctly sexist, despite them now accepting female students, even to me, and I felt responsible for them. So whenever someone bullied the girls, I got names, and would invite said person out for a dragon flight. And when the Crown Prince of the Seven Kingdoms offers you a dragon flight, there really is only one answer.
So Laena or I would take them into the sky on our dragons, before performing the most daring acrobatics we could. Loop-de-loops, barrel rolls, dives. I'd even figured out how to do an Immelmann Turn and a Cobra manoeuvre. After the third time I reduced a knight to literal shits and giggles, the number of harassment cases dropped significantly.
The maesters weren't happy, but they at least, had the brains to shut up and teach.
When my father decreed that females could now become knights and maesters, the Citadel wasn't happy. So I threatened to have Lord Hightower cut their funding, order the printing presses returned, as well as an oblique threat involving Vhagar and their library unless they complied. To make it worth their while though, I offered them copies of the memoirs and journals of my ancestors— Though carefully edited to remove incriminating details— copies of a few of the Valyrian Encyclopaedias and an ingot of Valyrian steel for new links in their chains should they comply. Needless to say, the choice was obvious.
And to prove to all Westeros that this wasn't baloney, I personally attended the Citadel as its first female student. Laena was second, and Daenys third. And let me tell you, it was heartening to see hundreds of highborn girls show up over the next few months to join me. A distressing number of them were actually considering becoming full maesters solely to avoid their betrothals, which was yet another reminder of just how crap lives were for women in this era. They were little more than bargaining chips for their fathers, and could be told to marry a total stranger in the morning, and go to his bed that night.
I couldn't imagine subjecting my daughter to that, which was why I made a conscious decision to try advance women's rights as possible, in the hopes that by my children's time, girls were treated no differently than their brothers.
On the weekends, I'd take Silverwing out and fly to different parts of the Seven Kingdoms. I inspected all three great canals during this time. We hadn't named them yet, but construction was proving smooth, so we'd have to come up with them soon. In the meantime, interim names had been tacked onto the three.
The Oldstones Canal, or Hoare's Canal as the Ironborn called it, was the furthest along. The Ironborn had proved surprisingly interested in such a project, and instead of raiding at the ships transporting the materials, were actually protecting them. House Goodbrother even allowed the labourers to load their ships up with the vast amount of soil and dirt that they'd been excavating, such that they could be dumped at sea. I must say, it was very surreal to see House Mallister cooperating with their longtime enemies so easily and openly.
Oh, House Greyjoy itself was against such cooperation, but approximately half of their bannermen were committed. I was told that it was because the canal would knock over a month off the travel time required to reach Essos, allowing them to raid in the Narrow Sea with greater ease. As a reward for their cooperation, regardless of their reasons, I had the Valyrian farming methods disseminated to these specific houses, telling them that it allowed an average of threefold crop yields.
On the eastern side of the canal, the assembled royal think-tank of engineers, maesters and scholars had managed to mostly drain the marshes. The springs which were the source of the Blue Fork were dammed up such that they only flowed east, down the river, instead of watering the marshes. Oldstones was actually growing into a respectable settlement now. A town of labourers had sprung up around it, and where men went, camp followers and traders followed.
The Mander Canal was actually going at a faster pace than the Oldstones one, given the warmer surroundings and more men invested in the endeavour. The houses in the northeastern Reach had called their banners, deploying thousands of levies as workers. However, as the Mander Canal was nearly twice the length, twice as broad and twice as deep as the Oldstones Canal, barring some unfortunate circumstances, the Oldstones Canal would likely finish first anyway.
The Northen Canal outstripped them all though. It would be twice as long as the Mander Canal, twice as broad and twice as deep. It was actually possible to sail from one coast to the other. But only if one had intimate knowledge of the swamps and bogs, and was using nothing larger than a rowboat. And while the existing paths weren't exactly practical, they did exist as proof-of-concept of the feasibility of the project.
We'd actually had a stroke of luck in this regard. While plotting the canal route, the maesters and the Crannogmen we'd rustled up to guide them had stumbled across an already existing and partially built canal. Nearly a third of it had been completed. Best the maesters could tell, it had been made by Brandon the Builder, but never completed given the technological limitations at the time. It was overgrown, and would need great expansions to meet our demands, but even then, Brandon the Builder had shaved off entire years from the projected timetable.
The winter winds were preventing much progress though, but there was a general consensus among everyone that once spring came, work would begin in earnest. Still, it would be worth it.
The Blue Fork was shallow and narrow, so only slim ships capable of shallow water would go down it, like galleys or longships. However, it was a relatively fast river, flowing from west to east. Tourism was expected to be the bigger draw here, with tourists from Oldtown and Lannisport travelling through to reach places like King's Landing and Gulltown.
The Mander was broad and moderately deep, allowing for bigger vessels like cogs to travel down it. But it was slower than the Blue Fork, and flowed from east to west. This would allow trading ships from Essos and the east coast through, as well as allowing the ships that came down the Oldstones Canal to return home without rowing upriver.
The Northern Canal was to be the biggest, and for good reason. It was the only one that could allow proper two way traffic, as well as allow massive trading carracks through. The calculations performed by Uncle Vaegon claimed that he expected the Northern Canal to be the most lucrative of the lot, which was why the famously isolationist North and the even more famously isolationist Crannogmen were so involved in it.
Meanwhile, construction of the Great Sept of Aemma was going well. The foundations had been fully dug, and the steel skeleton fully assembled and welded together. Laenor was the person we stuck in charge of overseeing the construction while we were gone, and he was glad to have been relieved from duty. He flew Seasmoke back to Driftmark before we could press him into dragon-flying duty, so we were forced to improvise.
Bell and Shaeterys had been allowed to claim dragons, the smallest rideable ones in the Dragonpit admittedly, but dragons nonetheless. We'd made it clear that if they tried anything funny we'd hunt them down with extreme prejudice, but I trusted those two. Bell let her fists do the talking, but was utterly loyal. And Shaeterys had a good head on his shoulders.
We'd offered Daena the right to claim one as well, but she demurred, saying that she wanted only one dragon. We eventually agreed that she could claim Caraxes when she reached sixteen, after proving herself loyal with nearly a decade of service.
I was riding back to the manse House Hightower had loaned us for our stay in Oldtown when I saw an unusual sight. A light green dragon was resting in the field behind the building. It's name was Balefyre, and it belonged to Bell Fyre. What was she doing here?
I opened the door curiously, hanging my cloak and coat and removing my wet boots before entering the living room. A simple heating spell rippled over me, drying and warming me up.
Yep, there she was, chatting with her siblings over a cup of warm milk. Bell Fyre herself. Born in Runestone to a servant girl, second oldest of Daemon's bastards. She wasn't pretty, with a mop of brown hair and a big nose, with only her lilac eyes showing her ancestry. She was stouter than me, considerably so, with broad shoulders, but not as tall. For now at least.
"Bell, Didn't expect to see you here. How've you been?" I asked, sitting down beside Rhaegar.
"Nyra. Good to see you." She greeted. "I'm here because of your father. He's asking that you return to King's Landing."
"Huh, I don't mind. It's already been a year since I left, or close enough. I've got what I came here for anyway." I agreed. "Any particular reason?"
Oh shit, why did fearless, tomboyish and brash Bell look apprehensive?
"Out with it." I ordered, Bell gulping before speaking in a 'please don't execute the messenger' voice.
"It's for a wedding. King Viserys is getting remarried to Alicent Hightower at the end of the year."
I will forever deny until the end of time that the manse burning down was my fault.