The Red Keep squatted above the city on Aegon's High Hill, all pale stone and dragon skulls, and inside its walls the family that had conquered a continent was busy doing what it did best: pretending not to hate each other in public while doing it very enthusiastically in private.

The old king, Viserys, was not long for this world, though nobody said it out loud. They just said things like the King's health and these difficult times and then drank more wine.

Queen Alicent Hightower had not slept properly in three years. You could tell by the small lines gathering at the corners of her mouth, and by the way she kept a small seven-pointed star in her sleeve like a woman who expected to need it.

Her eldest son, Aegon, had already been drunk for most of the afternoon. Her daughter Helaena had been talking to a beetle on the windowsill. And her second son, Aemond, was nowhere to be found, which was usually where the trouble was.

Meanwhile, in a corridor off the royal sept, the Queen's ladies were gathered around a small window that caught the afternoon light — the sort of gathering that looked like embroidery and functioned like a war council.