— Aelya —

They held the council in the map room of the Old Palace, with every window open to catch the sea breeze and every door shut to keep the servants out.

Aelya had thought hard about who to bring to this table. Too few and she was a tyrant making her own wars; too many and she was a committee, and committees did not take thrones. She had settled on nine. Herself. Dany. Prince Doran in his wheeled chair. Arianne at his shoulder. Ser Barristan, still in the new-smelling white cloak. Grey Worm, who did not speak much in councils but who needed to be present because his men would follow orders he had heard given with his own ears and would hesitate over orders that came to him second-hand. Missandei, because Missandei was now, officially, Aelya's Mistress of Whisperers and unofficially the person in the room who had read the most letters. The Lord Captain of the fleet. And — a late addition, one Doran had quietly requested — a thin dark Dornishman named Daemon Sand, a bastard knight of some skill and a great deal of discretion, who was, Arianne had informed Aelya privately over breakfast, her former lover and current closest friend, and who could be trusted as completely as Arianne herself.

Aelya had agreed to him on the spot. A woman who could stay friends with an old lover was a woman whose judgment Aelya was inclined to respect.

They had been at the table for three hours.

"So," Aelya said at last. She had a finger on the map, on the Trident. "Let me put it plainly, and let us see if anyone disagrees. The war in the riverlands is grinding the Young Wolf's host to bone. Tywin Lannister is burning the crops. Stannis is broken at the Blackwater — as of six days ago, per the raven from Gulltown — and is fleeing north to lick his wounds at Dragonstone, which he will not reach, because Dragonstone is mine and I have sixty Unsullied and a very hostile castellan waiting for him. Renly is dead. The Tyrells are in King's Landing, newly bound to the Lannisters by the boy-king's marriage to Margaery. The North is committed in the riverlands and cannot turn home. The Iron Islands are raiding the western coast, and Balon Greyjoy has declared himself king of rocks no one wants. The realm is open, my lords. It has not been this open since the Conquest. If we do not move in the next six moons, one side or the other will consolidate, and we will be fighting a unified enemy instead of a fractured one."

"Agreed," said Ser Barristan.

"Agreed," said Doran.

"Agreed," said the Lord Captain.

"Agreed," said Grey Worm, who had been listening with the intense focus he brought to all councils and who now added, in careful Common: "But. Your Grace. One question."

"Ask it."

"When we land — where. And how many places."

Aelya smiled.

"Grey Worm," she said, "that is the question."

She laid it out.

A single landing was a single target. A single landing could be met by a single army. A single landing — even one of twelve thousand Unsullied and three thousand Silver Company and six dragons — could be pinned, and a pinned army could be worn down by siege and starvation. She did not intend to be pinned.

She intended three landings.

"The first," she said, "is Dragonstone. Ser Barristan commands. Two thousand Unsullied, the Lord Captain's fleet to support. We retake the island openly, we announce ourselves, we raise the dragon banner, and we sit there looking like the largest threat in the Narrow Sea. Every lord in the realm who has been waiting to see which way to jump sees us there and begins, quietly, to write us letters. Cersei sees us there and panics. She sends her remaining fleet — which is, after the Blackwater, perhaps forty ships — to contest us. We sink them. That ends her navy."

"Second." Her finger moved south. "Storm's End. Three thousand Unsullied, three thousand Silver Company, Grey Worm commanding, Daemon Sand as second. The stormlords are in chaos since Renly's death and Stannis's flight. Half of them have already been writing to Dorne in secret looking for a lord to swear to. They will open the gates for us, or if they do not, the smallfolk will — the Baratheons have bled that country dry for two years and the country is ready for a change. We take Storm's End, we consolidate the Stormlands, we pick up perhaps six thousand stormland levies, and we march west."

"And the third," said Arianne, softly.

Aelya looked up.

"The third," she said, "is Dorne. The main host. Yours, Prince Doran, supplemented by my remaining Unsullied. You bring it up through the Prince's Pass and into the Reach. The Reach will fight you, because the Tyrells are committed to the Lannisters now, but the Reach is divided — Tarly is loyal to Tywin; most of the rest are loyal to Mace Tyrell, who is a vain man but a cautious one; and a number of the smaller houses remember Rhaegar with great fondness and will, if pressed, remember him more fondly still when they are reminded that the wife Rhaegar abandoned for a Stark girl was a Martell. You do not have to win in the Reach. You have to bleed it. Keep Tyrell in the Reach. Keep him unable to reinforce King's Landing. That is all."

"And you, cousin?" Doran asked. His eyes were half-lidded; he was listening very carefully. "Where are you, while Ser Barristan is on Dragonstone and Grey Worm is at Storm's End and I am bleeding the Reach?"

Aelya smiled.

"I am at the Wall."

A long silence.

"Cousin," said Arianne.

"With two dragons, a hundred Unsullied picked for cold-tolerance, Ser Barristan's second as captain, and my sister, who will not be parted from me and whom I will not be parted from. We go up the Narrow Sea, past the Fingers, up to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and we treat with the Night's Watch. I have a nephew there who does not yet know he is my nephew, and I have a great deal to learn from him and from the men of the Watch about what is coming down on us from beyond the Wall. That is the actual war, my lords. The war in the south is the noise. The war at the Wall is the war. And I cannot fight it from the Red Keep. I have to go and see."

"Your Grace," said Ser Barristan, carefully. "Forgive me. The south is not noise. The south is the Iron Throne. If you are at the Wall when Tywin Lannister consolidates —"

"Tywin Lannister," Aelya said, "is going to die this year."

Barristan stopped.

"Your Grace."

"Not by my hand. By his own son's. I have it on — I have dreamed it, Ser, very clearly, and the dreams of my line have never been wrong when they come this sharp. Tywin will die before the next harvest. The Red Keep will fall into Cersei's hands alone, and Cersei alone cannot hold it against what we are bringing. I do not need to be in the south to take King's Landing. I need the south to be softened for when my armies arrive. Prince Doran softens the Reach. Ser Barristan softens the Narrow Sea. Grey Worm softens the Stormlands. I go north, I bring back the thing I need from the Wall, and I come south last, with the dragons grown, and I put the crown on my sister's head."

Dany's head came up sharply.

"Aelya —"

"On your head, my love."

"We agreed —"

"I know what we agreed. I have changed my mind. I will tell you later."

Dany stared at her.

Aelya turned back to the table. She was not willing, in front of nine people, to have this particular conversation; she would have it tonight, in the dark, in her sister's arms, where it belonged.

"So," she said. "Are we agreed?"

One by one, around the table, they said they were.

Doran Martell was the last. He looked at her for a long moment — that placid, unreadable look — and then he inclined his head, and said:

"Cousin. You have been planning this war since you were a child, have you not."

"Yes, Prince."

"It shows. Dorne is with you."

Aelya bowed to him, properly, from the waist.

"Then let us, my lords, go and make it happen."

— Dany, later —

"You will not put the crown on my head," Dany said.

They were in their chambers. The lamps were low. Ēdrugon was on the other bed, which by now was entirely his. Aelya was unbraiding her hair at the mirror and Dany was sitting cross-legged on the window seat with her arms wrapped around her knees and her face set in the particular stubborn way Aelya had loved since they were four.

"I will."

"We agreed we would share it. Co-queens. Both names on the coins."

"I know."

"Aelya."

"Dany." Aelya set down the brush. She turned. She crossed to the window seat and knelt, so that they were eye-to-eye, and she took her sister's hands. "Listen to me. I have been thinking about this for weeks. I have not wanted to tell you because I knew you would fight me, and because I wanted to be sure before I fought back. I am sure now."

"Why."

"Because the realm will accept you as queen and it will tolerate me as your sister-consort, and it will never do it the other way round. Because you are the warm one and I am the cold one and the realm needs to love its queen, Dany, and the realm will love you. Because I am going to have to do things in the next five years — at the Wall, in the aftermath of the Wall, in the shaping of what comes after — that a queen cannot do without her crown getting bloody. You should not have a bloody crown. I will have the bloody hands. You will have the clean crown. The realm will have a queen they can kneel to without flinching, and I will have the — the freedom to be what the thing coming south is going to require."

Dany's eyes were wet.

"Sun and shadow," she whispered.

"Sun and shadow, my love."

"I hate you a little."

"I know."

"I hate you and I understand you and I hate that I understand you."

"I know, Dany."

Dany leaned forward and pressed her forehead to Aelya's, the old gesture, the one that had survived every other change between them, and she closed her eyes.

"All right," she whispered. "All right, wife. Crown me."

Aelya kissed her — softly, once, the kiss of a promise kept — and then rose, and blew out the lamp, and in the dark of their chamber the two silver queens lay down and held each other and did not speak of war again until morning.