— Aelya, at Eastwatch —

The raven from the Reach reached her on a cold bright morning in the ninth moon of the year, and Aelya read it standing at the window of her writing-room with the wind off the sea cutting through the open shutter and Ēdrugon stretched along the great stone bench by the hearth — his head on his forepaws, one yellow eye half-open, watching her — and when she got to the third page she sat down very slowly on the edge of the table.

He had gotten too big for shoulders sometime in the spring. She still felt the absence of him there, sometimes, the way one feels the absence of a familiar weight; but Ēdrugon was the length of a tall horse now from snout to tail-tip, and his folded wings spanned the bench, and the part of him that still wanted to be near her at all times had compromised by claiming the hearth-bench in her writing-room as his personal territory, where he slept whenever she worked. The stone of the bench was always warm. The maester had stopped trying to reclaim it.

She read the letter again.

Then she laughed.

It was a startled, sharp, slightly winded laugh, the laugh of a woman who had just been told, in considerable detail, by her sister, that she — Aelya — was a meddling, insufferable, two-moves-ahead, secret-keeping menace, and that if Aelya ever wrote to a great lord on Dany's behalf again without telling Dany about it first, Dany would personally fly Drogon to Eastwatch and bite her, and that in the meantime please advise on the following: how generous to be with Tywin, whether to take his head, what to do with Cersei, whether to send Tyrion back as ambassador or keep him in camp, and also did Aelya know there had been a letter to Tywin, of course Aelya knew, Aelya had written it, you absolute reptile, write back at once.

Aelya was still laughing, helplessly, when Ser Barristan put his head in to ask about the morning's drill.

"Your Grace?"

"Ser Barristan. My sister has called me a reptile."

"Your Grace?"

"In writing. With a flourish. I am going to have it framed."

Ser Barristan, who had over the past months developed a very dry sense of humor about the relationship between his two queens, allowed himself a small dignified smile.

"Shall I delay the drill, Your Grace?"

"No. Run the drill. I will be down in an hour. I have a letter to compose, and it requires my full attention."

He withdrew.

Aelya sat at her writing-table and put her chin on her fist and looked at her sister's letter for a long quiet moment. Ēdrugon, sensing the shift in her mood, lifted his head off his forepaws and gave her the slow considering look he gave her when she was about to do something he considered interesting. She reached over without looking and rested her hand on his snout, and his nostrils huffed warm air against her palm, and she picked up her quill.

Dany, my love,

Yes, I am a reptile. I have always been a reptile. You have known this since we were four. You once told me, in the house with the red door, that I had eyes like a kuālon — which is the small lizard in the garden of the manse next door — and I have never quite forgiven you. I was three. It was hurtful. You laughed.

To business.

First: I am sorry I did not tell you about the letter to Tywin. It was a probe. Probes survive being probes only if no one knows of them, including the people one loves, because the people one loves cannot lie convincingly to spies, and Doran's spies are not the only spies in our camp. The letter was a single line, my love. It said, in essence, if you have ever in your life done sums, do them now. I was not sure he would read it as I meant it. I was not sure he would do anything with it. I sent it because the cost was a single raven and the upside was Tywin Lannister sending his second son to your tent with an offer to surrender. Which is, my love, what has now happened. I told no one. I am telling you now. I will not do it again without telling you first. You have my word on it.

Second: take the offer.

Take it whole. Do not haggle. Tywin is offering you the head of a butcher (Gregor Clegane), the surrender of a polity (the Westerlands), the renunciation of a regency (Cersei's), and his own life in exchange for the lives of his son and his grandchildren and his daughter. You will never be offered a better trade. The math, as Tywin would say, is on your side. Take it.

Third: do not take Tywin's head.

This will surprise you. Hear me out. He has offered it. Good. The offer is the important part — it tells you he is serious, and it tells the realm he is serious, and it forces every fence-sitting lord in the West to read the wind. Now refuse it. Send him to a small holding. The Crownlands have several remote cliff-castles that nobody has lived in for a generation. Send him to one of those with a small honourable retinue and a maester and a writing-desk. Let him write his memoirs. Let him die quietly in a few years of an illness. Tywin Lannister with a sword in his hand and an army at his back is the most dangerous man in the realm. Tywin Lannister in a cliff-castle with a writing-desk is a story — the Lannister patriarch who surrendered to the Targaryen queen and was spared. The realm will tell that story for a hundred years. Every lord in Westeros will hear it and will quietly note that the new queen is merciful when mercy costs her nothing. That is worth more than his head. Take the worth.

If he tries to play any games from his cliff-castle, kill him then. He will not. He is sixty-three, my love, and his second son will tell you — if you ask Tyrion privately — that his father is tired in a way the realm has not yet seen. Tywin has decided to lose. A man who has decided to lose does not start a second war from a cliff-castle. He goes there to die. Let him.

Fourth: Cersei. Do not kill her either. Do not exile her to a sept; she will hate it and she will scheme from it. Send her to her uncle Kevan at a small estate in the West, with a maester to monitor her and a guard to watch her. Tell her plainly: behave, and your children live; misbehave, and they do not. Cersei without power is, as Tyrion has correctly told you, a frightened woman. Frightened women who love their children can be managed. Manage her.

Fifth: Joffrey. This one is harder. The boy is thirteen and he is, by every report I have, a small monster. I have thought about this for a long time. My honest advice, my love, is: do not exile him to a sept. He will be a terrible septon, and the sept that has him will be miserable, and at thirteen he is still salvageable in ways he will not be at eighteen. Send him north. To Winterfell, when Winterfell is yours again. Have Sansa Stark look him in the eye and decide what to do with him. She has earned the privilege. If she chooses mercy, give it to her. If she chooses justice, also give it to her. The realm will read either choice as right, because Sansa Stark is the girl whose father he killed, and any disposition of him from her hand will be honoured. This is also a kindness to her, my love. She will need to feel that something was done. Let her be the one who decides what.

Sixth: Tommen and Myrcella. Find them small good marriages within five years. Tommen to a daughter of a loyal house — perhaps one of the Tyrells; Margaery has cousins. Myrcella to a Dornish or Stormlands lord. They are children. They are not Joffrey. They have a chance. Give it to them.

Seventh: Jaime. Jaime is a problem I cannot solve from a thousand miles away, my love. I will tell you what I think when I see you. In the meantime: do not promise his life and do not promise his death. Tell Tyrion only that Jaime's case is under consideration and that Jaime's conduct in the next moon will weigh on it heavily. Then have Jaime closely watched. He may surprise us. The man Jaime was at seventeen was not the man Jaime was at twenty-five, and the man at thirty-three may be different again.

Eighth: Tyrion. Keep him. He is the most useful Lannister you will ever meet, and he has just spent sixteen days on a road thinking about which side he is on, and your offer to him in the next week will determine that. Offer him generously. He will not, I think, ask to be Lord of Casterly Rock — he knows the realm will not stomach it — but he will accept a councillor's seat in your court at full standing, with a stipend and a household, and he will earn it back to you tenfold. He will negotiate the surrender of the West with his father in your name in a way no Targaryen councillor could. He will draft the proclamations afterward. He will, my love, become one of the small handful of men in your reign whom you can trust on the intellectual level — and there will not be many. Take him.

Ninth: Highgarden. You did beautifully. I am going to gloat about it for the rest of my life. My darling sun, you walked into a hostile Reach with nine thousand Dornish spears and you came out the other side with six thousand more bannermen and not a single battle. I have read Khorane's report twice. I am going to find a way to give her a knighthood she cannot refuse, possibly while she is asleep. Tell her so.

Tenth: I miss you. I miss you to the point of physical ache. I am writing this letter at a window facing south because my body, of its own accord, has been turning south for months. I sleep on the south side of the bed because the north side is the side you would have been on. I am not telling you this to make you sad. I am telling you because we agreed there would be no protective lies, and I will not start one with this. The Wall is holding. Eastwatch is holding. The dead came once and did not come again, and Mance Rayder is moving his people through the gates in shifts, and the wildlings are settled in the Gift, and the Watch has not mutinied, although Cotter Pyke had to hit a man last week. I have a hundred small problems and no large ones. The large one is waiting for winter. Winter has not yet come. We have time.

I have a nephew, Dany. I am bringing him to you. I will tell you about him when I bring him. He has dark hair and grey eyes and a direwolf the size of a small horse and he is going to love you on sight, and you are going to love him, and I will leave the rest of the explaining for the day I lay him in front of you, because that day is going to be one of the very good days of our lives and I want to be there to see your face.

Burn this letter. The advice is for you and Doran only. Burn it after Doran has read it.

In salt and fire, your reptile,A.

P.S. Drogon will not bite me. Drogon is afraid of Morghon. We have established this.

She sealed the letter, gave it to a runner for the southbound raven, and rose from the table. Ēdrugon, who had been watching her write with the patient attention of a cat watching a fish through ice, lifted his head as she stood, and made the small low chuff he made when he was about to ask for something.

"I know," she said, scratching the soft skin under his jaw. "I am going. Drill. Then I will come back, and we will sit in the sun on the east battery for an hour, and I will read you what your Aunt Dany said about reptiles. You will find it gratifying."

Ēdrugon huffed warm air against her palm and lowered his head.

She went down to drill.

— Dany, eleven days later, in the command pavilion —

She read it three times.

The first time, fast, for content.

The second time, slowly, with Doran beside her, stopping at every clause to make sure they understood.

The third time, alone, after Doran had wheeled himself out, with the door-flap tied shut and only Missandei in the corner — Missandei not reading over her shoulder, because Missandei did not read over shoulders, but present, in case Dany needed her to be present.

Dany read the tenth point twice.

Then she folded the letter carefully along its existing creases and pressed it flat between her palms, and she sat for a moment looking at nothing, and Missandei rose without a word and came around the table and put one small dark hand on Dany's shoulder.

"Your Grace."

"She sleeps on the south side of the bed, Missandei."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"She has been sleeping on the south side of the bed for moons."

"Yes, Your Grace."

Dany pressed her free hand against her mouth, briefly, and breathed through her nose, and then she put both hands flat on the table and said, in the controlled voice she had been learning from Doran:

"Right. Burn the letter. Send Khorane to fetch Lord Tyrion. We are accepting the offer. With my sister's amendments. All of them. And — Missandei."

"Your Grace."

"Write a separate letter to Eastwatch tonight. Just from me. I will dictate it after supper. It will not be on the official raven schedule and it will not pass through Doran's couriers. Find me a private bird."

"Yes, Your Grace."

Missandei went quietly out.

Dany sat alone in the pavilion for another moment, with her sister's letter folded under her hands, and she thought — with a clarity that surprised her — we are going to win this. We are actually going to win this. The south is folding. The Wall is holding. My sister has thought of everything, including the south side of the bed. I am going to be queen of the Seven Kingdoms by spring.

The thought did not frighten her. It used to frighten her. It did not, anymore.

She picked up Tyrion Lannister's surrender draft and began to read it through a fourth time, with Aelya's notes in mind, and the candle on the desk burned low, and outside the pavilion the Dornish camp settled into the long quiet hum of an army that had not had to fight in three moons and was beginning, cautiously, to believe it might not have to fight again.