Slaves obey, men choose: chapter 29: Phanes, he could not be

The air in the square was thick with a language Viserys Targaryen had never been taught. It was not the tongue of courtiers or the High Valyrian of his blood; it was the crude, honest dialect of making. The rhythmic tap-tap-tap of hammers was its staccato punctuation, the soft hiss of hot metal quenching its sibilant whisper, the low murmur of instruction its tedious prose. He stood before a rough-hewn workbench, a prince marooned on an island of common endeavour, his hands—hands that should have known the weight of a scepter, the coolness of a crown, the heat of a dragon’s scale—clutching a strip of dark steel that felt both insignificant and impossibly burdensome.

The weight was not in the metal. The weight was in the act itself, in the quiet, undeniable proof of his own uselessness. This was a test, and he was already failing. He could feel it in the hollow space behind his ribs, the familiar, cold dread that had been his most constant companion since the day he’d understood what it meant to be the last, true son of a fallen house. The last, and the least.

The completed object of his torment—a ‘luminary,’ his nephew had named it the blacksmith had told him probably with that infuriating, gentle condescension of his sat at the edge of his bench like a perfected accusation. The blacksmith, a man whose face should have been a leathery map of a life spent in servitude to fire and forge but wasn’t had crafted it with an infuriating, effortless grace. It was beautiful, Viserys had to concede that much. A sphere of light, constructed from eight slender strips of steel, each curved into a perfect, soaring arc. They were not plain; carved into their surfaces was a pattern that, upon closer inspection, resolved into what he could only deem a painful, poetic irony: broken chains intertwining to form wings, from which dripped what could only be stylized drops of blood. Wings of broken chains. It was the kind of feeling, of  sentiment meant for a liberator and those said liberator had freed, not something fit, that should be meaningful got for a king. Not for him. Never for him yet Viserys couldn’t help but feel as if it was connected to the idea, that he understood it and he didn't understand why.

The components laid before him were akin in his hands to alien artefacts. The strips of steel, the spool of what he had been told was called copper wire, the base plate with its precise, mocking little holes, the brutish pliers—these were the tools of a creature he despised, the smallfolk who built things because they could not command them. He was of the blood of Old Valyria. His ancestors had raised empires with dragonfire and blood magic. They had shaped the very continent to their will. And he was here, meant to… bend, to twist wire. How low had he fallen? The humiliation was a physical taste, coppery and sour, at the back of his throat.

“Place the strip against the wooden form,” the blacksmith’s voice was like gravel grinding under a boot. “Apply steady, gentle pressure along its entire length. Match the curve. No jerking. The metal is soft. It will bend easily if you respect it.”

Viserys’s jaw tightened into a knot of bone and resentment. Respect it. As if the lump of ore were a highborn lady and not a mute, common thing. He picked up a strip, its surface cool and faintly rough, a sensation both novel and demeaning. He laid it against the curved wooden block. His first motion was a sharp, frustrated shove, a projection of all his simmering rage. The strip kinked, a permanent, ugly wrinkle marring its smooth surface. He stared at it, a hot flush of shame creeping up his neck. A simple curve. A child’s task.

A child could do this. A child was doing this, a few benches over, her laughter like the tinkling of bells. He saw her hold up a perfect luminary for her mother’s approval. He, Viserys Targaryen, third of his name, could not manage a simple curve. The thought was a scream inside his skull, a silent, frantic denial. It was something saying ‘It cannot be me. It cannot. I am a dragon. Dragons do not fail; they succeed. They do not fail at making, at building cages of light; especially when they had in their veins enough fire to illuminate the whole world.

He discarded the ruined strip with a clatter that was too loud in the focused quiet. He took another. This time, he was more careful, pressing down with a forced, trembling steadiness. The metal yielded, slowly, reluctantly, taking on the shape. It was not perfect—the curve was flatter, weaker than the master’s—but it would have to suffice. It had to. He repeated the process seven more times, each bend a small, private battle against the tremor in his hands and the rising tide of panic in his chest. His fingers, which had always felt so capable when curled around the hilt of a sword felt thick, stupid and alien.

Next, the assembly. He placed the glass jar in the center of the base plate. Then, taking one curved strip, he aligned the hole at its bottom with a hole on the plate’s edge. His fingers, all thumbs, fumbled with a piece of copper wire. The blacksmith had made it look like threading a needle. He finally managed, his breath held, then used the pliers to twist the ends of the wire together on the underside of the plate. The action was crude, violent.

This is what I have been reduced to, he thought, a surge of contempt for the world, for his nephew, for himself, so potent it nearly choked him. Twisting wire. Like a common smith. Like a slave.

He repeated the tedious process. Align, thread, twist. Align, thread, twist. A mantra of the mediocrity of the task given to him. Only eyes reminding him of Dornish flowers, of a flower crown made him continue instead of giving it up. Sweat beaded on his noble brow despite the cool night air. His world shrank to the few square inches of scarred wood, the feel of cold, unyielding metal, the bite of the wire against his soft skin. He could feel the eyes of the others on him, a hundred invisible pinpricks of judgment. When he dared a glance, their heads were down, focused on their own work, their success a silent, collective accusation. Their silence was a roar in his ears.

Finally, he gathered the top ends of the eight strips above the center of the lantern. They splayed out like the pathetic, metal petals of a flower that had never seen the sun. He aligned the holes, slid the top ring over them, and secured it with a final, desperate twist of wire. He attached the carrying chain with a sense of grim, hollow triumph. It was done. It listed to the left like a drunken sailor, and the strips were uneven, a chaotic mess rather than a harmonious whole, but it stood. It was, technically, a luminary.

The blacksmith ambled over, his eyes, old and knowing on a face that looked too young scanning Viserys’s creation. He didn’t speak for a long moment, just circled it slowly, a vulture assessing a dying animal. Then, with a calloused finger that seemed to carry the judgment of the Fourteen, he tapped one of the strips near the top. The entire structure shuddered, wobbling precariously on its base.

“This wire,” the smith grunted, pointing to the topmost twist. “It’s loose. A stiff wind would have it in pieces on the cobbles. And the tension on this side…” He poked another strip. “It’s wrong. It’s fighting the others. It’s not a single thing. It’s eight pieces you’ve forced together. They have no unity.”

Viserys’s fleeting triumph curdled into ash. “It’s standing, isn’t it?” he retorted, the defensiveness in his voice as thin and fragile as the structure itself.

“A corpse stands if you prop it up right,” the smith replied, not with malice, but with a blunt, devastating truthfulness that was its own kind of cruelty. “Again.”

And so the cycle began. Again. And again.

Each time, Viserys would listen to the instructions, his mind repeating them like a prayer to a god who had long since abandoned him. Each time, he would try to force his treacherous hands to obey, his brow furrowed in a concentration that was really just a mask for a bottomless fear of what would always happen. Each time, the result would be a new variation on failure. A strip curved with a coward’s hesitation. A wire twisted with the frantic strength of panic, causing the metal to strain and complain. A base that was as unstable as his own claim to his family throne. The blacksmith would arrive like a minister of fate, and point out the flaw with unerring accuracy. And Viserys would watch, seething with a humiliation so complete it was a physical ache, as the man disassembled his work with a few deft, contemptuous flicks of his pliers.

The pliers were the instrument of his torture. Each twist of the wire being undone was akin to the unlocking of another door to his shame, one whispering You are not even fit for this. Daenerys would have succeeded. Rhaenys, Rhaegar and Aegon would have even though they had never done such a thing before. Why can’t you do the same? You are not a craftsman. You are not a king. You are nothing. You cannot even do this. The words were not spoken, but they echoed in the clatter of each discarded component, in the patient sigh of the blacksmith, in the very air he breathed.

The true, salt-in-the-wound humiliation was the world around him. Another girl finished her luminary. The burly man who smelled of the sea finished his with a loud, satisfied grunt that seemed to shake the very benches. A pair of women with voices more fit for elderly women, their hands feeble and soft and clearly inexperienced worked together, their movements a slow, practised dance of mutual support. They all succeeded. They, the former slaves, the smallfolk, the rabble whose very existence was meant to serve his, mastered in minutes what a dragonlord of Valyria could not grasp in what felt like a lifetime of trying.

It is me, the thought finally broke through the denial, a cold, stark realization that It was worse than any insult. It has always been me. It was with him that something was wrong, that was the only thing that made sense.

He was a Targaryen in name only or at least that's how he felt right now. Their blood was fire and genius; his was… ash and inadequacy. They commanded dragons; he could not command a strip of soft steel. They built an empire; he could not build a simple lantern. This was the truth he had spent his life running from, the truth Ser Willem Darry had tried to shield him from, the truth Illyrio Mopatis had masked with lies and promises. It was here, on this bench, in his own two damned useless hands.

His hands began to shake in earnest. A fine, constant tremor that made the delicate work an impossibility. He tried to still them by clenching his fists until his nails bit half-moons into his palms, but when he opened them again, the tremor was worse, a visible vibration of his failure.

His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, caged thing. Was this some sorcery of this accursed city? Was Aegon, from his high tower, watching this spectacle with cold amusement? Was this the promised ‘closure’—a final, definitive proof that Viserys would never reach what he wanted, realise his dreams, avenge those he had lost, regain what was theirs, that he was just the disappointment?

“Stop.”

The voice cut through the panic that was threatening to swallow him whole. The blacksmith was looking at him, and in his hard, weathered face, Viserys saw something he had not seen in a long time, something that made him want to recoil and scream: not contempt, not even anger, but a weary, undeniable pity.

“What?” Viserys hissed, the word a venomous dart. Pity from this man, a creature who should have been kneeling, It was an insult that dwarfed all the others. It was like the final confirmation of his worthlessness.

“You’re overthinking it,” the smith said, his tone flat. “You’re trying to strangle it into being. You are fighting yourself. You’ll always fail like that.”

“What in the Seven Hells does that mean?” Viserys snapped, his voice cracking, rising to a pitch that drew a few more looks. The heat of their attention was a brand. He could almost hear them say Look at the disappointment. Look at the failure. Look at him failing something that had been simple for a child.

The blacksmith gave a sound that was half-grunt, half-sigh, the universal sound of a man dealing with a broken tool that was not worth fixing. “Follow me.”

“What?”

“Follow me. Or you can stay here and keep making useless, ugly things. I don’t care. But I have a feeling you might.”

The choice felt like a trap, one presenting two roads that in the end both lead to entrapment. To stay was to admit absolute defeat, to sit amidst the physical evidence of his incompetence. To follow was to obey a commoner, to submit. His pride, that tattered, bloody banner he had clung to for so long, warred with the sinking, shameful knowledge that the man was right. He was failing. Miserably. Publicly. There was no victory here, only a choice of humiliations.

With a sound of pure, impotent frustration, he shoved himself away from the bench. “Lead on, then,” he muttered, staring at the ground, unable to meet the smith’s eyes.

They left the lit square and plunged into the winding arteries of Astapor. The magical light from the great tree high above continued bathing everything in a soft, ethereal glow, but the streets themselves were alive with a more mundane, more terrifying magic: the magic of ordinary life. Torches and lanterns spilled warm, dancing light from tavern doors. The air, which during the day carried the stench of salt and dust, was now rich with a hundred different smells: sizzling meats, exotic spices, baking flatbreads, the faint, cloying sweetness of night-blooming flowers. It was the smell of a city living, breathing, continuing without any need or worry, for fear, for the like.

Viserys walked a step behind the blacksmith, his arms crossed so tightly over his chest it hurt, a storm cloud clad in fine silk. He was a prince being led on a leash through the streets of a city that was his nephew’s creation, by a man who represented everything he was supposed to be above. The absurdity of it was a sharp stone in his shoe with every step.

“Hungry?” the smith asked after they had walked in a heavy silence for some time.

“I am not some common—” Viserys began, the retort automatic. But his stomach, traitorous and empty, chose that moment to betray him with a low, audible rumble that seemed to echo in the narrow street. He had been too agitated, too consumed by his own failing, to eat before the… the ordeal.

The blacksmith didn’t even smirk. He simply stopped at a stall where a woman with kind eyes and hands stained with grease was tending to skewers of meat and vegetables sizzling over a charcoal fire. The smell was primitive, overwhelming. The smith handed over a few small coins and received two skewers, handing one to Viserys without ceremony.

Viserys stared at it. It was messy, greasy, common. The kind of food he and Daenerys wished they had been able to eat no matter how common it seemed when they had been reduced to eating in the alleys of Free Cities, when the money ran out and the promises proved empty. The kind of food that tasted of desperation. He took it, his pride a thin veneer over a hunger that was more than just physical; it was the hunger of a man who had been fed on dreams and found them to be empty calories. He took a tentative bite. The flavors exploded in his mouth—garlic, pepper, something smoky and rich. It was not just delicious; it was real. It was, he thought with a sudden, startling clarity, the first real, uncomplicated thing he had tasted in years. It was something… delicious. He devoured it quickly, the grease slick on his chin, his dignity forgotten in the face of a simple, satisfied need.

“See? Not poisoned,” the smith said, a ghost of a smile touching his own lips as he finished his own skewer.

“It was… acceptable,” Viserys sniffed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, a common gesture that felt strangely liberating.

They walked on. The smith pointed out things with a grunt or a short, declarative sentence. “That fountain. Was dry for twenty years. Now the kids swim in it when the heat gets bad not that it gets bad those days since the king made it snow.”

“That plaza. Used to be where the Good Masters’ soldiers would drill. Now the old folks play cyvasse there.” He didn’t speak like a guide currying favour, but like a man stating simple facts about a place that was his home.

Viserys, despite the fortress of his resentment, found the walls thinning. The tight, frozen knot of anger and anxiety in his chest began to loosen its grip, strand by reluctant strand. He watched the people. They weren’t the cowed, fearful slaves he remembered seeing in other slave cities of Essos. They walked with their heads up. They laughed without looking over their shoulders. A group of children ran past, chasing a dog with a ribbon tied to its tail, their shrieks of laughter echoing off the pale stone walls. He saw a young man, his voice off-key but brimming with earnest feeling, serenading a girl on a balcony. She laughed and threw a flower down at him.

It was… life. Simple, messy, vibrant, unthinking life. It was a world away from the life he carried inside him, a life composed entirely of ghostly memories, of losses tallied like a miser’s coins, of the cold, sharp-edged ambition for a throne that was, in this moment, as insubstantial as smoke. For a precious, fleeting hour, the crushing weight of being Viserys Targaryen, the Beggar King, the Last Dragon, felt less like a divine right and more like a burden he had been carrying for so long his shoulders had permanently curved under its strain. Here, in these streets, he could almost imagine setting it down.

He did not smile. The muscles for it had atrophied from disuse. But the permanent, defensive scowl on his face softened at the edges. He was a feral creature being slowly, patiently coaxed out from the dark thicket of its own fear, still suspicious, still ready to bite, but lured by the unfamiliar warmth of a harmless hearth.

Eventually, their meandering path led them back to the city square. The crowd had thinned, most people having left with their finished, glowing luminaries. The sight of the empty benches sent a fresh, but now duller, jolt of anxiety through Viserys. The physical evidence of his failure was gone, but the memory was etched into the grain of the wood on his bench, and deeper still, into the marrow of his bones.

The blacksmith stopped and gestured toward the workspace. “Try again.”

Viserys looked from the smith’s calm face to the bench, then back again. The fragile peace he had found on their walk began to evaporate like morning dew. “This… this is why you made me walk through this city, isn’t it?” he accused, though the heat had gone out of his voice, replaced by a weary understanding.

The blacksmith’s face split into a genuine, unvarnished grin. It transformed him, etching younger lines of humour around his eyes and mouth. “Yes. You were tighter than a drumhead. Now you’re just… a well-used bowstring.” The analogy was crude but apt. It carried no insult, only observation.

Viserys let out a sound that was half-groan, half a breath that was almost a laugh. “You are an insufferable old man.”

“And you’re a princeling who can’t bend a strip of soft steel. We all have our flaws. Now. Try. And this time, don’t think about making a luminary. Don’t think about them,” he gestured to the empty spaces around them. “Don’t think about me. Don’t even think about being a prince. Just look at what’s in your hands. The steel. The wood. The wire. That’s all that exists in the world right now.”

Viserys walked to the bench. It felt different. He picked up a strip of steel. It felt different now. Cool, but not hostile. Just metal. He placed it against the wooden form. Instead of forcing it, trying to dominate it, he let his hands remember the feeling of the walk, the smell of the night air, the taste of the simple, good food. He applied a steady, gentle pressure, a conversation with the material, not a command. The metal curved. It was perfect. Smooth. True.

He worked slowly, methodically, but without the frantic, desperate energy that had poisoned his earlier attempts. He bent the other seven strips, each curve a little easier, a little more natural than the last. He placed the glass jar on the base plate. He took a strip, aligned the holes, threaded the wire. His fingers, now calm and sure, did not fumble. The twist of the pliers was firm, secure, final. Align, thread, twist. It was no longer a mantra of failure, but a simple, peaceful sequence of actions. A meditation.

He gathered the top ends. They came together not as eight separate, rebellious pieces, but as the components of a single, intended whole. They supported each other. He slid the ring on, threaded the final wire, and twisted it tight with a sense of completion, not conquest. He attached the chain.

He did not look up at the blacksmith for approval. He simply looked at what he had made.

It stood on the bench, symmetrical and sturdy. It did not lean. It did not wobble. The wings of broken chains seemed to hold each other up in a delicate, strong balance. The drops of blood were just a pattern now, a story told in metal, not an open wound. It was not just a construction; it was a luminary. His luminary.

A feeling bloomed in his chest, something so foreign and fragile he hardly dared to acknowledge it. It was not the loud, brittle pride of his birthright, the pride that was a shield against the world. This was a quiet, solid warmth. It was the pride of creation. Of having made something whole from separate parts with his own hands. Of having, for what felt for the first time, for once in his life, succeeded at a task set before him. He had made this. With his own two hands. The same hands that had failed so many times before.

For a fleeting moment, the voice of his disappointment, the one inside his head was silent. There was no room for it. There was only the lantern, and the quiet warmth. It was a feeling more alien than any magic, more precious than any crown. It was enough. Just for this moment, it was enough.

He looked up at the blacksmith. The man was watching him, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable in the shifting light.

“Blacksmith,” Viserys said, his voice softer, more vulnerable than he had intended it to be. “What’s your name?”

The man lifted a bushy eyebrow, a flicker of surprise crossing his features, then shrugged. “Muraz,” he said, the name sounding like stone grinding on stone. “What for?”

Viserys held his gaze for a moment, then looked back at the luminary, its metal wings waiting for a light. “Thank you, Muraz,” he said, the words barely a whisper, but they were clear and true in the quiet of the square.

Muraz was silent for a beat. Then he nodded, a single, curt gesture that held a world of understanding. “I did it because it was expected of me. But you’re not that bad, Viserys. For a prince.” A faint, genuine smile touched his lips. “You’re welcome.”

Viserys Targaryen looked at the cage of light he had built with his own hands, and for the first time in a very long time, the cacophony in his mind stilled. The throne was three thousand leagues away. The disappointments of the past were shadows. There was only the lantern, and the quiet, and a feeling that was not yet hope, but was perhaps its first, fragile cousin. He had no words for it. He had no more words at all.