Asha?

  The air was cold, wet, and stinking of gull shit. Damphair had dragged them all to Old Wyk for his kingsmoot, intent on robbing her of her crown.

  She spied him atop the rise, dour-faced and sour-eyed, his beard crusted with salt and seaweed. The kettledrums and warhorns that sounded their summons were loud enough to silence the sea, and all around them Nagga's sun-bleached ribs reached for the sky like the masts of dromonds.

  It was all that was left of the Grey King's court, for the Storm God had swept all the rest away.

  As she leaned back against one of the forty-four ribs, a smile like a shark's carved across her lips. The surprise she had spied on her nuncles at the sight of her support was a fine wine indeed.

  The Reader pawed at his grey beard next to her, and with him stood much of the might of Harlaw, the richest of the isles. Foremost was Ser Harras Harlaw, her cousin and one of her three champions, the black and silver of his plate drinking in the sun as much as the Valyrian steel sword on his hip.

  Her other two champions were a pair of lovesick kittens, one bearing his own bloodthirsty steel and the other watching her with his dark eyes, a sealskin cloak around his shoulders. With Tris had come his lordly father and brothers, each sporting some vestment in pale green and some arrangement of silver fish.

  The other lords that she had gathered to her counted Baelor Blacktyde, his cloak of sable pinned with a seven-pointed star. Asha did not care if he worshipped the Seven or a turnip, so long as he was hers.

  The fleshy Meldred Merlyn was another, having long chafed under her father's spurnment of the gold price.

  That left the queerest of her supporters in the Farwynd and his three sons. Lonely Light was further from the rest of the isles than the isles were from the green lands, taking an eight days' sail from Great Wyk, whose black mountains she spied west.

  A hag in grey stood near to him, if a comely one. A gull with a crown of feathers red as blood perched on her shoulder, fed on wriggling fish like a king.

  It had been its master's suggestion that she entreat the ancient hags of the isles. They held as much sway as the drowned men in an age past, naming themselves the brides of the god beneath the sea. The thralls sought out their wisdom and their wiles still, if few of the lords.

  It was not as if she was like to win the dour priests to her side.

  Her eyes turned back upon her aurochs of an uncle, a mutter passing between him and his champions.

  For all he had more of the captains than any there, they were all second sons and third sons and lesser lords with a rock and sticks to their name. The strength of the Iron Fleet turned out for their Lord Captain.

  His champions were of a like nature, Red Ralf Stonehouse, Black Ralf Kenning, and Nute the Barber. All with stones for wits.

  The Drumms and the Goodbrothers, the Orkwoods and the Sunderlys, if they did not intend to make their own claim, they waited and watched. The day would be won with words and daring, and all her nuncle offered was her father's words and her father's daring.

  When the Damphair raised his bony hands, his drowned men quieted, and the rest followed, the quiet only broken by the crashing waves again.

  "We were born from the sea, and to the sea we all return," her priestly uncle began, his voice as crusted with salt as the rest of him. "The Storm God in his wrath plucked Balon from his castle and cast him down, yet now he feasts beneath the waves in the Drowned God's watery halls." He lifted his eyes to the sky. "Balon is dead! The iron king is dead!"

  "The king is dead!" his drowned men shouted.

  "Yet what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger! Balon has fallen, Balon my brother, who honored the Old Way and paid the iron price. Balon the Brave, Balon the Blessed, Balon Twice-Crowned, who won us back our freedoms and our god. Balon is dead... but an iron king shall rise again, to sit upon the Seastone Chair and rule the isles."

  "A queen," she whispered.

  Once her nuncle had rasped his fill and stepped down from the summit, the moot began in earnest. She was in no rush to speak herself.

  First it was Erik Ironmaker, too old to even stand from his seat. His gifts were silver, bronze, and steel.

  Next came Dunstan Drumm, near as old. Yet he raised Red Rain in the sky, a faint bloody hue to the smoky steel, and many there shouted his name. At least until his gifts showed only bronze and a sliver of silver.

  It seemed they were cursed with old men as Gorold Goodbrother stepped forward to shout his claim. The Goodbrothers were not a poor house, yet he may as well have thrown a few of his dozen daughters in with his gifts if he wanted a crown to seat his brow.

  It was not another ancient specter that followed, but a boy lord in Maron Volmark. And though he had Black Harren's blood in his veins, his champions were callow boys the same as him, and his gifts wind.

  As her nuncle stepped forward with a golden kraken around his shoulders, she reached into her pocket for the ring a sorcerer had given her, its color black as sin. The winds that sped her back to the isles had only seen half of the crew of the Lyseni ship drained…

  It was clammy as she placed it on her right hand, as if the blood still stuck to it. It put a shiver to her skin.

  "You all know me," he began. "If you want sweet words to wet your ears, look elsewhere. I have no singer's tongue."

  That much was plain. He made a kingly sight, but he did not sound it.

  "I have an axe, and I have these." He raised his bear's paws, and Nute the Barber showed them his axe, a thing as tall as her. "I was a loyal brother. When Balon was wed, it was me he sent to Harlaw to bring him back his bride. The first time Balon took a crown, it was me sailed into Lannisport to single the lion's tail. The second time, it was me he sent to strangle the Neck."

  His grim face stared them down. It might have been the most words he'd ever spoken.

  "I'll see Balon's work done. The north will build us a thousand longships with which we will sweep over the green lands as in the days of old."

  "VICTARION! VICTARION! VICTARION KING!" His champions began the ruckus first, then his captains. The shouts only grew in number once his gifts were revealed, a hoard of silver and gold and fat gemstones that saw the captains scramble to fill their hands.

  Her eyes caught the sky as she stirred, the sun and a red wound vanished under the ever grey of the isles. There were worse days for a crown to grace her brow.

  She was too quick for his champions to stop her. Her fingers snatched a gem from the ground, a ruby red as blood between her black claws.

  Asha glanced at it a moment, the thump, thump, thump of her heart as quick as the beat of the kettledrums earlier. "Such fine gifts you've brought to my queensmoot, nuncle. And such fair words! Mayhaps we'll make a singer of you yet."

  For a moment it was a dream where the Crow's Eye stood before her instead. A haunting horn had broken the air and burned out the lungs from a man.

  She shook her head of it, her smile sharp as steel as she saw the uncertainty in those hard eyes.

  "Tell me, when the rivers turn hard as stone and the snows pile over the trees, will we learn to sail the flows?"

  "Winter is not yet come to make such cravens of us," he argued. "Balon saw the same as we do now, that the wolves have gone south. The north's riches are ours for the taking."

  "And what great riches are we to find? Collect your crown of pinecones if that is your wont, and turnips to warm your belly, but I would sooner sup on grander fare." Her voice echoed off Nagga's ribs as she turned on the throngs beneath them. Even the thralls furthest down the hill would hear her words. "My nuncle said you know him. You know me too—"

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "I would know you better!" some fool shouted.

  "Now there's a man as brave as any eunuch," she returned. "'Tis true I've not a worm between my legs. Teats on a king are a terrible thing, is that the song?" From between her breasts she drew her dirk. "Aye, and here's my suckling babe. She's a thirsty one."

  "Balon let you play at reaving," her nuncle bellyached. "But not at kingship."

  "My father knew much of kingship. He's had two crowns to his name, that's more than most." Her eyes fell upon those gathered again. "How many of you had home and hearth put to the torch when the stag king came to our shores? How many had daughters raped, sons slain? Burnt towns and broken castles. Crown my nuncle and when the wolves come a second time, they will leave naught but haunts behind."

  "And what would you do?" another shouted. "Wear it to bed?"

  Her smile sharpened. "I will see the green lands beggar themselves for our ships and our steel. Grandfather had the right of it. The iron price, the gold, either has its use. And if there's like to be a victor, I would see them in our debt." She shrugged her shoulders. "Some of you might think my words too green still."

  Her eyes found the Damphair, staring at her as if she had spit on the god himself.

  "I say you think too green. The Grey King's domain stretched everywhere the sunset touched, yet we do not dare to even sail more than a thimble of it."

  "Thimble," a gull shrieked.

  Both her nuncles knew not the game she was playing at now. The ring felt heavy as an anchor on her hand.

  "I saw the god, Damphair. Even the most mighty of dromonds would seem a toy before him. I stared into his eye and now I would give you but a glimpse."

  Volantis had seen her crew stand resplendent in black plate. Cromm stepped from their midst, his face shadowed as he knelt.

  He was the only one of her crew to love a slaughter even more than a woman.

  "If you harbor even a shadow of a doubt, the sorcery is like to take the reins from you," she heard. "You might not be too happy where it takes you."

  She did not know if he had come to speak it himself or if it was only a phantom, but she tasted iron on her tongue, and saffron also.

  A river of blood escaped the ring as she proffered her hand. A storm rose from the captains first at the sight, then the thralls, and finally a strangled scream.

  All the color fled his skin and left only grey. Muscle bulged. Bloody teeth fell to the earth, replaced by a maw of white. When Cromm stood again, it was as a shark more than a man. A horror from a nightmare that she had given life to.

  Her hand felt light as a feather.

  "ASHA! ASHA QUEEN!" It had started with a single throat. Then a hundred. And when the treasures of two score ships sprawled down the hill, a river of gold to join the one of blood, it had turned into a thousand.

  The isles had seen their first queen.

  The Unlikely Captain?

  It had been a moon since a madman had sailed into Black Rum Port. It felt more as if it were twelve. The Basilisk Isles had ever been a butcher's dream, but as a den of scum and villainy, not a haunt of sorcerers.

  The Jolly Jester had seen the death of three captains in the span of that moon. Mummer's fool that he was, he could not muster a word of protest when its men named him their captain next. Captain, and soon to be dead man.

  Euron Greyjoy was the name of his new king and god, the Silence his ship, though none called him by it. He was the Crow's Eye, the Black Wind, the Harbinger of the Moonless Sky, but most often Your Grace in the style of the Sunset Kingdoms.

  His eyes turned warily on the beauty in his bed. A woman of Naath that he was gifted. Why he knew not. Only that she was not a gift he could refuse.

  He might have eaten his shoes for the chance to bed her once, yet now his eyes would sooner watch every shadow in case something should crawl out of them. The last captain of this misbegotten ship had been strangled by one.

  Even when slumber would take him, there was no escape. His dreams had seen a thousand horrors after he had drunk a cup of warlock's wine.

  The morn found her watching him, her breath soft as rain. He had one of the lickspittles he ruled over now bring them something to break their fast. He feared poison still, but hunger more.

  A knock interrupted them as the sun crawled into the sky. "He summons you."

  Where most of the crew on the Silence were mutes, his sons still wagged their tongues for him.

  He went like a hound to its master. He left pride for the corpses rotting in the waters.

  The ship that met him was red as the thing in the sky, red as blood. It had a comely maiden for a figurehead, all black iron save her mother-of-pearl eyes. Long shapely legs, a slender waist, high breasts, yet not a mouth to be found.

  Its crew looked no more out of place than he did. The Basilisks brought men from every miserable corner of the world.

  The cabin had not much room, the only color a queer splash of yellow upon its door, but that was as its master liked. He watched them with a smiling eye blue as a cloudless sky, his lips near as blue. The patch on his other eye they all whispered hid a horror, though he would be happy never to see it for himself.

  "Kyaphos," his new king and god whispered. "Be welcome."

  He wished he had not given himself a mummer's name. The boy he was hadn't one, and so thought to make himself sound as if he was a Valyrian rather than a poxy whore's son.

  "Your Grace," he returned with a bow as low as he could muster.

  Most of the others there were captains new as him, if not newer. There was Treno Thrice-Drowned, though he had never drowned. Scurvy Samwell with a smile black as sin. Old Salt-Squint who stared too long at the horizon. Seven-Fingered Silas that claimed to be a septon. Moko Man-Eater, Whispering Whale, Bhalabar Black-Tongue, Three-Dye Torgon. All soon-to-be dead men the same as their predecessors.

  He had worn as much as red and black he could find, the better to make himself seem scarce. The seat under him creaked unpleasantly anyway.

  "Breathe deeply of the new world, my captains. You breathe the same sweet air now as men did before the world grew small and dull."

  The only sweetness he smelled was rot. The rest was blood and piss. The wine they were poured was just as sour.

  "It is not long now until all these isles whisper my name as their new god, and not a day too soon. You dreamt too small, aspired to nothing, yearned for less. Worms hiding themselves in colorful rags."

  He nodded along as he pretended to enjoy the wine.

  "You complain of dromonds making your routes more treacherous as if you were old fishwives, blind to the opportunity."

  He did not doubt there was opportunity to be hanged by the Braavosi. Or to see the sun bleach his bones on a Volantene plantation.

  "Fear not. I shall dream for you, aspire for you, yearn for you." One of his mutes laid out a map that stretched from as far east as Leng and as far west as the Arbor. "I am in need of holy men. Priests, priestesses, woods witches, soothsayers, muttering madmen… let them all whisper in my ear as they whisper to their gods."

  His cup of sour wine saw no answers. He tried not to think about how the floorboards remained slick with blood.

  "The turn of the third moon is near, my captains. Tyrosh will fall on the turn of the sixth. You will have until the turn of the seventh. Though some of you might wonder what I will do as you toil in my name." Not him. "I will sail to the Isle of Tears. To Gogossos, taken by the Red Death."

  He did not dare pray that his new king and god would meet his end there.

  It was a poor time to be confused with a holy man.

  kingsmoot queensmoot done. Asha has her crown.