114 AC
The Red Keep, King's Landing**
Orpheus Flowers stood near the edge of the great hall with a quiet smile on his face, staff resting lightly against his shoulder. Around him the usual court musicians tuned their instruments and whispered. His two partners, Roger and Amon, were already in costume, faces painted, waiting for their cue. The rest of the hall glittered with silks and jewels King Viserys on the high seat, Queen Alicent at his side, the Hightower greens clustered near them. Across from them sat the Velaryons, and at the center of it all the Crown Princess Rhaenyra and her new husband, Prince Laenor.
Orpheus had chosen the song carefully.
The first notes rose as Roger and Amon stepped into the open space before the high table, beginning the tale with exaggerated bows and flourishes. Orpheus waited until the hall had settled into amused attention. Then he touched the wooden circle of his staff.
A cold breeze swept the length of the hall. Every torch and candle guttered out at once. In their place rose a sickly green fire, the color of deep swamp water under moonlight. Shadows lengthened and began to move of their own accord across the stone walls.
Orpheus walked forward, humming, white locs catching the green light. The instruments of a song no one in Westeros had ever heard began to play themselves through pure memory and will brass and low drums and a sly, rolling rhythm. He moved between the tables like a man who already owned the room.
When he reached the Velaryon seats he slowed, giving them a polite, almost knowing smile without breaking the song.
"Sit down at my table
if you relax your mind,
I'll enable you to do
anything that you desire…"
The shadows on the walls answered him. They twisted into half-seen figures bargains struck, futures rewritten, hands shaking over dark water. Orpheus drew a slim deck of cards from inside his vest, tarot cards of his own making, and fanned them with a flourish.
"The cards, the cards, the cards will tell
the past, the present, and the future as well…"
He kept walking, voice smooth and amused. When the song reached the line about royal blood on his mother's side he gave a small nod to Roger and Amon. They stepped forward. Orpheus's voice deepened, layered now by the staff's rings, echoing from every corner of the hall.
"Shake my hand…
come on, boys…
shake a poor sinner's hand…"
He slammed the butt of the Hex-Ring Staff against the stone floor.
Green smoke exploded around Roger and Amon. The remaining lights died. For a heartbeat the hall was absolute black. When the green fire flared back to life the two men were gone. In their places sat two large, bewildered frogs.
A collective intake of breath ran through the nobles. Several knights half-rose. A few of the more pious lords looked openly offended. The children, however, clapped and laughed, delighted by the trick.
Orpheus bowed low, staff still in hand. A moment later the side doors opened and Roger and Amon walked back in, perfectly human, and bowed beside him. The frogs had been only shadow and suggestion. The tension broke. Applause cautious at first, then genuine filled the hall.
Orpheus straightened, smile still easy.
"A pleasure to serve all of you. May the Crown Princess and the prince consort have a long and happy life."
He turned to leave the floor. King Viserys's voice stopped him.
"Minstrel. Wait."
Orpheus faced the high table again. When his eyes truly settled on the king, the spirit-sight that lived behind his violet irises opened without permission. He saw Viserys not as a man, but as a great dragon whose scales were already rotting, pale worms burrowing steadily deeper into flesh and soul. Something old and heavy had marked the king as unworthy, and the curse was patient. Orpheus's smile softened into something almost sad. There was nothing he could do for that.
"It is magic, Your Grace," he answered calmly. "Not the sort most in Westeros know by name. Voodoo, if you want the word. The shadows simply help me tell the story I mean to tell."
Viserys studied him for a long moment, then gestured.
"Do you have another song?"
"I do." Orpheus adjusted the fall of his scarf and the set of his vest, then snapped his fingers once. A shadow-piano and a pair of accompanying instruments formed themselves out of the green light and the dark. He began to sing, voice warm and clear, reshaping the old Earth song into something that belonged under these red walls.
He walked slowly as he sang, circling the floor, letting the staff carry the melody so it filled every corner. When he passed the high table he glanced up and gave Rhaenyra a small, deliberate wink. The princess's mouth curved. Laenor watched with open curiosity rather than offense. Shadows rose again behind Orpheus two figures, a man and a woman, the woman seated astride a dragon while the man looked up at her with quiet admiration.
He finished the song to real applause this time, then settled among the other musicians with an acoustic guitar across his lap. The staff rested against his knee, quietly amplifying the soft chords so couples could dance without strain. For a while the hall loosened. People moved. Wine flowed. Orpheus played and watched, content to let the night breathe.
He was speaking quietly with a lesser lord from the Reach when a soft clearing of the throat made him look up.
Princess Rhaenyra stood there, alone.
"How do you do, ser," she said. "The way you play… it was beautiful."
Orpheus set the guitar aside and rose, offering a respectful half-bow that still somehow felt like a private conversation.
"I hope you and your husband find every happiness together." His voice dropped, shaped by the staff so that only she could hear the next words. "Though it is a shame a beautiful flower like you has to go away."
Rhaenyra's eyes widened a fraction. Interest sharpened behind them.
She recovered quickly. "You said earlier you came from a long line of royalty on your mother's side. You do not look Dornish, and you are clearly no Targaryen. Did you mean you are a bastard?"
Orpheus laughed, low and warm, the sound carrying only as far as her ears.
"I am a bastard, yes but on my father's side. On my mother's side, even though she never knew it, the blood runs differently. In the old ways I was raised with, the women who hold the deepest gifts are treated as royalty of a sort. A Voodoo Queen is a spiritual leader. The women of that line are honored. Especially those who shine the way you do."
Rhaenyra studied him more carefully now the white locs, the violet eyes, the calm way he stood in a room full of dragons and did not flinch.
"Where did you learn music like that?" she asked. "I have never heard anything similar."
"Another life," Orpheus answered simply. "Or the memory of one. Songs stay with me. Some of them are older than this castle. Some I make as I go. The staff helps the sound travel the way I want it to."
She asked about the green fire, about the shadows that had moved on the walls, about whether the frogs had been real. He answered each question without fully explaining, offering just enough truth to keep her leaning closer. He spoke of growing up in the Reach, of the swamp that warmed itself under a wild dragon's breath, of nights spent teaching himself to make instruments that could carry a feeling as well as a melody. He never once looked toward Ser Harwin Strong, who watched from a distance with a faintly puzzled expression.
Rhaenyra's questions grew quieter, more personal. She wanted to know how a man with no banner and no name walked into the Red Keep and made the court forget, for a little while, the weight of succession and green-and-black banners. Orpheus answered with the same easy honesty he had used on the stage never quite revealing everything, never quite lying.
When the torches had burned low and the last dancers were drifting toward their chambers, Rhaenyra finally stepped back. The interest in her face had not faded. If anything it had settled deeper, thoughtful and faintly hungry for more.
"I will remember your name, Orpheus Flowers," she said.
"I would be honored if you did, Princess."
She left him then, returning to her husband's side with a small, private smile that had nothing to do with the court around her. Orpheus watched her go, then quietly packed his guitar and lifted his staff. The green fire along the walls had already begun to fade back into ordinary torchlight.
He slipped out of the hall the same way he had entered unhurried, smiling, already thinking of the long road back to the Reach and the warm swamp that waited for him.
The night closed behind him like a curtain.