The Drowning of Kings

On the morning they meant to drown him, the heir of Vael woke early, ate well, and checked, as he had every day for nineteen years, that he still remembered how to swim. He did. He had made very sure of it. The kingdom of Vael crowned its kings the old way, by giving them to the sea and accepting back whatever the sea returned, and for four centuries the sea had returned a corpse and the corpse had been called a king. Aedric intended, with great and quiet rudeness, to be returned alive.