The chief issue of Maekar's reign was the question of his heirs. He had a number of sons and daughters, but there were those who had reason to doubt their fitness to rule. The eldest, Prince Daeron, was known as the Drunken…Next after him was Prince Aerion, known as Brightflame or Brightfire—a most puissant knight but cruel and capricious, and a dabbler in the black arts. Both of these princes died before their father, though both had issue. Prince Daeron sired a daughter, Vaella, in 222 AC, but the girl sadly proved simple. Aerion Brightfire's son was born in 232 AC, and given the ominous name of Maegor by his sire.
~ The World of Ice and Fire
"Happy name day. Are you still sour about your name?" Maegor's cousin said.
"Oh, I've just moved on to being sweet about it. Sweet as a tooth-rotting cake chewed hard on a chipped tooth."
Maegor immediately regretted snapping. His cousin Vaella had been nothing but kind to him. She was frowning now, her thick silver brows creasing deep beneath her wimple. It made him feel utterly lousy. Maegor refused to hang his head in shame, but he gently took her empty basket to ease her burden and clasped her hand in apology.
"Thank you, Vaella," he said. "It's not often that I turn nine-and-ten. I've a mind to stuff myself with sweets. Again. I've had a tooth pulled out, the damned thing won't bother me now."
Vaella laughed. She tugged on their held hands and urged them to amble along the Gulltown docks. Maegor followed easily enough.
It was never difficult for him to follow Vaella.
"I held you after the Great Council," she had told him several name days ago, when he had been a kitchen boy for the septons and she had been a novice in the Gulltown motherhouse. "You were a baby then. So adorable. Our uncle Aegon was named king, and the lords and ladies were filing out of the Throne Room. But I stayed back and hugged you."
It had been the first of Vaella's visits to him. She'd said that the septas deemed her a very good girl, sweet and obedient, and early on had allowed her to accompany the septa charged with buying the foodstuffs.
Vaella had given him a sticky rice ball coated with honey, during that first name day visit. They had sat near the pile of dirty pots and pans he had been cleaning, he a bald scrawny little boy, she a young maiden, almost a woman grown.
"What is a Great Council?" he'd asked.
She'd fetched out a piece of paper from her sleeve and showed him what she called a family tree. It had been full of squiggly lines and strange curls. Maegor had admitted that he didn't understand what it said, and Vaella had frowned, her thick silver brows creasing deep on her sunburned forehead. Her brows were the most noticeable features on her face: heavy, and feathered at the edges like the tails of a bristly cat.
"Do you know how to write your name?" she'd asked.
"I don't know how to write."
"That is sad."
Maegor had shrugged. He'd finished his sweet and licked at his fingers.
"You will ask the septons to teach you." Vaella had folded the paper, and had gently patted his cheek. "How will you know how to read the Seven-Pointed Star? You will tell them that as you wish to follow the good and holy path of a septon, you will need to learn how to read the Seven-Pointed Star."
Maegor had crossed his arms. "But what if I don't? I don't want to be a septon."
Vaella had smiled sweetly down at him. "You do. Or you will."
Eventually he did learn how to read. It had been like a whole new packet of sweets opening, and for those first few days he swore he could see writings on everything.
And he had always been proud to show off to Vaella every time she visited on his name days.
"It's a miracle," he'd crowed out on one such visit. "I am touched by the gods, I feel it when I understand a word, I do, I do." And then he had burst out cackling, dancing around the dirty pots and pans.
The septons had always called him blasphemous, but he had only been so happy, and he had been so proud that Vaella had been so proud of him.
She'd been so proud of him when at last he loudly read out the family tree.
And then the flush of joy had been sipped out of him.
He'd dizzily imagined that the gods had finally grown impatient with his impudent and blasphemous ways. He'd glanced up at the sky, the piece of paper making faint crackling sounds as his hands trembled, and he'd imagined that the gods had poked out reed straws from the heavens and were slowly sipping the joy out of him.
King Aegon had three older brothers, the family tree had told him. The third one was both a maester and a brother of the Night Watch. The second one had been Maegor's own father. And the oldest one had been Vaella's.
As if in a daze, he'd followed the lines. Vaella had been the only issue of Prince Daeron and Kiera of Tyrosh. Maegor had been the only issue of first cousins Prince Aerion and Princess Daenora.
When the words had started to swim, Maegor had handed back the paper to Vaella. Then he'd dumbly asked if she'd like to share the persimmons old Septon Hal had given him.
Septon Hal had taught him to read and write, and had also been the one who had ordered that Maegor should always have a shaved head. When Maegor had asked to read about the histories, the ancient septon had allowed him access to a copy of a history book, compiled by a maester and dedicated to Aegon V Targaryen and his queen Betha Blackwood.
"You should've been queen," Maegor said, not for the first time.
All the way from the village to the docks, the popular talk was about their cousin Prince Daeron's death during a rebellion.
They paused along the docks of Gulltown, bustling in the afternoon as galleys from Braavos rolled up their purple sails and as the ones from Volantis let down their anchors. Stalls selling strange fragrant fruits jostled with ones selling street delicacies.
As celebration for his nineteenth name day, Maegor and Vaella were eating black rice from folded paper cups, and quail eggs covered in fried orange flour.
"And what should you have been, darling one?" Vaella asked mildly. She scooped up rice with her fingers, followed it with a strong-teethed bite on a quail egg.
Maegor still thought it had been unfair.
He had been a baby in swaddling clothes, he'd had no choice. He'd seethed about it. When he had been a boy, there was a time he wished that his and Vaella's births were switched. Then he could have been the ten-year-old during the Great Council. That had been the case against him during the Great Council, his infancy and a resulting long regency.
And his seven-times-damned name.
Vaella should have been Vaella First of Her Name. That old history book said that her claim had been dismissed because she was a "sweet but simple-minded girl of ten." That had made Maegor angrier. It still did. There was nothing wrong with Vaella, nothing. She only talked too much, and told lots of bizarre stories. Perhaps the Great Council had thought it was a fault, but Maegor didn't. Sometimes he even thought that he got his inclination to talk too much from her.
She should have been the ruling Lady of the Seven Kingdoms, and he – what of him?
"I don't know, a prince." Maegor sullenly gestured at his roughspun robe and the begging bowl hanging from his neck. "I don't mind this much, but by the Seven I do wish I could ride a horse."
Vaella smiled. "When you become a proper septon, you can ride a mule."
"Damn that, I want a horse." He finished his black rice and quail eggs. "Can you imagine, me jousting and you giving me your favour. It would be like from a song. I wish our uncle just gave me to singers. I should like to be a singer."
"I should like for you to sing as well," Vaella agreed. "Will your songs be sweet ones? Funny ones?"
"Sweet ones," Maegor promised, "funny ones." He would love to be known for songs which would remind the listeners of sunrise.
When Vaella finished her food, Maegor silently took her folded cup and threw it with his in a bin full of oyster shells and shrimp heads.
"What is a king to a singer." Vaella retrieved her empty basket, and lifted her face to the warm wind rushing from the sea. "One time, a king stumbled and fell because of a singer. Some gods wept so a torrent of rain fell, and some gods laughed their thunderous laughter at the silly king and singer."
Vaella was a favourite amongst the market and dock children because of her stories.
Maegor nodded with a fond smile. Gods could be like that. They could poke out reed straws from the heavens and sip the flush of joy from unsuspecting newly-literate children.
Vaella started chuckling as she secured her wimple against the wind. "It is a great day to fly kites. After I purchase the foodstuffs we can fly kites."
"Oh, did you just happen to bring kites?"
Maegor didn't particularly like flying kites, but he did like watching Vaella do it. He remembered Vaella making kites of her own out of cheesecloths, of Vaella racing through grass and rocks as her kite flew above her.
"Yes, kites make for good shadows," she said, and started to lift her starched white skirts.
Maegor yelped. He glanced around, angled his body to shield her, and then looked down to where a kite was indeed tucked into Vaella's hose.
Maegor stared. Then he threw back his head and guffawed.
Tradesmen and craftsmen and sailors pushed past them, the crowd jostling and the din almost swallowing up their laughter. But he could still hear it. Vaella was laughing with him, as familiar and bone-deep and breathtaking as sunrise.
Vaella clutched at her side and, grinning, leaned towards him to say, "I like you laughing. We should laugh whilst there's still time."
"Septa Vaella, Septa Vaella," a girl was sobbing out, "my tooth wobbles."
When Vaella started to pull out the tooth with a sewing thread, Maegor flinched and shuddered.
He looked over at the small crowd of children instead. They came flocking towards Vaella on her market days, to have some of their aches soothed and to hear some of her tales. So far they liked the story about a burning dancing elm tree, and the one about five stones being jumbled inside a basket and being picked out again in the wrong order by a tired old squire.
If Vaella was an entertaining story-teller, she was better at bargaining.
One more carrot for less a copper, she'd insisted. A better jar for the salt, for the same price, she'd cajoled. In the jumble of rejected canvas cloths, Vaella had forcefully yanked the one she liked from somebody's grasp.
Maegor had offered to hold the half-full basket, but she'd said, "No, darling one. Why don't you collect some more for your begging bowl? I will take care of this."
When he turned to see if the tooth pulling was done with, Maegor saw two children fighting and Vaella gazing at them patiently.
It only took the time for Maegor to blink before they started brawling. Maegor stepped forward, saying loudly, "Mind the basket, little pests, mind the septa's basket." He pried off the children from each other.
"That's my doll," the boy screamed.
"He's a liar, that's my doll," the girl spat out.
Maegor raised his brows. He herded them in front of Vaella. "Ah, the sounds of young children squabbling. It brings me back to my own childhood, it was summer, I remember -"
"You were born in the winter, darling one," Vaella said, and turned back to the children.
Apparently, the boy's sister had passed away and left the doll. But the sister had also been the girl's friend and it had been the girl who stitched the ragged dress of the doll. Maegor spent the entire screechy recounting chortling.
"Very well," Vaella told the children. "The doll will go to Chett, and the dress to Anne."
Carefully she removed the dress from the doll, then distributed each piece to the children. "Now. Chett, apologise to Anne for pulling at her hair. And Anne, apologise to Chett for biting his ear."
Later, after the children had made peace and Vaella rewarded them with a story about two boys who climbed a stony mountain then rode on a falcon to reach the moon, Maegor said, "Don't you feel cheated at all? You could've been sitting the Iron Throne and settling disputes, and there you were, sitting under a tree and dealing with childish squabbles."
Vaella glanced up from assembling her kite. "Most lords are childish. And we are safer here, darling one. You'll see."
Maegor huffed. He sprawled down next to her under the tree. He groaned when the copper and silver coins tumbled out of his begging bowl.
"Happy name day," Vaella said with a soft laugh. When she ducked down and kissed him on the cheek, Maegor's breathe snagged and he almost dropped the coins he was collecting.
"Yes," he blurted out, "my thanks. I'm still sour about my name."
Vaella slightly pulled away and regarded him with curious eyes. He was so close to her that he could see that her eyes were more black than purple, and that there were more faint hairs arching between her thick eyebrows.
Damn it all, he thought, and quickly brushed a gentle kiss on her windburnt lips.
Just as quickly, he pulled back, suddenly afraid. But more defiant than afraid.
Vaella patted his cheek, and smiled sweetly down at him. "It is all right. You are good and kind, and I am very good and very kind. No harm was done." As though to prove it to the gods as well, she kissed him again, very low on his cheek that his lips could almost feel the phantom of it.
"Happy name day to me," Maegor said with a grin. "Suddenly I don't feel too sour about my name."
"You ought to be a High Septon, then." Vaella stood up, her kite ready. She brushed grass stains from her white skirts. "High Septons shed even their given names. Can you imagine, you a High Septon and I a queen's septa?"
The sun was setting. Vaella jogged ahead of her kite, a wide triangle canvas brushing the eastern sky in deep blues and purples.
Maegor turned her words over in his head, and thought that it didn't sound bad, what she'd said. Indeed, it sounded almost perfect. One Maegor an enemy of the Faith, the other one leading it. He could feel a sort of hope rising in him, the sort of hope he felt every morning as the sun rose, promising another day where anything could happen.
"I can imagine it," he called out to Vaella when she passed by him again. "I can imagine it, and I love it."
Vaella never stopped running. "You'll see," she shouted back. She tugged at the string, her kite's triangle shadow brushing by Maegor's feet before soaring on, and she laughed and laughed and laughed.
fin