Laena Velaryon - The Pearl of the Tides
Grand Maester Runciter was the first to urge His Grace to remarry, even suggesting a suitable choice: the Lady Laena Velaryon, who had just turned twelve.
- Archmaester Gyldayn
105 AC, Driftmark
"No matter, my pearl," her papa tells her, "I will make you a better match."
"Papa," she says forthrightly, "you don't need to console me. Or mama." At twelve, her septa thinks her too old to still use those childish names for her parents - "they are your lord father and your lady mother, not mama and papa as though you are still a milk-swilling infant in the nursery," the dried-up bitch is forever saying. But she turns a deaf ear to the sour, puckered old thing - as she does to anything she does not like to hear.
Her papa rambles on, oblivious to her words. "A fat old man for my pretty little pearl, what was Runciter thinking when he suggested it? The very idea! And he's besotted with that daughter of his, not likely that he would name any of yours his heir. But all for a jumped-up slut..."
"Corlys," her mama says sweetly, "I think its you who need consoling. Men..." she sighs as papa storms to the maester's tower, muttering furiously under his breath. She takes Laena's hand and says, "Has the news upset you, sweetling?"
"No," she says. "I'd never want to be Cousin Viserys' queen. He is old and fat."
"Neither would I," mama says.
"I don't like boys very much," she confesses, "even though Septa Maerinna said I would after I flowered. Old men are worse, even though the kitchen maids are always gossiping about how much they'd rather be yoked to a steady old plodder though a spirited young colt's always best for a ride." She looks at her mother anxiously. "Is there anything wrong with me?"
Sometimes she is almost sure there is. She isn't at all like her other girl cousins - certainly not like Rhaenyra who loves gowns and jewels or the Velaryon, Arryn or Baratheon girls who don't even have their own dragons. They all act like there's something the matter with her and though she doesn't mind, sometimes it hurts when they play and gossip amongst themselves and never invite her to join.
"No, my pearl," her mother says, letting her cuddle on her lap though she is a big girl now - no, not even a big girl, a maiden flowered and how she hates it when anyone calls her that. "You're only twelve and you're just like me. Flesh made fire." And she pinches her nose and says a good ride round the cliffs will make her feel better in no time at all.
Laenor is watching Seasmoke feed when they come back to the rocks. "I hear there's to be a wedding," he tells mama, "Cousin Viserys is going to marry Lady Alicent Hightower."
"You're only the very last person to know," Laena tells her little brother in a superior voice. "We knew it ages ago." She is about to tell him that at first she was to be chosen as the bride when her mother quells her with a look. She's right of course, Laena thinks, Laenor blabs as much as he eats. And he eats a lot.
"I want new clothes then," Laenor announces. "If I'm to go to a royal wedding, these shabby old things won't do at all."
"You should have been the girl," Laena says, because her mother is too nice to state the obvious.
"We'll see about new clothes," her mother says cautiously, looping an arm around each of them and steering them towards the castle.
"Clothes are important," Laenor insists. "I want a silver velvet, with dragons embroidered in purple silk and pearls stitched all over it. I know just how it'll look and mama, for you I think yellow-" Rhaenys ruffles his hair fondly but there is a wary look in her eyes.
Laenor is still babbling about new clothes at supper and papa, listening to him with only half an ear and brooding over his wine, never asks a thing until the fruits and cheeses are brought to table. "What's the occasion, my boy?" he asks tolerantly.
"The royal wedding of course!" Laenor says. "We're all to go, aren't we?"
"Hmm." Papa strokes his bushy silver moustache, so soft and thick that Laena still loves running her hands through it just as she did when she was little. "I don't know about that."
Laenor regards him with wide-eyed surprise. "But we must!" he insists. "It-it'd be a slight to the king if we didn't! Wouldn't it, mama?"
But their mother, always so carefully indifferent to the politics of the court, is dipping her strawberries in cream and sugar. Resolutely she ignores them all.
"It was a slight to us," Papa says softly, "when the king cast off your sister for a used-up whore with mud in her veins. Laena should have been Viserys' queen, by all rights - Grand Maester Runciter and all the wise heads at the court thought it best. But no, what did that fat little twat think - as though he can think for all the lard in his blood-" his voice rises and Laena shrinks away nervously from him. She doesn't like it when her papa turns into a pirate, as he does sometimes when he's especially angry.
"Laenor," Mama murmurs, "don't keep your mouth open like a frog waiting for flies. It looks uncouth."
"But mama-" he splutters and turns accusingly to Laena. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you're a baby," she tells him very primly.
"I am not-"
Rhaenys sighs and drags the two out of the hall and towards her solar. "Children, children, don't make a scene," she says, in the sing-song voice she used to tell them stories when they were little.
"His Grace will be wroth," Laenor, who loves the sound of high-flown words and his own voice, says. He tugs on his mother's gown anxiously. "Mama aren't you worried?"
"I never involve myself in state affairs or scandals," she tells them, "I haven't since my poor father died. I leave that to your papa - he has more taste for it than I do." In the solar, she hands out work for the two of them to do - crocheting for Laenor who loves it and whittling for Laena, who at least prefers it to needlework. "I won't have idle hands in my home," their mama is always fond of saying, "do what pleases you, but you must do something useful."
She begins to mull wine for an after-supper snack and when they have finally quietened down she says, "Besides Laenor, I think we'll be too busy now to attend our cousin's wedding. A little bird tells me that we're to have a visitor."
"Is Laena getting married to someone new?"
"I never was married in the first place!"
"Hardly," their mother says, laughing softly. "What ideas you children get into your heads sometimes. No, it's your Cousin Daemon. You two haven't seen him since you were very little, he's like a gadfly that one, always buzzing off from here to there. Laenor won't remember him at all."
"I do," Laena says. It'd be hard to forget Cousin Daemon, she thinks. It would be very hard indeed.
