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Foreign Queen
Chapter 7
A few months later…
"Come on, what is it that you want? Tell me… He doesn't answer," Myriah told Daeron, smiling.
"Well, I imagine he'd have to learn to talk first."
It was a rare event for Daeron to answer to her this sharply. Myriah's eyebrows shot but she didn't say anything. Instead, she turned back to Baelor and kept talking to him. Soon, his disgruntlement went off and he started smiling at her.
Daeron shook his head, tiredly. Myriah's nosy nursemaid who hovered nearby, ready to take the babe if Myriah became dizzy, something that happened to her quite often nowadays – in fact, more often than in her first pregnancy – huffed and gave him a belligerent look. She was also on the little bore's side. Everyone was on his side – Myriah, Daeron's mother. His grandfather, even! Everyone crowded around the tiny squealer - or rather, the not so tiny squealer. Sure, it was all good and nice that he was healthy and he had certainly started looking better these days – the hairs had fallen off his ears and he had even started to turn proportional, instead of being mostly head – but he was still a bundle of cries for attention and Myriah was ready to reply whenever she wasn't busy being sick. She had no time for Daeron any more. They were barely alone – she insisted that Baelor be there when she was feeling good. Naerys was even worse – she had turned into a doting grandmother and all she ever spoke about, except for religion, was the babe. And the King's Hand was the final straw – he actually came to their chambers and held the little crier, to Baelor's apparent delight. Daeron rarely had any desire to and frankly, neither did Baelor – as soon as he felt that it was his father holding him, he would start screaming his head off. It had nothing to do with repairing the peace in the kingdom – it was grown and responsible people turning into fools as soon as a babe smiled at them toothlessly. No one seemed to read Baelor's thoughts as Daeron did. The babe's face was quite expressive and Daeron could practically see what he'd say as soon as he started talking… "Mother, Mother, look at me commanding Grandmother. I've set her on singing to me… This dog looks fluffy… well, it is fluffy… oh when will I be able to start plucking his fur off? I am not sleepy, so stop rocking me. I said, I am not sleepy, I am not… Why should one start shouting to be taken notice of and understood here?" Daeron knew these were Baelor's thoughts, yet no one else did. Instead, they treated him like something pure and fragile, instead of the pester he was. Maybe things would get better when Baelor grew up a little but for now, he was just a bother. A bother Myriah was too attached to.
"Let him rest in his own chambers, Myriah," he said. "He needs to rely on others and not you alone. You won't be available at all times to him. The new babe will…"
She looked up. "But the babe is not here yet. This child is here now." She paused, her eyes thoughtful, alert. "You don't love him, do you?" she suddenly asked.
Daeron blinked. He had gotten accustomed to her outspoken ways but this time, she had taken him by the surprise. "What? Don't be ridiculous, of course I love him…"
She looked at the small head, dark like hers. Her voice was subdued. "Sometimes, I wonder…"
The worst thing was, sometimes Daeron also wondered. In the two years after the Dornish ship boarded, he had come to love Myriah with all the strenght of his young and fierce heart but Baelor... he wondered.
A knock at the door, and a maid announced the arrival of Princess Naerys. Baelor's eyes lit up as soon as he saw his grandmother and he raised his hands for her to take him. She gave Myriah a present – a small box with some lotion that Daeron had no idea as to the purpose of but his wife obviously valued. Then, Naerys turned her attention to Baelor. "Look who we have here," she crooned. "Our very big boy. Come here. Come to me, right?"
He gurgled. She was about to take him when the Dornish nursemain intervened. "Leave the child where he us, Your Grace," she said.
Naerys looked stunned. Apart from her husband, no one had ever thought of giving her orders or telling her what not to do. She looked at Daeron, then Myriah and finally the woman who looked very calm, as if she hadn't overstepped her boundaries enormously. 'What's the meaning of this?" she finally asked, the devout septa falling away to the wroth of an offended queen – or a queen in waiting, as she most certainly was. "Is this a Dornish way of addressing royalty?" she added and immediately wished to take her words back. Of course, it was too late.
"It certainly isn't the way Dornishmen and women would like to address a Targaryen, Your Grace," Myriah said, her tone icy, the joy of playing with her babe suddenly soured. These little jabs hurt her more than she cared to admit, especially when they came from those she had come to like and trust – Daeron, Naerys. They did it unwittingly and that hurt more than Aegon's barbs because it showed that she was still not accepted, her land and her people not respected. Not fully. She knew all too well how people at Sunspear spoke about children born to Dornish women and Westerosi soldiers, children of hurt and helplessness, children of rape and survival, children of conquest. She squeezed Baelor so tight that he wailed and she immediately relaxed her grip. Was this how people would speak of her children one day – Baelor and the one who was still to be born? Ah these. They are not of Westeros, they are Dornishmen… "Or would you like to hear how we addressed your revered cousin, the Young Dragon?"
Naerys looked down. "No."
"I didn't think you would. Rest assured that we address everyone by their merit… and we know how to treat our children, something that Westerosi mothers of good birth obviously fail to impart in their own children."
Somehow, she made good birth sound like disgusting incest. Daeron and Naerys both stared at her, dumbfounded. She glared back.
"You shouldn't pick the child up," Lelia said, still addressing Naerys and seemingly oblivious to the conflict she had caused. "You have to take care of your own little one now."
Naerys stared at her. She did not understand. And then she did. Her hand immediately went to her flat belly under the white gown. "You are wrong."
The Dornishwoman shook her head, offended. The silence in Myriah's solar was heavy and full of questions and doubts. "I am not. You are with child, my lady."
"I am not," Naerys snapped even as she was counting the days in her head. Lately, Aegon had been seeking her bed more than usual and she had admitted him as a wife should. But it was impossible!
"Quite the contrary," Lelia countered.
Baelor made a sound as if he was trying to repeat the word without much success. At another time, they would have laughed at his clumsy attempts at speaking. But not now. "I am too old for childbearing," Naerys said.
The woman just gave her a pitying look. Naerys should take offense once again but this time, she was beyond that. "My lady, correct me if I am wrong but you are barely thirty-odd, right? It isn't at all unusual for ladies your age to get with child."
"But these are women with many children!" Naerys cried. "I never had a child after Daeron. You must be wrong."
Lelia shrugged. She seemed to feel that she had done her duty – she had informed the Princess about her condition. If the silly woman wanted to risk her own babe's wellbeing, well, that was hardly Lelia's business.
Once again, Baelor raised his hands for Naerys to pick him up.
She didn't.
"Well," Myriah muttered, "it seems we'll have to retrain him." As young as he was, Baelor knew his mother never picked him up. He was carried to her. They needed to teach him that with Naerys, too, it seemed.
A new knock. "Come in," Daeron said, and Lady Ilena entered and started talking to Myriah in low voice.
"What?" the Princess asked, as if she had not heard right. "Are you sure?"
The girl nodded. Myriah turned to the others and was about to speak when a huge cry from the outside preemptied her and rattled the windows. The hallways suddenly resonated with the sound of hundred of feet running. All bells in the Maegor's Hold started ringing, followed by each bell in the Red Keep and Visenya's Hill, and then the city. "The King is dead! The King is dead!"
"May the Seven hold him," Daeron said softly and cursed himself for the sinful anger he felt at Baelor – really, fasting himself to death! What had he been thinking?
Myriah looked down and stroked her son's head unconsciously, as if to steady herself. "I am sure they will," she murmured. "He spent his entire life serving them."
"He could have chosen a better day for dying," Lelia snarled, all more sharply because of the contrast with Myriah and Daeron's words. But truly, was she supposed to be pretend that the Targaryen king had been devout? He had been befuddled, that's what he had been. And his death had exacerbated the visions that had been dancing into the flames for her as soon as she had realized that Princess Naerys was with child. This babe would be both cursed and blessed, linked to blood and bloom, devastation and flourishing. And death.
Naerys, it seemed, had picked up on the Dornishwoman's meaning. She might not believe she was with child, but her hands certainly did: they went to her belly, as if to protect the babe from the cries.
