Thief Guild Pride
Chapter One: Myrcella Baratheon
As part of my birthday challenge, I've been updating or uploading a work every day from New Years to my birthday! I hope you enjoy this WIP!
Myrcella's mother has two brothers. Uncle Jaime is Mother's twin, which means they were born at the same time. Uncle Tyrion is younger than them by four years, and is only a little bit taller than Myrcella is, as he is a dwarf. They are both blonde, like Myrcella is, and they are both very clever – all the servants say so. Mother loves Uncle Jaime, but she doesn't love Uncle Tyrion.
Myrcella loves both her uncles, enough for both her and Mother, so that's ok.
When she is three and nearing four, she doesn't see a lot of her mother. This is because Mother is going to have another baby. Both of her Uncles are in King's Landing, and Joffrey has taken full advantage of this, demanding that Uncle Jaime practice the sword with him, and Uncle Tyrion read him great tales of battle.
When Myrcella finds out, she asks her uncles, "Do you not like girls?"
Uncle Jaime reacts in surprise, demands she tell him why he would ask such a thing.
"You don't play with me, like you play with Joffrey." She tells him plainly. He tells her that it is not a girl's place to fight – her job, when she's older, is to serve her husband and have his babies, run his household when he's away from home. She knows he won't believe her if she asks for protection from Joffrey – nobody ever believes her about that. So she says nothing, and walks away.
Uncle Tyrion tells her that he loves women quite a lot, so what makes her say otherwise.
"Why don't you read with me, too?" She asks. She hasn't cried yet. Doesn't want to – she's three, and about to become a big sister, she's not a cry-baby.
"I didn't know you liked stories about long ago battles, my dear. Which story would you like to go over? I'll read with you now, if you like."
This is how Uncle Tyrion becomes her favourite. He reads with her a great deal, over those long months when Mother is sick and growing the new baby inside of her. Tales of battles, princes and princesses, gods and monsters, adventures and tragedies and lovers and death. Somewhere along the way, she begins to understand the words beneath his tracing fingers.
It's halfway through a book on genealogy (they've read just about everything else in the library), that Myrcella fully realises just how much like a Lannister she really looks, with her blonde hair and green eyes. Uncle Tyrion tells her how clever she is, and so do the guards. Her whole life, the servants have said what a pretty baby she is, and her Uncles were always saying how tall she was. She doesn't have a square jaw, either, and no amount of you will see when you're older, my lady will convince her that she will have one when she is grown. Her cousin Shireen is a year younger than her, but Myrcella has already heard all about her Baratheon jaw and Florent ears. She keeps this to herself, but pays close attention to her Uncles, to her Mother when Myrcella is allowed to visit, and to her Grandfather, on the few occasions he comes to King's Landing.
She doesn't say anything about it.
However, on the day the castle starts to murmur that her mother is having her baby, Myrcella does say something.
"Uncle Tyrion?"
"Yes, my dear?"
"Can we have an adventure? Just us? We don't have to tell Mother, or anyone! It can be our secret!"
"What sort of adventures would you like, then, Myrcella?" One of the things she loves about Uncle Tyrion is that he doesn't treat her like a child – he treats her like an adult who just so happens to be even smaller than he is.
"I want to see the city!" She exclaims. "I want to see the markets!"
Tyrion ponders this for a moment. "Alright. But we will need a big strong knight to guard us on our adventure. Let us ask the fair Ser Jaime to come with us!"
She loves her Uncles, and they love her. She has fun, and whenever Uncle Tyrion is in town, she begs him and Uncle Jaime, or him and The Hound, to sneak her away to the docks and the marketplace without Mother or Father's knowledge.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
She is five, when she first hears the name Lyanna Stark outside of a history book. Father is telling Joffrey that he will be lucky to have a woman such as Lyanna, a fierce but kind-hearted warrior, for a Queen.
"Can I learn to fight then?" She asks. "Would you like me better, if I could fire an arrow or hold a sword?"
Mother pulls a horrible face. "What makes you think we do not love you?!"
Myrcella blinks at her. "Father spends all his time in the castle in meetings, or with you or Joffrey. You spend all of your time with Tommen or Father, or Uncle Jaime. Neither of you have time for me anymore."
Mother starts a loud protest, but Father is contemplative.
"It is not the Southern way, to teach women to fight," Father interrupts. "But you should at least know how to defend yourself, I suppose."
"Whenever will she need to know such a thing?!" Mother demands. "You are the King, she is safe in the Red Keep!"
Father narrows his eyes at Mother. "Aye, that's what the Targaryen's thought, and look where that got them! No, Myrcella will learn at least the bow, when she's older. For now, she can learn how to handle a dagger. The Kingsguard will teach you." He waved a big meaty hand, dismissing the subject. However, over the next few weeks and months, Mother continued to argue the matter.
Myrcella takes it into her own hands.
"Psst! Uncle Jaime!"
"Myrcella, what are you doing under the table?"
"… Hiding from Mother. And the servants. And the Septa."
"That's a long list of people for such a little girl to hide from."
"Mother has a long list of people working for her." She shrugs. "Can you keep another secret for me? Please?" She knows that if she wobbles her lip and blows her eyes wide, as if she is going to weep, whoever she is talking to is more likely to agree with whatever she's saying. She uses this face on Uncle Jaime whenever she needs him to distract Mother, and the cooks when they catch her stealing sweets from the kitchen.
He resists for perhaps five seconds, before agreeing with a big, gusting sigh. "Fine, yes, what is it?"
"Can you teach me in secret? Pleeeeease! Just knives, Uncle, promise!"
It is easy to fake tears when you are five, and it is easier still to convince people to do what you want if you are cute and earnest and innocent.
Ser Jaime Lannister never stood a chance.
Myrcella tells Cercei that she no longer wants to learn anything from her previous teachers, but she stills wants to be able to have free time in the garden to admire the flowers. Somehow, Cersei buys this.
Jaime does not tell Cersei that he is teaching their daughter how to handle a dagger, and the finer points of a knife fight. This continues for many years, and Cersei is none the wiser.
Myrcella is nearing seven, quick-witted and confident under her cover of meek and demure, when she eventually askes Robert and Cersei if she can visit the docks and the markets on her own, with a small escort of her Uncles and The Hound. This starts another of the many fights between Mother and Father, but this time Myrcella persists, using all of her wiles on both parents.
"I never ask for anything!" She yells at Mother, finally losing her temper after a straight three weeks of arguing. "Joffrey gets whatever he wants! Is it because I'm a girl? I knew you didn't love me as much as him or Tommen!"
The very next day, Myrcella visits the markets with an uncle on either side, Sandor Clegane five steps behind them, and a contingent of guards twenty paces behind him.
"Smug doesn't look good on you, my dear," Jaime says wryly, as they walk between two bakers stands.
"Sorry, Uncle," she says, and means it. "I was trying to be subtle."
Both he and Tyrion laugh at her for the rest of the half-hour, and only manage to contain their chuckles when they return to the Keep because Mother is waiting for them.
Myrcella gives it a week, before she convinces Cersei to let her only have Jaime and Sandor as her guards, and Tyrion as a companion. Cersei doesn't need to know that she drops Tyrion off at one of the many brothels early into the trips, and Sandor at a bar.
She gets better gossip through this arrangement, and makes even more friends.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Myrcella is finally seven, and she knows a lot of things that other people don't. She knows which stalls at the Market have the freshest produce, and why some stalls charge more than others. She knows that if she wants to book a ship to Braavos, she need only present a certain coin to a Braavosi man and tell him that all men must die. She knows that certain street children serve certain lords, and do the deeds the nobles are too High or fancy to do themselves. She knows who serves Varys the Spider, and who serves Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish – and who will only ever serve her.
She is eight, and Sandor and Uncle Jaime keep her secrets for her. Cersei doesn't know that her only daughter has been taught to brawl by streetrats in exchange for food, that the Thieves guild King refined her knife fighting himself for a few coins and her blade at his groin, that the fishermen's children taught her to gut and cut a fish in under a minute just so they could see a Noble doing work. Pickpockets are her friends, and they tell her the sordiest secrets, teach her how to slip a ring off a woman's hand without her knowledge, pinch a purse or necklace and disappear before the owner is any wiser. She takes in a 'rat as one of her handmaidens, a girl a few years her senior, but almost identical to Myrcella in appearance (after a number of baths, and a liberal scrub with soap) bar for her thick black hair. Her name is Jory, and she runs messages for Myrcella when the Princess cannot leave the Keep, gives Myrcella the information she cannot collect when Cersei demands her daughter's presence somewhere else.
The Spider remains none the wiser, and Myrcella takes that as a true compliment.
It is at this time that Myrcella takes it upon herself to talk with her cousin Shireen.
Mother doesn't like Shireen because she caught Greyscale as a child. Secretly, Myrcella thinks that it is also because Shireen's claim to the throne is stronger than Myrcella's own, or those of her brothers'. However, Myrcella likes her cousin – a sad, dour child, from what she learns in their first few letters. Shireen is also a lot more well-learned than Myrcella, being raised as Uncle Stannis' only heir, and having an unlimited access to the Dragonstone library.
Myrcella tells Shireen stories about the docks, the markets, the Street of Steel, of Lions and raiders from across the sea. Shireen tells her stories on the formation of Dragonglass, Dragons in general, and smugglers. Shireen is very excited about Dragons – their great-grandmother (Shireen's great-grandmother) was a Targaryen, and the whole castle at Dragonstone is decorated with their images. Myrcella worries about her mother's paranoia, and so starts to send Shireen some of her stitchings, with messages hidden inside the designs.
She spends months dropping hints to her father about visiting Dragonstone, and seeing the grand castle for herself.
It is a slow, delicate process, and so it isn't until Shireen is almost eight and Myrcella nine, that Myrcella is finally able to see the epic castle for herself.
Tommen is gifted a fawn by their uncle as a gesture of goodwill.
(They will be in King's Landing for all of three days, before Joffrey skins the poor thing.)
Myrcella and Shireen run around the castle, just themselves – Cersei tries to send people with them, but Myrcella sits her down, saying that she is entitled to a female friend of her own, besides her handmaiden. Jory runs interference for them, occasionally joining in on the fun as well.
Myrcella and Shireen tell each other secrets that nobody else knows: that Myrcella doesn't want either of her brothers on the throne, that Shireen wants to rule Dragonstone without a husband – she doesn't like people that way, not even in stories. They are both good with hidden blades, but they are able to teach each other new tricks regardless. Tucked away amongst concealed catacombs, Myrcella teaches Shireen how to fight with her fists and elbows and knuckles, and Shireen teaches Myrcella how to place her feet so that she is quieter than any mouse. Together, they develop their own hidden language out of raised dots in certain patterns, deciding to use this in their stitchings – Shireen, who is a fine artist, adopts many of the patterns into a border around her portraits. They tell no one of this, neither Onion Knight or beloved uncles.
In years to come, this will be for the better.
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