What was the point of a door? All it did was allow people through your walls. Ever since the battle, people had been coming to see him, from his sister and mother with their words to the lowly servants with his meals. Ser Gerold came to try and coax him into armour and to take up his mace and poleaxe again, to not let his skills wane, but what did it matter, the gods had ruled against them, all because of what he had done. Had he not struck down his uncle, victory would have been theirs.
He had two places to be; here and the sept. Nothing else mattered, food had no taste, wine had no flavour and love had no warmth. But why should they? He was a kinslayer, why should the gods look kindly upon him and grace him with these pleasures when he had broken their sacred laws. Princes and paupers were equal in the eyes of the Seven, and this Prince had sinned.
But that didn't keep them away. He didn't know how many days had passed so far, dozens, he felt. They were all the same. Wake up, eat, go to the sept, pray for hours until his hands were slick with sweat dripping down his wrists like snail slime, and his knees bruised and bloody on the stone. Then return to his room, eat a flavourless meal and lie down in his sickeningly comfortable bed and sleep a fretful sleep before repeating the process again. But they kept on coming and today was no different.
A soft knock at the door slunk through the air like a snake before crawling into his ear. "Brother", her sweet voice called to him.
Go away, you can't be here, not near me. He didn't answer. Maybe she'd think he was asleep, leave him to his failings. Fortune didn't favour him, for the door opened and his beloved sister entered the room. "Brother", she repeated, her soft angelic footsteps approaching the bed. His body sank a little as she sat next to him. "Lyonel... you have to get up. You can't stay here forever".
I'm asleep, Shireen, leave me.
She didn't. He felt the soft press of her fingers against his skull as they ran through his filthy, matted, unwashed hair, dirtying their purity to bring him comfort. I'm not worthy. "Lyonel, the world moves as you stay here. We need you to lead us." Let father lead us, or mother, not me. "I need you."
He needed her as well, that was why she had to leave. Every night he needed her there, her arms around him, her soft words in his ears to send him off to sleep. She wasn't there, he couldn't let her be, she was already in his dreams. Everytime the dreams took him they were together, alone in a world without war or sin or plague or foulness. They'd laugh all day long, and hold each other all night. He was with her every moment, always in her eyes, in her life, in her arms or in her. What was this if not a warning. Not for him. He was damned already, that much he knew. But Shireen, she was perfect and pure and bright. He couldn't let her come to him that way. He couldn't deny her her place at the table of the Seven, an eternity of warmth and reward. If he denied her that then he was less than he already was and he was already less than nothing.
"Go away", he murmured, pulling his hair from her grip like a child trying to escape his mother's arms. "Leave me".
But like a mother she was persistent. Her fingers were torn from his hair but wrapped around his whole head, pulling him closer. He fought it, pulling away from her soft hold. "I said leave me", he repeated, shuffling away from her on the bed. "I don't want you here. Just leave me alone , Shireen."
"You don't mean that", she said.
"How do you know what I want?!" He replied with as much of a snarl as he could muster. "You aren't me, you don't know me, and you will leave me!"
He could feel her recoil and it cracked his frozen heart. "Brother... please..."
"Go, Shireen", I am unworthy of you. "Give up on this. If I return to you it will be at a time of my choosing".
"If you wish it, then I will leave you for now. But you're asking me to give up on you, and that is something that I can't do." She said those words every time he drove her away. How could she keep faith in him so long?
He heard the door open, her soft footfalls leaving through it, and then click shut again.
He met the next visitor on his return from the Sept. Lady Melisandre was not who he wanted to see, but at least she didn't come with a sickening tone of hope and pleasantness.
"My Prince", she said, her back to him as she looked out his window into the night sky. He grunted and slipped under the covers, his hair shirt rubbing against his chest roughly. "You still seek the words of the silent gods?"
He didn't reply. She turned to him. "Have they seen fit to grace you with their words and commandments?" Of course not, and you know that, otherwise you'd be in front of a fire burning your eyes out.
"Perhaps it is because you have sinned in their eyes, or perhaps it is because there is no one there to speak."
"Perhaps", he replied, not believing it for a second. Of course the gods existed. "Would I have been punished for my sins if not?"
She looked at him with her burning red eyes, as though the fires she stared into so often were staring back. "You talk of sin and defeat like they are beholden to you alone." She replied, keeping a respectful distance. How was it that this witch knew to stay back but his perfect sister couldn't read his needs in this moment? "If your gods are truly just and omniscient, then why are you, the true inheritors of King Robert's legacy, being punished by them?"
"Because I sinned when I murdered my uncle?" What was the world like when he had to explain the sins of the world to a priest? Next there would be whores needing instruction in pleasuring others. "The throne could never be gained from sin. Never."
"Yet the person sitting there is a bastard born of incest. Joffrey called-Baratheon sits on the throne that should be your fathers, yet no god has moved to oppose him, and the supposed voice of your Seven endorses him."
"He is not the gods, he is a man." A man unworthy to wear that crystal crown, I've met beggars and vagabonds more suited to that title than him. Something else to correct – for father and Shireen to correct.
"Is he not the voice of the gods on earth? Does he not speak for them?"
He scoffed weakly. "You ask a sinner to explain the gods... you might as well ask a septon how to murder."
"It seems you are not ready to listen or talk", she said, slinking over to his door. "When you are, I will be as well."
"I've no care for what you have to say".
She paused. "Your gods will not answer you. Will they ever tell you why they grant victory to those who commit the sin of incest with harmful intent, and defeat to he who killed for good?"
With that, she was gone and he was at peace once more.
His door was slammed open at dawn. "This ends now. Lyonel to your feet."
"M-mother", he moaned groggily, ripped from the safety of a dream to the horror of the waking world.
"Get up Lyonel, you're needed, and you have been here far too long."
He curled up again. "No. I can't."
A fist clenched in his hair and pulled him up. He gasped in pain as he saw his mother's face, all sharp lines and stone staring at him. "You can and you will Lyonel. You are acting like a child and I'll be damned if I let it continue. You are needed. You are needed by your people, your gods your father and your sister. One lost battle is not a lost war, and the war must still be fought."
"I can't moth-" she smacked him. He tasted blood on his tongue as he turned back to look at her.
"No more talk of what you can't do, not here. You are going to bathe, you are going to clean the muck from your hair and body, you're going to get dressed into clothes befitting your station as a prince of the realm, and then you are going to help us recover from the defeat on the Blackwater."
"I can't", he whispered.
She smacked him. "Have a bath prepared for my son", she called outside. A brass tub was brought in and started to be filled with water. She dropped him back on his bed and went to his wardrobe, pulling out clothes in gold cloth and black velvet. She lay them on the bed. "Brother", she called out.
Uncle Rolland entered the room. "You called, my Queen?"
She nodded sternly. "Stand guard outside my son's door. When he emerges bathed and dressed you are to bring him to me in the Chamber of the Painted Table, until he emerges in a manner befitting a prince, in a manner befitting my son, he is to remain in here. He will not go to the sept, he will not go to the privy."
"Mother!" She can't rip the gods from me, she can't!
She smacked him. "No more of this pathetic attitude. I laboured five hours to bring a man and a warrior into his world, not a cowardly boy who runs and hides at the first defeat." She seized him as the bath was filled with hot water. He tried to resist as she pulled at his shirt, but weeks of inaction had left him weak and feeble. I can't even resist my own mother. He was pathetic at that. His hair shirt pulled over his head, the coarse material ripping some of the hair from his chest. Weeks of little more than bread and water had left him pathetic and weak and he could do nothing to stop her. "Until he looks respectable I don't want to see him again. When he is, bring him to me."
Without a backward glance, she swept from the room. Rolland and two men at arms stepped forward to take her place. "It's time nephew," Rolland said, a look of sad resignation on his face. "Get in the bath, or we have been instructed to force you."
He looked back at his bed, then a chink made him jerk his head back to look at his uncle again. He'd stepped forward, arms ready to lunge out and catch him. What was the point in resisting? He nodded and pushed down his britches, the cold air making him shiver in his nakedness. He slowly approached the brass tub and the steaming water inside. He looked back and Rolland nodded, half encouraging, half insistent. He gently slid one leg in, wincing at the burning heat. He pulled his leg up a little to see a line of redness. A cough from behind him told him to put his other leg in as well. Using all the strength left to his frail body, he held his body up on the rim of the tub before sliding his other leg in. He started to lower himself.
"Too hot!" He said, lifting himself up, but Rolland swept over, seized him by both shoulders and forced him under the water. He gasped as the water sloshed up his chest, hitting him full in the face and spilling over the side of the tub to patter on the floor.
"There we go my prince, not so bad once you're in, maids!" Four of the castle's maids entered at his call, clearly his mother had them all ready for this. "Scrub him, if the water gets too filthy, we'll replace it. But the Queen wants him sparkling."
Lyonel closed his eyes and subjected himself to their ministrations.
After what felt like hours, he was dragged from the tub, the maids left with the water that was near filthy black and replaced by three grooms with his clothes. "Now dress him as befits his station," Rolland told them. The clothes felt bigger on him now than they had before, but a tightening of the belt and a strap here and there and they cinched around his form.
"Nearly there now my prince," Rolland said with an encouraging smile.
"Just take me to mother, let me get this over with."
"Not yet, my prince," Rolland said, putting a hand on his chest to stop him. "First, you need to eat a proper meal."
He called out for the next set of servants and they brought in large silver plate with a whole smoked haddock on a bed of vegetables and baked bread and a large jug of clear clean water. The very sight made his mouth water. "I... shouldn't."
"You've been fasting long enough, if you like I can go and get the septon to tell you so, or you can sit down and eat that delicious fish the cooks have prepared for you."
He sat down and ate.
When Rolland pushed open the door to the chamber of the painted table, he saw his mother and Shireen sitting at one end of it. "Lyonel!" Shireen leapt to her feet, but his mother seized her arm and held her fast. She got to her own feet more slowly, her gown of gold and black, tied at the waist with a cord of black leather and a necklace hung round her neck, a silver nightingale resting above the fabric at her chest. Her hood of brown hair fell about her shoulders and down her back, held up by two long, silver pins and her eyes cut into him like daggers.
"So then, let's have a look at you," she said, standing before him. She pinched at his clothes, noting how they hung off his limbs, took him by the chin and looked into his eyes and even leaning in to smell him. "They did a good job I see," she nodded "yes, this is much better. How does it feel to be up on your feet again?"
He thought about it. "Unsteady."
"Well you'll need to find your feet, quickly, or we may all soon find ourselves without a head."
"What?"
Myrielle nodded and he heard Rolland shut the door to the chamber. "Things have not gone well for us since the retreat," she said and he felt a surge of guilt well up within him. If not for him... "Your father holds the army at Storm's End, but already has placed two lords and seven landed knights in irons for plotting to abandon him. I've been working every day to keep the lords and knights who you saved with the fleet from doing likewise, though the fleet itself is loyal as ever, so it's not like they have anywhere to go if they wanted to leave. "But now there is more bad news." She paused, waiting for him to say something, when he said nothing, she sighed. "Tarth has declared its full allegiance to the Iron Throne, declaring us all traitors."
"What?" Shireen gasped.
Myrielle nodded, lips in a thin line and swept back to her seat. Shireen made to take his arm, but Rolland stepped forwards and took it first, guiding him so he was sat opposite his mother and sister. "Since the battle we've done nothing to try and regain momentum," his mother said, looking down at the map carved in wood. "We can't know what other treacheries this will inspire. If the stormlands rise against your father, the Lannisters and Tyrells will have a land ripe for invasion, and then the tide of treasons will be too great to stem I fear."
She looked at him again, eyebrows raised expectantly.
"So what do we do?" He asked.
"That's what I'm asking you," she told him. "My father taught my brothers war, not me, your father has taught you, so what do you suggest we do?"
"I don't know-"
"Then think!" She demanded, leaning over the table, her gaze slicing into him. "What do we need to do to prevent Lord Tarth's treason spreading further?"
He thought. "Punish him for it?"
"What else?"
He thought more, some of his father's words coming unbidden to the fore of his memory. "Make sure our lords know we haven't lost yet."
She sat back. "And how do we do that?"
He looked down at the isle of Tarth, alone, isolated. "Send the fleet." He said.
His mother smiled. "And?"
"And?"
The smile became a frown. "Yes, what else will you do?"
He thought. "Send the army?"
She closed her eyes and seemed to be holding back a yell of anger. "Lyonel, I assumed the fleet would take men to besiege the castle, that's not what I'm talking about."
"Then wha-"
"Lyonel, this is a direct affront to your father's authority as king, a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the crown that you will one day wear. What are you going to do about it?"
"Go myself." He surprised himself with those words. He took a breath and repeated them. "Go myself to see that it is done. And be seen that I am doing it," he added when he saw his mother's mouth open with another question. He saw Shireen smile and his pride reared its head.
"What will you do, Lyonel?" His mother asked slowly, definitively.
He took a breath. "I will go with the fleet to Tarth and punish Lord Selwyn for betraying his oath to father. And I will bestow Tarth on someone more worthy."
"Again, with meaning!"
"I will take the fleet to Tarth and punish Lord Selwyn for betraying father."
"Again!"
"I will go to Tarth and punish it's lord for betraying us!" He yelled the last three words.
"Yes you will!" His mother said, getting to her feet and sweeping around the table, she pulled him up and hugged him so tightly he thought his back might snap. "Thank you for coming back," she whispered so quietly he almost didn't hear her. She kissed his forehead fiercely. "If you ever act like that again so help me..." she couldn't even finish the sentence. She pulled back and held him at arm's length, feeling his muscles. "You need to get these back to what they were," she said. "Ser Gerold."
Lyonel hadn't noticed the Master at Arms standing in one corner by the door. He stalked over, felt Lyonel's arms and chest. "Not good, but I've worked with worse," he said. "My lady, if you see to assembling the fleet and invasion force, I'll get to work with the boy."
"You haven't called him boy in years," Shireen said, hurt.
"I'll stop when he's a man again," Gerold said. "Now I hope you had a good breakfast boy, because we have got a lot of work ahead of us. You'll be swinging that mace around until your arms can't lift it anymore, and then we'll be shooting arrows until your fingers bleed. We're at war, so there's no time for steady training, you'll be going to bed broken and bleeding until that fleet is ready. You understand?" He nodded. "Good."
Despite it all, he felt himself smile.
