The Hightower, Alaric had to admit, was impressive. Towering, exactly in accordance with its name, even higher than the Wall, it utterly dominated Oldtown, and the beacon's flame atop the massive white lighthouse seemed brighter than the sun.
"The beacon's color can be changed, they have a special sort of glass for that," Alysanne told him as they were making their way towards Battle Isle in Gyles Hightower's boat. "Normal reddish-golden for peace, blue for high winds, green to call the banners, and dark red for pestilence."
"Well, then, let's make sure they don't use green glass in the foreseeable future," said Alaric.
The lower floors of the Hightower were pitch-black, a contrast to the pale stone of the lighthouse. Alaric had read that this part of the castle, the most ancient one, was made of something akin to Valyrian dragonstone and dated from before the coming of the First Men, and he immediately saw what an asset such a fortress could be in a war to its owners (and what a drawback to their enemies): the stone was completely fused, he noticed, and he doubted that even dragonfire could melt it.
The black stone fortress was almost as unadorned on the inside as it was on the outside, with a maze of barely-lit corridors and rooms. Using a large wooden platform lifted with a system of ropes, similar to the ones the Night Watch's brothers had at the Wall, they went up to the lighthouse – almost like a different building entirely, with the furnishings styled with the Reach's usual brightness, the spacious halls, and the wide windows.
Lord Gyles led them to what he dubbed the grand audience chamber, where a few more of his and the Septon's relations had already lined up in welcome.
"My son and heir, Ser Eustace – I believe he was away during your last visit to Oldtown, Your Grace, – his wife, Lady Amalia, and their daughter, Lady Milane," he said. The young but strong-looking knight with a weatherbeaten face and a slim woman at his side knelt down, and Lady Milane, being about Princess Alyssa's age, babbled something with a wide smile. She was seated in the lap of "Lady Catelyn, wife of my cousin Ser Brentys", together with another infant, "Lady Catelyn's daughter Ermessa".
Alysanne was beaming – though Alaric soon understood that her particular joy was caused by the sight of the several people of the Faith, also awaiting them in the audience chamber. Indeed, once the official introductions to the bunch of Hightowers were over, a young septa hurried to Alysanne, who hugged her tight and kissed her clothed head.
"It's lovely to see you again, Rhaella," said Alysanne. "I did not know you would be joining us today."
"How could I not, when it's a matter of my earthly family?" Septa Rhaella – Alaric now knew she was the surviving daughter of Aegon the Uncrowned – said warmly.
"I think you haven't met my husband, Lord Alaric Stark of Winterfell."
Rhaella's cheeks reddened as she bowed:
"It is an-no-no, an honor, m-my lord. C-congratulations on your marriage t-to C-Cousin Alysanne."
"Thank you, Septa Rhaella," Alaric said, wondering what the matter with her could be. However, after the children were carried away by Catelyn Hightower and everyone had sat down at the enormous table in the middle of the chamber, he saw that the girl was stammering and blushing whenever anyone at all talked to her, with the only exceptions being Alysanne, the High Septon, and some aged septa who sat next to her – probably her tutor.
"So, as far as I understand, Your Grace, you wished to talk of King Aemon's... right... to the crown," said the High Septon after the necessary pleasantries were exchanged and the light mead and fruit offered as refreshments (nothing more – everybody had to keep a clear head for the talk).
"Yes, indeed, Your Holiness," Alysanne nodded. "I have heard the most disconcerting rumors about the king, prince and princess being," she grimaced as she had to speak it out, "abominations, and we believe it has something to do with the rejection of Exceptionalism."
"Abominations is what the common folk says," said Lord Hightower. "I mean, we all know Septa Rhaella, and she seems quite normal."
Rhaella's cheeks flushed red, and her tutor flashed a scathing glance at Lord Gyles, which led to the latter now hanging his head in shame. Alysanne remembered that in his sire's lifetime, Gyles was always as shy and fearful and awkward with words as it was possible for Oldtown's heir, and it looked like things hadn't changed much since then.
"It is indeed clear that there is nothing to speak about concerning physical defects," said the High Septon, also throwing a reproachful look at his nephew. "As far as I am informed, His Grace and his siblings are fine young people. The problem, Your Grace, lies with their legitimacy."
"Is there no way to reinstate Exceptionalism?" Alysanne asked – with little hope, just to make sure she tried it.
"Forgive me for bringing it up, Your Grace, but the tragic passing of King Jaehaerys and Princess Daenerys has made it quite impossible. If it had been just the princess... the children were especially vulnerable to the Shivers, the people could have accepted that, but as it is..." he shook his head.
Alysanne's throat spasmed with pain as she held back tears.
...Mommy, I'm cold...
...Alysanne, my love, I am cold – I am freezing...
She took Alaric's hand, and he clearly understood what she needed, squeezing her palm gently and lightly stroking it with his fingers. Right now, Alysanne had brought up the topic herself, and there was no way she could burst into tears right now, at the start of the talk.
"I understand," she finally said as she felt her throat relax and took a deep breath to steady herself. "Therefore, we are proposing the following suggestion. As all of my children were conceived when Exceptionalism was the official teaching here at the Starry Sept..." and she outlined Septon Barth's idea of sin committed in ignorance.
"It would be hard to convince the populace of it," said Lord Gyles. "King Jaehaerys invented Exceptionalism."
"No matter who invented it, Exceptionalism was accepted by the Starry Sept," Alaric spoke up. "Either we all agree that several people were honestly mistaken, or you proclaim that the previous High Septons agreed to change the Faith's doctrine just for the fear of dragons."
Alysanne looked at him gratefully. She hadn't expected him to take an active part in the discussion at all, except maybe to confirm his support for Aemon.
Judging by the High Septon's contemplative look, he had come to the same conclusions.
"Of course, it could be possible to choose the second option," he said. "I was blessed with the crystal crown only after Exceptionalism was established. But then people would ask why I hadn't revoked it at once, and we come to the same options again. I like to think I wouldn't cower if it really came to the Faith's doctrine against Silverwing, by the way, but I wouldn't want to be presented with such a choice, and certainly wouldn't want it forced on our brothers and sisters."
"Moreover," said Alysanne, "Exceptionalism – it really was an honest mistake. When my sweet Daenerys woke me up and said she was cold, Jaehaerys – he was crushed – he ref... refused to believe it c-could..." as the memories of those horrible days came back to her in a crashing wave, she couldn't hold back the tears anymore.
When Alysanne's voice broke off into a sob, Alaric wanted to pull her into an embrace, hold her close until she calmed down, and damn... er, postpone the negotiations – but he had underestimated his wife's self-control. One moment, she was weeping helplessly, the next, she was calmly sitting upright once again and gently wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.
"Forgive me, Your Holiness – my lord," she smiled. "You understand it's still a very painful topic for me."
"We are sorry we had to talk of it, Your Grace," said the High Septon.
"We... we understand your grief, my queen," Ser Eustace said in a strangely tight voice, his face grown pale. Alaric belatedly recalled hearing news that the Hightower heir, too, had lost his young wife and children to the Shivers; it looked like his marriage with Amalia occurred barely a year earlier than Alaric's own wedding to Alysanne. No wonder Eustace was so quiet during the negotiations... unlike Alysanne, he could at least afford to mourn in silence.
"Oh, no, there is nothing to apologize for – coming here today was my idea."
"Now, the problem still remains as to how we explain everything to the lords and the smallfolk," the High Septon continued. "Exceptionalism is wrong, but sins committed before it was proven wrong are not judged... It's rather a difficult maxim to explain."
"Can't we send another group of Seven Speakers?" asked Septa Rhaella. "I can even be one of them."
Since she reddened and stuttered even when her own liege lord addressed her, Alaric admired the courage in such an offer.
"Thank you, Septa Rhaella, but no," said the High Septon. "Even if we find six more people up to the task, which, as I said, is harder than the one the original Speakers had to deal with, there is one major drawback: everything so far has only been at the level of rumors and whispers. Am I right to say no lord or even commoner has openly contested His Grace's succession?" he asked Alysanne.
"So far, no one has dared," she confirmed.
"Therefore, when the Speakers go to preach, the people can just swear that nobody dreamed of insulting the King and refuse to listen. We can't have a group standing constantly at the ready and waiting for the day when it comes to an open rebellion. Remember, Your Grace, when you and your brother ascended the throne, memories were still fresh of the Faith Militant uprising."
There was a pregnant pause.
"I've suggested, back in King's Landing, that we should write up a law affirming King Aemon's birthright," said Alaric. "I stand by that suggestion. A law, backed up by the arguments from the Faith, would be hard to circumvent."
"If I, for example, found myself in a similar situation here in Oldtown, Lord Stark, I would do precisely that," said Ser Eustace, who had previously been silent but clearly much deeper in thought than his fearful-looking father. "But you and Her Grace have all the Seven Kingdoms to deal with, and many lords can just shrug and say that your law clashes with this decree or that tradition... Sadly, King Jaehaerys's idea of a great law code for the entire realm had never come to fruition."
"We are going on with its development, Ser Eustace!" Alysanne assured him. "But yes, it will be years, if not decades, until it's finalized and accepted. There has to be another solution... there has to be."
"Other than fire and blood, if possible, I beg, Your Grace," Lord Gyles added.
"Yes, I promise, other than fire and blood," Alysanne's smile was so radiant that even Lord Gyles, who had been tensed up since he saw Silverwing land, seemed to relax.
Nobody had come up with any more ideas, and eventually Lord Gyles offered to show the royal guests to their chambers (or, rather, his chambers – like his father, he gave them his own rooms) and invited them to a feast in their honor in the evening. For all that Alysanne loved feasts and all sorts of entertainment, she was getting rather tired of them, especially right on the heels of the three-day wedding celebrations which she hadn't been exactly enthusiastic about either. However, she had long learned that feasting generally provided more opportunities for diplomacy than all the negotiations and councils put together.
It's ironic, she thought. Many of the poorer girls at women's courts have confessed that they envy the lavish feasts I attend – while I sometimes can only dream of a quiet meal without excesses and with only my closest family and friends for company.
"You were wonderful at the negotiations, Alaric," she told her husband as they sat down by the fireplace – close to the very top of the Hightower, it would have been freezing without a fire in every room, even though it was a wonderful spring day on the ground.
"The first time anyone's told me that," he said. "I was glad to help you."
He put his arm around her waist:
"I'm sorry you had to go through it all, Alysanne."
"Not you too! It was my idea entirely, remember?"
His other hand caressed her cheek:
"Your idea or not, you broke down. I just wanted to say... it may sound stupid..." for once, Alaric truly struggled for words. "If you want to cry now, I... I'll hold you."
The heartache and tortuous memories that the meeting had stirred came to the surface again – back in the audience chamber, it had taken all of Alysanne's willpower to force them into the back of her mind.
"B-but," Alysanne whispered, "I th-thought you wouldn't want me crying over Jaehaerys."
"I didn't," he admitted, "but I realize now I've been a fool. You burst into tears in front of the Hightowers – I personally don't care a straw what they think, but... it's so not like the Alysanne I know. There has to be someone with whom you can drop your pretense, or you'll just burst."
"Oh, Alaric," Alysanne murmured, her lips shaking, and tears streamed down her face again. He pulled her close, just like he wanted to do at the negotiations, and she cried and cried, her hands clutching his shoulders as if she was drowning.
"It's been a year... I know... I should have put it behind me... but sometimes... I still..." he heard her mumbling half-coherently between the sobs. He gently stroked her flowing hair, raining light kisses on her head, and shame ate at him for jumping at the chance to wed Alysanne while she was still grieving so deeply.
At last, she grew silent and her breathing gradually steadied.
"Who told you that you 'should have put it behind you'?" Alaric asked quietly.
"Um... I don't know... nobody, maybe... I just felt..."
"It's balderdash," he said firmly. "I remember myself after Jonelle died. The kids and I used to huddle up in the godswood to mourn together, even many months after her passing."
Jonelle... He thought of his cheerful, easygoing, utterly fearless first wife. After she died – a sudden and shocking death, of a cold gone bad after a long swim in a cold spring – he had been devastated and certain he would never love a woman or even be joyful at all again... Was it truly wicked of him now, to love Alysanne so madly?
"Aemon, Baelon and Alyssa are but little, they won't understand the mourning and will only get scared – I can't let them see my tears..." Alysanne said, meanwhile. "Only Alarra... sometimes... oh, Alaric, she's been such a great comfort to me."
He felt a surge of pride at her praise of Alarra – but also some sadness, even envy, that emotionally, he wasn't as close to Alysanne as his daughter was.
"You don't need to hide your grief from me," he told her. "You might be the Queen to everyone else, but to me, you are my wife first of all, and I don't want you to put on the same facade you use with the vassals."
"But I know you hated Jaehaerys, and I didn't want to make you uneasy," she explained.
Damn. His feelings for her mattered much more than his hatred for the deceased king – but how could he tell her that without revealing said feelings?
"If I wish to remember my Jonelle, would that bring you any unease?"
"No, but that's different," Alysanne pointed out. "I have no ill feelings towards Lady Jonelle – quite the contrary, from what you and Alarra have told me, she sounds like a fascinating woman and I am sure I would have liked her."
"I think she would have liked you too," Alaric admitted. "Listen, whatever I thought of King Jaehaerys or he of me, I know you and he loved each other. If you want to grieve for him and Princess Daenerys, I won't be offended."
Alysanne smiled through her tears and embraced him tighter.
By the time the feast was about to start, Alysanne had washed her face and had some rest after her crying, so when she – smiling, rosy-cheeked, clad in a flowing silvery dress – entered the hall to a chorus of cheers, people who hadn't seen her burst into tears wouldn't have believed she had been in any way distressed earlier in the day.
Alaric could have just gazed at her the entire evening, but, of course, no such luxury was allowed in the showing-off, money-wasting ceremony that followed. Determined, obviously, to outdo the Caswells and the Fossoways, Gyles Hightower hadn't just prepared a feast. He had also hired singers and mummers, so the ballads had to be listened to and the theatrics watched, and the entirety of the feast had to be dutifully praised afterwards.
The mummery, as he soon found out, was staged to specifically honor his wedding to Alysanne. It was a highly elaborate allegory, with Brandon the Builder and the old dragonlords of Valyria making endless flowery speeches in bad rhymes, so that Alaric got quickly confused as to what the plot was even about (if, indeed, there was any). However, to his amazement, when the play was finally over, Alysanne clapped more vigorously than a child who watched their first puppet show at a fair, and she thanked the mummers heartily for performing and Lord Hightower for inviting them.
"Did you actually like it?" he whispered to her as a group of jugglers took the mummers' place.
"It's not about liking," Alysanne answered enigmatically. "This show was tremendously boring, but thanks to it I've had an idea."
What the idea was about, he found out after the jugglers were gone and all the performances were thankfully over. Alysanne turned to Lord Gyles:
"My lord, I think I know what to do about proving King Aemon's birthright."
"Yes, Your Grace?" right as he spoke, Lord Gyles motioned for the High Septon to approach their side of the table.
"Now, look," Alysanne began once everyone who had been in attendance at the daytime meeting was within earshot. "We can't prepare the Speakers, and I don't think just ordering the septons around the land to preach of the 'sin-in-ignorance' would work either – we won't even be able to know how many of them will obey the order. But now it has come to me: if words will most likely fail, and no one among us wants to use force, then we should try reaching the people through entertainment."
"Songs?" asked the High Septon.
"Plays," Alysanne corrected him. "Someone should write a play reflecting everything that has happened around our Exceptionalism dispute... well, maybe without the Shivers, because nobody would want to be reminded of that. You will make sure the mummers put it on in Oldtown, and we will bring it to King's Landing... We must make sure it grows popular, and this way, we'll turn the public sympathy to Aemon without a single sermon or a single breath of dragonflame."
"Who should write such a play, though?" Alaric asked. "The authors of the one we watched?" in his opinion, another creation of that author or authors would only be good for one thing: putting people to sleep.
"No," Alysanne smiled. "I don't think so either. We'll need to search through the mummers and puppeteers that perform at fairs and street celebrations. We don't need a playwright who'd use elegant language: we need someone whose plays would attract crowds."
"But then it might take years to find someone like this," Lord Gyles said.
"Hardly. I think there are plenty of popular shows in King's Landing and Oldtown, and, I'm sure, other cities as well. I'll ask my mistress of whisperers to search in the capital, and you can arrange a similar search here."
"There is one thing we can do to the save the time and money in this... chase," Alaric said, a thought striking him. "We can think up the play's plot in advance and offer it to the playwrights we wish to hire. They'll just need to turn it into the proper monologues and duets and everything."
Alysanne's blue eyes grew wider.
"Alaric!" she cried happily, catching his hands in hers (he froze in astonishment). "Alaric, you are a genius! This way, we can hire different authors in different cities without sending a flurry of ravens to discuss the choice, and we won't have to wait until the play gets from Oldtown to King's Landing or vice versa... and the variety of versions will make the play even more popular!"
If anyone had told me just a few months ago that I would soon be consulting Hightowers on how to create a mummer's show, I'd have thought that person was barking mad, Alaric thought. Alysanne was still holding his hands and grinning in joy, and the Hightowers, including the High Septon, were carefully pretending they were not there.