It's been more than a year but yes, I'm back to this story. Are you surprised? I am, for sure!
Mirror Image Masked in Mist
The Slight
"What does it say?"
His grandmother's voice was loud enough but it seemed that his mother did not hear the question. How strange! She was staring at the parchment in her lap as if the ink squiggles were not words but snakes rising their pointed heads to bite and poison her. Fear rushed through his veins even before his grandmother repeated, "Melissa! What does His Grace want?"
Slowly, as if her head was being tugged by an invisible rope, Melissa looked up. Her face was strangely wooden, as if someone had frosted it with too much snow and it now hurt. "He wants Brynden," she said. "He wants him to go to court."
The joy on his grandmother's face was quickly replaced by something that Brynden could not decipher. "Does he want you to accompany him?"
His mother laughed – her mouth moved and the sound coming out was that of laughter but it was not the warm laughter Brynden was used to. "No, he doesn't. I'm lucky in that, at least. But he wants Brynden. It was time for him to go to court and whatnot…"
For a moment, something in Brynden roared with joy but that quickly went away at the sight of his mother's face.
"Perhaps it is," his grandmother said but even Brynden could say that she did not mean it. "Soon, the boy will be of age to be fostered…"
"Yes, in three years!" Melissa snapped. "You know what this order means, Mother, I am certain. He didn't even ask about the girls. All he cares about is parading Brynden at court to wound the pride of the remaining Brackens…"
If she knew that he was at the other side of the open window, on the wooden bench at the terrace overlooking the dead godswood, she would have never said it. She rarely spoke about the King their father and never in negative terms. His brief joy at going to court was quickly drowned by the realization that he'd be paraded… He didn't know what the word meant but by the way his mother spoke it, it was something to be feared… To would the Brackens' pride? How could anyone's pride be wounded? Surely one could not take a sword to it? But when he asked his mother, late at night as she came to his chamber before he went to sleep, she gave him a look of dismay. "You should not eavesdrop on people, Brynden! If you wanted to know something, you should have just asked me."
"Would you have told me?" he asked a little sleepily – it was quite late indeed. Normally, his mother came a lot earlier.
Melissa sighed. "Probably not," she said. "You should never repeat what you heard, Brynden. Never. In front of anyone. But you should be careful. Do show your father due respect. He is your father and our king besides. But try not to love him, as charming as he decides to be. He cannot be relied on. He can send you back in disgrace whenever he decides – and he often doesn't think before making a decision."
"So I'm going to leave?"
She reached down and clutched him tight. "I do not dare refuse," she said, leaving him petrified by the words that he had never heard from her before. She had never not dared anything. She had never feared anything.
The guards waited in full formation in the bailey. The galleries were filled with courtiers who had come to bid farewell or leave themselves. Before the long rectangular building near the White Sword Tower, a wheelhouse with twelve horses stood ready. The three gates that would let the party out of the Red Keep had been opened since dawn but the longer no one came out of the Prince of Dragonstone's chambers, the more the muttering and speculations grew.
Mariah Martell, the future Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, now stood in front of a door flanked by two gold cloaks who refused to move away even at her command.
"My lady," Ilena Redtree who had come with her, "let's go back. They're right, it isn't safe."
Mariah gave her a withering look, fear coursing through her veins and giving additional edge to her voice. "I don't remember asking about your opinion, Ilena. And certainly not about theirs! You can go back. You, open the door."
The two men looked at each other and the shorter one shook his head. "I am sorry, Your Grace. I cannot. The King himself told us…"
"The King won't live forever," Mariah said icily. "And it won't be wise of you to forget who is going to succeed him, for I surely won't forget your faces."
They shifted their weight, caught between a rock and a hard place, between a woman who would be all powerful tomorrow and a man who was all powerful today. But at the end, they didn't step away and when she walked straight to them, they brought their spears closer to bar her way.
From a side corridor, the Grand Maester himself appeared, carrying a few bottles that he almost dropped when he saw the two young women.
"Your Grace, I beg you to leave these chambers at once!"
"Not before I see my son. What's going on, Grand Maester Milladron? What's wrong with him? Do you really think you can stop me from entering?"
"Yes," he said bluntly. "I'm sorry to say it, but it's the speckled monster we're dealing with. If you as much as breathe the same air as the Prince, you can give the infection to your lord husband or your other sons. I cannot allow this and I'm sure the King will understand my reasons."
Mariah turned so white that he rushed to steady her and she let him lead her to the nearest bench carved in the thick wall. Ilena rushed to fetch some water and Mariah's fingers dug into the Grand Maester's painfully. "The speckled monster? Are you sure? How can that be? He hasn't had any contacts with anyone who has it, I'm sure."
"But he takes part in processions, doesn't he? All it takes is one poor soul too close. The guards cannot keep the air away, Your Grace."
She shook her head wildly, insistently. "But he doesn't get ill," she insisted. "Even when he was little, he rarely succumbed to any children's disease."
But she immediately saw that the conclusions the Grand Maester drew from this bit of information differed from hers considerably. "This isn't good, Your Grace. Children need to get ill and recover from small ailments. It isn't good when their first clash with one is something so major," he went on and cursed himself when the horror on her face intensified. "We're doing all that we can. There are people who survived it."
"How many?" she asked desperately.
He looked down. "Not many."
"So I know," she murmured and rose. "I'm going inside."
"No," he said. "Forgive me, my lady, but you aren't."
It was a measure of just how little influence she and Daeron held in this castle that the gold cloaks listened to the Grand Maester and not her.
"Of course they'd listen to the Grand Maester," Aegon said irritably when she brought the matter before him. "No one wants you to spread the disease in the Red Keep. And you can't do anything for Maekar anyway. He's being cared for by the best minds of the land. Worried mothers are of no use in such circumstances."
"He's right, Mariah," Daeron said reluctantly. "The speckled monster is extremely contagious. Think about the rest of them!"
But she couldn't. It was like this when Rhaegel had one of his spells. She couldn't think of anything and anyone else. Only, Rhaegel's spells never posed a danger to his life. And she didn't trust the maesters. Even the Grand Maester. There were no people of decency in her goodfather's court.
"I won't go out before he's better," she offered, deeming it a reasonable compromise. "This way, everyone will be safe."
Daeron gave her a look of dark horror, the thought of losing both her and Maekar too terrible to contemplate. "I cannot allow this," he said. "You know I can't."
Aegon smiled.
"I never thought I'd see the day you side with him against me," Mariah spat.
"That isn't what I am doing."
But the drama had become too intensified for the King, it seemed. He struggled to his feet. "You're such a fool," he said. "There is something wrong with you mothers anyway. He'll die anyway, no matter what you do, so you can make some better use of your time. Go to the sept like Naerys would have done and pray. And don't forget to include the bit about his looks," he added. "The lucky few who survive the disease are left so disfigured that they can never show their faces in public."
"Why, thank you for reminding us," Daeron snapped back. "We'll think of this bridge when it's time to cross it. For now, we'll be pleased just with him surviving."
For a while, Aegon stared at them, a slow smile curving his lips and transfiguring his bloated face into something gruesome to see. "I'll let you know what the outcome was, one way or another," he said. "You are no maesters and you'll be of no use to him, so I'd really advise you to go forward with your plans. You are going back to Dragonstone, aren't you?"
Even Daeron recoiled, stunned by such heartlessness, and Aegon immediately noticed his weakness. Like a hunting animal, the young man thought. He smelled it. But Daeron was too preoccupied to care. "Not before he gets better," he said.
"Yes, before," Aegon said. "We can take care of him just as well without you as we would with you here. I am sure my sweet Serenei will oversee his recovery… if he does live through the peak of the ailment and can be looked upon without a tender soul swooning."
He didn't need to finish. His meaning was clear. If Maekar survived, if he, by some miracle remained untouched by the aftermath, he and Serenei of Lys would take care to turn him into everything Daeron and Mariah despised.
Mariah's hand flew to her throat and then desperately sought a support but found none. Her feet could no longer support her and when she collapsed in a cloud of blue silks, Aegon smiled again. Finally, he had found this stubborn Dorniswoman's weak spot.
He'd have great fun being a devoted grandfather. A great fun indeed. If he got the chance.