Forman II

Merle,

I've found my way to the stinking capital, and its pungent fragrance is as if your chamber pot followed me from Old Town to Blackwater Bay. Humorous to think the only thing I will not miss about the horrendous experience it is to be acquainted with you, the smell, is the only thing here to remind me of the decomposing puss pool that you've become.

I met the young man Hensen Hightower. I'd say he was a lovely and cordial future Lord, but we both know that couldn't be true. As much of a cunt as he is, he may indeed be more redeemable than most of them have been born to be, but that may be because of the unusually hopeful outlook I have on account of this new assignment.

For as little as I have going for me in life, windfalls such as being rid of you, Morton, and his retched tome, should be celebrated. I toast to those left behind in Old Town. May the lot of you rot like the putrid boils you are!

More seriously, you shriveled and decrepit meat sack, I am eager to inform you of a matter you may find of interest and import. As the Archmaester of the Higher Mysteries, it is paramount you consult, at least through correspondence, on the case of the young Brynden Rivers, the son of Missy Blackwood and the King.

Upon reaching the city, he was brought into my care with a rare case of fever. There was no heat, but the boy would sweat, especially at night. On the evening the party stopped to investigate strange noises from the wood, the boy was said to have woken from a dream, retching, speaking nonsensibly, but, in the words of Ser Uthor Bulwer of the King's Guard, warning of the fate of those that ventured into the wood, like a premonition of sorts.

If you could survive the journey, the boy and I would benefit from your counsel.

As much as it pains me to say, I look forward to your reply.

If your old hands can even hold a quill.

The Foulest Cripple to have ever drawn breath

"See to it that it is sealed with the Redwyne crest for Archmaester Merle's eyes alone. The missive I sent yesterday should occupy them enough to miss this one. I can trust you, yes?" Forman asked the young acolyte, who was serving his term in service to the Grand Maester. It was seen to be a prestigious opportunity, though Forman knew better. A boy Forman knew from his earlier years that had never even earned his chain, Cotten Hardseed, once served Larkin and said he was treated as lowly as a slave, and never once spoke to the man himself.

"Aye, my Lord."

"That sounded as convincing as the proclamation of love from a whore. Here. Speak a word of this, or fail to ensure the missive's safe passage," Forman said, passing a small clutch of silvers to the wispy younger lad, waiting to finish until the coin exchanged hands, "and Larkin will know of this very bribe."

The acolyte tried to force the silvers back into Forman's hand, but the cripple replaced his left with his right, good for bad, and the attempts were comically futile. Forman failed to contain his laughter.

"Just take it. I'm sure you've eaten naught but bowls of brown since your assignment here. The least I can do is spread my father's wealth to those in need, and based on what I know of this position, you are indeed in need." Forman smiled to hear the rhyme. "Get a drink, lad. I'll tell no one if you just do as I've asked."

Wordlessly, the boy smiled and tucked the clutch into his robe.

With a nod, Forman began hobbling away as nobly as he could. He wondered what the boy thought of him, now that his back had turned.

He wondered what they all thought, in the end.

Forman's first full day in King's Landing had more for the crippled Maester than the Citadel ever did. The king, his daughter, the boy Brynden, and even the gods damned baker all had need of his healing.

Whether their ills were of the body and its systems, or their shaken minds, with all that had occurred within the past weeks, he wondered how anyone could survive the Red Keep and all its trials.

Especially Larkin, who himself was no rigorous man of strength, known throughout the private and hushed whispers in the corners of the Citadel as a politician more than he ever was a scholar. He studied every mystery, becoming the most well rounded yet least tested among them. Never had he failed an examination, but never had he truly achieved anything of intrigue or import. He only ever attempted to be good enough at everything to be considered good, never great at any one thing, but wiser than most about everything.

But when it came down to it, Larkin was as useful a healer as a blacksmith. If it didn't require hot irons, the Grand Maester might as well be a Septon and offer strong prayers. His help in earnest would prove just as ineffective.

That day, Larkin was his first appointment. The Grand Maester requested the cripple climb to his chambers that morning. Forman sent a servant to request Larkin either meet him in his own room, or at least somewhere at ground level. The same servant returned after a quarter hour with the simple reply of, "No."

So, Forman climbed the steps, each steeper than the last, settling into a rhythm after so many, and found his way into the Grand Maester's quarters. "Settled in?" Larkin asked, without as much as making eye contact, as if he actually cared when he clearly didn't, staring down at the blank parchment before him, his quill dipped in a tankard of ink, and his hands clasped gracefully on the desk before him.

"As settled as a visitor can be," Forman replied after a long enough pause, still out of breath from the climb. The Grand Maester's quarters were more opulent than most Lords'. Throughout the main rooms of his apartments hung tapestries of Targaryen conquests and victories, many of them featuring the long extinct dragons. The rooms' furniture was finely carved, some pieces ivory and ebony, others harder looking tropical woods like bonewater and teak. There was finery all around the old man, and none of it seemed able to make him smile.

Forman's own accommodations were similarly superior than what he had grown used to in his time in Old Town, but he did not want to tell Larkin that. It would inform the Grand Maester more specifically on Forman's position within the ranks of their order, if the highest official ranking member of them didn't already know, which was more than likely.

But power among the maesters didn't flow down from the capital, it flowed from the banks of the Honeywine and spread from their seat in Old Town, the true head of the order.

"I was surprised to hear Romono recommend you to this station, though I gather you've more links now than even Old Morton. I'm pleased to know Zander's brother far more useful than he ever turned out to be."

"Aye. My brother is worth what he is, no more no less. Not a miniscule amount of worth, but neither is he a treasure trove," Forman replied, trying to sound in agreement to avoid friction so soon with his superior.

"So, to get to it," Larkin said, still looking down at his parchment, only shifting his eyes to reach for an unopened scroll to the side. He kept it in his hands, covering the seal, as if Forman were trying to look, which he was, but subtly enough the Grand Maester didn't notice. Larkin guarded the seal out of habit, it seemed. "See to the King. With his excess in all its forms, he is always in need of something. At minimum, he's in need of observation. We are relieved to have you here."

Forman set off to see the King in his private chambers. Aegon was known throughout the realm for many things. None of the things Forman had heard included wit.

Forman had his Grace partially disrobe and make himself comfortable on the examination table carpenters had constructed specially for the King's weight. It was a simple structure of pine and oak, but each of the many legs was reinforced with multiple bracing arms. Even then, the structure seemed to creak as he rolled onto it.

"How comfortable are you with jests of your form?" the King asked as Forman inspected the creases in his obese body for rash. The maesters should have already been doing so, yet they failed to, as was the case for many of his order when it came to such basic tasks. "I'm fine with you teasing me harshly for the nauseating nature of my own. I'm twice the size of when I was first called fat, and if anyone deserves a chance to say so, it would be the one forced to clean between the folds of all the extra portions I've been eating since they let me sit in that damned chair. I ask because if I'm to see you regularly, I'd like to know how harshly to treat you so you don't slip moon tea in my tonics so I shit blood for a week."

"I'll only slip you moon tea if you make jests of my care. I take no pride in my form, 'tis the gods doing. I do take pride in my skill in medicine," Forman replied, fulfilling his duty.

The human form is disgusting. From the fluid, growths, and tumors, to the smells from inside and out, to the noises things made as things happened. Everything a healing maester was involved in required some level of foulness, and an acceptance of foulness was paramount in maintaining the focus needed to cure the ills of such a disgusting thing as a body.

Forman had seen worse than a fat king with multiple diseases from the whores he continued to bed.

"Very well. I think the ease in which you perform this speaks to either a lack or mastery of whatever skill, so I am thankful, I suppose, for that skill. But please tell me they don't teach this specific task in your studies. It would be a shame to know a class is taught in cleaning pigs."

"Pigs, your grace, are far cleaner and less slovenly. Cleaning a pig is taught to the stable boys. At the Citadel, we clean whales. Serves us better when we come into the service of Lords, especially the ones on the coast. There seems to be a correlation with fat lords and their proximity to vast amounts of lamprey pies."

"Ha!" the King laughed, causing the fold Forman working in to ripple like a wave. "You're quite possibly the funniest member of both your order and family. Are you sure Zander is your brother? Seems you got all of the best things except a working body."

"And look at him, with nothing but a physique that works and a name that sounds familiar, he was able to rise to the Small Council."

"I suppose that's all it takes," the King said, as if he was sullen. "Look at me. I don't even have a body that works and they let me be the motherfucking King."

"I was never surprised they let you be King, your Grace. What surprises me still is that women keep climbing on top of you."

"Who says I don't mount them?"

"You do. Your fat fucking lard of a body says so, your Grace. If you were climbing on top of women and fucking them as much as you fuck, even in the short time I've been here, you'd weigh four less stone. That's a lot of fucking work."

The King was beside himself. Forman couldn't even continue his duty, as Aegon was rolling back and forth, testing the strength of the wooden structure below, as it moaned like an aurochs too tired to plow, laughing hysterically at Forman's jests. The maester couldn't help but sweat, nervous, frightened even, for his tongue just continued to wag, spilling fouler and fouler filth of the King to his person, a sentence of death somewhat likely for the new arrival, despite the King's good sense of it before him.

He just kept laughing. I just kept going. Why didn't I stop? Gods, I'm to hang for my tongue, or worse, he'll take my tongue away! The King is a tyrant, they say. Mad. Uncontrollably volatile and dangerous.

What have I done?

"I would warn you to stop, I am the King, you know, but I can't. This is the most I've laughed since they died."

"Laughter can be a good tool to heal, your Grace. And you started it."

"I didn't even get to say a jest. I was merely asking if I was allowed."

"This is your realm, your Grace. I would say you're allowed."

"I can't come up with anything now. I was too busy laughing at how fat I am."

"Don't laugh at that, your Grace. It's no laughing matter. We should focus on reducing the stress your size puts on your royal frame. Besides, the more you laugh, the harder it is for me to clean the creases."

"Very well. Back to your duty, cripple."

There it is.

Forman discussed a regimen with his Grace that would lead to better health, in relation to his obesity anyway, as there was little anyone could do to stop his incessant whoring. The King seemed committed when they discussed it, citing his desire to improve many aspects of his existence and to live as long as the gods would allow. Forman said the gods hadn't shoveled food into his mouth for near a decade like a grave digger in the rain, and between laughs, the King admitted it wasn't him shoveling either.

"That's what the servants are for."

Forman finished his work on the king and hobbled his way to the chambers of the young Brynden Rivers. The boy was a curious case. Forman arrived to his chambers and the door swung open. It was a bit of a foreboding omen, but Forman gave little credence to superstition. He hobbled in to see the boy at a desk, reading a book far too thick for a boy of seven. It wasn't the first time Forman had seen him, visiting the boy almost as soon as he arrived in the capital, but each time still seemed a bit of a shock.

His hair was pin straight, long, and well brushed, but there was no where to put it. He tried to brush it behind his ears, but every time he looked down to read, it would fall back out of place, covering his face as if he meant to hide behind it. His skin was almost blank white, as if he spent any more time inside and out of the sun, his skin would be translucent and could then be used to study the workings of the systems of the human form. His gaunt face looked wiser and older than his age, and he had the same shape of his ancestor's jaw, cut from the mold of the conqueror, regardless of his age and stature.

It was his eyes, though. The boy's eyes were unsettling.

"Is there ever a use for it a regular hand couldn't do?" the boy wondered aloud, not aware of the potential lack of courtesy in asking. By his tone, he seemed truly fascinated, and not in the way Forman feared from that one woman he had discussed with the men aboard the ship.

Forman held it up to the boy, as plain to see as he could make it. "Only to scare others off. I'm afraid there's no use for a stump, other than to be mocked. I just prefer to laugh along. It's not like I made this thing. I was born this way, and I'm not to be blamed for such a mistake."

The boy smiled, though he had little reason to. Forman wasn't sure what the boy had seen, but he, at seven, had seen worse than Forman at nine-and twenty, and Forman had been taught to use blades to open the body. He'd seen a man suffocate from a bleed inside his chest.

Forman had seen some of the advanced horrors of humanity.

Somehow

The boy had still seen worse.

At one point in their conversation, the boy asked, "In what manner would one die when hit with an arrow?"

The boy seemed serious, as if the question or the answer pained him. Forman treated the query as such. "Where was the person in question hit?"

"The chest," Brynden replied softly.

"And when you say, 'In what manner,' do you mean how would the person actually die?"

"And if it hurt a lot."

Poor child. Forman had heard of the boy's exploits on the road from the White Knight Ser Uthor Bulwer. To hear the brute tell it, the boy was forged of fine steel, the toughest of mettle, just young. I see a boy wrought with guilt.

Forman replied, "Master Rivers, when a man dies, the body may undergo changes that dull the senses and ease the suffering one might imagine comes with a lethal wound like you are asking of. It is a hard subject to answer, but from what has been discovered, when a man dies, its usually better than the worst it could be, for what that's worth, I suppose."

The boy shot right back, barely digesting the previous answer with, "Does the Citadel teach of dreams, maester? Is there meaning or purpose to them?" the boy asked, staring up into the ceiling.

"Most of the answers the Citadel has for the unanswerable aren't worth the air it takes to speak of them. As for me, I enjoy things not having answers, so we can discuss and try to find them together. That, to me, is knowledge. The shared understanding of something is better than the unified opinion of one entity. As for your dreams, they're not unprecedented. It's just not many could even begin to understand what you're going through."

"How do you achieve knowledge of something when there are few, if any, with any understanding of it?"

"You're too wise for seven, boy. That question is more intelligent than most maesters' Ultimate Summations upon earning their chains." Forman sincerely pondered the question, as the boy deserved at least the attempts at an answer. "I suppose when there is no understanding to share, then the misunderstanding, or the uncertainty is what needs to be shared. Information of all sorts can inform, so even the disconnected images of your terrors could potentially lead to some greater idea of what ails you, if anything at all."

"Do you have dreams?"

"I suppose I do. When I sleep, I see things. I walk through fields unencumbered by a limp, my right hand fully formed and able to wave through the tall grass as I stride through it. Other nights, I see the whole of my body shrivel to match my misshapen right side, down to even my face. I dream of court jesters in the colors of my house with my brother's face and mine, drinking clouds of red wine, and falling deep into the dark sea. And I see horses with wings floating gayly over four eyed toads that judge their hooves' shape. Dreams mean little and less, unless we assign meaning."

The boy seemed unsatisfied. The maester felt he owed him more. "Tell me about your dreams. Maybe we could talk you through them."

"It's hard, Maester Forman. It's hard to remember more than the feeling when I wake," he said, staring off past even the room itself. Brynden was present with Forman, yet he also seemed to be vacillating between somewhere off in the distance as well.

"On the road, with your sisters, you woke in a terror, yes?" Forman asked, studying the boy's eyes to see if they might offer information the boy's thoughts otherwise couldn't.

"I did. It was different," the boy replied in contemplation. "Each night something stirs me awake, but that time, and before Darry were different." The boy finished and turned, looking directly into Forman's deep stare. It was haunting. Forman tried to focus past the feeling. Brynden's face soured as he admitted, "I'm sorry. I don't know how to describe it though." As frightening as he appeared, he was still just a boy.

"Well, let us make an attempt. Just say what you can. Even the fact that they're different is information enough to start."

"The crow," he muttered.

"What, master Brynden? I couldn't hear you."

"The crow. It's a crow, and it shows me things. It's hard to think about without getting frightened. But when I have the dreams I see, it's the crow." His face somehow paled whiter, and it was as if he had seen something in that moment in that distant stare.

"You are safe now, Brynden," Forman said to reassure the boy, reaching his good hand out for the boy's shoulder. "You're here at the capital. You've been here for a few days. None within the city walls wish harm upon you. You're their hero. The Hero of the Road, Brynden Rivers. They even call you the Blood Raven."

"That's not why they call me that," the boy replied. "They say my mark is a raven of blood."

"That is why they may have called you that before, but now, you're the boy who killed his attackers. The Blackwood Raven, not afraid of blood."

"And a hero, aye," the boy remarked, as if the word was something of an insult. "People love their heroes, don't they? But heroes are cursed. That's what the crow is, maester, a curse, and that's what dreams are."

Forman talked the boy through his state the best he could, seeing his despair and confusion, but in his heart, he feared he had failed him. Nothing could save the child from sleep, for that was where he was most fearful.

And, eventually, even heroes had to rest.

Forman wondered if the boy Brynden would face suffering again that night and if there was anything a maester could do to help him.

Hopefully Merle would know what to do.

After finishing with the boy, suggesting Brynden try staying active in the yard and his studies to promote as restful a sleep as possible, Forman was summoned to meet another patient in what would be his new treatment room. The servants had spent the time since he'd arrived clearing out a room used to store the recently passed Queen's things, as the King and his kin had yet to even consider what to do with them. The room would serve him well enough, but he wondered where Queen Naerys' belongings would be moved.

When he had finally finished his hobble back down to the main corridors of the Red Keep's halls where his room was, his patient was already waiting for him. The new cook needed treatment for a bad burn.

"How long have you been a cook for, my good man?" Forman asked, trying to keep the man's mind off the pain of the bubbling flesh of his forearm.

"I was always a baker. Grease catches quicker than butter," he said. At first, Forman was too concerned with his task to ponder what that might mean, but later, he wondered how a cook in the royal kitchen could be placed as a cook when he was a baker by trade.

I guess with King Aegon's needs, both the maesters in charge of his welfare and the cooks in charge of feeding him need all the help they can get.

As the cook left, Forman thought he could finally sit down and relax for a moment. It was not to be. Almost as soon as the cook had left, the young Princess Daenerys crept in gingerly.

Daenerys was everything one would imagine a Targaryen Princess would be. Upon first glance, she looked to be in fine health. There was a rouge to her cheeks that seemed vibrant. She was neither too slim nor too well nourished. And though she appeared fatigued, it was said that she had to aid in the newborn child Shiera's care after the unfortunate incident with her wet nurse, which would be expected of an adolescent girl in the face of such a duty. It made Forman ponder what her issue could be.

"What seems to trouble you, your Grace," Forman asked, hiding the grotesquery of his misshapen right arm and hand.

"I apologize for the intrusion, my Lord," she said, smiling shyly and bowing her head. Likely she's uncomfortable with my disfigurement.

"Don't be amusing. Never apologize for intruding here. My assigned role in this castle is to wait for each intrusion as it arrives with anticipation and vigor. Come. Sit. What ails you?"

"Nothing ails me in the usual sense, I'm afraid. Though when I went to my father for his aid, he was at least kind enough to recommend speaking with you. Since he didn't have the time, he said you might be the cleverest person in the castle."

"I'm not sure that would be a complimentary superlative," Forman replied with a chuckle, amused the King might have said something along those lines. "Yet a maester can serve his purpose in many ways. I am no one if not someone who will attempt to assist in whatever way I can."

The girl sat in her seat squirming, or nearly so. Forman wondered if he was imagining it, and if somehow the presence of this young girl made him uncomfortable, reminding him of the horrors of his own youth. Then, she looked up at him, her violet eyes glassy and wet. "I'm afraid I cannot begin to speak without forgetting my courtesy."

Forman exposed his arm for the first time, showing his own vulnerability to help match the brimming bit about to burst from the young princess. "My dear, I'm a foul-mouthed cripple with a penchant for too many drinks before noon. If there is a person of my order that will allow for a lapse in courtesy, it is me. Tell me, child, as plainly as one can."

"I'm afraid I've gone mad, maester. I've lost everything, and everything seems to keep getting worse." Her breathing quickened, tears began to fall, and her voice quivered back and forth from cries, to breathing, to stammering sadness. It was moving. So much so, Forman had to fight back his own empathy.

"Now, child, don't be so upset." Unsure of how to console her, Forman offered the child his words the best he knew how. "It's not that you've gone mad, it's just that you've learned the whole world is, and is likely going to be for some time. Everyone's mad, Princess. We just find different ways to hide it from the rest of the world."

She cried harder, but her face changed. A smile broke through, then a nervous giggle. "How is that supposed to be clever? That sounds stupid," she sniffed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

"If you're mad, and I'm stupid, I'm afraid you may not benefit much from this conversation." He tried to speak as plainly as he could, neither firm nor soft. She neither needed condemnation for her outburst, which was likely cathartic and appropriate considering Forman's initial levity, nor the blind pity for her pain, as Forman didn't know the girl at all, and it would seem disingenuous.

Her tears stopped, though she had to wipe the last traces of them from her face as her sadness waned. "If I'm mad, I'm madder still for thinking I might."

"As I said, your Grace. The world is mad. Share some of your madness with me and mayhaps it will feel a bit lesser. Mayhaps it won't, but there is a chance that speaking about it, especially to the most cleverest of the cleverests, makes some of the everything that's left a bit better too."

"I knew that wasn't how you're supposed to say it," the Princess replied, referring to 'cleverest' as opposed to 'most clever.'

"It is actually correct both ways, it's complicated and has to do with the fact that it is both two syllables and, well, never mind that, but since you said it the first time as if it was incorrect, I wanted to make it sound the more silly when I said it."

"So, it is only incorrect if you say both, like when you said most cleverest then?"

"I suppose that makes you the clever one."

"And I say it's most clever."

"Most clever it is."

When she regained her composure, Princess Daenerys began to speak about the loss of her mother, her father's adjustment to being both too busy and newly interested in raising her, and the sudden death of the wet nurse. Surprisingly, she seemed most disturbed by the servant's suicide, as if there was something sinister to it, but as she spoke, the strain on her young features seemed to lighten, and her sharp wit reminded the maester of another he had met that day.

She left his treatment room smiling. He had felt as accomplished with that patient interaction as he had with any in his life.

And she barely ever looked at my stump.

After much hobbling and a full day of consults, Forman was ready for a drink. Once he finally reached his chambers, he finished a cask and fell asleep early. Each new day after was more of the same.

It was four nights before he finally ran into his brother. It's as if I somehow remind him of home, or what by the fates he could have been. Funny, in each other we are both haunted. Myself, haunted by his near perfection with the promise of what could have been, and he, by the randomness of fate, seemingly forever only a coin flip away from looking like me.

But the coin had long since flipped for Zander and Forman Redwyne. One, a future Lord and a member of the Small Council. Aegon the Unworthy's Small Council at that, and the attractive one of the group, so the young bachelor future Lord had the pick of the finest women in the capital the King hadn't already given disease. The other, an outcast crippled maester sworn to father no children and hold no lands in service to an order that hid as much knowledge as it was said to seek.

It was not by anything other than happenstance and proximity that Forman found himself drinking in the same villa as Alezander. It was a brothel, of sorts. The women were paid more for their company than their actual anatomical company. Forman rarely enjoyed whores. He slept with many, for only a few women ever knew Forman that way without first taking coin, but Foreman didn't enjoy paying women to want him.

He didn't mind paying exorbitant amounts for drinks if it meant lovely company with fine ladies in finer clothing that could actually continue a conversation past, "It'll be three silvers for you, cripple," and whose mouths had full sets of white teeth, which was a rarity in King's Landing. He just didn't think it would be a place his brother would ever be seen.

"Isn't that your brother?" the buxom auburn-haired beauty Jessalyn asked, pointing behind Forman.

"I hope it's not, but since our faces are nearly identical, I'm sure you're looking right at him aren't you?"

As was the case in most instances Forman shared a room with his brother, the woman whose attention he had just held, was now ignoring the cripple for his statuesque sibling. Of all the places for you to be, and all the moments.

I guess it's for the better. It's not like a lovely lady as this would ever lay with the likes of me anyway.

Forman turned and prepared himself. Sure enough, as the small crowd of patrons and employees noticed Zander, they all turned, and as it always was, all eyes were on The Master of Ships.

"Brother?" Alezander said, cocking his head and looking through the gazing sea of faces. "Is that you?"

"No, Zander. It's your other twin," Forman replied. Music from a lute player must have drowned out his words, but so too was the room wholly fixed on his brother, and must have failed to hear his jest.

"I guess it's my other twin," his confident voice sounded through the noise, as though Forman had not made the exact same jest half a heartbeat before. Yet, when it was Zander saying his words, the people began laughing. Zander would usually fare better in a crowded room, but for it to be the exact same jest, Forman could barely handle it. He was the cripple and the fool. Again, like that time so long ago with Romono.

Understandably, Forman didn't like crowds, especially not around his brother.

The maester rose from his stool at the raised counter where his drinks had been served, intending to escape the establishment as quickly as possible. Jessalyn's agreeable company soured as her obvious admiration and preference for his brother became too blatant to ignore. Nodding to no one in particular, he reached for his cloak and cane from beneath his stool, and began hobbling away as inconspicuously as he could.

Another meaningless superlative.

"Wait, brother. I've just arrived."

"And I've been in this city for four days, now, yet you've not once even acknowledged that I am within ten miles of your person until we meet on accident. Do not feign interest in me only because fate happens to have brought us to the same place to drink on the same night. Good evening, my Lord, and good morrow. Good year for all that it's worth. I mean you no ill, but let me leave in peace with no further embarrassment."

"Is that what I am to you? An embarrassment?"

"No, you imbecile, that's what I am in comparison to you."

"Stay, brother," Zander pleaded, his pupils wide and his facial movements erratically active, like he was almost twitching. "And we can be merry again, like the old days of our youth in the Arbor!" The taller twin reached down with an arm to embrace his brother from the side, and Forman shrugged Zander off him.

"So you can humiliate me like you used to? So you can belittle me, and prop me up next to you, the cracked and broken rock to your gemstone, to make you look perfect to all your followers. Isn't it enough that people worship you? Do you need to see their disgust of me as well?"

"It's nothing like that, brother. We are Redwynes, and we drink! Isn't that what we always said?"

Forman had nothing more to say to his brother. Not after what he'd done. He shrugged passed him and tried hobbling away.

Zander caught up quickly, refusing to relent. "Come now, brother. When will you forgive me? It was nearly twenty years ago now. Haven't you forgotten about it?"

Forman could never forget it.

Zander had seduced a young woman and told her to meet him in the stables. He then told Forman that the young woman wanted to meet him, the cripple, in the stables. In the dim light, the twins were identical, and at first, the girl didn't know she'd been fooled. Neither did Forman. The girl just started kissing him.

He had never kissed a girl before that day. He was sixteen, but as a cripple, and the son of a lord, no girl wanted to do those sorts of things with him. It would be dishonorable for one, and besides, no girl would ever even look upon Forman without a hint of disgust.

So, he allowed it. What was he supposed to do? Stop her? She must not have noticed at first, for they were kissing long enough for Forman to lose himself in the excitement, and reach to hold onto the girl tighter.

He could barely see her. She, likely, could barely see him. But when he reached out with his stump arm, she must have felt it, and when she had noticed, she had immediately stopped kissing and screamed.

The Lord and Lady Redwyne had finally lost their patience with their crippled waste of a son. They had believed Zander when he'd told them it had been Forman's idea, not his, and that the prank had been on the girl and not Forman. His parents had been more than cross, fearing him a monster and a potential rapist in the making. Zander hadn't thought that far in advance of his game, but neither had he corrected his parents for fear of what punishment would befall him if the crosshairs shifted from twin to twin.

So, within a fortnight, Forman Redwyne was shipped to Old Town to attend lessons at the Citadel. Peremore the twisted indeed.

A/N

I hope you all enjoy Forman as much as I do. Let me know what you think. Thanks as always for reading, and look out for new chapters as soon as I can get them to you.

Harwin Snow