Chapter 2

"So… beautiful day we are having, right?"

Archmaester Randall's reaction was less than satisfactory to my feeble attempt at redirecting the subject.

He looked at me with a disappointed expression of someone that was just told that Christmas was being cancelled and that the presents were already on their way to the recycling factory.

We were sitting around in his study in the presence of Seneschal Elbert, Archmaester Vaegon and Maester Barthold with me sitting on a small uncomfortable chair in front of an illustrious panel of academics that seemed baffled that one amongst their herd of nerds and geeks tried to join the football team and eat in the cafeteria with the jocks.

Old sour Vaegon, in all his dour valyrian countenance, frowned at me as if he couldn't comprehend my existence while Seneschal Elbert had an expression on his wrinkled face like Hugor of the Hill had come again. I could already hear him thinking: "Oh that boy will get it now! What sort of menial, boring but utterly back breaking work can I give him as punishment? I must think of something!"

Maester Barthold (or Black Bart, as I called him, both due to his numerous links of black steel in his chains and his status as an Ironborn) just looked somewhere between disappointed, sad and exasperated.

"Boy, what in the Gods's green Summer were you thinking?" Randall spoke with a tone of voice of someone who just wanted to desperately wake up from a dream.

I wasn't quite able to hide my wince.

"Well, you see…" I tried to explain. "I… might have tried to run away."

"Aye boy! That was clear for all to see! But why?" Black Bart pleaded while looking to the vaulted ceiling as if asking the Heavens for strength.

"Well, it's not like I am somehow forbidden to leave whenever I want."

From the expressions of the elderly around me seemed like they all had bitten the same sour lemon before the prescripted shot of tequila.

"All acolytes have the freedom to end their studies and leave the Citadel to make their own way in this world, aye, that's true." Black Bart spoke up once more, the movements of his mouth animating his large but well-trimmed beard causing the accessories braided into it to clink and pling against each other. Then his tone turned sharp. "But Maesters do not."

"But I am not a Maester!"

Every single should-be-retiree in the room looked pointedly at the complete chain around my neck.

I decidedly ignore them.

"It is true you have yet to take the oaths, but they are merely a final step, mighty binding as they might be, but once you complete your chain you already are in the process of becoming a Maester." Vaegon spoke, his voice as solid as steel with the tilting accent of the Targaryens, earning a not-so-subtle glare from the Seneschal at his seeming dismissal of the importance of the oaths.

I opened my mouth but Black Bart, the future Archmaester of the Black Steel link, cut me off before I could interject.

"By the Drowned God's locker, if you had any problem against the Citadel big enough to leave then you should have spoken with one of us!" Then he looked at me like I was particularly dim. "Or least left before finishing your chain!"

"Why?" Randall simply spoke.

"I…" I gulped, a bit unnerved and disappointed that I was caught by such a mere thing as chance. I was hoping of leaving very early in the morning for a ship to Braavos where my skills in accounting would probably quickly give me a job in the mercantile city. I had everything ready, even put a false dummy in my bed! However, Black Bart, as mighty skilled with the Ravenry link he might be, was still an Ironborn and had not forgotten his roots earning him as many links of steel as the Archmaester of said link. So, as I entered Ragman's Harbour, he was already there speaking with some of the captains who were about to leave before the tides changed. Suffice to say it was easy to recognize the only tall ice-eyed Dornishman in the entire Citadel carrying his entire life's belongings in a sack. After that he quickly grabbed me by the scruff like I was a pup and dragged my ass back to the Hightower. You think I might have put up a fight, don't you?

Well, you try fighting an Ironborn solo that looked like the embodiment of the wise buff old dude anime trope.

Didn't help that despite his age he was slightly taller than even I was.

I sighed.

"I didn't want to be bound by the oaths just yet" I didn't want to give up sex no matter how little I have done it since arriving in this world. "I wanted to see the world too." I don't want to stay in Westeros when the entire Dance of Dragons is only a few decades or so from happening. "And the entire knowledge I have is merely theoretical, I wanted to put it in practice." I want to a good paying job where I am free to leave if I feel like it. "Staying here meant I would either remain locked in the Hightower or swear to a Lord's castle and then stay trapped there." To stay means stagnation.

All the venerable old geezers looked thoughtful at me after my speech.

"Hmm. Mayhap…" Vaegon muttered, clearly lost in thought.

"Vaegon?" Randall questioned.

Vaegon opened his purple eyes and looked at me with such intensity that I couldn't help but compare the stare to that of a reptile. A very large fire breathing reptile. Whoever dubbed Vaegon Targaryen the Dragonless clearly was never a target of his glare.

"Acolyte Alystair. Please, give me a moment to speak with my colleagues. Go outside, do not go anywhere else." Vaegon said, still looking eerily at me.

As the oak doors closed behind me, I quickly pondered running away but dismissed the idea at the look given to me by the Hightower guard that came up with me and Black Bart all the way from the harbour.

Well time to suck it up and act like an adult.

A long moment passed. At a certain point I started napping on one of the alcoves of the corridor, only to be rudely awakened by Black Bart who hurried me to Archmaester Randall's solar.

I took particular notice that the Seneschal looked particularly put out, before my attention was brought to Randall who coughed.

"Believe it or not, it is unprecedented that an acolyte who has completed his first chain wishes to leave the Citadel. Normally, if this case had happened to anyone else, we might have had to call the entire Conclave to decide upon this matter." Randall spoke, while looking at me with shrouded eyes. "However, no acolyte has, of yet, contributed as much to the Citadel as you have in our eternal pursuit of knowledge. So, the few of us here, have decided to give you one thing."

The question in my mind clearly showed in my face for Vaegon answered the unvoiced inquiry.

"Time. We decided to give you time. Since you wish to experience the world we have decided to allow you this. However, for this, you will still remain an acolyte and you will give back one of your links to show your status remains unchanged." Vaegon took a breath and continued. "My nephew Viserys currently sits on the Iron Throne and his interests in Valyria have demanded that several books to be moved from Dragonstone to the Red Keep which has caused an extra amount of burden to be added to Grand Maester Runciter's already busy schedule. I exchange correspondence with him regularly enough that he has confessed to such difficulties in his advancing age, and he has asked for a few acolytes to join him at the Red Keep to shoulder some of his duties."

Then Randall continued the tale.

"Runciter is a good friend of ours and he has recently read the book you have published, The Mechanics of Numbers, so he is delighted to have found a new way to organize the Red Keep's accounts. However, most nobles do not read the recent publications of the Citadel-"

"Or read at all." Mutters Black Bart.

"- and even more nobles stupidly dismiss our art as counting coppers, so we have decided to send you there to help the Master of Coin and the Grand Maester in overseeing the transition of the Treasury's accounts to the new style of accounting."

My jaw dropped.

"On top of that, you will help in anything the Grand Maester, or the Hand of the King, or the King himself, asks of you. You are a brilliant young man with several links in various subjects so do not be surprised if Runciter gives you the task of tutoring the young princes and princesses. See this as an opportunity, an apprenticeship even with Runciter and Lord Beesbury, which none before have received"

I closed my mouth and audibly gulped.

"And if I refuse?"

If Vaegon's glare had been intimidating, then it did not compare to the combined might of the glares from all the geriatrics in the room.

"Then I swear by all the Gods, Old, New and Drowned, we will drag you to the Conclave for you to recite your vows, push you into the Candle Room, and then make you a Maester - as you, by all rights, should be by now - and assign you to Castle Black."

Well, then it wasn't much of a choice, was it?

"I accept."

A/N: Hello!

I know, I know, bad habits die hard.

I have decided to give this one more chapter to at least justify the HOTD tag beyond the timeline.

And if anyone asks about the age thing: according to canon Maester Aemon already had 6 links by the time he was 12, having entered the Citadel "at nine or ten", and became a full Maester at 19. So Alystair becoming a Maester at 18 isn't as awe inspiring as you might think, especially taking in consideration his own status as an OC/SI.

If you came back and are wondering what happened to the 3rd chapter: I deleted it. The reason for this is because, like I have said in other places, I have the tendency to get swept up by new ideas and write them without a long term plan for them. After thinking carefully, I now have a plan for this fic but the 3rd chapter was not in line with my new plan for this fic, so it had to go, my apologies.

Thank you all very much for your support and readership;

I hope you like it!