Measure of Dragons (Aerys, son of Daeron SI)

[Sakumo]

On the way to Ashford, 209 A.C.:

The old man had not wanted to stop, but the fever had other plans.

Ser Arlan of Pennytree swayed in the saddle for the better part of the morning, and Dunk had ridden close beside him on Chestnut, one hand hovering near the old knight's belt should he need to catch him. By midday, when they reached the shade of a broad oak growing alone beside the road, Ser Arlan finally allowed that perhaps they might rest a while.

He did not get up again.

"It is only a chill, boy," the old man had said the night before, though his teeth had chattered even beneath three blankets and the heat of the fire. "I have had worse on the Dornish marches. A day's rest and I'll be fit to break lances again." His voice had been thin as parchment, and Dunk had wanted very badly to believe him.

Ser Arlan of Pennytree had never been a large man, not the way Dunk had grown to be large, but he had always seemed sturdy — knotted and weathered like old oak, a man who had outlasted two kings and more wars than he cared to count, who had taught a barefoot boy from Flea Bottom which end of a lance to hold and how to fall from a horse without breaking his neck. He had seemed, to Dunk at least, like the kind of man the world simply could not do without.

The world, it seemed, thought otherwise.

By the time the sun stood high over the oak tree, the old knight's breath had gone shallow and rattling, and his eyes, when they opened at all, no longer seemed to know where they were.

"Dunk," he rasped once, gripping the boy's wrist with a strength that startled him. "Dunk, lad. You'll go on to Ashford. The tourney. I still owe fees to the innkeep at—" A cough took the rest of the sentence from him.

"I know the way, ser," Dunk said, though his voice cracked like a boy's, not a man grown of six-and-ten who stood a head taller than most grown knights. "You've shown me the way many a time, ser."

The old man's eyes found his, clear for just a moment, the way a candle flares brightest just before it gutters. "Aye," he whispered. "That I have." His hand loosened. "Bring me... under a tree, lad. Someplace with shade. I have had my fill of dust and open road." A ghost of the old dry humor touched his cracked lips. "I mean to rest a while."

He said nothing more after that.

Dunk sat with him through the long silence that followed, beneath the oak that would, before evening, become a grave. He did not weep — Ser Arlan had never had patience for tears, not even when Dunk had broken his arm falling from Chestnut as a boy — but something in him, some soft, unguarded place, closed over like a fist.

When at last the old knight's chest ceased its shallow rise and fall, Dunk rose, fetched the second-best of Ser Arlan's two shovels from behind Thunder's saddle, and began to dig.

He was still digging, sweat-soaked and hollow-eyed, when he heard horses on the road and looked up to see a column of riders rounding the bend. At their head rode an old man absorbed in a book, indifferent to the world around him — until he raised his eyes and found Dunk, and something in his face sharpened into fascination.

He was thin and spindly, his long hair mostly hidden beneath a hood, his robes plain beside a lord's finery but far better than any smallfolk's, a dagger at his belt. It was the eyes that held Dunk's attention: red-rimmed, and of a color he had never seen on a man before.

Perhaps he is a lord, Dunk thought. The stranger studied him with open curiosity, the forgotten book still open in one hand, while four armed men flanked him with the wary, watchful look of men paid to be wary and watchful.

"What business have you over the hill, my good man?" There was an authority in the voice that needed no crown to back it, and Dunk knew at once he was speaking to someone who mattered.

"Pardon, m'lord." Dunk bowed as deep as the shovel in his hands allowed. "I'm burying my master, Ser Arlan of Pennytree. He knighted me before he died."

"I am no lord, ser." The stranger's laugh was soft, almost apologetic, and he raised both hands as if to prove he meant no harm by the correction. "Only an academic. I collect facts the way other men collect coin; a habit from my days at the Citadel."

Dunk's eyes went to the chain half-hidden beneath the man's collar, a maester's chain, unless he missed his guess. "You're a maester, then?"

"I cannot confirm nor deny the accusation, Ser," was the confusing reply given to him. "But you may call me Rys if you so wish. I would also like to be your acquaintance Ser…?"

"Dunk," he replied. 'That is no name of a knight,' a voice inside of him say. "Duncan, I mean. Duncan the Tall."

"Well met, Ser Duncan." Rys turned in the saddle, a small gesture that set the column moving again around him. "These are my liege's men, here for my protection, though I've never once needed it. And that lad skulking behind the others is my scribe, Gerrick."

He wasn't sure how to respond to that, so Dunk just gave a short nod to the maester's five companions as the voice of Rys called out to him again. "Come, let us bury this Ser Arlan of yours and we must bury him well."

"You needn't—" Dunk started.

"A body left too long in the sun breeds disease, Ser Duncan, and fouls the air besides. I've buried men before in my time in Oldtown learning the human body. Allow me the exercise. Many a man, including my liege, tell me I get too little of it." He was already turning dirt, his fine sleeves darkening with soil, and something in the brisk, matter-of-fact way he said it closed off any further argument.

While Dunk would've rather be left alone to say a few words to Ser Arlan, he did not begrudge the kind offer the learned man, who insisted on shoveling, making his clothes dusty.

"If you would like to say a few words to your former master, Ser Duncan, you may do so," Maester Rys replied, stepping backwards to rejoin his guards. "We shall wait for you here."

"You are very kind, Maester," Duncan told the man, "but if you have a journey to go, you might be late."

"Oh no Ser," says the man. "My liege allows me the laxities of someone of my considerable experience. I would not be reprimanded by something as trivial as punctuality." Dunk felt that Rys was thoroughly amused, however. "And considering I have been travelling with men as stiff as wood, a man such as yourself might be able to provide good company and conversation for me."

Having no reason to deny the man's offer, Dunk nodded his head before looking to Ser Arlan's grave.

"I'd leave your sword, but it would rust in the ground," he said at last, apologetic. "The gods will give you a new one, I guess. I wish you didn't die, ser." He paused, uncertain what else needed to be said. He didn't know any prayers, not all the way through; the old man had never been much for praying."

"You were a true knight, and you never beat me when I didn't deserve it," he finally managed, "except that one time in Maidenpool. It was the inn boy who ate the widow woman's pie, not me, I told you. It don't matter now. The gods keep you, ser." He kicked dirt in the hole, then began to fill it methodically, never looking at the thing at the bottom. He had a long life, Dunk thought. He must have been closer to sixty than to fifty, and how many men can say that? At least he had lived to see another spring.

When it was done he rose, gathered Sweetfoot, Chestnut, and Ser Arlan's old warhorse Thunder, and did not look back at the oak again.

"Where are you bound, ser?" Rys asked as Dunk led the horses to the road.

"I suppose I should continue going to Ashford," he revealed. "Me and Ser Arlan travelled here in the Reach as he would compete in a tourney."

"A stroke of luck then, for my liege is also at Ashford to attend the tourney," Rys said. "We shall keep each other company in the meantime then. What are your plans once you reach the tourney? Will you join the Archery? Perhaps the melee? Or are you setting your sights to join the jousts?"

It wasn't so much a question as it is an answer, Dunk thought privately. "I would join the lists, then suppose if I become a champion and do well, perhaps a Lord, or even a powerful landed knight would notice me and offer me a place among their household."

Rys looked at Dunk from top to bottom, before nodding his head. "I assume you are good with a sword and a lance, Ser Duncan? I will caution you that there are as many hedge knights as there are hedges. You will compete against skilled tourney knights, well-trained lords and heir, and even hedge knights that are far more experienced than yourself."

"Ser Arlan taught me the ways of the sword and lance, and how to ride a horse," Dunk proclaimed. 'But perhaps not enough,' the same voice inside him spoke again.

Instead of laughing, Maester Rys gripped his saddle and spoke, "Then welcome to your first steps as a Knight, Ser Duncan the Tall. May the beginner's fortune favor you in your first tourney. Now, we have a tourney awaits us."
​

---

"We can stay at this inn, Ser Duncan," Maester Rys's voice pulled Duncan back to his thoughts as he didn't even realize it was getting late. They have been travelling for hours, and the sun has already set.

Maester Rys was indeed an intelligent man, Dunk thought with a newfound appreciation to his scholarly companion. While the other men in Rys's retinue did not speak unless spoken to by the Maester, Rys himself proved to be an excellent storyteller, and a man who shares his knowledge freely. He first thought that a journey with a maester would frankly be a bore, Duncan found himself in good conversation, with Rys's tales spanning from the centuries-old histories, to the Blackfyre Rebellion just ten-and-three years ago, to how the Citadel taught him alchemy and arithmetic.

"Aye," Dunk agreed. "We can stay here, I hope it would be a cheap stay."

"Nonsense, the coin my liege provided is ample enough to give us the best accommodations here," the maester said with a dismissive tone.

The inn stood where Rys had said it would, a tall daub-and-timber building set beside a narrow stream, its windows spilling warm yellow light across the yard. Dunk had ridden past enough such places with Ser Arlan to know a decent one from a poor one, and this looked decent enough — better than decent, if Rys meant to pay for it. His stomach, which had been a hollow, aching thing since midday, gave an eager growl at the smell of woodsmoke and roasting meat drifting out to meet them.

At the stream's edge, a boy was wading out of the shallows dripping and bare as his name day, drying himself on a roughspun brown cloak. He could not have seen more than eight or nine namedays, pale and thin as a whittled stick, his bare feet black to the ankle with mud. What struck Dunk was his head. He had no hair on it at all, not so much as a fuzz, and in the last light it seemed to catch a strange gleam, as if it had been oiled.

One of Rys's guardsmen reined up beside Dunk. "That'll be the stableboy," he said, not unkindly. "Small little thing, isn't he."

The maester, still ahorse, was watching the boy with an odd stillness that Dunk did not understand before Rys dismounted from his steed and passed it to his guards. If the boy noticed the column of armed riders drawing rein outside his master's inn, he gave no sign of it — his eyes had gone straight to Dunk, or rather to Thunder, the warhorse Dunk led on a lead rope, and stayed there with the frank, assessing stare of a boy who loved horses more than he feared strangers.

"I'll want my palfrey rubbed down. And oats for all three. Can you tend to them?," Dunk asked.

The boy looked at him brazenly. "I could, if I wanted to."

Dunk almost gave a snort and wished he could clout the boy in the ear. "None of that, disobedience. I am a knight, I'll have you know."

"You don't look to be a knight," came the disbelieving squawk.

"Well, do all knights look the same then?"

"No, but they don't look like you either," the bald boy confessed. "Your sword belt is made of rope."

Dunk frowned at the insolence. He was never that bad when Ser Arlan took him in, wasn't he? ""So long as it holds my scabbard, it serves. Now see to my horses. You'll get a copper if you do well, and a clout in the ear if you don't." He did not wait to see how the stableboy took that, but turned away and shouldered through the door. It took him a moment to think that the boy didn't so much glance at Rys's finery or the guards, which passed him as strange. Most stableboys he had known would have gawked. This one seemed to care for being hardheaded and little else.

The common room, when they came into it, was near empty for the hour — only a stout, whey-faced woman bustling between kitchen and hearth, and a young lordling slumped at a table by the window, his fine damask mantle stained dark down the front, snoring softly into a puddle of spilled wine. The woman's eyes went wide and round as saucer-plates at the sight of Rys's guards filling her doorway, and wider still when Rys himself stepped down from his horse, his white hair catching the firelight, his chain glinting faintly beneath his plain grey robes.

"M'lord," she said, bowing as gracefully as she could "Good sers."

"Only a traveler, and a handful of guards, goodwife, and a hungry one," Rys said, with that same soothing laugh he had given Dunk beside the oak tree. "My companion here is the knight" — a nod toward Dunk — "and has ridden farther while also have eaten less. See him fed first, and generously. I shall want a room for myself, another for Ser Duncan, and my men will want the loft, or the stable, whichever suits them best. Coin is no trouble."

The woman's eyes flicked from the maester's chain to his soldiers to Dunk's rope belt and back again, as a woman does sums in her head. "As you say, m'lord, that is, maester. Sit, sit, both of you. There's lamb, and duck my son shot down this morning, and bread not an hour from the oven."

"Both if you please," said Rys, settling himself at a table with the unhurried ease of a man who grew up clearly surrounded by wealth and comfort.

Dunk took the chair across from him, near the window, well away from the sleeping lordling. He had not eaten at an inn in half a year or better, not since Ser Arlan's purse had grown thin outside Stoney Sept, and the smell of the roasting meat was near enough to make his mouth water shamefully.

"As you say," the woman complied easily enough.

"How much further from here to Ashford," Dunk asked, his voice quiet and uncertain. He was looking at the innkeeper, but perhaps Rys could know as well.

"A day's ride. Bear north when the road forks at the burned mill. Is my boy seeing to your horses, or has he run off again?"

"No, he's there," said Dunk. "You seem to have no custom, goodwife."

"That is to be expected, Ser Duncan," Rys murmured in a patient tone. "When a lord hosts a tourney, a crowd is to be expected and visitors all over the Realm will converge. No doubt, once we reach Ashford, we will see colorful pavilions and many lodgings from those that wished to participate."

"Aye, what he said is true," the innkeep agreed. "Half the town's gone to see the tourney. My own would as well, if I allowed it. They'll have this inn when I go, but the boy would sooner swagger about with soldiers, and the girl turns to sighs and giggles every time a knight rides by. I swear I couldn't tell you why. Knights are built the same as other men, and I never knew a joust to change the price of eggs." She eyed Rys and his men; all of them looking prim and proper, then at Dunk curiously; his sword and shield told her one thing, his rope belt and roughspun tunic quite another. "You lot are bound for the tourney yourselves?"

He took a sip of the ale before he answered. A nut brown color it was, and thick on the tongue, the way he liked it. "Aye," he said. "I mean to be a champion."

"Do you, now?" the innkeep answered, polite enough before checking the food outside.

"You are strangely muted, Ser Duncan," Rys observed, pouring himself a cup of the water the woman had left. "A man does not bury his master and ride the better part of a day without some thoughts pressing on him.

"I was thinking on the tourney, Maester," Dunk lied, though in truth he had been thinking of Ser Arlan's grave, and the oak, and whether the wolves in these parts dug where they oughtn't.

Rys studied him a moment with those pale, clever eyes, as if he knew the lie for what it was and chose, out of some private courtesy, not to say so. "The dead do not begrudge us our appetites," he said instead, gently. "Eat, ser. Grief keeps better on a full stomach than an empty one. I have found that true of most things."

It was then that the lordling at the window stirred.

He raised his head from the wine puddle with a groan, his face sallow and unhealthy beneath a rat's nest of sandy hair, days of pale stubble crusting his chin. He blinked blearily about the room, at the woman, at the fire, at Dunk, and his bleary stare caught, and held, and would not let go.

"I dreamed of you," the lordling said thickly, and something in his slurred voice had gone taut with fear. He lurched half up from his chair, one hand splayed on the table to keep from toppling. "You. Stay away from me, do you hear? You keep well away—"

"My lord?" said Dunk, bewildered, for he had never laid eyes on the man in his life. From the corners of the room, he can see Maester Rys's guards were now alert, weapons drawn.

The lordling's eyes then wandered wildly before his stare had slid past Dunk's shoulder to where Rys sat with his water cup half raised, and all the color that drink had left him seemed to drain away at once, until he was pale as the tallow candles guttering on the mantel.

"Uncle," the lordling said, in a voice gone suddenly, horribly sober. He was on his feet now, swaying, and then, to Dunk's astonishment, he was on his knees on the rush-strewn floor, wine sloshing from the cup still clutched forgotten in his hand. "Uncle, forgive me, I did not know, I did not think you rode this road, I would never have—"

"Get up, boy," said Rys, and there was no laughter left in his voice now, nor any of the mild, dismissive humor Dunk had grown used to on the long road from the oak tree. It was a different voice entirely, quiet and cold as still water, the kind of voice that did not need to be raised to be obeyed. "You are making a spectacle of yourself before strangers. Again. What would your lord father say to you if he saw you in this sorry state?"

Dunk looked from the kneeling lordling to themaester and felt something cold settle in his belly that had nothing to do with hunger. The guards at the door had gone very still but they have yet to sheathe their weapons. The whey-faced innkeep had frozen with a platter of bread halfway to the table, her mouth open and no sound coming out of it.

"Maester Rys," Dunk repeated slowly, as if turning the word over might make it mean something other than what it plainly meant. "You said your name was."

"I said you might call me Rys," he corrected gently, setting down his water cup with great care, as though the moment required steadiness of hand. "I never said it was the whole of it."

He turned back to the lordling still huddled at his feet, and his voice softened, though only a little. "Up I say, Daeron, before you shame our House further than the wine already has. Where is your brother? I did not come all this way to find one Targaryen boy drowning himself in a wine puddle while the other hides in a stream like some smallfolk's brat."

As if the words themselves had summoned him, the common room door banged open, and the bald boy from the stream came tumbling through it, breathless, a curry comb still in one muddy fist, his borrowed roughspun cloak flapping about his thin shoulders. He skidded to a halt at the sight of the kneeling lordling, the armed men, and Rys at the table, and his quick, clever eyes went round with a boy's dawning understanding.

He did not run. He did not gawk long, either. He went down on one knee beside his brother, quick and neat as if he had drilled the motion a hundred times and hated every one of them.

"Prince Aerys," the boy said. "We didn't know you'd come to Ashford, Uncle."

The name struck the common room like a dropped sword. Dunk sat very still, his spoon halfway to his mouth, the lamb and duck and hot bread all at once forgotten, and stared at the man who had shoveled Ser Arlan's grave with his own soft, ink-stained hands not six hours past.

"Prince Aerys," Dunk said, very carefully, his heart pounding and his mouth quickly drying.

Aerys, his voice wondered dangerously, like the King's son?

His scholarly companion turned that same fascinated, faintly amused look on Dunk that he had worn beside the oak tree, as if the whole world and everyone in it were a book he had not quite finished reading.

"I did tell you, Ser Duncan," Prince Aerys said, "that I could neither confirm nor deny the accusation." He gestured, almost kindly, at the empty bench beside him. "Sit, both of you," he told his nephews. "And someone find that fool boy a fresh cup of wine that isn't watered with his own tears. We have a great deal to discuss before Ashford, it seems — and I find I have grown rather fond of surprises today."​

 

[The Laziest Dragon]

This is a pretty interesting start to a story, slow but heavy in characterization. I don't know much about this point on the Asoiaf timeline and hope I'll have a chance to learn about it through this story, good luck with your writing.

 

[Sakumo]

The Inn, 209 A.C.:

The boy, Dunk realized, was neither the innkeep's son, or a stableboy, but rather a Targaryen, and so was the drunk lordling, who seemed to be his brother.

Even Maester Rys had not been a maester at all, but a prince of the blood.

Not just any Prince, but the King's son.

King Daeron the Good ruled the Seven Kingdoms not with an iron fist but with open arms, Ser Arlan once told Dunk. His heir, the Prince of Dragonstone was said to be the finest knight alive if the old man was to be believed.

Suddenly, the guards made sense now. And the lordly bearing of Rys, and his clothing, no matter how simple it looked, still was from the finest wools.

They retreated to the largest room in the inn — which proved to be the one Prince Aerys bought — and settled by the hearth. The prince sent for supper, and the innkeep complied kindly enough, though the three gold dragons pressed into her palm for her silence had surely helped her mood along. Prince Aerys bid his guards and Gerrick to rest, but his lieutenant, a hard-eyed man named Luc and his son named Tim, insisted on standing watch outside the door regardless.

The eldest prince unclasped the chain from around his neck and drew back his hood, looking, for the first time since Dunk had met him, faintly sheepish. "It was not my intention to fool you, Ser Duncan. But a prince draws eyes he does not always want. Our Valyrian look is too plain a signature to hide for long."

"Of course, Your Grace—"

"Aerys will do, ser. Or simply 'prince,' if you must wish to be respectful. The only 'Your Grace' I recognize is my father, and my brother Baelor, since he stands heir to the Iron Throne." He settled back with a book already open on his lap, and his eyes moved to his nephews. "Now. What do you two have to say for yourselves? Why is your head bald, Aegon? And where is the royal party?"

Daeron opened his mouth, found no words in it, and returned instead to his cup, ignoring his brother's disapproving look. Aerys waited him out and got nothing, so the bald princeling answered for him.

"It was Daeron, Uncle," proclaimed the boy, pointing at his brother with an accusing finger. "He didn't want to ride in the tourney, so after we left Summerhall he stole away from our escort, only instead of doubling back he went straight on toward Ashford, thinking they'd never look for us that way. It was him shaved my head. He knew our father would send men hunting us."

Daeron did not deny it. He only drank. A sad creature, Dunk thought, though a question nagged at him from downstairs still: why did he look at me as if he knew me?

Aerys turned a page, unhurried "A clever move, I must admit. Daeron has common hair, sort of a pale brown, not so special among the eyes of the realm, but yours is like your father's and mine." There was a momentary pause as Prince Aerys spoke again. "Your wits have found their way home, I trust? Both of you?"

There were two nods.

"Then good. Knowing Maekar, he would search for you both once your duplicity is realized. He would command the knights sworn to him, and even the Kingsguard that Baelor brought with him, and would stop at nothing to see you both in his sights again. We reach Ashford as soon as may be."

Both nephews took this easily enough, and Prince Aegon found his next question. "What of you, Uncle? Are you bound for the tourney as well?"

Aerys did not answer. He had gone back into his book. Dunk, gathering his nerve, touched the man's shoulder and tipped his head towards the boy.

"Hm? Forgive me. Yes, I am indeed bound there. I took the scenic road rather than ride with Baelor's party; he was gracious enough to lend me some of the Dragonstone's household guard, and I happened on Ser Duncan along the way."

Upon the mention of Dunk's name, the drunken princeling stirred. "I've seen him before, Uncle. In my dreams," Daeron said, slurring, his eyes fixed on Dunk with something queer in them.

"You said that downstairs, not an hour past, m'lord," Dunk felt compelled to say.

"Did I? Well, it's so. My dreams are not like yours, Ser Duncan. Mine are true. They frighten me. You frighten me. I dreamed of you and a dead dragon, you see. A great beast, huge, with wings so large they could cover this meadow. It had fallen on top of you, but you were alive and the dragon was dead." Daeron took another sip of his wine.

Dunk can hear Prince Aerys snapping his book shut, looking at his nephew with renewed interest. "What happened next?" asked he.

"That I could not say, but you were there, and so was the dragon. Yet now, the dream changed, Uncle. There are many dragons instead of just one, and they were circling atop a hill, before some of them fell from the sky suddenly while the rest scattered." He then pointed at Dunk. "While you…you followed a dragon to its nest, and you were standing fiercely. Bravely. As if protecting it from harm."

Whatever else he meant to say went the way of his supper as he lunged for the bucket instead. A pitiful man, Dunk thought again, and watched Daeron excuse himself toward the room he was lodging.

"Out of all in our blood to be blessed by dragon dreams," he heard Aerys say as the man shook his head once Daeron left. "Do you really wish to squire for your brother, Aegon? I am afraid that your brother is not much of a knight as Maekar was at his age. Your father was already commanding men older than him at ten-and-eight when the Blackfyres rose to rebellion."

The boy could only nod sadly. "My father commanded it so, Uncle. It is either he, or Aerion."

Upon the mention of the other name, Prince Aerys curled his lips momentarily before Dunk saw him mastering his face. "Your father is an excellent warrior, one of the finest knights of our time, yet for him, war has always been easier than fatherhood," says Aerys. "I do not claim to be close with Maekar despite he being my youngest brother, however I do know that he seeks to do right by you and your siblings."

Dunk found his voice, low and ashamed as he too, faced Prince Aegon. "M'lord, I'm sorry, for the stables. I took you for the innkeep's son, or a groom. Ser Arlan always said I was thick as a castle wall, and slow as an aurochs."

"No need, ser. I owe you the same apology." Aegon's grin came back easily. "You may call me Egg."

The young prince glanced to his uncle. "Might Ser Duncan take me as squire, then?"

Aerys said nothing, only waved a hand toward Dunk, leaving the answer to him.

"Beggin' your pardon, m'lord. I've no need of a squire."

"Every knight needs a squire," Egg pressed. "You look to need one more than most."

"Enough, Aegon." Aerys's tone stayed mild, but it closed the matter all the same. "You sound like your father did at your age, mercifully with less cursing. If Ser Duncan says he has no need, then he has no need."

Dunk was relieved. 'A pity I couldn't . . . but he is a Prince of the blood, with all the education and training he could ask for. His father is a Prince and a skilled warrior at that. His brother Daeron might be drunk, but it is still better than what he'd have squiring for a hedge knight,' the same voice as before inside his head say. 'Taking him would be no kindness.'

"Why leave King's Landing at all, Uncle?" Egg asked. "Did Grandfather — His Grace, I mean — send you off?"

"In part." Aerys turned his book over in his hands, not reading it now. "Truth be told, I wanted some distance from the Red Keep's company. I enjoy my talks with Father, and my cousin Ser Brynden besides — but the King has made it plain he'd have me use this tourney to find a wife among the Reach's ladies. Aelinor's not a year in her grave, and he says a marriage would 'bind the realm together.'" A thin, humorless smile. "I've no wish to court that grief again so soon. But what the King commands, I do."

Dunk knew nothing of marriage, of duty owed to crowns and houses. But he knew what it was to do a thing you hated because there was no choosing otherwise — Flea Bottom had taught him that much, stealing bread to see another sunrise. He said nothing, but something in him understood the prince a little better for it.

Aerys rose not long after, murmuring of duties still undone, and left them. When Dunk looked to Egg, puzzled, the boy leaned close.

"He is one of the King's unofficial advisors in the Small Council, and the Royal Understeward in Court" he whispered.

"Former Royal Understeward, and temporary advisor to the Small Council," Aerys said from the doorway, without turning, as though the distance and the hush had been no distance and no hush at all. "I have given the office to Lord Alaric Hunter of the Vale, whom I advise my kingly father to succeed me. There are too many Targaryens serving in positions of authority at Court as it is, and both Baelor and Father agree, and so too are the lickspittles of King's Landing."

Neither Dunk nor Egg found anything to say to that. The prince withdrew to the room he shared with his brother, and the innkeep led Dunk to his own — a featherbed waiting, softer than any ground he'd slept on as a squire. Ser Arlan would have had words for him over a comfort like that. A hedge knight's bed was rock and hedge-root, he'd always said, and little else.

Dunk slept on it anyway, and did not dream of dragons, but rather a memory of he and Ser Arlan.
​

---

It was bright morning when Dunk rose from his bed and he felt his stomach growl slightly. After the good supper last night, Dunk yearned for food like that for the rest of his days, yet he must conserve his coin and not act like a spendthrift.

When he went down, he was greeted by the sight of Prince Aerys, reading a book from the table closest to the window where the sun was shining. The innkeep was busy in her own right when she noticed Dunk approaching, as did Prince Aerys.

"Ah you're awake, Ser," says Aerys. "Fetch yourself a chair and break your fast ser. My men and I already broke ours an hour passed while my troublesome nephews have yet to rouse from their sleep."

He obeyed the prince and sat himself at one a table nearby. Dunk was not a learned man like Prince Aerys or most lords, but his attention was drawn to the book's cover, which was scaly leather and an illustration of a three-headed dragon.

"I see you're also fascinated with dragons, Ser," Aerys murmured, his voice soft and inviting.

Dunk scratched his head. "Quite, my prince. Ser Arlan told me that dragons once flew in the skies not a hundred years ago."

"That is true, Ser Duncan. While many would say that the Dance of the Dragons led to the death of the beasts, it was not so," Aerys explained. "The last dragon lived during the days of King Aegon the Third — Aegon the Dragonbane he was called for the last dragon also died during his reign."

The innkeep gave Dunk a platter of both bread and meat, as Aerys continued reading. Not a few moments passed when the man began writing and murmuring to himself, speaking of 'ingredients' and 'chemical properties'. Dunk wasn't sure if Prince Aerys would appreciate him as company especially when the man is lost in his own world so he went outside for fresh air.

Outside, the Targaryen guardsmen were readying their own arms and steeds, with the lieutenant giving Dunk a firm nod.

"Early morning, Ser Duncan," says Gerrick the scribe, who seems to be the closest to Dunk's age. When he noticed Dunk staring at his peculiar saddle, the scribe hastily explained. "A contraption of Prince Aerys, he designed it himself. I was suffering from uneven shoulders, his invention made me more comfortable of long rides."

"Is Prince Aerys a builder then?"

"His Grace is more of a scholar and a reader, as many of us in the Red Keep can attest him never leaving the library or the vaults unless the King commands him to. However when something strikes his fancy, he will use his considerable talents to produce marvelous inventions."

Dunk left the scribe to talk with the guardsmen as he went to check his horses. His stomach was full and his purse was still as heavy as when he buried Ser Arlan, but he felt good as he walked to the stables.

Ahead, he heard a horse whicker. "Easy, lad," a boy's voice said. Dunk quickened his step, frowning.

He found Prince Aegon mounted on Thunder and wearing the old man's armor. The hauberk was longer than he was, and he'd had to tilt the helm back on his bald head or else it would have covered his eyes. He looked utterly intent, and utterly absurd. Dunk stopped in the stable door and laughed.

The boy looked up, flushed, vaulted to the ground. "My lord, I did not mean—

"Your Grace," Dunk said, trying to sound stern. "Take off that armor, and be glad that Thunder didn't kick you in the head. He's a warhorse, not a boy's pony, if you do not mind me saying."

The boy took off the helm and flung it to the straw. "I could ride him as well as you," he said, bold as you please.

"My Prince, you are being stubborn, do you want me to tell your uncle that you are awake already? He would be most displeased." Dunk can see Prince Egg's sudden fear. "The hauberk too, take it off. What did you think you were doing?"

"How can I tell you, with my mouth closed?" The boy squirmed out of the chain mail and let it fall.

I cannot hit him, a voice inside Dunk's head warned him. Not only will Prince Aerys grow furious, I might even be relieved of my head. Mustering up the patience, he sighed.

"You can open your mouth to answer," said Dunk. "Now pick up that mail, shake off the dirt, and put it back where you found it. And the halfhelm too. If you mean to ask me again to take you on as a squire, the answer is still no, m'lord."

He could still feel the lad's disappointment, though, but before either of them could say a thing, one of the guardsmen walked up to the stables. "Ser Duncan," the man greeted before seeing Egg, "Prince Aegon. Prince Daeron has been awoken and Prince Aerys tells us to continue our journey to Ashford at once."

"Of course," Dunk agreed as he mounted Sweetfoot and took up Thunder's lead while Aegon walked back sullenly. He turned the palfrey and rode from the inn, leading the other two horses.

As spoken by the guardsman, Prince Aerys was already mounted to his own horse, with Prince Daeron not too far behind him. The lieutenant was at the head of their column, barking orders while Dunk was once again requested by Aerys to ride beside him.

"And nephews," Prince Aerys said before they can march. "No more escaping."
​

---

The shadows of the afternoon were growing long when Dunk and Prince Aerys's retinue reined up on the edge of broad Ashford Meadow. Three score pavilions had already risen on the grassy field. Some were small, some large; some square, some round; some of sailcloth, some of linen, some of silk; but all were brightly colored, with long banners streaming from their center poles, brighter than a field of wildflowers with rich reds and sunny yellows, countless shades of green and blue, deep blacks and greys and purples.

Ser Arlan might have ridden with some of these Knights, Dunk thought with awe; some were from the tales the old man would often tell him in common rooms and campfires. His former master never learned how to read or write, but he sure did take special attention to Dunk when it came to teaching him heraldry, often drilling him as they rode. He saw the nightingales belonged to Lord Caron of the Marches, as skilled with the high harp as he was with a lance. The crowned stag was for Ser Lyonel Baratheon, the Laughing Storm and heir to the Stormlands. Dunk picked out the Tarly huntsman, House Dondarrion's purple lightning, the red apple of the Fossoways. There roared the lion of Lannister gold on crimson, and there the dark green sea turtle of the Estermonts swam across a pale green field.

The brown tent beneath red stallion could only belong to Ser Otho Bracken, who was called the Brute of Bracken since slaying Lord Quentyn Blackwood three years past during a tourney at King's Landing. Dunk heard that Ser Otho struck so hard with the blunted longaxe that he stove in the visor of Lord Blackwood's helm and the face beneath it. He saw some Blackwood banners as well, on the west edge of the meadow, as distant from Ser Otho as they could be. Marbrand, Mallister, Cargyll, Westerling, Swann, Mullendore, Hightower, Florent, Frey, Penrose, Stokeworth, Daffy, Parren, Wylde; it seemed as though every lordly house of the west and south had sent a knight or three to Ashford to see the fair maid and brave the lists in her honor.

"We have arrived at last," he heard Prince Aerys say with a soft sigh. "Thank the gods and I can safely deposit you both to Maekar without him terrorizing every passerby he might meet."

It was time to depart from the Prince, as good was his company, Dunk knew. Throughout their journey, Prince Aerys had been naught but respectful and kind to him, and perhaps someday he can repay the man of his generosity.

His eyes wandered at the scene, however fine their pavilions were to look upon, he knew there was no place there for him. A threadbare wool cloak, or a hedge, or perhaps a tree would be all the shelter he had tonight. While the lords and great knights dined on capons and suckling pigs, Dunk's supper would be a hard, stringy piece of salt beef. He knew full well that if he made his camp upon that gaudy field, he would need to suffer both silent scorn and open mockery. A few perhaps would treat him kindly like Prince Aerys, yet in a way that was almost worse.

"I suppose this is where we would part ways Ser Duncan," Prince Aerys called out to him with a smile.

"That would be true, Your Grace," he agreed, bowing his head as low as he could.

"None of that, man. I am glad to call you friend," Aerys continued as he outstretched his hand.

For a moment, Dunk hesitated. A prince has no business becoming friends with a hedge knight, something inside him spoke again. But Dunk gripped the Prince's hand and shook it anyway, for kindness is rare amongst men like him.

A hedge knight must hold tight to his pride, Ser Arlan counseled once. Without it, he was no more than a sellsword. I must earn my place in that company. If I fight well, some lord may take me into his household. I will ride in noble company then, and eat fresh meat every night in a castle hail, and raise my own pavilion at tourneys. But first I must do well.

Reluctantly, he turned his back on the prince's party and led his horses into the trees.​

 

[Sakumo]

The Tourney of Ashford, 209 A.C.:

Egg watched Ser Duncan ride away from their party, back straight, head high, as though the man did not know his cloak was thin and his belt was rope. That is a true knight, Egg thought, and meant it — though a moment later, glancing sideways at Daeron swaying in his saddle, he wondered whether that made his own brother a false one.

Daeron had made it the whole way to Ashford on only a few wineskins, which was, Egg supposed, an accomplishment of sorts. It was still pitiful.

Whether he would ever see Ser Duncan again, Egg did not know. The man meant to make himself a champion here; that was how hedge knights were noticed, how they found lords willing to feed them and clothe them and give their swords some purpose beyond surviving until the next tourney. Egg found himself hoping, with an intensity that surprised him, that Ser Duncan would win enough of his matches to buy himself a decent hauberk. His own, he was fairly sure, would not survive another boy trying it on.

"Now," Uncle Aerys said, in the same unhurried voice he might have used to remark on the weather, though his eyes had already gone distant with calculation. "We must find Baelor and Maekar. They will be with Lord Ashford, or near enough to it, guests of honor do not wander far on the first day. Luc, lead on. Unfurl the banner. There is no more use for secrecy."

The lieutenant nodded and barked something short at his son Tim, and at Lem, and between them they produced the black banner with its red three-headed dragon and let it snap open above the column. People stopped to stare as they rode through the meadow's edge and up toward Lord Ashford's walls, smallfolk first, then knights, then a cluster of maidens who went pink and whispering behind their hands. Egg sat a little straighter in his saddle. He had gone two days without anyone looking at him twice, and he found, guiltily, that he had missed it.

They halted before the castle gate, and there was the usual fuss of dismounting that a scholar with poor balance and a princeling half-asleep in the saddle required. Uncle Aerys climbed down with Gerrick steadying his elbow, more careful of the book tucked beneath his arm than of his own footing. Egg was lifted bodily off his horse by Tim, which he found humiliating and did not have the dignity to protest, being too short yet to manage the height of a destrier's saddle on his own. Daeron nearly fell doing it himself.

"Take them to the stables," Luc said, ordering Tim, Lem, and Gerrick. "Perkin, with me."

Uncle Aerys, meanwhile, had already opened his book again and begun to walk, reading as he went, oblivious to the fact that he was walking toward a wall. Perkin caught his elbow and steered him half a step to the left without a word, the way one might correct a child who had wandered off the path, and Uncle Aerys murmured his thanks without ever lifting his eyes from the page. Egg had to press his lips together to keep from laughing. His uncle, second son of the King Daeron, looked for all the world like a man being led about by a nursemaid.

They had not gone far into the yard before a white shape detached itself from the crowd and strode toward them, a knight in gleaming plate, a snow-pale cloak swinging from his shoulders, his visor raised to show a broad, weathered face.

"Prince Aerys?" The Kingsguard's voice carried real relief. "My Prince, thank the gods. And Princes Daeron and Aegon besides."

"Ah. Ser Roland." Uncle Aerys did not look up from his book until the very last moment, and then only briefly, as if confirming what his ears had already told him. "Good to see you again, Crakehall. I take it my brothers have already presented themselves to our host?"

"That is correct, my Prince."

"Then lead on, if you would be so good."

Ser Roland Crakehall bowed and turned smartly on his heel. Uncle Aerys gave Luc and Perkin each a small, courteous bow of thanks and followed the white knight inside, the rest of them trailing after like ducklings behind a particularly distracted mother duck.

"I hope you're ready to face Father," Egg said to Daeron, not bothering to keep the pleasure out from his voice.

Daeron, mid-pull on his wineskin, rolled his eyes so hard Egg thought they might stick that way. "Don't remind me. And knowing Uncle Aerys, he'll tell Father everything, plain as parchment, without so much as softening a word of it."

"Good," said Egg. "You earned it."

"Is it because I shaved your head?" Daeron mused.

"Yes."

Daeron did not have an answer for that, which Egg counted as a small victory, and pocketed alongside his other grievances against his brother, of which there were several, and growing.

---

Ser Roland led them through a hall hung with faded Ashford tapestries and into a wide chamber where a long table had been laid with wine and fruit. At its head sat a man Egg knew at once for Prince Baelor Targaryen. His uncle was different from most of their family, more Dornish than Targaryen in features, yet nonetheless looked every inch of a ruler: tall, fair, broad through the shoulder in the way of a man who had spent his life preparing for war rather than merely dressing for it. A bowl of grapes forgotten at his elbow as he leaned toward the stout, balding lord seated beside him. At the far corner of the table, half in shadow, sat Egg's father, Prince Maekar.

Their father's eyes found them before Ser Roland had even finished announcing them, and Egg felt the familiar drop in his stomach, the one that had nothing to do with hunger.

"Prince Aerys Targaryen," Ser Roland said, his voice pitched to carry the length of the hall. "Prince Daeron Targaryen. Prince Aegon Targaryen. Your Grace."

Uncle Baelor rose up upon seeing Uncle Aerys with outstretched arms and a wide smile. Father on the other hand, stood rigid and his jaw clenching, as is usual for him.

Baelor Breakspear was on his feet before the last name had finished echoing, arms already opening, his smile the wide, uncomplicated kind that made men want to follow him into battle. "Brother, I see your journey was not without incident."

"Indeed not," Uncle Aerys said, allowing himself to be embraced with the stiff-shouldered discomfort of a man unaccustomed to being touched, his book still clutched in one hand behind Baelor's back. When he was released, his eyes moved, with visible reluctance, to the corner of the table. "And hello to you too, Maekar."

"Aerys." Their father's voice could have frosted over a summer pond.

He rose without hurry, crossed the room in four long strides, and seized Daeron roughly by the back of the neck and shoved his head sideways, hard enough that Daeron stumbled.

"Where the fuck have you and your brother been?"

"Father—" Daeron began.

"They spent the night at an inn a day's ride from here," Uncle Aerys said, before Daeron could finish, his tone entirely unchanged, as though he were reporting the weather rather than intervening in a beating. "Young Aegon was got up as a stableboy, bald as an egg and filthy to the knees. Your heir, meanwhile, was drinking himself insensible at a table in full view of the common room. They were fortunate that the inn had no other custom that night, and that my retinue arrived when it did — a wandering singer with half a wit about him could have made a very profitable tale of it by morning."

Father's jaw worked. His grip on Daeron's neck did not loosen. "Has that swill addled what little sense the gods gave you, boy? Look at your brother's hair, why is he bald. Look at yourself. Do you have any notion what you've done? Any notion at all?"

"I did not want to ride in the lists," Daeron muttered, staring at the floor.

"That was never the question put to you."

"Maekar." Uncle Baelor's voice was mild, but there was iron under the mildness, the sort of iron that came from long practice at being obeyed without needing to raise his voice. "The boy is found. He is safe. Sit down, and let him go, and we will speak of punishments later, in private, where the whole of Ashford Meadow does not stand to hear it. Let him rest in the Royal Pavilion and sober up for tonight's ceremony."

For a moment Egg thought his father would not release him. Then, abruptly, he did, shoving Daeron half a step away as though he'd only just remembered he was still holding him. Daeron staggered, caught himself on the table's edge, and said nothing further.

"I quite agree with Baelor," Uncle Aerys said, settling himself onto the bench at Baelor's left with the unhurried ease of a man rejoining a card game rather than a family in crisis. "No need to berate him in front of half of Lord Ashford's household, Maekar. It does neither the Crown nor your own dignity any favors."

Their father's eyes cut toward him, sharp as a blade drawn. "And where were you while all this was happening, brother? Off in some library counting dragon bones, I'd wager."

"I was riding the scenic road, far from Baelor's preferred journey at the Roseroad, as it happens, with five of Baelor's household guard for company," Uncle Aerys said, entirely unbothered. "I found your sons by chance, not design, buried a hedge knight's dead master with my own two hands out of simple decency, and delivered both boys to you whole, unharmed, and only slightly the worse for drink. I would have thought that merited something other than accusations, but I confess I have never fully understood how your mind works, Maekar. I doubt I ever will."

"Enough, both of you." Uncle Baelor's tone had gone flat and final, the voice, Egg understood dimly, of the man who would one day be king. "Maekar, sit. Aerys, you've made your point — twice, in fact. We are guests here, and Lord Ashford's hospitality does not extend to watching his King's sons snap at one another like dogs over a bone."

The stout lord at the table's head, who had been sitting very still through all of this with the fixed, polite smile of a man desperately pretending not to have heard a word, inclined his head. "Think nothing of it, Prince Baelor. Family is family, high or low."

Father sat. He did not look pleased about it, but he sat, and his eyes fixed on Egg instead, raking him from bald head to travel-stained boots, and Egg had the sudden, uncomfortable sense of being weighed and found wanting.

"Aegon," his father said, "stand where I can see you. You will not leave my sight again. Not today, not tomorrow, not until this tourney is finished and I have you back behind the walls of Summerhall."

"Yes, Father," Egg said, and did not argue, because he had learned young that there was no arguing with that particular tone.

Uncle Baelor, watching, let a small breath go that might almost have been a laugh, quickly smoothed over. "With your sons safe under your eye, Maekar, perhaps you'll find it in yourself to enjoy the tourney a little. Will you take a turn in the melee?"

"Perhaps," Father said, in a tone that suggested he would rather eat his own boot.

Egg was given over to Lord Ashford's maids within the hour, and stood, itching and impatient, while they laced him into a close-fitted black wool doublet, the sleeves lined red beneath, a three-headed dragon worked in silver thread across the breast. It was, he privately thought, rather a lot of fuss for clothing, though he would not have said so with his father still watching him the way a hawk watches a hare.

"There's a melee, then?" he asked, when the maids had finally released him and Lord Ashford's attention had drifted his way. "I had thought it was only the joust."

"Indeed there is, my Prince," Lord Ashford said, visibly pleased to be asked, puffing up a little the way men did when given leave to speak of their own accomplishments. "And an archery competition besides, three days of it all told, enough to fatten the purse of any knight with skill and stomach for it. My own sons, Androw and Robert, ride as champions for my daughter. Perhaps —" and here the lord's smile turned faintly, "perhaps you would honor one of them by squiring, my Prince. It would be no small thing, a prince of the blood in a knight's service, even for a tourney's span."

Egg's whole chest lit up at that. "I would love to, my lord." Then he caught his father's eye across the hall, and the light went out of him nearly as fast as it had come. "But my lord father will decide it. Not I."

"I say let the boy do it." Uncle Aerys had looked up from his book at last, and there was something almost alert in his face, the particular attention he otherwise reserved for old texts and older mysteries he so obsessed with. He glanced toward Father. "It would do him good, Maekar. A week learning a knight's duties under some other man's roof, away from—" there was a small pause, but Egg can tell it was deliberate "—away from certain influences, might serve him rather better than you'd expect."

Father's eyes narrowed. "I will think on it," he said at last, after a silence that stretched long enough for Egg to count his own heartbeats twice over.

It was not a yes. But it was not the flat, immediate no Egg had braced for either, and he found himself, for the first time since his father had grabbed Daeron by the neck, almost hopeful.

"I take it, then, my lord," Uncle Baelor said, smoothly filling the silence before it could curdle, "that this stretch of the Reach has yielded a fair harvest this year?"

"Very fair indeed, Your Grace. In fact—"

Egg lost the thread of it almost at once. Harvests, he had decided some years back, were the single most tedious subject available to grown men, more tedious even than the family trees of the noble Houses of the realm, and he let his attention drift instead to Lord Ashford's daughter, a slight, fair-haired girl older than he was, presented briefly to the table and gone again just as quickly, fleeing — Egg suspected — toward whatever business a girl on the eve of her own nameday tourney actually cared about.

Uncle Aerys had drifted, by degrees, into a conversation of his own with Lord Ashford's septon about the Seven and the nature of the Faith's teachings on healing miracles and sacred symbols, a subject Egg found, if anything, even less interesting than harvests, while Uncle Baelor kept Father occupied with talk of the tourney's field and which houses had sent knights worth watching. Egg sat where he had been put, swinging his heels against the bench leg, bored past bearing, and let his eyes wander the dim edges of the hall.

That was when he saw it: a shape at the base of one of the stone pillars, still, half-swallowed by shadow.

He tugged his father's sleeve.

"What is it now, Aegon?" Father's voice was clipped with the particular impatience of a man interrupted mid-sentence, but Egg only pointed, and his father's gaze followed his finger, and whatever irritation had been in his father's face sharpened at once into something harder.

"You there!" Father was on his feet. "Are you fucking spying on us? Show yourself, damn you, now!"

The hall went quiet all at once, the way a room does when the air itself seems to hold its breath. Lord Ashford's smiling face changed into suspicion; Uncle Baelor's hand drifted, almost idly, near his belt; even Uncle Aerys lowered his book, though he did not look especially alarmed, only mildly curious, as though observing one of his 'theories' which outcome he already suspected.

Footsteps, slow and heavy, came out of the shadow.

Egg's breath caught before the man had even fully stepped into the light. He knew that height, that rope belt, that plain, homely face, even before he could make out its features properly.

"It seems we are fated to keep meeting, Ser," Uncle Aerys said, and there was real, unmistakable amusement in it now, the first true warmth Egg had heard from him all afternoon.

Ser Duncan went down on one knee at once, folding himself nearly double to do it, his eyes fixed somewhere around the level of the rushes on the floor. "Prince Aerys. Prince Aegon. M'lords." His voice had gone thick with something that might have been shame, or fear, or both together.

Egg, watching him kneel there in his patched, travel-stained clothes before a room full of princes who had, not an hours past, been screaming at one another over a beaten wineskin and a shaved head, thought that Ser Duncan looked, of all of them, like the only person in the hall who actually had cause to be ashamed, and did not deserve to feel it half so much as he plainly did.

---

In the end, it was settled easily enough. Uncle Baelor, who had known Ser Arlan of Pennytree by reputation if not by acquaintance, spoke for the old knight's memory with an ease that seemed to relieve Ser Duncan of some great weight; and Uncle Aerys confirmed the whole of the tale of their meeting in the same plain, unembellished way he might have read aloud from one of his books, which somehow made it more believable than any amount of passionate defending could have.

"I cannot believe that you let my sons travel two days in the company of an unknown hedge knight," Father said afterward, once Ser Duncan had been vouched and sent off to find his place among the tourney's lesser camps, his temper apparently unwilling to let the matter lie even once it was resolved. His eyes fixed on Aerys with real irritation. "You were meant to be the clever one, brother."

"And you were meant to run a disciplined household, like a captain commanding his troops," Uncle Aerys said, without any particular heat, turning a page. "Yet somehow your oldest and youngest sons managed to slip your own royal escort entirely, Maekar, and it was I who found them, fed them, and brought them here. I find myself struggling to see where the greater failure of cleverness lies."

Father's face went a dangerous color. "Let us not—" Uncle Baelor began.

"—be hasty with words," Uncle Aerys finished for him, mild and unhurried, though his eyes were observant. "Yes, brother, I have heard you say it before."

Egg, doing his very best impression of a boy suddenly fascinated by his own boots, felt his father's glare swing toward him instead, searching for some safer target for his temper, and found himself grateful beyond words when Uncle Aerys rose from the bench, tucking his book beneath his arm.

"Lord Ashford," he said, "might I trouble you for the direction of my chamber? I find myself wanting a few hours' quiet before this evening's ceremonies." He looked to Baelor. "I will be present when the tourney is opened. You need not fret over that."

"I never doubted it," Uncle Baelor said, and there was real fondness beneath the dryness of it.

Lord Ashford's second son—Ser Robert—was summoned to lead the way, and Uncle Aerys went, a satchel of books already produced from somewhere and clutched to his chest, pausing only long enough to give Father one long, unreadable look over his shoulder before he was gone.

"Why must he be so insufferable," Father muttered, low, though not quite low enough that Egg didn't hear it.

"To be fair, Maekar," Uncle Baelor said, and there was no dryness in his voice now, only something steadier, almost stern, "it was you who accused him first. Your sons came home safe and whole, and rather than thank him for it, you called the man negligent to his face. He is not made the way you and I are made; like Rhaegel or Father, he was never going to be a warrior, and he has made his peace with that better than you ever let him. But do not mistake his quiet for foolishness, brother. He is your elder, and he is not without his virtues. It would serve you to remember both those things a little more often than you do."

Father said nothing to that. He only looked, for a long moment, toward the doorway where Uncle Aerys had vanished through and fell silent.