Chapter Text
The maesters were already sharpening their pens to note down the first uprising in the Seven Kingdoms since Maekar had assumed the throne. Aelinor would not be surprised if some of them had actually written down the outcome in advance – there could be only one. What had Dyanna used to say about the Ullers from Dorne? Half the Ullers are half mad, and the other half are even worse, or something like this. Aelinor wondered what she would have said about the Peakes. The very idea that they truly believed they could win against the Iron Throne was the mark of a family in the grip of madness.
There was no real need for Maekar to go and suppress the rebellion in person – other than the one searing his mind and wringing his heart. As the clamour of armours and swords traveled all the way to the throne room, Aelinor’s eyes went to the door that the only one not readied for leaving yet strode through.
“Are you still angry?” Maekar asked when he reached her at the foot of the dais.
She shook her head. “No,” she replied quietly but her voice echoed in the huge empty hall where just the two of them and the Kingsguard stood. “And I never was.”
He hesitated, took her hand, and held it. For the first time in years, his fingers were as warm as the rare occasions when he had touched her hand in their youth, as warm as they had been in their wedding night. “But you’re sad. And worried. I’m sorry, Aelinor. It’s just something that I need to do.”
“I know,” she replied. For so long, he had been feeling as like he was not living at all, the punishment of the crown becoming more torturous with every year. Winter had come so unexpectedly that it had raced the maesters’ announcement of its arrival shoulder to shoulder. No one had been prepared and it had been – still was – terrible. The tragedies in their own family… And always, always the feeling that he was not doing enough, that he could not do enough because how could one do enough in their punishment? That was the curse of those full of life and vigour – that they demanded of themselves to be always able to make things right, even those that did not depend on them.
Battles and fighting were one of the things where Maekar was truly unsurpassed. Where he could change things his way. Of course he needed to do it. She smiled.
“Perhaps I’m worried about myself as much as you,” she said. “It doesn’t sound pretty but that’s the truth. I don’t want to live the life I was destined for after Aerys’ death.”
There was a spark in his eye that in another man would equal laughing aloud. “Yes, it would be hard to make Daella the same proposal that you made me,” he agreed. “And forgive me for saying so, but in a fight between you and Alor, I don’t see you winning. He’s better with sword.”
At first, Aelinor did not even understand what he was implying… no, saying outright. Then, she blushed. With this Targaryen look of his, it was easy to forget that he had been born to a Dornish mother. He had been wed to a Dornish wife.
Maekar smiled at her blush, pleased, and then turned serious. “It won’t be the same,” he said. “I won’t let this happen.”
“My best bet is not finding out,” she replied and repeated this in her mind as a prayer when she left with him to see the host off.
At the end, she did find out. In her stupor, she vaguely thought that it was strange how obvious his being dead was – one would have expected the difference to be less prominent, with this fair skin of his. Indeed, its tone was just a tad paler and since the rock had spared his face, to someone else he might have seemed as if he were asleep. But Aelinor noticed the vast difference immediately. He had never slept soundly. Always, always there had been a movement to him even in his deepest sleep. If not nightmares, then a stirring of muscle. A smile had been much rarer but it had happened. This peace akin to death? Never, she thought, fazed, as she walked out of the Great Sept and passed down the path the guards opened for her. A sea of people had filled all the squares, all the streets in her sight. Everyone was silent; wherever Aelinor looked, she saw fear, and the dawning horror of being left at the whims and dubious mercy of the high and mighty. Maekar had not been loved but by the Seven, now he was being mourned! A stern hand meant a hand that held the ambitions and grudges of the lords well away from the smallfolk and while Maekar had never looked the part men and women wanted to see in a king – not in demeanor, not in expression and certainly not in reputation – people had felt secure under him. Now, the civil war was lying in wait – actually boldly raising its ugly head. Or at least this was what people thought.
Aelinor realized that she had been as ignorant and deluded as every fishwife when, two days after the funeral, she heard of a Great Council that would take place soon.
“What?” she asked, incredulous. “A what?”
Aemon looked down, avoiding her eye. “This is the best way to prevent a second Dance of the Dragons, Your Grace. With no clear heir pointed out…”
“Your father had a chosen heir,” Aelinor snapped, his clear discomfort enraging her. “And you know it!”
“Not so loud!” Aemon hissed, glancing around to make sure that there was no one around who could overhear them. “So, he told you,” he finally said, calmer now. “I always found it strange that he would keep such a secret from you. He told you everything.”
Aelinor did not deign this with an answer. “Your father wanted Daella to succeed him… and he thought you and Aegon were going to support this.”
“We were,” Aemon said. “Aegon was going to publicly renounce his rights as Daella and Alor grew in prominence. But now… you know what people are going to think of her, my lady. She’s wed to a Dornishman and…”
“And her first two children, the one who would have come after her, are half-Velaryons, as you know,” Aelinor said angrily. “What does it matter whom she is wed to? The Targaryen kings had been taking Velaryon brides for ages.”
“This is so,” Aemon sighed. “And both Aegon and I dislike the situation. But the truth is, Father had no time to establish Daella’s position. There is no written word of a definite intention. He hadn’t even talked to her yet.”
“I know,” Aelinor said. “But this was his wish. He didn’t write his intentions down because he trusted the two of you – and yes, his Hand.”
Aemon would still not look at her. They both talked instinctively softly because even in the Queen Dowager’s chambers, in a castle shrouded in mourning, every word echoed louder than usual.
“I want to think this so,” he said, still staring at the black drapes covering every bit of colour in Aelinor’s solar. “But the fact is, there’s nothing we can show to prove his wishes. How much time do you think it’s going to take some of the lords to declare this a conspiracy on our part? Who’s going to desire to be ruled by a woman wed to a Dornishman just because we say Father said so? In the immediate aftermath of an uprising? With the Blackfyres rising to might again in Essos? Do you think Lady Alys is just going to sit down and accept this?”
Aelinor didn’t reply. He was right, she knew he was. Personally, she did not care at all about Alys’ personal wishes but one embittered woman could easily recognize another. And Alys was in such accord with her nephew that her wishes were the wishes of the Vale.
At least the Tyroshi will be too busy with the quarrels between the Blackfyres and Kiera’s family over our succession to make trouble in Vaella’s name, Aelinor thought but this was no great consolation.
“I believe we can still pull it out,” she said. “If we all swear this was Maekar’s intention…”
Aemon gave her a level look. “I believe we may pull it out,” he said. “We may fail, you know. You weren’t at the battlefield, my lady, but I was. It’s going to be unconscionable of us to take the risk of upsetting the peaceful decision-making of all the great lords in the realm to try and enforce Father’s wish when we have no proof it was ever his wish. I am not ready to plunge this realm into a new river of blood. the best thing we can all do is support Aegon’s bid, despite his own lack of wish.”
“Oh, I’m so sympathetic to his plea,” Aelinor snapped, although she knew it was true. Had Maekar lived, Aegon would have supported his sister, and Aemon would have as well. As it was, there was no firm evidence of Maekar’s intentions – perhaps a letter to the Citadel with veiled questions, or the last raven that he had sent her, Aelinor. But this letter was not clear either. Who would believe them? Who would want to believe? Too few, at any case. And yet everything in Aelinor rebelled, screamed that it was not right.
“We can always step back later, if we see that the situation is taking a dangerous turn,” she said. “This was your father’s decision, Aemon, and it was a well-reasoned one.”
Now, he looked her in the eye. “The situation has already taken a dangerous turn,” he said. “Last night, I was approached by certain lords who offered to act for my release of my vows. The separation of interests, each achievable only through division in our House, has already started.”
She only gave a low gasp.
“Of course, I refused,” Aemon went on. “I am not fit to rule, as I think you agree. But Daella won’t be allowed to rule. A reign of hers will be forever marred by contradictions and attempts to change things, like my grandfather’s reign forty years ago. We won’t have this. We can’t have you spreading tales, no matter how true they are.”
“How are you going to stop me?” Aelinor asked and when he did not reply, she realized with cruel preciseness just how true her last words to Maekar had turned out. She would find herself isolated more badly than she would have at Aerys’ death, and at the hands of those Maekar had trusted most.
The silence stretched until the low buzz of Maegor’s Holdfast around them indicated that the servants were closing windows and lighting more fireplaces, preparing the castle within a castle for the night. In the last weeks, Aelinor had barely caught any sleep at all, hollow and dead inside, and yet the tears would only come when she would manage to go to fitful sleep, cold and unrelieved by the warmth of a body next to her; when she woke up at night, her face was always wet with tears and in the morning, her eyes were swollen, yet she could not remember having wept.
“Don’t tell Daella,” Aemon finally said. “I know she never wanted to be Queen and I believe she will understand but the bitterness will be there.”
“Yes, for certain!” Aelinor agreed. “Why, even I feel bitterness and I’m not the one cheated out of a throne.”
But this was the last arrow in a battle that she had already lost. With Maekar’s death, she was again no one, a queen in name and just this. Nothing depended on her, except for hurting Daella. Or… not hurting her.
The scrawl of an invisible ink once again took over her life in the years she spent at Summerhall – a castle that had been granted to Maekar unconditionally, so he was not bound by any rules of succession and could leave it to whomever he wished. It turned out that he had chosen her. A castle of her own, additional means that were more than generous, and being the sole guardian of Vaella and little Maegor – yes, Aelinor did find some measure of comfort in knowing that her abilities and devotion had been appreciated after all.
The End