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“What will you tell Daella and Rhae? And everyone else at Summerhall?” Daeron questioned his father. “The pretense that Aegon returns home to Summerhall after the tourney may be believable to others, but not to those at Summerhall, surely. They will see quite clearly that he is not among our party, the moment we set foot inside the castle.”
Maekar glared at his son. “Do you take me for a fool? I am well aware of the problem.”
“What do you plan to do about it, Father? Will you explain his absence with the excuse that Aegon is suffering from some dangerous illness that could infect others, and thus must remain secluded at a mysterious location until he is healed? Or are you going to pluck some peasant boy to pretend to be Aegon, while the real Aegon is away on his grand adventure with the hedge knight?” Daeron asked, outlining the various possibilities with glee. His sister Rhae once said that he should be let loose to spin yarns and tales for a living. (“Perhaps you wouldn’t be so miserable and unhappy then, and you wouldn’t drink too much,” Rhae had added, with the total and complete earnestness of an eight-year-old. It was almost enough to make Daeron cry.)
Maekar scoffed. “I will not stoop to such ridiculous theatrics. And no one would be fooled by it, least of all your sisters. Those at Summerhall will be told that Aegon has gone to Lys with Aerion. That is the most plausible explanation for his absence.”
“Lys? You sent your youngest son, a boy who is not yet ten, into exile across the narrow sea? Even you would not be so cruel as to do that, Father. No one would believe it.”
Maekar disagreed. “On the contrary. They will find it very easy to believe. They will think that it is precisely the sort of thing I am capable of. A kinslayer who struck his brother dead with his own mace, surely nothing is beyond such a man.”
It was not the anger and bitterness he had been expecting that Daeron heard in his father’s voice, but a deep, weary resignation that quite unnerved him. “Father –“ he began, but was swiftly interrupted.
“You must keep your promise not to divulge anything about Aegon’s true whereabouts,” Maekar warned his eldest son. “Unless you wish to do your brother a great harm. Unless you wish to endanger his life.”
“I would never do anything to endanger my own brother!” exclaimed Daeron, looking and sounding hurt. “Do you really think so lowly of me, Father?”
“When you are sober, perhaps … perhaps … you could be trusted not to do intentional harm to your siblings, but –“
Daeron interjected, sourly, “Well, thank you very much for your glowing confidence in me, Father.”
“He was your squire!” Maekar exploded. “I entrusted him under your care. You swore to me that you were ready to perform all the duties and responsibilities of a knight, including guiding and protecting a squire. But drunk and senseless, you completely lost sight of your brother for days. He could have been truly harmed if it was not Ser Duncan he came across first, if he had truly been abducted by a robber knight, as you claimed.”
“You should have known better than to make Aegon my squire,” said Daeron, sullenly. “I never wanted to enter the lists at Ashford. I told you that, more than once, but you kept insisting.”
“Well, you are right, for once.”
Daeron could not believe his ears. Did his father just say that he was right? This … this ... well, this was truly unprecedented, an occasion worthy to be recorded in the annals of history. He amused himself by imagining the entry. The first time my father said I was right, by Daeron, son of Maekar, grandson of another Daeron, whose father never said he was right.
“I should have known better than to entrust you with anything at all,” Maekar continued.
Daeron slumped on his seat. Oh. Of course. He should have expected the second part of his father’s statement. He was a fool not to see it coming.
“If it were up to me,” said Maekar, darkly, “you would never have known the truth about Aegon’s whereabouts. But it is just like you to sneak around and to listen to conversations that are not meant for your ears.”
“I was not sneaking around,” Daeron protested. “I thought you were about to give Aegon a scolding, for insisting that he would only squire for Ser Duncan and no one else. How was I supposed to know that you were going to –“
Maekar interrupted, “And I suppose you thought it would be amusing to watch your brother being scolded?”
Daeron sighed. “I am a lot of things, Father, but I am not Aerion. I enjoy a great many things you disapprove of, that much is true. But I do not enjoy watching the misfortune of others, let alone the misfortune of my little brother. I thought, having failed Aegon once before, I must come to his defense this time, in my own muddled and ineffective way, of course.”
“No, you are not Aerion. Gods know you have your faults, very many of them, too many for my liking, but you are not Aerion.”
Daeron raised his eyebrows. Was that a compliment? It was not much of a compliment, even if it was one, but still …
“I was blind about Aerion, completely blind,” Maekar continued.
“Well, Aerion could be very … plausible. And convincing.”
“I am his father. I should have known better.”
You should have, Father. You really should have.
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The look on Rhae’s face was heartbreaking, a mixture of incredulity, fear and fury. “Lys?!” she exclaimed. “You sent Aegon to Lys, with Aerion? Father, how could you? Aerion will kill him!”
“Aerion will do no such thing,” Maekar said, stiffly.
Rhae changed her tune, abruptly. “You did not really send Aegon to Lys, did you, Father? This is all just a … a jape. A prank, or some kind of trickery. Egg … Aegon, I mean, he’s hiding in the stables, and he’ll come out laughing, to see me cry. It’s his revenge, because I pretended that I had given him a love potion to drink.”
Maekar could find nothing to say in reply. Rhae took hold of her father’s hand. “Tell me it’s not true, Father. You wouldn’t really do such a thing. You wouldn’t! You just wouldn’t! I know you wouldn’t.”
Daella said to her sister, gently, “When have we ever known Father to take part in childish japes and trickeries, Rhae?” Then, turning to her father, she said, less gently, “Aegon did nothing wrong. Why should he be punished like Aerion? And Daeron here lied to you about Ser Duncan being a robber knight, but you did not send him into exile. How is that fair, Father? How is that just?”
Daeron flushed. Leave me it out of it, sister. Let’s not give Father any new idea on how to punish me. His disappointment is punishment enough.
Though, in all honesty, he could not pretend to be baffled about why Daella, and Rhae, too, would see it as an injustice, if Aegon was truly sent into exile in Lys, while Daeron himself remained in Summerhall.
Egg had written a very long letter to his sisters, after the trial of seven, just before Uncle Baelor’s funeral. Daeron had seen him bent down with concentration, writing, I didn’t mean any harm, when I lied to Ser Duncan so he would take me as his squire. But now Uncle Baelor is dead and Father and Ser Duncan are both being blamed for it. What should I do? I don’t know what I must do.
Rhae was still insisting that it was all a jape. She seemed desperate for her father to convince her of this. Daella looked calmer, outwardly, but her lack of surprise was probably a sharper knife in the chest to their father, thought Daeron. He imagined Prince Maekar thinking, You think I am capable of this. My own daughter thinks I am truly capable of this. Not just strangers who know nothing of me, but even my own progeny, my own blood.
Daeron bit his lower lip, trying to hide his grin. It reflected very badly on himself, he knew, but truth be told, he was somewhat relishing his father’s current predicament. Now you know how I feel, Father. Now you know how I have always felt, faced with your constant disappointment and disapproval. And now you must live with your daughters’ disappointment and disapproval. Let’s see how you like it, Father. Let’s see how long you could withstand it.
“Aegon is in Lys, and he will remain in Lys for the foreseeable future. I have decided, and we will not speak of the matter again,” Maekar declared, in a tone that was meant to brook no argument – his usual tone, in short – but this time, it fell far short of stopping the argument.
Rhae snatched her hand away from her father’s grasp, wailing, “It’s monstrous! You are cruel, Father. Too cruel!”
Daella took her sister into her embrace. She didn’t say anything to their father, but she didn’t have to, because the look on her face said it all.
It was all too much for Daeron, seeing his sisters’ palpable distress. Even the stricken expression he spied on his father’s face did not give him the satisfaction he had thought it would. He sputtered, “Tell them the truth, Father.”
“Keep out of it, Daeron,” Maekar warned. “Remember your promise.”
“Daella and Rhae deserve to know the truth. You should not conceal it from them too. It shows that you do not trust them.”
And it hurts, Father, not being trusted by your own father.
“Unlike me,” Daeron continued, “your daughters have done nothing to deserve that lack of faith from their father.”
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It was time for another edition of the mummer’s farce, enacted in front of the servants, household knights and men-at-arms at Summerhall.
“Aegon must be down to skins and bones by now. Please, can he come home soon, Father?” Rhae pleaded.
“My poor, poor brother,” Daella said, wiping tears from her cheeks. “Surely he has been punished enough. How much longer must he remain in Lys, Father?”
And on and on it went, as the two sisters acted out a barrage of emotions, alternating between pleading with their father to allow their youngest brother to come home, and berating him for being such a cruel, heartless man.
“I do not see the point of this charade,” Maekar had scoffed, when Rhae first suggested it. “You already know the truth about Aegon’s whereabouts. Why pretend otherwise?”
It was Daella who replied, “So they would believe it, Father. So others at Summerhall would believe that you had really sent Aegon to Lys. How could there be any doubt about it, when your own daughters believe that you have done this very thing?”
Daeron was under strict order from his sisters not to laugh, or even smile, during this repeated performance. “That would ruin the whole thing, if you laugh,” they warned him. He put on a somber, mournful expression, and kept his mouth firmly shut.
They did not have to warn Prince Maekar not to laugh and smile, or to ask him to act stern and severe. He did that all on his own, with no acting or prompting required.
Daella’s tears looked very much in earnest that it really surprised Daeron. Rhae was usually the performer, the one who could make-believe and pretend with the best of them, not Daella.
“When did Daella turn out to be such a convincing performer?” Daeron wondered aloud, in the privacy of his father’s solar/
“What made you think that it was all just a performance?” asked Maekar.
“Well, she knows that Aegon is not really in Lys,” Daeron pointed out. “She knows that it only a story you put out, to hide Aegon’s true whereabouts, to try to keep him safe.”
“Aegon may not be in Lys, but that does not make him any less absent from home. And it certainly does not mean that his sisters would not miss him,” replied Maekar.
“Or his father?” ventured Daeron.