Chapter Text
The stench of King’s Landing was legendary – starting well before the city came into view and rising almost half-way to the top of Aegon’s Hill. In King Daeron’s mind, it was the most overwhelming feature of his capital and he had to reach the ripe old age of five-and-fifty to understand how wrong he had been. The sound of the city was just as prevalent – and it actually reached the Red Keep. A constant buzz, punctuated by sharper noises that only stood out because no one even noticed the buzz. The sound of life. Daeron only realized it existence now, when it was no longer there. Now, King’s Landing was full of dead and those who waited to die and it was silent. Creepy silent. It looked so from Aegon’s Hill, at least. The dead King’s Landing. As dead as the body now burning on the pyre…
It felt so strange that the touch of the Stranger had made smallfolk and highborn equal now. They all went to the flames, from the beggars in the street to Valarr himself. Daeron could not look away from the orange tongues consuming his grandson’s remains but he could not see anything either. He could only see the day, almost twenty years ago, when his dreams had come true and the world had seemed his for the taking. The birth of this child that carried the blood of dragons, the blood of the Dornish Marches, and the blood of Sunspear had looked like a promise, a good omen. Valarr had been supposed to bring the unification of the realm to its completion because time would not let Daeron and perhaps even Baelor do it. A new generation was needed, a new generation born in united Westeros to feel in their bones. Now, Valarr was headed to meet the gods as his grandfather still lived and this seemed impossible to Daeron. Impossibly cruel. Painful even beyond impossibility. But he wasn’t supposed to go away, Daeron thought numbly. Neither him nor Matarys. Yet here they were, gathered in the court right beyond the bridge of Maegor’s Hill to attend the second royal burial in two weeks.
Baelor had been seen by many who had come to pay their respects for one last time and see him on his last way; now, only some of the people dwelling in the Red Keep had come for Valarr. Fear had replaced stench and noise, more permeating that they had ever been.
Daeron felt Baelor’s presence at his side more acutely than ever. The reproach that his son would have given him. The reproach that he was giving himself right now. He should have been able to prevent this. Stop it from happening. He did not know how but he felt that he should have been able to do it. Just like he should have been able to prevent Baelor’s death. He should have handled Maekar better… A look at his youngest son revealed just what he expected to see: no expression at all, gritted teeth as Maekar pushed his way through this as he did with everything else. He’d better change this if he wants to keep going out, Daeron thought fleetingly but with some concern. A King’s Landing in the grip of panic would find it easy to find a culprit in him – not for causing the sickness but for being who he was and carrying himself the way he did. And despair could push people beyond all limits. Daeron still had no idea just how Maekar, specifically, fared in the streets. I’ll have to warn him, he thought but if he intended to have this conversation a few hours after the burial, he was in for a disappointment: Maekar had already left to have a look at the new cordon separating an entire quarter with not a single unaffected household from the rest of the city. I should have known, Daeron thought and wondered bitterly if Maekar even felt saddened by his nephew’s death. As much as he fought it, in the last few months, he had started letting all the things people whispered, all the shameful doubts that he had been trying to keep at bay for over fifteen years get to him. It was so difficult and confusing. At one moment, he remembered a silver-haired boy who never gave him any trouble, did everything well and dreamed of bringing glory to his House, the son he had never taken much notice of but loved anyway; but in the next, the other recollection came and there was no escape from it. Maekar had killed Baelor with his own hands and although Daeron believed, or wanted to believe that it had been an accident, he did not indulge in illusions. Maekar was a severe, self-contained man haunted by the little that he lacked to gain the affection and recognition that he desperately craved, yet did not know how to win, perhaps capable of everything to get them, in any way – a man Daeron feared he did not know, might have never known at all.
One thing had remained unchanged, though: Maekar’s feeling of duty. It kept pushing him to do the right thing. And being Maekar, he would not avoid danger and fear: whenever something scared him, he did not run away but sought to see it face to face. Right now, everyone’s fear was one and the same and Maekar did not make any exception. Daeron glanced at the shutters of the windows in his granddaughters’ chambers and felt how his own fear rose, the fear that despite the strict order that they should not leave their chambers by any pretext, the plague would find its way there. He almost welcomed it, for it soothed him to know that despite his complex feelings for Maekar, his feelings for Daella and Rhae had remained unchanged.
“I wish he had not gone out today,” Rhaegel said unexpectedly, as if he had read his father’s thoughts. He did not specify whom he was talking about but Daeron did not think there could be any mistake. For all the feebleness of his mind, Rhaegel could be more intuitive than the rest of his brothers together. Now, he sounded as if he was merely continuing a conversation that they had had just a moment ago.
“Do you?” Daeron asked. “Why is this?”
“Because the moods against him have been rising uncontrollably. Yesterday, he got surrounded by a throng who wanted to make him order the opening of the city gates, so people could leave, run away from the plague. There was some casting of stones… One of these days, he may find himself dragged off his horse and killed right there.”
“He won’t,” the King said with pretended certainty. “Rhaegel, where do you know all this from?”
His son shrugged. “I asked.”
It was so simple that Daeron wondered why he had not thought about such a decision. Especially when Maekar was concerned. He rarely talked about his struggles – he just found a way to bring them to conclusion. The only way to know what was going on with him was to ask. Even this was no promise of an answer but not doing it was a promise of no answer at all.
Rhaegel was staring at him, eyes narrowed and focused. It was in moments like this when the pain became too much to bear, these glimpses of what his son might have been if not for… what? His blood? An accident right before birth? A whim of the Seven? Daeron did not know and maesters could not offer anything by the way of explanation.
As usual, he stopped thinking about this because decades ago, he had realized that this was the only way to survive.
“What is it?” he asked at last because Rhaegel was not letting go.
“I wonder how far it’s going to go,” his son finally said.
“What?”
“Your desire to see him hurt.”
Daeron’s head went back as if Rhaegel had slapped him but he did not say anything. After all, that was what everyone was thinking. Rhaegel was just the only one brave or mad enough to say it to his face.
“His pain doesn’t give me any pleasure,” he denied even knowing that it was not quite true.
“Doesn’t it?” Rhaegel asked and finally looked away, at the gardens beyond the window. Plants and flowers were the only thing living in King’s Landing right now. They did not care about death and despair – they just went on and brought colour and vibrancy in a world that had been drained of any. “You’re glad… You want him to suffer…”
Daeron stilled his hand, shocked by the sudden urge to hit Rhaegel. He had never felt this way before, never. With Baelor and Maekar, and even Aerys – yes, certainly. Rhaegel had waited for over thirty years but he had caught up. None of the others would have dared…
“You’ve always been on his side,” he heard himself say. As different as those two were, they had each other’s back. Guarded each other’s secrets. For decades.
Rhaegel blinked, confused and then angry as well. “Sides? There are sides now?” He sighed. “The only thing I wonder is whose side you’re going to take, the Stranger’s or his, if you were given this choice.”
I wonder as well, Daeron thought and felt incredibly old, spent and most of all, ashamed. I wonder as well.