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I carry my brother in my teeth and his wounds don’t sleep,
he knows it’s why I’ve had darkness all my life,
Come,
You’re my brother and you’re alive
Edmund and Edgar stagger home by Alex Peery Clark
Egg wakes to a sweaty hand over his mouth, his brothers eyes dark as purple grapes in the candlelight. For a moment, he thinks it’s Aerion, but no, it is Daeron’s sandy hair dangling down towards his face. Certainly no one else reeks so much of wine. One sallow finger hovers over his mouth.
“Shhh.”
“I haven’t said anything,” Egg mumbles against the hand. Daeron slowly releases his hand and Egg wriggles upright against the headboard.
There are no other estates between Summerhall and Ashford, and all their lords gone to the tourney regardless, so they’re camped up in an inn. They’d ended up sharing a bed, when Ser Gillam insisted on staying in the inn alongside and there were no more rooms to stay. I’ll disturb you, Daeron had warned, planning to toss some money to one of the other guests but Egg had insisted. Daeron hadn’t lied, he mumbled in his sleep. If there were words in the mumblings, Egg couldn’t parse them. Now, just when he’d managed to block out the noise and fall asleep, Daeron’s waking him again.
“Get dressed quick, we’re going to lose this lot,” he whispers, gesturing his head in what is probably the vague direction of the guards outside.
“Why?”
Daeron’s already inspecting things before stuffing things into their packs. He pauses and tilts his head at his brother. “Am I a good knight, Egg?”
“Not so much.”
Daeron says nothing in response, only leans forward to ruffle Egg’s bright hair, before returning to his packing. Tentatively, he sniffs at a tunic. It must pass muster because it too gets thrown in.
“You would be a better knight if you weren’t drunk so often,” Egg says, rubbing at the sleep in his eyes and slipping out of the bed.
“And you would be a better squire if you were taller.”
Once Daeron is satisfied with their shoulder bags, he shakes out twenty or so silver stags from his purse and leaves them on the little table.
“Ser Gillam is a light sleeper, so we must be very quiet on the stairs,” Daeron warns, and they very cautiously make their way down to the stables. Egg’s never seen his brother so graceful before.
Egg’s hobby Galladon whickers at him when they swing open the stable door. His brother hangs back by the entrance, as bad a squire as he was a knight, and leaves saddling the horses to him. Daeron always laughed at the way he cared for horses; mostly because he himself was always a little scared of them. He’s skittish, just like you, Egg had whispered to his brother’s palfrey before they’d set off.
(“What’s he called?” Egg had asked, when the ride the day before had begun to bore and he started shifting in the stiff saddle.
“Who?”
“Your horse.”
“I didn’t ask,” Daeron had replied, looking vaguely sick from the jolting movement. The result of trying to drink while riding, Egg had supposed.
“Names are important. A horse must have a good name so he’ll learn to act like it. Mine’s called Galladon, after the Perfect Knight, and see how steady he is compared to yours.”
“I don’t know who the Perfect Knight is but you can name my horse if you like. Something he can live up to.”
Daeron always looked sad, but Egg had noticed it then more than ever in that moment. “How about after Symeon Star-Eyes. He’s got a star right above his brow, look.”
“Ser Symeon was blind, wasn’t he? Seeing is not always such a good thing.”)
Now, stood with the moonlight embracing him from behind, his brother looks maybe not happy but less sad. Facing father’s inevitable anger will be worth it just for that. Once Egg is happy with the horses, he leads them out into the fresh air.
“The guards are sleeping on the south of the house, so we should avoid them.”
It is surprisingly easy to escape; beyond keeping their voices low, there is not that much else they need do. Egg does not particularly understand why Daeron is insisting on bringing him along. He’s a heavy enough sleeper, and not much use to him if they’re going to avoid being found instantly. But why argue it? Even if he stayed, there’s no squiring without Daeron. He’s just happy to come along.
Egg’s rather relieved to get his hood off by the time they enter the room. Daeron seems to have forgotten he has more than enough coin for two rooms so they’re staying in one again, two beds broken by a small gap. For now though, he can savour the silence while his brother drinks away the afternoon. Like as not, there’ll be no sign of him until he stumbles his way to bed.
Daeron surprises him by bursting in after what could only have been one drink, sending Egg rushing for his hood in fear until he realises who it is.
“Why are you back so early?”
“I’ve got to do your hair, and I doubt I’ll manage it drunk.”
Rummaging through the bags, he brings out a bronze razor and inspects the edge in the fire light.
“Where’s my clothes? I thought you packed them.” Egg asks. He’d gone through them to try and keep them somewhat tidy, and found only his brother’s tunics and trousers.
“You can’t go wandering around in those clothes. Yours have all got the sigil on them.”
“Then what am I to wear?”
“I’ve asked the innkeeper’s wife to bring up some clothes of her son, he’s near enough your age.”
He lines the razor up on the small table, and draws his dagger from his belt. Clearly, Daeron had thought this through. But then of course, he’d done this before, snuck off to get pissed in some tavern while guards caught colds trying to find him. Why their father had trusted him to not try again, Egg doesn’t know. Maybe he thought the cloutings from the last time had made enough of an impact. But Daeron will take all the cuffings you give him as long as he can do it drunk. Egg has given up trying to convince him to not bother father so much. After all, he was only a boy of nine.
“What about your clothes?”
Daeron pushes him so that he falls back onto the bed.
The innkeeper knocks not long later, a little girl about Egg’s age trailing behind her. They both stare queerly at Egg for wearing his hood indoors but say nothing when Daeron slips a silver their way. There are two bowls of water, one warm and the other cold and the pile of clothes. They smell fresh enough, and aren’t nearly as rough as he was expecting. Lighter linen will certainly be far more comfortable in the summer heat than the thick damask of his own clothes.
Daeron sits him down and stands back for a moment, lifting up locks of silver hair. Out of the corner of his eye, Egg trails the blade, ornate hilt and light bouncing off the sharp metal.
“I really should have asked for a pair of shears, but oh well.”
With his left hand, he pulls a chunk taut and hacks at it with the blade. It is a vastly different experience than having the barber cut his hair, but he is at least trying to be gentle.
“I don’t like the sound of it,” Egg says, as he watches silvery hair collapse onto the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. The knife against the hair makes a horrible dry ripping sound that runs right through him like a sip of wine. Unconsciously, he bites the inside of his lip.
“Well, what would you have me do?”
“Say something, or make some noise. Sing.”
Daeron looks uneasy when Egg turns to look at him. Since he was a boy, he’s loved the singers and mummers and everything in between. Sometimes, if he listened hard enough and drowned out everything else, he could pretend he wasn’t Aegon but a true knight, maybe Galladon of Morne, who only unsheathed his enchanted blade Just Maid three times. Not once against a mortal man, only ever in fairness, and slew a dragon with it. Well there were no dragons anymore, and if Aerion were the one telling it, Egg would be the dragon, not the knight, falling against the sword.
“I don’t know many good songs. Just what they sing in the taverns.”
He quickly hacks away at another chunk of hair, as if doing it quicker will make it less painful a sound but Egg still shivers.
“Please?”
“Fine, if it’ll stop your squirming.” He takes up the knife again. “Prince Baelor was the first born. Prince Maekar sprang out last. Daemon was the bastard, so they kicked his bastard…”
For some reason, he trails off, and the thwack of the hair seems louder than before.
“What is it? Why did you stop.”
“Nothing… I-never mind.” Daeron says, rubbing his fingers together to lose the cut hair. “Grass is green in summer, green grass I adore. But grass is red all over when you kill a rebel…Horses die in battle, this battle was the front.”
Egg’s heard Daeron sing before; he seems to fall into it when he’s fallen into wine, which is more than not. With only his wine skin from the road, which he had drunk slowly to eke out his supply, his voice is not nearly as bad. Drunk, it is reedy, slurring and slow. Now though, it’s rather pleasant.
“Blackfyre’s not a trueborn, he came from the wrong…Country was in peril, the Hammer smashed the bastard with his giant veiny host of Dornish spearman!”
He loses the melody a bit by the end but even Egg can hear that he actually seemed to enjoy it. Without having to draw blood with biting, they have gotten through most of the long parts of his hair. The floor is a mess of wispy hair, clouds fallen down.
“Short enough to shave now, I’d wager. Pass me the razor.”
Egg, more worried about how well he’ll manage with this part, hands it up.
“Will you sing again?”
“That’s the end of the song. I don’t think I know all the words to much else.”
“I don’t mind hearing it again.”
Daeron sings around three more rounds of The Hammer and The Anvil by the time they are done. By the second, Egg joins in, fairly good at picking things up, and that helps even more with the noise. He can hear the song echoing around his ears more than the scraping of the razor. When Daeron places it down, Egg reaches up and runs a hand along his clean head, smooth and fresh. It tickles but not unpleasantly.
“Go on, have a look in the reflection.”
There’s little hair floating around in the bowls of water, but he can see clearly enough. There is his face looking out at him, his features small in the middle of his face without the hair. Now the silver-gold is gone, he looks well. Normal. Sometimes he cursed his luck at landing with the distinctive Valyrian hair. Only his brother Aerion really had it; Daella had the same sandy hair as Daeron, and Rhae’s was dark as their mothers had been. Aemon was blonde, but somehow it had turned out like the kind Lannisters or Hightower’s sported. Aerion never let him forget that they were the only ones with true Targaryen hair.
For the first time, Egg sees his mother’s face in the reflection, not his father’s, not his brother’s. The rippling, distorted bald boy in the water smiles.
That night, they sit in the tavern of the inn and order food. The barkeep places two plates before them piled high with roasted pork swimming in a kind of ale sauce. On the side, they’d piled barley cooked in butter and a variety of vegetables roasted with honey. Daeron shovels it in between gulps of wine. For Egg, they’d brought out a cup of small beer. He’s been taking small sips every now and then with a bite of food, but he can’t help wrinkling his nose each time.
“Small beer is vile,” he says, for want of something to say.
“Indeed,” Daeron half shouts, because he is not quite drunk enough to slur his speech but more than enough to forget his volume. “Here, have some wine instead.”
“I don’t want wine,” he says, so that he doesn’t have to say anything else. I don’t want to be like you, he thinks.
“You drink it at Summerhall.”
“This is not Summerhall.”
“Come on, have a drink with me. It helps.”
The way he says it, he sounds hollowed out from the inside. Looking at him, wine spills already splattering the table, Egg’s not so sure. Just when he thinks his brother has let it pass, he gestures to the barkeep for another cup.
To appease him, and because he really would rather drink it than the small beer, Egg finishes it. It doesn’t take long for it to soften his head so that it feels entrenched in mud.
“More,” Daeron says, his clammy palm pressed against Egg’s bald head. “You need more to feel it. That much will hardly touch you.”
“I do not want to feel it.”
“But why not?”
“Daeron, please.”
Mid pour, Daeron stops, wine sloshing out of the jug. Slowly he blinks back at Egg.
“Seven hells I-. Sorry.”
Resting his head in his palm, grabbing at the skin on his face, he hardly makes any sense he is so muffled. “Go and get some rest. I’ll try not disturb you.”
He’s torn for a moment, between wanting to stay with Daeron, maybe even try and stop him from having many more, and wanting to go and disappear from everything. But there’s little chance he has of stopping Daeron. Certainly, he has never managed before. He stands up and instead slips out into the darkness.
Egg spends near an hour in the stables, talking to Galladon and Symeon, brushing them down. He’s been curled up, unable to sleep, in his small bed for double that time when Daeron finally comes stumbling through the door. Hopping on one foot, he throws his boots to the side, and climbs into bed fully clothed. There’s no need for Egg to feign he’s asleep, Daeron is not in any position to notice.
After some time, he falls into a fitful sleep but Egg is still awake, watching his brother. Wine has made him snore, but eventually he stops and it becomes muttering instead. Daeron moves his head as if to shake away something but he’s still asleep as far as he can tell. When he shifts, Egg sees him, batting at his arms like he’s trying to push something away.
“Don’t, please don’t.” He mutters, hardly coherent.
Aemon says there’s no waking Daeron when he’s dreaming, or at the least no point. They will come for him, waking or sleeping or whether he’s shaken awake in the duration. His dreams are real, Egg knows. But they are never kind dreams. If he must dream of the future, why can’t it be of something nice for once, he always thought. It would be easier for Daeron, easier for them all.
Instead, he tries as best he can to get some sleep. But it doesn’t stop, or even quieten. With the gap of years between them, Egg never shared the nursery with him, so it is not often he has ever slept beside his brother. Everyone knows, or at least hears about it. It is something else to witness it. The previous night seems nothing in comparison. Daeron whimpers, twists and turns as if he’s burning.
Egg slips out of his bed, pads over to his side.
Daeron is crying. He can see that now, tracks of tears slipping out of his closed eyes, catching against the darkness even as he twitches. His whimpering gets louder, and he writhes more, almost as if someone is pulling at him from the inside out. And the sound, oh the sound. Egg’s not heard cries like that since their mother died. Aemon be damned, he’s waking him up.
“Daeron! Daeron, wake up!” Egg calls, trying to hold his brother still enough to shake him. He squirms under his grip but Egg uses all the strength he’s learnt from guiding the horses. “Daeron!”
Daeron shoots up, eyes wild, but he stares ahead like he isn’t yet awake. His hands claw at Egg, trying to remove him. “Stop! Stop! Let me be!”
“Daeron! It’s me! It’s Egg!”
And slowly, Egg sees his brother’s eyes soften, as he comes to, breathing slowing but still heavy. There is sweat soaking his forehead, leaving his hair even more limp than it had been before.
“I dreamt… Egg, I dreamt.” He says, his voice rocky as the roads they’d ridden down. “I was the feast and all the whores were eating me. Piece by piece until there was nothing left..”
At the last, something finally splinters and Daeron breaks down into heavy, broken sobs. It’s more than his brother would ever usually tell him. The dream has shaken the truth from him and suddenly Egg feels terribly like he is intruding in something he shouldn’t.
“It’s over now, brother.” Egg whispers, and his voice sounds younger than ever. “Lie back down.”
Daeron falls back against the pillows, red eyed and looking older even than their grandfather. Once he is sure he is fine, Egg rushes over to grab the jug of water, pours some in the bowl and dips the linen towel in it. He rings it out, and presses it against his brother’s forehead, wiping away tears and sweat both. Daeron could be dead, for all he moves, or acknowledges anything. But once the cloth has wiped his face, he puts a hand on Egg’s arm to pause him.
“Go to bed, Egg. I’ll be alright now.”
What else is there to do but go to bed?
By the next afternoon, Daeron is still not out of bed. He doesn’t sleep, only lies there, staring at the wall. There’s nothing to do at the inn, everyone has left for the tourney. Instead, Egg takes Galladon and rides up the small hill that allows a glimpse of Ashford in the distance. He could abandon Daeron, ride his way to Ashford and join his family. But somehow, it would be his fault that Daeron ran off, and father would be angry and he’d be unable to avoid Aerion. Which has been the best part of this little escape.
He looks at his hand on Galladon’s reigns, the too large, borrowed tunic slipping down his arm. What would it be like, truly being the son of a barkeep. Really being Egg not Aegon. He could watch the tourney, and he could spend time with horses and his mother would tuck him into bed each night. That Egg, he’d have a mother again. It wouldn’t be his mother, but still. He thinks it might be nice. Maybe that’s the truth of it. Maybe he doesn’t need to be Egg the innkeeper’s son if his mother was still alive.
Egg looks back at the castle in the distance and turns back.
Back at the inn, Daeron is up and drinking, and looks to have been for quite some time. Egg orders them two meals, some kind of game pie, and makes him eat the whole thing. As soon as he’s done, he slumps back into the table. Sometimes when he’s drunk, Daeron is hilarious, jolly and cheerful and a good brother, but this is not one of those times.
“You should go to bed,” he suggests, tentatively.
Muffled by his arm, Egg just catches a mumbled no.
“Why not?”
“Dreams…”
That’s when he remembers, last night when he’d been piling things out of the satchels, he’d spotted it. The small pouch that Daeron kept full of sweetsleep. Truthfully, he’s not meant to have it often; the maesters have forbade him because of the amount he took. But just for one night, perhaps.
Egg takes the stairs by two, and scrambles through the clothes until he finds it. On the way back down the stairs, he almost barrels into the barkeep’s daughter.
“Daeron,” he says, poking the crumpled form of his brother. “Daeron, how much sweetsleep is right for a dreamless sleep.”
Daeron’s head rolls upwards, wine stains around his mouth. “Sweetsleep…”
“How much?”
He swallows deeply, and looks deep into Egg’s eyes. Egg slaps him, not hard but enough to jolt him. Daeron blinks slowly.
“A pinch.”
“Are you certain?”
“…Yes.”
Cautiously, he opens the pouch and grabs a small pinch and drops it into Daeron’s wine. His brother drags himself up, and uses a finger to stir the wine before sucking the remainder off. Then he drains the cup.
Egg waves off the barkeep’s offer of help, and supports Daeron up the stairs. It’s not easy, Daeron is tall and also drunk. Eventually, they make it to their room and he half drops half throws Daeron onto his bed. First, he slips off his brothers shoes and then leg warmers and trousers. The tunic is harder, he has to pull him into a sitting position to get the doublet and tunic off. In only his shirt and breeches, he looks awfully vulnerable.
By the time Egg has folded the clothes and put them neatly aside, Daeron is asleep already. For the second night, he pads over to the side of his bed. Daeron reeks of wine but is markedly still. Carefully, he slips into the gap beside him, wraps an arm around his brothers side.
Tonight, they will both get some rest.