Chapter Text
The branch broke on the third blow, and Maekar thought he might cry (he did not cry. He was six, not a baby, and Baelor was watching).
"You're too easy to read still," Baelor said. He was four years his elder and already fashioning a new branch-sword, stripping the smaller twigs with quick fingers. He had their father's hands, everyone said so. Long and sure and made for holding things. "Your shoulder drops before your arm moves. Ser Borys says it every time."
"I know what Ser Borys says."
"Then do what Ser Borys says."
Maekar took the new branch-sword from his brother's offering palm. The stream moved beside them and the kingswood lived around them on all remaining sides, great old oaks with their roots in water and birds going about their unknown business far above. It smelled of wet bark and leaves and something he could only call cleanliness. Maekar had tried once to describe it to Aerys, who had said that is just forest, Maekar, forests smell of terpenes and soil, and then gone back to his book. Aerys always had a book, even now.
He could see his brother from here, some twenty yards upstream where the bank widened into a flat shelf of stone. Aerys sat very straight and very still, as he always sat, the great tome open across his knees. He was eight, two years older than Maekar, but he looked much younger than him, thin-wristed and solemn, his silver hair falling across his face as he bent over whatever legend or genealogy he had found so vital that he had insisted that it accompany them into the kingswood on what was meant to be a morning of fresh air and brotherly sport.
Ser Maribald Footly stood behind him. Or rather, Ser Maribald loomed behind him, which was what men of Ser Maribald's dimensions tended to do with any space they occupied. He was a big man, the knight—broad through the chest, with a square jaw and pale eyes set very close together, and a look about him of a dog that meant well. His cloak was the white of the Kingsguard, and his sword was fine, and Maekar was quite certain his grandfather would not have chosen him if he could not use it. That much he was prepared to grant Ser Maribald Footly. With a blade, surely. The rest was less certain.
"—and there it says the Fisher Queen," Aerys was saying, pointing at something on the page. "What is a Fisher Queen, Ser? Is it symbolic, do you think, or do you suppose—"
"Aye," said Ser Maribald.
There was a pause.
"Aye what?"
"Aye, my prince. 'Tis... a queen. Who fished."
Maekar turned away. It was too tedious to watch.
"Ready?" said Baelor, and Maekar raised his branch.
They fought until Maekar's arm ached and his temple was damp with sweat and his branch had broken twice more and been twice replaced. Baelor beat him, and beat him, and beat him and on the fourth bout, when Baelor stepped inside a parry and raised his arm for the killing blow, Maekar dropped low and brought his branch up sharp and caught his brother across the belly.
Baelor stopped. He looked at his belly, he looked at Maekar and then he smiled. "There. There you are."
Maekar felt something move in his chest that he had no name for either, something bright and hot and better than the smell of the forest. He kept his mouth very straight and tried not to show how much he had wanted that, how long.
"You're slow," he remarked, because Baelor would expect him to say something.
"I gave it you."
"You didn't."
"I thought about it." But Baelor was grinning still, and he dropped down onto the bank and pulled off his boots to dip his feet in the stream, careless and magnificent, the way he was about everything. Maekar sat beside him and did the same. The water was very cold where it ran over his toes and this too, was somewhat tedious. Upstream, Aerys was now asking Ser Maribald about the Bloodstone Emperor, and Ser Willam was saying aye again in various configurations.
"He doesn't know anything."
Baelor followed his gaze to Ser Maribald. "He knows enough."
"He said the Fisher Queen was a queen who fished."
"Perhaps she was."
Maekar considered this and found it unsatisfying. He pulled his feet from the water and dried them with his discarded overcoat.
Rhaegel, who had been crouched amongst a bed of flowers for the better part of an hour, said that had found something.
He was always finding things, always close low over the ground, examining whatever small world lived between the grass and the stones. Flowers, mostly. Sometimes beetles. Once, a dead vole.
"Baelor," called Rhaegel, without looking up. "Come see."
Baelor went without fuzz, because Baelor always seemed to indulge Rhaegel in all of his strange interests. Maekar came too, still holding his branch, looking at what Rhaegel was looking at.
"They have different numbers of petals." Rhaegel had not looked up. "Look, Baelor. This one has five and this one has six and this one—"
"They're very small," said Maekar.
"Yes," said Rhaegel, as if this were the point.
"What are they called?" asked Baelor
"I don't know." Rhaegel considered. "I think they should be called something with an l in it. They look like they have an l in them."
Ser Maribald came over as well, probably glad to be free from Aery's incessant questions. He crouched down and Rhaegel showed him the same flowers he had just showed Maekar, and Ser Maribald said, "Very pretty, my prince," and then (Maekar could not entirely track how it had happened) the knight was holding the flowers while Rhaegel directed him in the making of a crown.
"Let's get away from here," whispered Baelor, right into Maekar's ear.
He glanced at Ser Maribald who was frowning down at a stem Rhaegel had said must go under, not over, and at Aerys beyond them with his head buried deep in his tome.
"We'll be in trouble."
"Yes," said Baelor.
The trouble was not the point. The trouble was beside the point. Maekar looked at his brother's face and saw the promised adventure in it, and said, "Fine."
They walked, very casually, in the direction of the trees. Then they ran.
Maekar ran until his lungs burned, Baelor just ahead and to the left of him. They dodged roots and low branches, laughing so loudly they scattered the birds out of the canopy above them. They stopped in a small clearing awash with golden light. Baelor put his hands on his knees and laughed at the ground. Maekar did the same.
"When I am king," said Baelor, when he had enough breath for it. He stood up straight and looked at Maekar with the golden light across his face. "You will be my Hand."
"I know." They had talked aplenty about it.
"We'll ride out together. No one will make us stay behind."
"No one will dare." He thought about it. "We'll be famous. They'll give us names."
Baelor's eyes lit up at that. "What sort of names?"
"Good ones." Maekar considered the sky. "The kind all the great heroes have."
"I want something with the. The something." Baelor struck a pose with his branch. "Baelor the Bold."
"There have been so many the Bold, though. There's Ser Edricor the Bold, and The Bold Fury, and then Captain Steffon the Bold, the oarsman who—"
"I know which one." Baelor lowered the branch but did not seem much discouraged. "Then something else. Something they haven't used yet." He looked at Maekar expectantly.
"Baelor the Bright," Maekar offered.
"Too soft."
"Baelor the Burning."
"Too much."
"Baelor the—"
"Baelor the Best!"
Maekar stared at him. "You cannot call yourself the best."
"I'm not calling myself anything. They call you." He swept an arm. "The smallfolk. The singers. They'll see us ride out, both of us, the king and his Hand, and they'll say: there goes Baelor the Best, and his brother who is also very good—"
"His brother who is also very good." He looked at his brother flatly.
"—Maekar the—" Baelor paused, tried again. "Maekar the—what would you want?"
He had not been asked before nor had he really thought about it much. "Maekar the Obstinate," he said.
Baelor looked at him.
"It means stubborn," supplied Maekar.
"I know what it means." But he was smiling. "Alright. Yes. That's right. Maekar the Obstinate, Hand of the King. We'll be remembered."
"We'd ride into battle together. Not hanging in the back like cowards and reading." He didn't say like Aerys, but their brother's name was there still. "Actually riding. With banners."
"With banners," Baelor grinned. "And they will write songs after."
"Songs after. Definitely songs."
They sat together in the quiet of the clearing and the quiet was comfortable, which all quiets with Baelor were. His brother had a quality to him, some gentleness of presence that made the world seem less frightening and dire.
A bright butterfly moved through the far edge of the clearing, going from one cluster of flowers to the next. It landed on a flower, considered and then moved on. It did not seem to know what it was looking for, only that it had not yet found it, and there was something in that that reminded Maekar of Rhaegel.
His brother would have loved this clearing. He would have gone very still, watching the butterfly with both hands loose at his sides, and he would not have looked at Maekar or Baelor or asked them to look either. He would have just watched, keeping whatever he felt about it somewhere inside himself where no one else could get to it. That was the strange thing about Rhaegel; Maekar had pulled his hair last month in a temper about something he couldn't now remember, and Rhaegel had said nothing and gone back to whatever he'd been doing, and somehow that had been worse than if he'd screamed or hit back.
Nothing ever seemed to touch his brother, or if it did, the wound went somewhere no one could ever find it.
He watched the butterfly until it was gone into the trees.
"Here," called Baelor. He had found dark berries growing along a low branch at the clearing's edge. They were dark and very round, leaving red smudges on Baelor's palms.
"They might be poisonous." Mother taught them to never eat anything strange and these berries were certainly strange.
"They're not."
"How do you know?"
"I just know."
This was not a method Mother had taught them. "Eat one first."
Baelor did. He ate one and stood there, and then ate another, and did not die, and raised his eyebrows at Maekar in a way that settled the matter.
Maekar ate one. They were both sweet and tangy, and Maekar found he actually did enjoy the taste of them quite a bit. The two ate the rest of them standing there, passing the branch back and forth between them, saying nothing, and when the berries were gone they wiped their hands on their breeches and that was that.
Ser Maribald found them not much later.
Of course he found them. He was a knight of the Kingsguard, which was, for all his slowness with legends and flower crowns, presumably what he was actually good at. He came through the trees with his face red and Rhaegel—now wearing a lopsided crown of purple flowers—at his elbow.
"My princes," the knight said, sighing.
"Ser Maribald!" Baelor stood up straight. "We found berries."
Ser Maribald sighed yet again. It was a very large sigh, fitting for the man's dimensions. "Come along, my princes," he said, and turned back into the trees.
Aerys was waiting where they had left him, the great tome now buckled into his saddlebag. He sat very straight, as he always did, on his pony and said nothing when they emerged from the trees, only looked at them both with an assessing gaze. Rhaegel sat on Ser Maribald's great horse, secured snugly before the knight with the crown still on his head, slightly less lopsided now.
He rode on the same horse as Baelor. There had been some discussion about this—Prince Maekar should ride his own horse, Ser Maribald had suggested, uncertainly—but Baelor had said, "Ride with me, Mae," and lifted him up before anyone could say differently. And so Maekar sat before his brother on the broad back of his grey palfrey, and Baelor's arms came around him to hold the reins.
The city came to them slowly, red towers growing large through the thinning trees. Maekar felt Baelor's heart beating against his shoulder blades, slow and even, something that was built to last. The horse shifted and Baelor shifted with it and Maekar shifted with Baelor. The whole was so natural it seemed like it had always been, like this was simply how they fit, the two of them, older and younger, king-to-be and Hand-in-waiting.
We'll be remembered, Baelor had said.
Yes, thought Maekar. He watched the towers come nearer and tried to imagine all of it; the banners and the riding out, the songs they'd write after and the names the singers would give them.
He could not wait. When it is time, I will be his Hand. I will.