King's Landing
98 AC (Tenth Moon—Day 12)
Baelon I
The solar's arched windows drank in the midday light, spilling a golden flood across the chamber, kindling a buoyant air. The room hummed with a careless ease, its monotony transmuted into something familiar yet wistful—a nostalgia for moments unlived, woven deep into the stones of the place.
Baelon lounged in his chair, gaze adrift, the day's drag pulling slow at his thoughts. His mind sipped the splendor of the Hand's Tower, still strange to him even days after claiming its halls. It stood apart, this place, stitched into the Red Keep's sprawl yet lacking its familiar pulse. The walls seemed to whisper of foreign hands, of lives carved in alien stone, defiant of the keep's shared blood.
He blinked, and awareness sharpened his eyes. A breeze slipped through, teasing the curtains into a fitful dance, its touch cool… wild. Even the city's stench, borne on that wind, lacked its usual venom—whether by his son's labors or the rain that had wept through the night, Baelon could not say.
For a fleeting moment, his gaze snagged on the stack of reports cluttering his desk, their parchment edges curling like dry leaves. Most spoke of the sewer works, or matters tethered to them—Viserys's grand toil, spawning endless tedium.
Aye, with the drudgery those works churned up, Baelon half-prayed the city's softened air owed its grace to his son's hands.
He shook his head, sinking deeper into the chair's cushioned embrace, its softness a lover's murmur at the edge of sleep. The moment cradled him, painted in hues of fleeting peace. A sigh slipped from his lips, cracked and parched by thirst unheeded.
A cup of spiced wine would soothe, but he shunned the thought—dulling his wits so early would only thicken the day's fog.
He longed for the days of the second prince, when the throne was Aemon's burden to bear. This grind of rulership, this tangle of courtly guile, ill-suited him. He craved daggers bared plain, words spat true without silk's deceitful veil.
"Truly, the gods hold no love for men," the words touched the room's quiet like secrets uttered in confidence—low and light. "You'd have worn this duty better, Aemon."
The lie rang true.
His elder brother had no taste for the court's false smiles, its lords and ladies and coin-grubbers weaving hollow bonds. Yet Baelon clung to the thought that Aemon would've borne it with surer grace, his heart less bruised by fate's cruel jests.
Yet fate, ever cruel and heedless, had reaped Aemon with a blow too slight for its ruin. A fever, stubborn headaches—mere trifles that should've yielded to a day's rest, leaving him hale and whole. But the malaise had lingered, a thief in the night, stealing his wits, ravaging his strength, until it ushered him to the Stranger's cold arms with naught but moans and shivers for his final song.
It was a death too craven for a prince so beloved, a loss that left no foe to curse, no blade to wield against it.
Baelon still wandered in memories of that day, haunted by Aemon's breath taken weak, his mind clouded. What words might he have spared, had clarity remained faithful to him? A gentle farewell, mayhap, laced with that quiet smile to ease the ache of his kin's vigils? Or some charge of duty's iron—beseechments to shield Rhaenys from life's sharpest thorns?
Such hopes were frail, spun from a heart's soft yearning, yet cloaked in dust and webs of time. Nay, duty would've been his refrain, a command to guard their blood's bright flame.
He dragged a hand across his face, Baelon, wishing the gesture might scour the guilt from his bones. It did naught, lingering heavy as ever.
In his marrow, he held fast that Rhaenys could've been a queen of rare mettle—leagues beyond the king he'd ever be. That Baratheon steel, forged in Jocelyn's blood, ran true in her.
Yet wishes bent not the world's course.
For all Rhaenys's fire, she lacked the seasoned guile, the courtly edge honed in Jaehaerys's long years. A woman still, she was, decisions painted with the heart's softness… and slaved still to a man's voice.
Even his Alyssa, and he did miss her dearly that sister of his, fierce with pride and thunder, had bowed to his command.
Baelon let a beckoned breath ease out of his nose, the act silencing his heart's rise to old hurts. He best not be lost to memories just yet… not under this blue sky.
Tempered, his thoughts took a step before the invocation of matters full of scabs.
Corlys would've reigned in all but name, that was the cold truth. The Velaryon's ambition would've carved a throne of his own until the Stranger claimed him, his house's star blazing over the realm.
Even now, that seafarer prowled the edges of power, drunk on grandeur and ambition, daring to slight his liege house with brazen scorn. Aye, Corlys's stunt of choking merchant ships bound for Dragonstone still gnawed at Baelon's gut.
Had Maelys not woven his web, steering his shadowed contacts to the isle's aid, Baelon would've been forced to kneel before their father.
And Jaehaerys would've spared no lash of scorn. The old king brooked no failure, not when the works that happened at Dragonstone primed it for prosperity.
Baelon shook his head to it. The seafarer had played his hand with shameless cunning, seeking to make young Laenor a conduit for his soaring ambitions, a key to unlock Viserys's soft heart. It was a stroke too sly, wielding sentiment like a blade to carve a path to royal favour.
Whether by winning the king's ear through the fond ties of squiring or by binding Rhaenyra in marriage to channel his will. Whichever it could have been, it promised risk of Velaryon acquisition.
And Baelon, though it pained him so to scorn his brother's grandson, had shut the possibility wholesale.
"Gods grant you see it too, brother," his voice was a touch sacred, as if Aemon's shade might catch the words beyond the realm of men.
The thought stirred deeper musings, untainted by the heart's soft sway. Who would claim the crown after Viserys? Custom pointed to a son, yet unborn, from Aemma's womb in some hoped-for birth. But Baelon was no blind fool. He knew his good-daughter's frame could bear no more heirs without courting ruin, her body too frail for the task.
Nay, the path forked between Daemon and Rhaenyra.
His son, though dear, was a flawed vessel—ambition, passion, pride, all blazing bright, yet unmoored by discipline or wisdom beyond petty plots.
Daemon's unfitness was plain to all, writ in the absence of lords flocking to him with honeyed words or gilded schemes. Reckless, his boy, though fierce with loyalty to blood and name, a dragon's heart caged in a youth's rash fire.
Baelon held faith that time might temper him, forging calm from chaos. Yet his father harbored no such hope. Nay, the old king meant to cast him to the Lyseni bankers, trading blood for coin, bartering favour to stoke ambitions now flaring anew.
And the bitter truth? Baelon found no grief in it. The match served Daemon's hungers—wealth to spill on fleeting whims, a wife of beauty to slake his desires, and foes aplenty to burn should he tire of Lys's silken dens.
Yet fears lingered, ever were they there those things of doubt.
The Rogare were no strangers to ambition, their eyes would be sharp for the prize of Targaryen blood hailing from his line. Like the Velaryons, those Lyseni nobles could kindle treachery in Daemon's heart if the succession wavered…continued in this waver. Worse still, folly might seize his boy—handing dragon eggs to his heirs in chase of some inane dream.
All this, his father tasked him to quell, piling the burden atop the Hand's chain and the king's diverted duties. No wonder Barth had crumbled under the weight.
"And I've yet to broach this with Daemon."
Gods grant the envoy to that isle dawdled in their task. He'd scarce begun to forge arguments to sway his son—not merely to yield to this arrangement, but to seize it as a rare chance.
He closed his eyes. A moment's ease.
A yawn tore from his throat, the sun's warm caress falling soft upon him, murmuring wordless lullabies that weighed his lids with sleep's gentle pull.
Fate made that inevitability false, however.
The oaken door's gentle knock stirred his mind from its haze, the rhythm familiar—two sharp raps, then a third, delayed, like a hesitant afterthought. A new custom, one he found little sense in, yet it heralded intrusion all the same.
The door creaked open, revealing Ser Alyn of Fell's quiet visage. "My prince," the man did start, voice measured low but thick with rumble. "Princess Gael seeks an audience with you."
Baelon's brow furrowed as a wave of confusion washed over him. What could his youngest sister wish to speak of now? Yet he waved a hand, granting her entry, for no other course suited. To turn her away for the sake of idling would be churlish, and truth be told, he craved the soft company of his gentler kin.
A nod from the chestnut-haired knight, and moments later Gael glided in.
She was a vision of light, clad in a flowing gown that caught the sun's glow, its hue a warm breath of summer. Lace draped her shoulders, delicate as spider's silk, and a silver necklace that gleamed with a scatter of glass gems, winking like stars. Her feet, shod in queer flat shoes, whispered soft against the stone, their tread near-silent.
Silver hair spilled modestly over her shoulders, brushed clear of her face to frame its gentle lines. His sister looked the embodiment of what a mother ought to look like. Soft. Smiling. No hint of dark scheming there, barely any hint of wit beyond wanting to cradle children or pillaring a husband's desires.
It was a look Baelon might've brushed aside on principle, had it not been kin who bore it.
Yet he summoned a smile, true-wrought from memories of sweeter days, its edges lifting, eyes creased to blur. He rose, him, and folded Gael into an embrace that near engulfed her hefty frame. Her scent bloomed like a meadow distilled to perfume, her skin silken under his calloused hands, soft as the costliest Essosi weave.
Gael's arms wrapped him in kind, her joy spilling out her person.
"It's good to see you, brother," her voice was touched by a softness that echoed of their mother's—near a mirror, woven with earnest. "I'd thought I would be turned with how many suppers you've missed since your arrival here."
They pulled apart, easy-like, and Baelon permitted her rest as he too eased back into his chair.
He nodded to her remark. It was true, he'd been rather absent to many of the organised suppers he'd been invited to ever since his arrival. However, his lack of involvement wasn't born out of scorn or intent. It was duty—vellum piled high, small council meetings and private lectures with their sire. Lordly discussions too, as one could not entirely ignore all the lords that sought his ear. The mantle of Hand had its limits.
Brushing his robes hued dark and lined with gold, he postured himself proper, that manner of sitting that inspired knowing and all seriousness.
"That was no intentional choice on my part, believe me that. I am merely settled with a bit much work to allow leisure beyond a breath." His words came out honest, even if a bit of exaggeration clung to them.
Gael's focus wandered about the solar, flickering here and there with slight pulls to her lips. There seemed to be memory there, a mind's painting of how things ought have been. He supposed it was so, she did seem rather saddened immensely during Septon Barth's funeral.
He allowed the moment, using it to observe his sister's person in kind.
Her attention did return, a look of apology touching her features for a moment beyond a heart's beat. "Maelys shared the reasons with me." A measure of sympathy sculpted her face, lips glossed crimson pressing into a line that betrayed concern. "He says father has all but left you with the duties of rulership while he contemplates matters of banking."
A scoff clawed up his throat, a laugh twisted.
Aye, that was the truth of it. Their father was preoccupied with new ambitions—wants for legacy. He roped Maelys and Lady Florence in those schemings, though Baelon suspected the former might have been the second mind behind this fancy.
His sister shared his amusement, a smile to steal hearts.
"He deems it fit for a king-to-be to bear the crown's weight," his voice steadied as calm crept back to his chest. "But truth be shared between us, I reckon he's grown weary of the post's endless drone—petty pleas and parchments begging naught but a stamp's swift grace."
Gael giggled, enjoying the farce for what it was even as she eyed the pile of reports near the left of the desk, though the regard seemed to lack interest beyond play. "I doubt it's merely such." Her gazed swivelled back, still eased even as her voice hinted at tease.
She truly was a person removed from intrigue, wasn't she?
Baelon felt his guard melt. "Gems of worth and threads of rot twine in that heap," his eyes flicked to the teetering stack of reports. "Only patient hands can sift them true." The queer quill—what the maesters called a pen—twirled in his hand in response to his beckon.
"Then I owe you my apologies, brother," Gael's words rang with true sympathy, "for my husband's latest schemes have surely heaped more burdens on your plate."
Baelon's smile came easy, his head shaking with a wry lightness. "That caught me off guard, aye, but it's his fool contraptions in the gardens that truly vex me. Lords and ladies now clamor for those spinning wheels and swinging ropes in their own keeps and manses. The young ones have taken to them with fierce delight, heedless of the mounting scrapes and bruises."
Gael's brows arched high, surprise carving soft lines across her face. "Truly?" She leaned in closer.
He stifled a wry smile. "Aye, mostly from lesser houses, those with scant prestige and broods of children in the city. Likely their young ones clamoring for the things. Though whispers of their safety—or lack thereof—echo through the halls as well."
Lord Upcliff had fallen to prattling on trifles, filling the silence with witless tidings when weightier matters went begging. Baelon wished the man would turn his sharp eyes to the scandals brewing in Casterly Rock, where whispers of intrigue carried more meat than the keep's idle rumours.
Gael was quick to shield her twin, as was her wont. "Maelys has maesters tending the children, so he told me, and artisans tweaking those contraptions to dull their bite." Her hand drifted to her belly, face turning tender and absent with dream.
Baelon's brow creased, doubt knotting tighter as he weighed Gael's pregnancy in the balance of his thoughts.
Was Maelys callously testing his creations' safety on babes he scarce cared for—all these for his progeny still yet to be born? Or did he simply not weigh the cost of his whims?
The Spring Prince leaned toward the former, his mind tracing back to the youngest of his brothers' fierce youth. Over a decade past, a boy of six then, Maelys had tamed Dreamfyre on a wild notion, fearing Gael might be bartered to some lord for favour or alliance. With a child's wisdom, he'd vowed fire and ruin on any who'd tear his twin from his side—a vow that shed its jest when he claimed a dragon to make it true.
The tale had set Alyssa's heart aflutter when he recounted it, her sister weaving romance from that madness. Aye, she'd even pressed Baelon, half in jest, if he could muster such a feat should fate ever turn so cruel against them.
It was absurd, thus he lied to keep the romance for he was not clouded by childish impulse.
"A rare bit of foresight, aye, but why not call on those healer folk from his mending houses for the children's scrapes? They've a deft hand at tending wounds—swifter than most maesters, if the Citadel's grumbling holds any truth." He asked delicately, hiding any hint of thought divergence and continuing the subject discussed.
And in truth, he was quite curious about those learned folks from the mending houses.
Dragonstone harbored a clutch of those healers, tending the folks laboring near the volcano's smoldering maw. By servants' hushed talk, Maester Jonos himself lauded their skill, weaving their methods into his own—high praise from a man so steeped in Citadel ways.
"Reputation for one." Gael answered, escaping her daze. "Skilled as those people may be, there's still no trust and prestige to their work, especially with the most critical of the maesters in Oldtown spreading their madness around the nobles."
"That so," Baelon hummed. In truth, he doubted Maelys spared a thought for the nobles' ill-tongued chatter. Nay, there was a play to this, though he didn't much fancy wasting away time to uncover it.
He shook his head, a tiny smile tugging at his lips. "Still, it's a queer turn. I'd wagered his scribing contraptions would've stirred more clamor, especially with lords fancying him the king's own shadow."
One would think they would have figured it proper by now—his brother was no one's extension.
"Aye," his sister sighed. "Some lords have even requested he foster or squire their sons, with some brazen ones suggesting marital possibilities to babes who've yet to be born."
The vexation in his sister was understandable, no doubt she suffered her own sycophants removed from just the splendour of her dresses and perfumes.
Since Maelys had unveiled his scribing contraption, the keep had turned loud, even if those words have yet to turn to ink. Lords with minds keener than mere ambition were starting to rub shoulders with his brother's creatures.
The court's smoothest tongues had turned to rabid lickspittles, spurred by Maelys's bold gambit with the High Septon. Aye, his brother had all but bent the Faith to a pawn, dangling power before them—yet laced with a Valyrian collar none seemed to notice.
Baelon himself didn't see it until it was fingered plain. And that had chilled him—frightened him more than he was willing to admit.
In a single deft stroke, Maelys had ensnared the Faith—the primary body full of the peasantry and the outer septas and septons.
Those keen-eyed greybeards in the Starry Sept would pierce through the veil of feigned piety. Nay, they'd spy the prize within: royal chains, whispered threats, and the futility of defiance. They'd host long meetings hinting at import, posturing as if they held sway. Yet despite it all, they'd bend true, with no accommodation beyond the initial offer at their feet.
Intrigue was such a mummer's farce.
"…might be wise to employ aides to sift through the worst of them." He did catch Gael's suggestion mid-utterance. "Handling all this by your lonesome won't be well for your health, brother."
He smiled, betraying no absentmindedness. "Your suggestion is novel, however there's sensitivity to this duty, not all the reports could pass through the eyes of common servants."
His sister's face hosted a frown, though it fled quick. "I believe I'm beginning to see the fostered limitations Maelys was speaking off, but I haven't come here to initiate arguments." She rested her hands over her lap, that smile of hers gaining warmth comparable to the sun's wash. "I've come curious of your own life."
She had a smile on her face when the words slipped out.
Baelon blinked, caught off-guard by the plain sincerity of her words, so unadorned, so free of guile. He'd braced for some veiled plea, even if not her own—Gael had long been Maelys's echo, and his brother always had requests aplenty.
But nay, it seemed his sister had slipped into his solar to trouble his duties with naught but trifles.
A laugh rolled from Baelon's lips, a rough cascade that echoed in the solar's golden hush. "You're a soul unburdened, sweet sister," he said, rising from his chair, his boots scuffing soft against the stone. He crossed to a side table, where a flagon of watered wine sat, its glass glinting faintly. Pouring two cups, he returned, offering one to Gael. She cradled it.
"Fair enough," he said, settling back. "I'll spare a breath for idle chatter. What stirs your curiosity most, dearest sister?"