Chapter 28 – The Farce Ends
Lance's voice wasn't loud, yet the sarcasm in his tone was clear to everyone.
After all, the last time he'd seen this woman named Maris and her two daughters, they had been wearing little more than rags.
"Lance… I…"
Hearing his mockery, Maris dared not show even a hint of displeasure. His towering frame pressed down on her like an invisible weight.
Not far away, blood still seeped from the stump of Oswell's severed arm. The Kingsguard knight lay unconscious before the Iron Throne, his life hanging by a thread—yet no one in the hall spared him so much as a glance.
Terror wracked Maris's body. Her lips trembled violently, producing only the clatter of teeth striking together, unable to form a single coherent word.
"Speak," Lance said evenly. "If you insist on accusing me, then make your case here—before the king and the prince."
His calm expression, so composed and unshaken, seemed to belong to the same simple blacksmith boy he once was.
That steadiness in his tone eased Maris's trembling for the briefest of moments. Hesitantly, she lifted her eyes to him.
This young man… he had once lived across the street, hammering away at the forge with his bare chest gleaming in sweat. Whenever she walked past, he would sneak shy glances at her figure.
But now—before her stood not that boy, but a knight of the Kingsguard. The white cloak draped over his broad shoulders transformed him, lending him a striking dignity. He had become "Ser Lance," a man spoken of in reverence, one who had once saved her and her daughters from two brutal knights who would have tortured them to death.
Even so, when Maris looked back and caught Prince Rhaegar's encouraging gaze, she swallowed hard and finally forced herself to speak.
"You killed my husband, Lance."
"You shouldn't have…"
Tears streamed down her face as her voice broke.
"Without Moller, how are my daughters and I supposed to survive? He spent the last of our coin on meat, and after his death, the three of us went two whole days without a bite to eat. We were starving—so I… I had no choice but to serve that filthy old butcher next door, just to get a scrap of food."
Her body collapsed weakly to the floor, and she knelt there sobbing, hands covering her face as though the world itself had wronged her.
"But when I came home with food… my poor little daughter… she had already starved to death in her bed!"
Her cries grew shrill, desperate, laced with madness.
"Oh, Seven above, she was so hungry that she gnawed through the very planks of her bed. Her mouth was full of blood and splinters when I found her!"
"All of this—it's your fault, Lance!"
Maris tore at his spotless white boots, smearing her grief upon them as though trying to carve her misery into the steel.
"If you hadn't killed Moller, none of this would have happened! It's all your fault!"
Perhaps Rhaegar's presence gave her courage, for she raised her tear-streaked face and glared at Lance with unbridled hatred.
"…Heh."
Lance let out a cold laugh at the sight of her rolling on the ground in her hysteria.
With the cruelty of Richard Lonmouth, had he not intervened that night, Maris and her daughters would have been dead long before now.
As for Moller—Lance remembered him all too well. A vile, petty man, always looking to exploit others, especially the timid boy Lance once was. At home, he was worse—raising his hand against wife and daughters for the smallest of reasons. Night after night, their cries of pain had drifted across the street, searing themselves into memory.
And yet Lance did not grow angry. He offered no defense, no explanation.
"State your demand, woman!"
At last, King Aerys's rasping voice cut through the hall. His patience was at an end.
Pointing a bony finger at the weeping Maris, the king sneered.
"This sort of woman I know all too well—she wants nothing more than to wring a few coins from us."
Disgusting as the woman's behavior was, the simplest way to deal with a leech like her was usually to pay her off and be done with it. After all, Lance had killed her husband.
At the king's order, Maris's weeping stopped at once. She stood briskly, cast a glance at Prince Rhaegar's encouraging face, gritted her teeth—then spoke words that stunned the entire hall.
"I… I want Ser Lance to marry my daughter, Dora!"
The chamber fell into dead silence. Even Rhaegar himself stared at her in utter disbelief.
What? That's it?
I went to all this trouble, Oswell lost his arm—and this is what you're after?!
But Maris, oblivious to the absurdity, pressed on as though her demand were perfectly natural.
"He killed my husband—so he owes our family another man! Ser Lance and my Dora are about the same age. Let them marry—that would be best. Of course, if Ser Lance prefers to marry me instead… I would not refuse."
Her tone had shifted entirely; now she repeated "Ser Lance" with exaggerated reverence.
"Wait—"
Rhaegar could endure no more. He hurried forward to interrupt.
"Your husband was brutally slain, your daughter starved to death—do you not want justice for them? Do you not want their killer tried and punished? This man has slain not only your husband but two knights!"
"Justice?" Maris scoffed, as if the notion were irrelevant. In her mind, Lance was already part of her household. The grief she had displayed earlier over her husband's death and her daughter's starvation seemed to vanish into thin air.
She cast the prince a disdainful glance, lifted her chin with a smug air, and said, "Those two knights broke into our home to commit rape! Ser Lance was merely delivering justice. As long as he marries my eldest daughter, there is no problem!"
"You fool!" Rhaegar nearly leapt with anger, his princely composure forgotten. "That man is—"
"Ser Lance is a Kingsguard, woman!"
The harsh, rasping voice of Aerys cut him off. The king's words cracked through the air, silencing the hall.
"The Kingsguard do not wed. Do you not know this?"
The truth struck Maris like a hammer. Her smug expression froze. The triumphant curl of her lips died on her face.
Looking around, she saw the mocking half-smiles on every lord's face—even Lance shook his head slowly. Only then did she grasp the enormity of her mistake.
Her knees gave out. She collapsed heavily onto the floor. Real tears welled in her eyes this time.
"I'm a fool… truly a fool," she murmured vacantly, rocking slightly.
That day, she had seen the boy across the street rise to become a knight draped in white, who had slain two knights and even her own brutish husband without hesitation. She had thought to twist that fact into a stepping-stone for her daughter, to marry her into nobility.
But she had never imagined such a rule—that the Kingsguard could not wed.
And I… I sold my younger daughter to that vile butcher for the coin to come to King's Landing. I shamed myself before king and Hand alike, and for what?
"Enough. Enough—end this farce," Aerys hissed impatiently.
He rose unsteadily from the Iron Throne and shuffled to Lance's side, looming over the broken woman.
"Woman, you will have ten gold dragons as compensation. Take them, and go."
"I-"
"Silence, Rhaegar!" he snapped when the prince opened his mouth again. His purple eyes blazed with madness. "Say one more word, and I will crown Viserys before I die!"
The naked threat choked Rhaegar silent. He stood frozen, fury smoldering behind his eyes, yet powerless to act.
"Not enough, Your Grace."
The calm voice belonged to Lance.
Aerys's head jerked. "What did you say?"
"I said ten gold dragons are not enough," Lance replied smoothly.
He stepped forward, smiling kindly as he looked down at Maris. His tone was gentle, almost compassionate.
"Your daughter is still young. Ten dragons won't last. A hundred—that would see her well provided for, for life."
"Oh, your damned compassion," Aerys sneered, rolling his eyes. In truth, he would rather have burned them all alive than indulged them with coin.
"Very well. As Ser Lance says—give her a hundred gold dragons."
Maris's tears turned instantly into laughter, her expression flipping once more as though she had won the greatest fortune of her life.
Disgusted, Aerys waved his hand dismissively. He clapped Lance's shoulder. "Take me back to my chambers. I am tired."
"Yes, Your Grace."
Lance's lips curled into a satisfied smile.
One hundred gold dragons in the hands of such women? He would bet his sword arm they would never make it home alive.
With practiced ease, the towering knight lifted the frail king onto his shoulder and strode away. Behind them, Prince Rhaegar could only watch, powerless, his eyes burning with silent fury.