Chapter Text
The melee is difficult to see through. There is mist and mud and the rich reeking coppery scent of human blood. Bryn sits on the edge of her seat and tries not to let the terror choking her show on her face. Nearly all of the fighters are unhorsed now – closest is Ser Duncan beating her vile nephew-by-law into the dirt – but Bryn’s gaze is locked onto a figure in black armour, his darting sword-point, his whirling plate-skirt, the dragon sigil crimson on his chest –
(the odd shape of his helm, at the back)
Bryn frowns, and doesn’t care who notices. Baelor has been her husband for only just over a year, but she has come to know him well. It is part survival skill and part genuine fondness; she knows he did not wish to marry again after the death of his first wife and the mother of his children, but needs must, and Baelor is first and foremost a servant of the realm. Bryn is his younger by more than fifteen years, but her bloodline is impeccable, her education as a high lord’s wife flawless, and she has wit enough to make her husband smile, on occasion. Her maester uncle’s training in the healing arts is less useful, except –
(the faint stagger when he turns, sword-point dropping a fraction as Ser Duncan drags the recalcitrant Aerion closer to the dais)
Warning bells are ringing in her mind. “The signs of an injury to the brain, Brynna – girl, are you listening? Headache, disorientation, nausea. Changes to gait or balance, dizziness, vomiting –” Uncle Andren’s voice is in her ears like it was only yesterday. The helm hadn’t fit well, she’d thought when Valarr had helped his father into his own armour, but Baelor was such a fine figure of a warrior even now, and the Kingsguard wouldn’t touch him nor would Daeron – she had extracted the promise from her oldest good-nephew herself –
“I withdraw my accusation,” Aerion spits out, and Bryn learned instinct at her uncle’s knee in the fraught years since the Rebellion; she cares not for appearances now.
She gets to her feet, and she runs.
Through the mud of the field, her fine skirts tangling around her feet, Byrn runs. The knights have stopped fighting – two lie in the dirt unmoving, far beyond the help of mortals now. But Baelor is so far ahead of her, trudging stoically on – Bryn is shouting his name, but it is though he cannot hear her – into the gatehouse courtyard off the field. So she gives up on shouting, and runs faster, arriving in the courtyard out of breath and heaving.
Her husband has his hand on Ser Duncan’s shoulder, but he lists off to the side, unsteady; he turns and frowns when he sees her, muddy to her knees, sleeves flapping freely in the wind. “My lady,” he says severely, as he often does when she disappoints him – it happens often enough. “You should not be here.”
For the first time in their marriage Bryn ignores him. She takes a step closer, and now those warning bells are shrieking; something is very wrong with Baelor. She can barely see his eyes through the damaged visor, but she can see enough; his darker eye looks ordinary enough, but the pupil of the lighter one is huge, oval rather than round.
“Ser Raymun, my helm, if you would be so kind,” Baelor says, but his voice is wrong too, slurred.
“At once, your Grace,” the young man says, goes to Baelor’s side. Bryn tilts her head, frowning. Baelor can’t seem to focus on any one thing, his gaze skittering all over.
“My lord,” she says, striving for equanimity, “Perhaps we ought to wait.”
“Visor’s cracked,” Baelor says, as though he hadn’t heard a word of it. “My fingers… fingers feel like wood.” Bryn swallows. The visor is missing altogether.
“Please, husband. Let’s wait for the maester.” Young Ser Raymun darts a glance at her. she knows she’s putting him in a difficult position, torn between a Prince of the Realm and his wife. But certainty is gathering in Brynna. She knows the signs of a head injury well enough.
“Goodman Pate, a hand,” Raymun says, and the burly armourer comes over to inspect the helm. Baelor is flexing his fingers, eyelids drooping.
“The helm, it’s crushed down the back, your Grace,” Pate says. “It’s smashed into the gorget.”
“My brother’s mace, most like,” Baelor replies, eyes closed, before they reopen with a hint of mischief, a thin smile curving his lips. “He’s strong.” He is. Enough to knock a man’s brains out.
“Stop.” It’s not so much that Bryn doesn’t recognise her own voice. She does, except not as her own; the steely, bone-hard order comes out like one of her uncle’s, when one of his patients is about to do something very stupid. For a moment, it is as though all three men forget she is a woman; the armourer’s hand freeze on either side of Baelor’s helm, Raymun Fossoway’s eyes going wide as saucers.
“Auntie?” It’s tiny Aegon, of all people, who dares to question her. “What is it?” Bryn swallows.
“That helm is the only thing keeping my husband’s brain from splattering all over the floor,” she bites out. “I would appreciate you leaving it where it is.”
Everything seems to happen very fast after that. Baelor can no longer remain on his feet, so the men go for a bier while Bryn sits down on the muddy floor with her husband’s helmed head in her lap. She braces her hands on either side of the steel – she strongly suspects the injury is to the back of Baelor’s head, and very much does not want to put pressure on it. Baelor gazes up at her through cloudy eyes.
“I believe you are overreacting, my lady,” he says, but the voice that is usually so deep and clear is now so slurred and reedy she can barely understand him. Next to her Aegon is weeping silently, his uncle’s huge, gauntleted hand clasped in his own tiny ones.
“Baelor, I cannot do without you,” Bryn tells him. it wasn’t what she meant to say; she meant to only tell him to be patient a moment longer, the bier would be here soon enough and they would take him up to the castle and mend his hurts. But she is frightened half out of her wits, and the truth pours out regardless of her better judgment.
“Sweet Jena,” he sighs, his free hand coming up to try to touch her cheek, his fingers listing far off to the side. Bryn closes her eyes against the tears that are threatening to fall; the fact that he had called her by his dead wife’s name barely registers. Baelor frowns at his own hand before resting it down again, his eyes flicking to his nephew. “Aegon. What did you do to your hair?” But both the boy and Bryn are saved from having to answer by the arrival of the puffing, red-faced maester, who bends down, takes one look into Baelor’s eyes and blanches the colour of soured milk. He oversees the transfer of Baelor onto the bier himself, cradling the prince’s head in his hands, before tying Baelor’s head to the impromptu stretcher with a length of linen to keep it from moving during transport.
“You better come,” he says to Bryn, to Aegon. “The other prince is raging.”
Up in the castle is the infirmary, the maester’s domain, and inside it Maekar is raging indeed. Bryn hears his voice before she sees him; she goes ahead of the stretcher at once. Her good-brother is bare-chested, bandaged across his broad chest in at least three places, and furious.
“Where in the seven hells is my brother?” he demands at once. He has never thought much of Brynna, his brother’s second wife, but he has always managed to keep the dragon in him leashed. Now it has lost its chains entirely, Targaryen-violet eyes ablaze.
“Maekar,” Bryn says, except that is far too informal; Maekar’s eyes narrow at once and he opens his mouth. “He might die.” It is too blunt, too tactless, except that is the only thing that works on Maekar when he is like this; too much talking around the point only agitates him further. “His helm is damaged, his visor cracked clean off. It is probably the back of his head. I think the skull is completely staved in –” Bryn’s voice cracks, and she turns away, trying desperately to regain her composure. “They are bringing him up now. Slowly, carefully. He will not rest if he hears you bellowing. So by all the gods, seven or old or otherwise, please. Be quiet.”
Maekar looks at her as if she’s sprouted a second head. But he is silent, albeit still enraged, chest heaving with outrage. Fortunately the maester and the four men bearing the bier arrive, and Maekar’s expression dissolves into something stony and unreadable at the sight of his silent and still brother. “What. Happened.” Maekar’s voice is a hiss with the effort of keeping his voice down, his eyes like daggers pinning the maester in place.
“The Princess is correct,” Maester Yormwell says, with a credible effort at pretending the glaring Targaryen Prince does not intimidate him. Maekar’s electric gaze snaps back to Brynna, who stares right back at him. the men are gently lowering the bier beside one of the beds; she goes to her husband instead of indulging Maekar further, and holds his head in her hands when they transfer his heavy, armoured frame onto a bed. Even though it is not a quick process, by the time Baelor rests safely on the bed, Maekar is still speaking to the maester in furious low tones, his own gaze unwavering from Baelor.
Bryn is starting to feel numb. The shock, she understands, and so draws up one of the infirmary’s rickety chairs to sit beside her husband. She wants desperately to hold his hand in her own, but Baelor is still armoured even to his gauntlets, so she begins there, unwinding the leather straps that keep the armoured glove in place. Eventually, Baelor’s right hand is bare – weapons’ calloused, faint scars on the knuckles from swordplay, a tiny spot of ink in the webbing between thumb and forefinger. Bryn gives up on her pride and allows the tears to break through, holding her husband’s limp hand against her cheek.
She knows not how much time has passed until there is a creak of the floorboards next to her, and a hard hand on her shoulder. Bryn looks up into Maekar’s stern, scarred face, and he drops a square of linen into her lap; a handkerchief, with his own quartered dragon sigil embroidered in the corner. “Thank you,” she says thickly, and swipes at her eyes.
“The maester seems to think that you have saved my brother’s life,” Maekar says, voice as cold and unrelenting as iron. Bryn just shakes her head.
“I fear I have only delayed his passing,” she says, hating every word of it. “It might have been kinder to let him die quickly. In the field, like a warrior.” Maekar’s grip on her shoulder intensifies to the point of pain, but it is a paltry discomfort compared to the throbbing ache of her heart.
“There is no chance of recovery?” Maekar’s coldness, Bryn knows, hides an immense well of molten heat, but she still wants to stab him with her cloak pin regardless.
“Damage to the rear of the brain has been shown to cause difficulty with vision, hearing and speech,” she replies dully. Maekar’s hand spasms on her shoulder; Bryn bites back a wince. “And that is only for mild or moderate damage. I suspect Baelor’s is severe, and involves more than just that part of the brain. He likely has no viable skull at the back of his head.” She looks up at her good-brother, his hard face, and cannot remain detached any longer. “I hope Aerion is worth it.”
Maekar had been looking at Baelor; he glances down sharply. “Don’t forget yourself, little Northern bitch,” he says, cold fury licking at every word. He must be overwrought, Bryn thinks, to lose his courtesies so harshly, and feels craven and low for lashing out at him.
“You should send for my uncle Andren, at Darkfall,” she says. “I can write the letter if you wish. He has treated many a cracked skull in his time. He taught me what to look for.”
“It is two weeks or more from Darkfall to here,” Maekar counters, tongue darting out to wet cracked lips, but it is not a no.
“He will come,” Bryn insists.
“Baelor will not survive until then.” But Maekar is wavering.
“Between Maester Yormwell and myself, we can keep him alive,” Bryn says, with confidence she does not feel. Maekar’s expression gives way, just for a moment, to reveal something true under all that artificial stone; the very faint beginnings of hope.
Once in Darkfall, when Bryn was still flat-chested as a boy and allowed to follow her uncle around in breeches and tunic instead of gowns, a stable lad had fallen from the loft. He had come into her uncle’s care barely alive, and Uncle Andren had doubted the boy would live more than a day. but he did, and then a day more, but his eyes stayed closed and he would not wake. Bryn’s uncle had brought out a small earthenware drinking vessel with a long spout. Drop by excruciating drop, he had fed the boy water, and taught Bryn to do the same. maester Yormwell has the same equipment as Bryn’s uncle – much less experience with it, perhaps – but not the time to sit with Baelor for hours upon hours, dripping water into his parched mouth. Bryn, though. Bryn can do it.
First, though, is the matter of the helm. Bryn puzzles over it with the maester as the day passes into afternoon and then to evening. Around sundown, Bryn leaves the infirmary, uncaring of the mud and filth still caking her gown. Maekar is a silent figure by Baelor’s bedside – he has allowed no one else entry, not even Baelor’s son, although Bryn had heard Valarr’s familiar voice in the hall.
She is alone. Even the Kingsguard give her a wide berth, as though ill luck trails her like a shroud.
Bryn finds the armourer Steely Pate packing up his cart. “Goodman,” she says, and the big man jumps, turns around faster than she thought a man of his size could manage. “I am afraid once more my House must ask for your aid.” He squints at her.
“Would that be Targaryen, now, Princess?” he asks, gaze keen. “Or Blackmont?” So he sized her up fairly, Bryn judges. Certainly she has the look of her line, the Blackmont inky hair and the tawny-hazel eyes.
“Both, but especially me, armourer,” she replies. “My husband the Prince has not yet passed beyond the veil, but we needs must remove his helm. Yet we must do so piecemeal, not as a whole. The pressure must stay on the wound, or he will most like die at once.”
“It might be kinder to allow nature to run its course,” Pate rumbles back in reply. Bryn sighs.
“Is it a question of money? Cost? You may have anything that is mine to give,” she says, and heedlessly begins stripping off the bangles on her arms. They drop to the ground in a jingle of gold; Pate’s eyes follow them as though despite himself. Bryn unhooks one bunch of teardrop black pearls from her ear and toss them down as well; she is about to free the second one when a large hand wraps around her wrist.
“That’s enough, Princess.” Pate stoops, bending to the dirt to pick up the discarded jewellery. He regards the bracelets for a moment – golden, filigree dragons with tiny ruby eyes chase one another up and down. He sighs, then tucks one of them into his pocket, before putting the other and her discarded earring into Bryn’s hand and folding her fingers around them. “I have a tool that can do what you need.”
“Diamond?” Maekar asks doubtfully.
It is the oddest collection of folk Bryn has seen in several years. Herself, to begin with, a linen apron borrowed from one of the castle midwives hastily thrown over her ruined gown. Baelor, stripped of his armour but for his helm – removing the crushed gorget alone had been a matter of many minutes of gradual, heart thumping work, for which Bryn’s own small hands had been better suited even than the maester’s. But now Bryn’s husband lies in the infirmary bed with just the light shirt and trousers he’d had under his gambeson and padded chausses, with only his son’s battered helm remaining of his armour.
Beside her is the armourer, Steely Pate, and in his large hands he holds a file and a cutting blade. Both are steel, but crusted along the edge of each are glinting clusters of tiny white gems. Behind him is Bryn’s good-brother, as frazzled as she has ever seen him, with just a rough shirt thrown over his bandaged chest, his usually neat white hair in disarray.
“Diamond is the hardest substance known to men, your Grace,” Pate says gruffly to the looming Targaryen at his elbow. “Harder even than steel. It will serve.”
“A king’s ransom in two small tools,” Bryn wonders. But in truth, the gems are not immediately recognisable as the most precious jewels in the world. Only an experienced armourer like Pate himself would know them for what they were.
It is delicate work. Bryn supports her husband’s head as Pate works on the helm and Maester Yormwell instructs him where to cut. Maekar, who seemed nearly out of his head without some role to play, has been tasked with keeping a fingertip on the pulse in Baelor’s wrist to monitor his heart. First Pate removes the broken visor, sawing gently and patiently at the metal, using the file where necessary to smooth down ragged points of steel. Then the side pieces – Pate hisses as a piece of metal comes away to expose the edge of the wound Bryn knew would be there; only the very boundary of the fracture in Baelor’s skull, promising worse horrors within. The maester presses a pad of twice-boiled linen to the wound – Bryn had made every single man to touch her husband douse their hands in a tincture of tea tree oil, lemon verbena and yarrow first – and slowly the last piece of metal is rotated in incremental degrees as Maester Yormwell advances the linen dressing, until finally Baelor’s head is unobscured and the awful open wound is covered safely again.
“Maekar,” Bryn says, then coughs; her throat is raw from tears and screaming and horror. “His pulse?” Maekar’s scarred and lined face is creased in concentration.
“No change,” he reports. “Steady. Slow.” Four sets of lungs breathe out in relief.
“Good. Come here.” Maekar puts his much bigger hands over her own as she instructs him, and soon enough she is able to take her own away, Baelor’s head now supported by his brother as the maester keeps pressure on the wound. Bryn picks up the rolled length of linen bandage set aside for this very purpose, and in short order the wound dressing is secured and Maester Yormwell is able to take his hands away.
“Seven hells,” the maester curses, wiping at the accumulation of sweat on his brow. Bryn looks down at her husband, his head still in Maekar’s massive hands, his face obscured by bandages over the cheeks, chin and forehead. Only his mouth and eyes remain visible.
“What now?” her good-brother asks. Bryn staggers. She had not realised how tired she is. The world is going black at the edges.
“I need to sit down,” she manages, and stumbles back. By some miracle she lands on another infirmary bed instead of the stone floor. As the maester eases a pillow under Baelor’s head, a nod from him releases Maekar from his duty, and he strides over to Brynna at once, a thunderhead of a frown gathering on his brow.
“What’s the matter with you –” he starts, and then stops. His violet gaze rakes her from top to toe, misses nothing, including how her hands have instinctively pressed over her abdomen. Maekar is a father six times over, after all. “How far along are you?” he asks instead, something softening in his snapping gaze. Bryn thinks about lying and gives up on it in the same breath.
“Three moons or so,” she replies, her own gaze sliding past Maekar to the still form of his brother, the slow rise and fall of his chest. Some time during their labours night has fallen. The lamps have been lit, giving off their smoky light. Pate is being ushered away by the maester. Bryn must find a way to reward him. it is no small thing, saving a prince’s life.
“Did my brother know?” Maekar reads the reply on her face. “You idiot girl,” he curses her, but there is no true ire in his voice. “You’re damned fortunate the shock didn’t bring the babe too soon.”
“My uncle started the first teaching hospital in Westeros, did you know that?” Bryn’s voice is alien even to herself. “The first one for common folk to learn the healing arts. I was in his workroom and wards from before I was ten. If that helm had come off in the gatehouse Baelor would have died then and there. What strange plan of the gods brought me here, to the exact time and place he needed me? I am no one, truly. Fifth child of a House that nearly lost its honour and our heads over a Blackfyre pretender. I am nothing. But I am here, with all my knowledge – Baelor is everything, I would trade all I have to save him – my heart, my hands, any child I might bear –” Bryn is crying. She knows it. She knows she is breathing too fast (“Hyperventilating, my apprentice,” her uncle says in her mind) and her hands are shaking and in front of her Maekar is blurring and wavering as she loses what’s left of her composure. She is prepared for it. She is not prepared for her good-brother to bend down smoothly and raise her up from the bed, and embrace her.
Brynna clings onto him from sheer instinct alone. Her arms go around his bruised ribs; Maekar grunts but says nothing, head and shoulders taller than her, a bulwark of unexpected safety and grace. The smell of metal and dirt and blood cling to him, but underneath it is the same sharp soap that Baelor uses, and the scent of warm living Targaryen male, with just the barest hint of fire. It had perturbed her at first, the physical reminder of her husband’s dragon heritage, whenever he drew her close in the night. Now it is a comfort, and so is Maekar; burly, gruff, prickly Maekar, who rarely has a kind word for her except for when he sees her playing with Egg in the gardens of the Red Keep or braiding Rhae and Daella’s hair after supper. Then his eyes soften, the corners of his severe mouth turning up slightly; once, he had kissed her cheek in parting, and Brynna’s skin had burned like fire.
Baelor and Maekar have always seemed to her like a matched set, for all they have two brothers between them. The Hammer and the Anvil, as the songs go; duty-bound, honourable, true. But Baelor has charisma and effortless charm, Maekar awkwardness and unease. Even now he looks older than Baelor, as through the years have worn him down, stripped flesh into stone. Dyanna had lightened him some, Baelor had told her once, but Brynna never had the chance to know her good-sister. By the time her father had brokered her match with the widowed elder Prince, Dyanna had been more than a year in the ground.
Now Maekar holds her up. He lets Bryn sob into his roughspun shirt until the tears run dry. Then he releases her from his hold, his hands lingering on her shoulders as he sizes her up. “You need to eat something,” he says bluntly. “And sleep.” Bryn swipes a hand over her eyes.
“Valarr,” she says, her voice worse than ever. “I should go to him…” Maekar shakes his head.
“I sent Daeron to look in on him. I can almost guarantee they are stinking drunk by now.” Brynna scowls.
“Alcohol is a depressant, it’ll only make him feel worse tomorrow –”
“At least he might rest tonight,” Maekar counters. They’d had to teach her how to say his name properly; the Valyrian pronunciation is slightly different. Bryn still remembers her first time dining with the extended Targaryen family; the King and Queen, her three good-brothers, Alys, Aelinor, and what felt like over a dozen children. Maekar had scowled when she’d been introduced to him; Rhaegel had been sweet, Aerys uninterested in anything except the tome of Valyrian poetry he’d brought with him. it had been the first time Bryn had met her betrothed in a private setting; he’d kissed her hand, asked her polite questions and listened intently to her answers, and all the while as distant as a star. Maekar, though. He’d been brash and ungentlemanly, though; had snapped at her when she asked him timidly what he thought of the weather –
“Mearkar,” he’d corrected, stressing the unfamiliar sound. “Gods, woman. You have the accent of a White Harbor goatherd.” On her other side Baelor had stiffened slightly in rebuke, but Brynna was amused. She’d met men like Maekar before. Quailing before them only made them more themselves.
“Our maester did offer to teach me High Valyrian,” she’d replied, pitching her voice low as to reach only her immediate vicinity’s ears, “I considered it. But I declined in favour of an education that might actually be of real use someday.” Across the table Daeron spat out the gulp of wine he’d just quaffed, his tiny brother next to him had laughed before the boy could think better of it, and Maekar had stared down at her, brows beetling. Bryn had thought herself sunk, but a sudden smirk had creased his weathered face.
“At least there’s a spine in there,” he’d muttered, and had readdressed himself to his pudding with some effort. Brynna, cheeks warm, had turned back to her betrothed, only to find the Prince looking down at her with something like surprise, the first real emotion to cross his face all evening.
“My brother’s bark is worse than his bite,” he’d said dryly. Brynna had lowered her eyes then. I don’t plan to let him bite me either, she’d thought.
Of course, that was then.
Brynna rises before dawn having not truly slept more than a wink. There is an ewer of water and a basin on the table by the bed; she strips off her nightrail, washes her face and hands and under her arms and between her legs, chews a stick of willow bark to freshen her breath. On a whim before the clouded looking glass, she presses a hand to the abdomen that has only just this week begun to grow. Under her dresses the change is undetectable, and so Bryn makes herself put it from her mind as she puts on smallclothes and shift and gown before ringing for a maid to do her laces.
She goes first to the infirmary. Although there have been men injured in both the tourney and in the natural rhythm of life in a busy castle, the ward has been emptied for the Crown Prince’s privacy. Thus she is unimpeded, not by the Kingsguard at the door nor by the apprentice maester seated at Baelor’s bedside, a thick tome on his lap but his eyes more often on the man in the bed before him.
He looks up as Bryn approaches, her footsteps echoing off the bare, white-washed walls. “Princess,” he says, getting to his feet at once; the book thumps loudly to the floor. The adolescent flinches, trying to bow and pick up his book at the same time. Brynna hides her mixed amusement and frustration, simply bypassing the boy altogether and going to her husband’s other side.
“I trust you do not think me uncivil, maester,” she says, sitting in the same rickety chair as yesterday, studying Baelor’s face. Were it not for the bandages, for the clever way the pillows have been arranged to keep the pressure from being too great on his wound, she might think he is sleeping. Long hours have passed in her marriage, watching Baelor’s profile in the darkness, his broken nose and firm mouth, the fall of lashes over his cheek. “I am merely intent on caring for my husband. Indeed, I must write several letters in his stead, but I could not bear to be parted from him for so long –” She has borrowed Baelor’s travel writing case, and now she sets it neatly on her lap. The first letter to her father is brief, reporting the situation, requiring his discretion and the aid of her uncle Andren. Then one to Andren himself. she trusts Maekar to inform the King and Queen, but there are still more letters to pen. Brynna works until the lamps are doused and the morning sun shines brightly through the white-curtained windows, and the apprentice maester is replaced by his senior.
Yormwell comes to stand by the bed. “Were his linens changed overnight?” Brynna asks. The maester frowns.
“It would be best to leave the dressing in place for now, Princess.” Bryn resists the urge to shake her head or stamp her foot in frustration. Men, by the gods.
“I meant his bedding, his clothes. His undergarments,” she specifies flatly. She is aware that this maester does not often have unconscious patients in his care – he had told her so himself yesterday – but surely is it not too much for him to be aware of the basic necessities of life.
Well, he’s aware now. “That’s – that’s not a maester’s work,” he stammers, ears turning pink. “That’s for women to do –”
“Then ring for the ward attendants,” Brynna replies, patience fraying, tone frostier than she would like. “Whomever you have. I will supervise them.”
At least the female servants of Ashford as competent. In short order Brynna has a bowl of steaming water, a stack of washing and drying cloths, and her husband’s own clothes brought from what only yesterday had been their shared quarters. She requests, and receives, special linens to put under his clothes to absorb the natural products of bladder and bowel that a body produces. There is a pot of unguent to massage into red and inflamed skin, if needed. Fresh sheets.
Caring for a bed-bound patient was drummed into Brynna early and she knows it by heart; the female infirmarians of Ashford seem of a similar bent. They work together easily, with minimal discourse needed. If any of the women – two septas and one muscle-bound maid – think it odd to be washing a prince of the realm with a princess in a silk gown and a linen apron, they say nothing of it.
It takes almost an hour, moving Baelor slowly and gently, bending his arms and legs to prevent atrophy, wiping the crust of sleep from his eyes. Brynna thrusts her hand into the pocket of her gown and comes up with only dragons, but she needs must thank these women in some way other than the dozen fervent expressions of gratitude she’d uttered as they tended to Baelor. The expense hardly matters; each woman’s eyes widen at the sight of the gold dragon in their palm – the septas try to refuse altogether –
“Use it to buy food for your congregation,” Brynna says, eyeing the closed door that separates the infirmary and its row of neat beds from the rest of the castle outside. She would wager much that Maekar is out there waiting, most likely pacing up and down and casting foul glances at anyone that dares to meet his eye. Eventually the septas and the maid go, the latter hauling the basket of linen to be washed through the infirmary’s side door and giving Brynna a significant look as she goes. But Bryn is too weary to be decoding enigmatic messages from strangers. Casting one last glance at Baelor to satisfy herself that naught is amiss (aside from her unconscious husband and threadbare hold on her composure, she goes to the main door and throws it open.
Maekar is there, as anticipated; his dark violet eyes narrow at the sight of her. “It is barely time to break one’s fast, woman. Must you hover over my brother so incessantly?” Brynna swallows a sigh and begs the gods for patience. But there is no godswood in Ashford, no heart tree with its red-slitted eyes and mouth. Her gods cannot hear her here.
“Unless you wish to change his linens yourself, your Grace, then my place is with my lord husband,” she says flatly, retreating into formality as she knows she often does when strained. Maekar’s mouth firms into a thin hard line.
“You have letters for me to send?” He nods to the bundle of tiny scrolls she is holding. Bryn nods, and hands them over; Maekar’s hand is cool and dry and almost identical to Baelor’s. His fingers catch hers and squeeze, briefly, before he draws them back. There is so much repressed torment in his eyes that Bryn can hardly stand it.
“He will live, Maekar,” she finds herself saying. “We need only wait until he is stable enough to travel. Then we can go home –” Maekar catches her eye.
“Home?” he asks, with his characteristic bluntness. “Where do you consider home, good-sister? Darkfall? Dragonstone? King’s Landing?” Brynna smiles. It visibly takes Maekar off guard, his eyes widening as he takes a step towards her.
“Summerhall,” she replies, and knows the truth of it all the way through. “We’ll take him to Summerhall.”