Chapter Text
It was a testament to how oft she shared a bed with His Grace of Winter, that Rhaena was awoken and mildly disturbed by her chilled toes. Moments passed as she stared at the canopy overhead in orange and black, before the humidity of water registered alongside the exhaustion of the journey.
“Ugh,” Rhaena’s hand stretched out to the canopy, and then landed on her face in exhaustion.
A light tap on the door, before it swung open. Where on Dragonstone or the Red Keep there would be servants that bustled in on contact, the Winterlanders were the catspaws that crept up in silence, as though they learnt it from the Stranger’s knee. Mayhaps some had, was the common jape shared in Wintertown. There was only one set of footsteps that actually reached her ears.
“…good morrow, Lady Sam.” Rhaena finally conceded to the dawn of day.
“Good morrow, my queen,” Lady Samantha Stokeworth murmured even as she loomed by the foot of the bed. Of Rhaena’s original posse of ladies, Lady Sam was the last one still in her service, having married and settled north of the Neck – by Southron standards, Lady Sam was big and boisterous and a heretic who followed not the Starry Sept; in the Winterlands, any of Lady Sam’s Whitehill good-sisters would horrify Southron lords and Septons more.
“I was unsure if Your Grace would attend the prayers this morn, but Berena had carried up a bowl of oat porridge if you would hear the Septon give mass – quick, get the chamberpot.”
Rhaena groaned over the shuffling behind Lady Sam. “I forgot… the garderobe.”
“…indeed,” Lady Sam’s expression mirrored Rhaena’s own feeling on the subject. “Harrenhal has yet to be rebuilt – certainly, one has a rather bad feeling of turning back to the chamberpot after the closets up north. Yet it cannot be helped…”
“Leave it, Lady Sam. His High Holiness has never done a single thing for me, cooped in Oldtown and far from his flock. Should a dragon-rider turned to the Snowy Sept, let it be on him.” Rhaena shuffled from under the bedclothes as from behind Lady Sam, two quiet servant girls carried a wash-basin and a tea-gown. “The tea-gown this morn, and the porridge – and the princess has long departed the bed, I see.”
“Princess Maeve has her own audience in the training yard, aye,” Lady Sam gave a rueful grimace over the wash-basin. “Even His Grace had stood down from his… vigil… to peer from the Hall of a Hundred Hearths.”
“…mine Uncle wrote of offering my daughter as Aegon’s bride, even on his deathbed,” Rhaena felt her face, dampened from scrubbing a hot towel, twitch in a grimace. “Jaehaerys is her uncle, but he is also King on the Iron Throne.”
“Then the princess…” Lady Sam furrowed her brow in a beat of contemplation. “That could not be. His Grace… King Walton, that is, would not hear of it.”
“Trying to press a marriage suit on an Einheri is not a good idea, when the bedding would withdraw any scant protection afforded to the spouse,” Rhaena conceded. “The choice would lie with my daughter. And that… lack of control, over the blood of the dragon, is what our Uncle Aerion could not abide.”
Rhaena shrugged on the tea-gown, a comfortable affair of tabby-weave silk dyed a careworn grey and red that passed as suitable for a morning audience, but not for Court. “Prepare the black mourning gown if you would.”
“Very good. Of the jewels we have packed the cairngorm parure. The brooch and diadem would be nice enough.”
“…” Rhaena froze, before she snapped her fingers. “I knew I left it, forget my own head next… the greeting gifts, we should have presented it the night afore.”
“I am sure Her Grace would welcome the gift, though it be late.”
“Oh, Alysanne and Vaella will,” Rhaena puffed her cheeks at the thought. “My little brother, however, would see it as Walton’s offence afore a distraction of the highest order.”
A light tap, before whispers to the servants, and then one of the servant girls stepped forth with a curtsy.
“Lady Wihtburg reports that one of Queen Alysanne’s ladies sent an invite for midday, Your Grace, to welcome her sister.”
Rhaena felt her face fall into a grimace. “She does this not as my blood-sister, but for the same reason that Jaehaerys and her would have me withhold Dreamfyre’s eggs from mine own children. She does this as a Targaryen queen.”
The luncheon was arranged at the Queen’s temporary apartments, the window overlooking a small potager by the Kingspyre Tower of Harrenhal. In the distance the Tower of Dread loomed fairly over the nearby mews, and the smell of horses passing by was only faintly accompanied with the scent of burning meat – no doubt Silverwing, Vermithor and now Dreamfyre were housed and fed somewhere. In the distance was Harrenhal’s twenty-acre godswood where her wayward daughter had no doubt disappeared to, and even further past the curtain wall, was that patch of red over the Gods’ Eye lake which was the Isle of Faces.
Alysanne sipped a tisane. “Alyssa tells me that she saw Princess Maeve break three bricks with her bare hands. Together.”
Rhaena cast a distant memory of the cut-steel brooch and necklace she had packed to be offered at the night’s supper feast with Vaella’s arrival. Would it be enough to pacify this offended mother dragoness?
“My royal daughter has the heart of a warrior – and the brashness of a boy, unfortunately for her sex,” Alysanne cast an eye towards Rhaena. “Whereas Princess Maeve was so graceful… even when performing feats of brute strength. Your daughter is… to be complimented, sister.”
“…thank you, sister.”
Rhaena wondered over the light luncheon – crusts of hard-baked crusty bread, cold cuts alongside pots of jugged hare, wedges of sharp cheese and a bowl of blackberries, alongside flagons of tisane and wine. The sort of food that could be lingered and picked over, rather than pottages or meats that would need much washing of hands betwixt messes.
No doubt, Alysanne expected this to be a long talk.
“Jaehaerys thought the same when he would have her as bride to my Aegon,” Alysanne was speaking now. “Save that she is not, in fact, King Walton’s heir.”
Rhaena could not help the scoff. “If Jaehaerys thinks he would marry the Winter Crown into the Iron Throne, I scarce doubt if your firstborn would survive my firstborn.”
“…unfortunately, I must concede,” a rueful chuckle followed the admittance. “Where is the princess, now?”
“Mayhaps the godswood, mayhaps the bathhouse. She shares the northern tendency for long, hot soaks,” Rhaena fought to keep her eyeballs from rolling at the thought – she was the Queen of Winter here, not just Rhaena Targaryen. “Maeve is wise enough to stay discreet – though I promise nothing should the Harroways call a hunt. No doubt the riverlords would have a collective fit at the Einheri in their midst.”
“I suppose it too much to hope that the Princess Maeve would share nothing else of the Winterlanders,” Alysanne grimaced. “Young Alyssa already prefers swords and armour to the bodkins and raiments. I shudder to think if she would chop her tresses short in the squire’s fashion or break her hands to emulate her… cousin. Why, I presume it is only the lack of dragon that would give Alyssa pause in worshipping the Princess Maeve.”
Rhaena felt the vein at her temple throb at Alysanne’s hint. “My daughter takes after her Stark father, aye,” she defended. “Though she had never needed to steal an inheritance from any of the Stark multitude. Your young Egg, though – I heard in a stopover at the old inn by the crossroads. He claimed Alkahest, did he not? Before our uncle’s corpse was even cold. Our Naunt has this draughty castle, but what of our cousin Laetitia? Would she claim a mount at Dragonstone now?”
“Jaehaerys… a Targaryen princess should not take the dragon out of our family.” Alysanne’s voice was tight. “Laetitia is… a sensible girl.”
“……”
Rhaena gave a rueful chuckle, even as she twisted the ring on her finger and manhandled the cairngorm set in white gold.
“You are too young to remember our grandsire, but he truly favoured our uncle. Mayhaps were the Conqueror’s sons born of Visenya and Rhaenys both, he would favour the line of Rhaenys – as it were, Rhaenys bore him both sons, and thus he truly favoured the younger, who he saw himself in. Our father was a nice man, but a weak king – I will admit this on hindsight, no matter how it pains me. Alysanne, were it not for our uncle’s childless marriage with the late Princess Ceryse, our grandsire would have prayed that nothing comes betwixt our uncle and the Iron Throne.
Rhaena had scarce swallowed a morsel of bread and tart blackberries, wetting her throat with a sip of wine next to appreciate the Arbour Red – the wine imported into the Winterlands tended come by way of Braavos, if not the local iced variety made of Brandon’s Gift or the mead that came of Torrhen’s Square.
“If I know this, no doubt any old courtier would know, and with this slight to our cousin family, Laetitia would be perfect to foment treason within these lords, ever dissatisfied with our family’s rule over the Realm.” Rhaena leant back, the better to look at Alysanne and ponder.
Jaehaerys was many things, but not fool enough to court trouble in the Riverlands and at once bait the Winterlands just beyond the Neck. Trouble…
The game of thrones had too many turnings, Rhaena fumed. She should have just stayed north.