Rhaegar put away roast pigeon as if the bird might stand up and leave.
When a knot of well-wishers cut Rhaena off from the low tables, he stole the wine as well.
The knights around him had found their real manners after two cups of the hard stuff.
The jokes went from bad to worse and the laughter came back in bursts.
Up on the dais the king and his blood lifted cups and set them down again.
The food in front of them stayed pretty and untouched.
Dignity had a cost.
Rhaegar’s mouth was shining with grease.
He told himself that was the better half of the bargain.
The doors went back.
Two guards on the posts pulled them wide, and the hall found a single direction to look.
“Lord Daemon Velaryon, Lord of the Tides, Master of Driftmark, comes to give his joy!”
A dozen of them came in with their heads up: silver-gold hair, purple eyes, the old Valyrian stamp still clean.
Knights filled the space behind.
Sea-green wool and cloaks, the same cut down the line, and on every breast a seahorse in silver thread that caught the candles.
An old man walked at the front.
The years had folded his face.
A youth had his arm and measured the steps for him.
Chairs scraped.
The hall stood.
Jaehaerys stood.
Alysanne stood.
Every Targaryen in black came off the bench with them.
Boremund owed the man an uncle’s name, and so did the king’s own generation.
Lord Daemon had been one of the first great lords to leave Maegor.
After he went, the rest found their courage and went too.
The highborn stood for the offices.
He had been Hand of the King.
He had been master of ships and lord admiral.
He had left the Red Keep years ago, and the Velaryon war fleet was still the largest in the Seven Kingdoms.
It could close a coast and keep it closed.
Dragons excepted, there was no harder strength on the water.
The knights stood for the white cloaks.
One of the first seven had been a Velaryon.
The first man to command them had been a Velaryon as well.
In Westeros a house could live a long time on what its dead had done.
Rhaegar had not been in the world for that man’s wars.
Books and supper talk had given him the shape of it.
The respect he could honestly spend stopped at the fact that this was Rhaena’s uncle.
House Velaryon had paid for him too.
The plague had gone through the main line until there was almost nothing left of it: Lord Daemon, three grandchildren, and behind them a trail of cousins who still had the face.
The rest were in the ground.
He had been the realm’s butcher since the day he fell out of the sky.
A few more names on that account did not keep him from the plate.
As a small boy he had run to Rhaena’s chamber and tried to sleep against her side.
The dead were a long line now.
He ate.
He slept.
Rhaegar watched the one holding him up.
Ser Corlys Velaryon, heir to Driftmark.
They had named him for the first Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, his great-grandfather, the other Corlys.
Three years older.
They had stood in the same rooms at other feasts.
Set the blood aside and they knew each other well enough.
Corlys was lean and not tall.
In Rhaegar’s private count, tall started at Boremund.
The silver hair was bound in a short tail.
The purple eyes did their work.
Every knuckle had a sailor’s callus.
The steps he gave his grandfather were even, the distance judged.
The yard work had not stopped.
If the boy ever learned to lose a point without making a meal of it, he would be someone.
No man who had earned a deck kept a soft face.
Velaryon children, girls as well as boys, went to sea with their kin before they had their growth.
The sun had done the rest.
Corlys was darker than the last time Rhaegar had seen him.
When the plates slowed, the hall danced.
When the dancing slowed, the plates came back.
The thing would run until the small hours and start again tomorrow.
Rhaegar could hold himself like a lord’s get when the room required it.
He could also sit with men who lived by steel and give them the sort of joke that filled a bench.
A few of the better filthy ones and he had a crowd.
More musicians came in.
The music that had been furniture got louder.
The men still drinking in the aisle found their seats.
Aemon took Jocelyn’s hand and led her out first.
They bowed to each other and began.
Halfway through, the tune eased.
Pair after pair of bright young things stepped onto the stones until the first dance was a floor of them.
Rhaegar’s belly sat round under his belt.
A few sausages were left on the dish and he had no honest use for them.
No girl at a feast like this would take a bastard’s hand and call it a dance.
He was not going to walk out there and prove it.
He had come into the world with an edge.
When he had a name worth the music, he could throw a month of this himself.
He took slices of white bread, put strawberry jam on them, and shut the sausages in.
Then he went to find Aemon.
Harrenhal had kept no cellar.
For years the only wine in his mouth had been what the maids made from fruit.
Tonight it was pear brandy out of Tyrosh.
Three turns of the hall and his head had a tilt.
He made the edge of the floor in a line that was not straight.
The first dance ended.
A slower one took its place.
The young came off to rest.
The middle years claimed the stones, and the king and queen led them.
“Aemon.”
He put the bread into the prince’s hand where the hall could not see it. Find the original chapter at g.com.
“I’ve been empty all day.” Aemon turned his back to the room and ate like a man at a siege.
The words came out thick.
“I couldn’t—find a hole—to put food in.”
“Jocelyn.”
The second packet went into her palm.
She had more care than Aemon.
She took it, looked both ways, and put a pillar between herself and the floor before she bit.
Rhaegar eyed the skinny length of him.
“You grow up and not out.
Eat.
Look at her.
When you’re married you won’t get out of the bed.”
“I hadn’t put my mind on that.”
They both looked.
Jocelyn was still at the pillar.
Girls came into themselves earlier.
She had two years on Aemon besides.
The Baratheon stamp was all over her: thick black hair straight to the waist, dark eyes that did the work men wrote songs about.
The realm already called her a beauty.
The rest of her was the problem.
She was not sixteen.
She was already near six feet.
The low gown showed what it was cut to show.
The shoulders and the arms were her brother’s: hard muscle under the silk.
She could have picked Aemon up like a stick and put him where she liked.
“Frightened?” Rhaegar’s own growth would come late by a year or two.
He did not mean to finish smaller than this lot.
“A bit.” Aemon had been in the cups as well.
Rhaegar hooked an arm around his neck and patted the flat of his chest.
“Swim.
Work.
You know the kind I mean.”
The brandy had old habits standing up in him.
He had trained bodies for pay in the world before this one.
The advice came out in that voice.
“After this I’ll find Ser Redwyne.” Aemon had tasted Rhaegar’s work once.
It was not a knight’s yard, and he was not ready to live in it.
He said the useful words and went back to the guests.
Rhaegar pointed himself at his seat and found a noise instead.
He put a shoulder through the ring.
Ser Corlys Velaryon had a young man’s wrist locked in his and the table under both their elbows.
“Ha!”
“Again, Corlys!”
The loser took his hand back and left with his face shut.
Corlys had won that one too.
He left the right arm standing on the board.
The left put a bottle to his mouth.
He waited like that for the next fool, a boy wearing an old sailor’s manner as if he had paid for it in storms.
Rhaegar sat down across from him, put his own right out, and closed.