Maekar watched the birds outside.
They moved freely above the city, cutting through the pale morning sky without purpose or destination.
He knew there was another visit that was long overdue…
Patience had never come naturally to him.
“Prince.”
He did not move.
“Prince!”
The second time was louder, sharp enough to jolt his arm from beneath his chin.
He turned his head back toward the table with the glance of someone pretending they had not almost slid off their chair.
Grand Maester Elysar looked at him from across the desk, the book before him now closed, one hand resting flat on its cover.
He was a patient man by nature.
Maekar had been testing that patience systematically for several months now and found it had limits after all.
“Yes, Grand Maester,” Maekar said, in the tone of someone who was present in body only.
Elysar studied him for a moment.
“Tell me.”
“The sigil of House Redwyne.”
“A bunch of grapes,” he said.
“Blue on gold.
House Redwyne of the Arbor.
Lords of the most productive vineyards in Westeros, bannermen to House Tyrell, therefore sworn ultimately to House Targaryen.”
A short pause.
“Their wine is better than their fighting record.”
Elysar stared at him.
“Don’t talk nonsense.
You don’t even drink wine.”
He opened the book again, turning pages with slightly more force than necessary.
“Then tell me,” he said, not looking up.
“The words of House Tully.”
Maekar sighed.
“No,” he said.
Elysar looked up.
“Rather than that,” Maekar continued, “tell me about Maegor the Cruel.”
The Grand Maester went still.
His eyes moved to Maekar’s face, searching for something, mischief perhaps, or the blankness of a child repeating a word they had overheard without understanding it.
He did not find either of those things.
The boy was watching him with an expression Elysar had not seen before in all his months of teaching him.
Not boredom.
Interest.
Genuine, focused, unguarded interest.
Elysar set down his quill.
“And why,” he asked carefully, “do you wish to know about Maegor the Cruel?”
“He built this city’s dragonpit.
He built the Red Keep we are sitting in.
And everyone acts as though he never existed.”
Indeed.
Maekar grew frustrated over the years.
He heard whispers, but apart from that nothing.
Elysar set his quill down slowly.
“Maegor Targaryen was born in 12 AC to King Aegon the Conqueror and his elder sister-wife, Queen Visenya.
He was their only child together, and half-brother to King Aenys before him.”
He folded his hands.
“He became a squire at eight.
A knight at sixteen, the youngest in the realm at that time.
He was large.
Larger than his father.
A born warrior by all accounts, trained by Ser Gawen Corbray of Dragonstone, who was considered one of the finest swordsmen of his age.”
“He claimed Balerion the Black Dread as his mount.
The largest dragon the world has ever known.”
Maekar nodded, that quiet pride rising within him like something he had not asked for and could not entirely suppress.
Elysar continued.
“When his half-brother Aenys died in 42 AC, Maegor seized the Iron Throne ahead of Aenys’s own children.
His reign lasted six years.
He burned the Sept of Remembrance.
He executed the builders of the Red Keep so that none but Targaryens would ever know its secrets.
He killed his own nephew in battle above the Gods Eye—”
“Were the Targaryens not under threat from the Faith?”
Elysar stopped.
Maekar’s voice had been challenging.
“The Faith Militant had been waging open war against the crown for years,”
Maekar continued, before the Grand Maester could respond.
“Killing Targaryen loyalists.
Threatening the dynasty’s very survival.”
“Maegor ended it.”
Elysar opened his mouth.
“And his nephew,” Maekar added, “was by all accounts a weak man.
Just like Aenys who could not control the Faith when it rose against him.
He could not protect his own family.
He spent his reign apologising to enemies who wanted him dead.”
He tilted his head slightly.
“Is a weak king not more dangerous to a dynasty than a cruel one?”
The Grand Maester looked at him for a long moment, worry rising in his eyes.
Outside, the birds were still moving across the sky.
“My prince,” Elysar said, and his voice had taken on a quieter, more deliberate quality, the kind a man used when he wanted to be certain he was heard.
“What you are saying is very dangerous.
There are fewer than a handful of men in all of Westeros who would agree with you.”
Maekar looked at him.
“I did not ask how many would agree,” he said.
“I asked whether it was true.”
Elysar had no immediate answer for that.
Then Maekar finally moved.
“The builders wanted to sell the maps of the Red Keep to enemies across the sea.”
Elysar went very still.
“Where,” he asked with grave tone, “did you hear that?”
Maekar only shrugged.
Then Elysar added one last line.
“Maegor was found dead upon the Iron Throne in 48 AC.
His wrists were slashed.
A spike from one of the swords had gone through the back of his neck.”
Maekar’s head had turned back toward the window at some point during those last words.
He could feel Elysar’s eyes on the side of his face, studying him.
The old man was curious.
Maekar did not want to give him anything, so he had turned.
He had known.
He had always known how it ended.
The throne, the blood, the silence of an empty hall.
He had carried that knowledge since the first moment his memories had returned to him in this small body.
But hearing it spoken aloud was something else entirely.
Elysar’s voice had been flat.
Professional.
The voice of recounting history, not the death of someone sitting across from him.
In his first life, at the end, he had accepted it.
Not with peace, but with dull recognition.
It was over.
That was simply what it was.
But that was before.
Before whatever force, god or fate, had seen fit to put him back.
To give him this.
A second chance, in a world that had moved on fifty years without him.
And now, sitting in a sunlit chamber with a Grand Maester who suspected nothing, hearing the clinical summary of his own death read aloud like an entry in a book, something moved through him that he had not felt since his death.
Rage.
It was very much visible on his face and his eyes.
He had been killed.
It had been planned.
Betrayed and abandoned and killed, and the realm had exhaled with relief, and Jaehaerys had sat down on the throne he had built and been called the Conciliator, the Wise, the Good King, and no one had looked back.
His jaw tightened.
This time it would be different.
This time he would win.
Truly so.
And they couldn’t do anything.
Ser Ryam Redwyne had been surprised when the King called upon him to stay after the council meeting.
It was not an unpleasant surprise.
Simply an unexpected one.
His role as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard was more ceremonial than necessary on most days.
He was not often asked to participate beyond that.
He waited while the last filed out.
Lord Lyman Beesbury passed him, already murmuring something to his steward about grain prices.
Although he was a scrawny old man, Ryam had become to like him.
From what he understood the man was extremely competent.
Septon Barth followed a moment later, unhurried as always, his plain robes at odds with the authority he carried.
The chamber settled into silence.
“Ser Ryam.”
Jaehaerys folded his hands on the table, the way he did when he had already made a decision and was now informing someone of it.
“I have a request for you.”
Ryam inclined his head.
“Anything, Your Grace.”
Jaehaerys studied him for a moment with those pale, unhurried eyes.
Then he said, simply:
“My youngest grandson.
Have you spent much time with him?”
Ryam’s expression did not change, but something in him went very still.
Now that the King mentioned it, he realized he had not.
Not truly.
He had seen Prince Maekar in passing, had exchanged the occasional word in a corridor, had noticed him at breakfast from across the room.
But spent time with him?
No.
The boy was always occupied with something, moving through the Keep with that purposefulness that sat strangely on a child his age.
It was different with Daemon.
Daemon sought him out constantly, loudly, with requests to spar and challenges issued with the cheerful confidence, only to be beaten everytime.
Ryam had grown almost fond of him for it.
Maekar had never once sought him out.
“Seldom, Your Grace,” he answered carefully.
Jaehaerys nodded slowly, as though this confirmed something he had already suspected.
“I want you to train him,” he said.
“In the way of the sword.”
“He is five years old, Your Grace.”
“He is,” Jaehaerys nodded.
Ryam looked at the King for a moment in disbelief.
“May I ask what prompted this, Your Grace?”
Jaehaerys was quiet for a moment.
“The boy asked for it himself,” he said.
“At breakfast this morning.”
“He used his nameday as leverage.”
Ryam blinked.
“You have noticed as well, I take it.”
It was not a question.
Jaehaerys leaned back slightly in his chair, the morning light catching the silver in his hair.
“He is quicker than boys his age.
Smarter.
Taller.
More composed.
Something about him is difficult to look away from, if I am being honest.
I believe he could become a great warrior, given the right foundation.
But he has to be led down the right path.”
He met Ryam’s eyes once more.
“So.
Will you do it?”
The gaze of Jaehaerys I Targaryen was not a comfortable thing to hold.
“Of course, Your Grace,” Ryam said.
And so Ser Ryam Redwyne found himself standing on the training grounds of the Red Keep on a warm afternoon turning a wooden sword over in his hands.
He swung it once, slowly.
Then again, testing the weight and balance of it.
It was on the heavier side for a child, he supposed.
But then, this was not going to be a child’s course of training, despite the fact that he would be training a child.
He still was not entirely sure what to make of that.
Boys in Westeros came to the sword for many reasons.
Most came because their fathers told them to, or because they had watched a tourney and wanted the glory without yet understanding the work.
Some came angry, wanting an outlet.
Some came afraid, wanting armor against a world that had already frightened them.
He did not know which of those applied to Prince Maekar.
He heard the footsteps in the mud before he saw him.
The boy came across the yard at an unhurried pace, two household guards trailing behind him, trying to look important.
Maekar did not appear to notice them.
His hands were clasped behind his back, his eyes already moving across the training ground with an attention that reminded Ryam of the way experienced soldiers assessed unfamiliar terrain.
He was indeed tall for five.
Ryam had half expected to feel foolish, standing here with a wooden sword waiting for a child.
He did not feel entirely foolish.
That in itself was something.
“Prince,” Ryam greeted him, stroking his grey beard with one hand.
“Ser Ryam,” Maekar replied.
He stopped a few feet away and looked up at him with those piercing violet eyes.
“Shall we begin?” Maekar said.
Ryam nodded, liking the spirit.
He tossed the wooden sword across without warning.
Maekar caught it cleanly with one hand.
A small thing.
But Ryam noticed.
The boy turned the sword over slowly, inspecting it the way a craftsman inspected a new tool, running his thumb along the grain of the wood, testing the weight with a few small adjustments of his grip.
Not playing with it.
Assessing it.
“Attack me.”
Maekar glanced at the wooden sword in his hands.
He, who had once been famed across the realm for his strength and martial prowess, was struggling to hold a wooden sword.
The grip felt wrong.
The weight distributed poorly across fingers that had not yet grown.
How laughable.
But if he ever wanted to hold his own in this world, on this continent where the strong ruled the weak, and that he believed with every fiber of what remained of him, then there was no other way.
“Attack me.” He heard Ryam say.
Maekar clenched his jaw.
Then he burst forward.
Ryam’s eyes widened slightly at the sudden charge, enough that Maekar noticed, though the knight still twisted his body sideways with practiced ease, letting the blow slide past him.
Maekar didn’t stop.
He swung again from the side.
Then again.
“Hah.”
He was already panting by the sixth strike, the one he delivered from above with everything the small body had left.
Every muscle was burning.
His lungs were screaming.
Ryam parried it with his own sword without breaking a sweat.
Maekar held his ground, chest heaving, and felt the anger rise through him like heat.
In that moment, a flicker of the old Maegor came through, although he quickly suppressed it.
He looked around.
Roland and Lionel were watching with wide eyes.
So were the knights and soldiers nearby, training forgotten, attention fixed entirely on the prince and the Lord Commander.
Maekar looked back at Ryam.
He tightened his grip.
“That is enough, Prince.”
Ryam lowered his sword.
He studied Maekar for a moment.
“Is this the first time you have held a sword?”
Maekar held his gaze.
Then he nodded, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist.
Ryam said nothing for a long moment.
Around them the training ground had slowly come back to life, steel ringing against steel, boots against dirt.
“A true prodigy,” Ryam murmured quietly as the wind rose around them.
The sun was slowly sinking over King’s Landing, bathing the city in warm golden light that stretched far across the realm of Westeros.
Maekar was still panting when, for the first time in over a decade, a thunderous roar shook the streets.
It rose from deep within the Dragonpit.
A massive dark silhouette stirred once more, as if awakened by Maekar’s simmering anger…