☽✧melinoya(rt)✧☾

How much blood is in a man?

As many drops as blades of grass the whole world over. He can bleed and bleed and yet live all the rest of his life, one must suppose, with fat veins ripe to spill again.

Daeron lifted the cloth from his fingers. Red on white. A rivulet pulsed out before he could cover it again.

'You'll gouge your nails out', Gwayne used to say, 'And then how will you play your lute?'

The thought had frightened him enough to make him stop the worst of it—no more digging in with paper knives or hairpins. But it wasn't as though he could lock his nails in the winter clothes chest. And anyway, a king should bleed, though he be only a puppet king. His father had bled upon that monstrous throne and was Daeron not twice so good? Lord Ormund said so. Sometimes. At certain times. Tonight.

A hiss of hot air in his ear.

Well, his fingers were starting to sting. Lifting the cloth again revealed sticky clots more or less closed over. It hurt from the soap more than the damage, he thought, and in the morning all would be right again. Those long baths afterwards were another of Sire's insistences, but this one Daeron could bear. The manservant would leave to fetch his housecoat and Daeron would sink under, let his lungs ache to match the rest of him, come up in a rush of tepid water.

How many breaths does a man get?

As many as the gods give him. So many to sleep, to gather courage, 'til You're a marvel—now off you go.

He longed for Oldtown. The green water on scorching afternoons and the purple nights spent lounging on terraces with the sea breeze in his face.

There'd been a poetry contest at the Quill and Tankard a few nights before the war began. He was friendly with some of the singers there, and had dragged in one or two novices, and the Cuy boys, and even Alan Beesbury, who he supposed he was not now like to see again. The prize had been a kiss from the barkeep's daughter Viola, who was allowed to sit by for an hour and cheer on her suitors. When he lost, Daeron thought the feeling must be as near to death as a breathing, bleeding man could get.

What a boy he had been.

At last he lay the cloth on his desk. Near there was a letter from his mother, from before. One he'd fancied himself too busy to answer. Now what could he tell her?

Most noble mother mine,

The days are short and the nights long. My uncle has lost some colour. Our cousin is attentive. I feel his fingers catch a knot in my hair. I feel his fingers at the corner of my mouth. Lower. So it ever was, but I am near at hand here and easy to fetch.

I think we will not see each other soon. I remember you in my prayers. And now I've no time for more.

'And now I've no time for more,' Gwayne used to laugh. 'When you next send for letter paper, you should have them write it ready for you.'

He was going to. A few leaves, gaudily illuminated, to write his uncle and cheer his spirits on campaign. That's the sort of thing the maesters would keep for exhibiting to scholars and poets: false King Daeron's lettersheet, note the inscription. He might have been remembered for that—something that was really and wholly his. Not these coins. A portrait not quite him wearing a crown he had not earned commemorating a reign that had never commenced.

He could feel the thread of fate draped about his shoulders, rising steadily to his neck. A pity Ormund couldn't rip it off when he clutched there. But why would he? He'd put it there in the first place. Pulled it tighter with every wretched kiss.

That's what the Lord of Oldtown liked. A feather-light kiss on each of Daeron's wrists, tracing his veins (ha!) down and up again to the hollow of his neck. Pressing at his edges. It was only dull pain now, if any at all, which meant that he would have to bleed more later to settle the debt. Like balancing humours: heart and body and mind. Soul was easier. If the gods saw fit to lay him down, then they could damn well clear that debt themselves.

So now the sun was coming up. Salmon pink ripples on the horizon and, if he could only see far enough, the Hightower burning green at the edge of the world.