Chapter Text
With her high bones, some men say his mother, Jeyne, looks more Targaryen than Stokeworth or Lothston. Maekar prefers to ignore that — he prefers to ignore his grandmother declaring that he is as much a Targaryen as Daemon Blackfyre or even the king himself; more so even. He hasn't seen his grandmother since he was a boy of one and ten. His mother is more welcome in Good Queen Myriah's household than at Harrenhal so that is where she lives. Her grace pays her companions a generous upkeep as well; enough to keep Jeyne well clothed and jeweled but not enough to pay Maekar a dowry.
In the shadows of the fire, Jeyne's eyes appear sunken behind their heavy lids. She has her sewing in her lap laid out on her right knee while the left one jiggs.
Maekar has Prince Baelor's correspondences on his right knee, a mirror to his mother.
Lord Velaryon wants approval for his heir's marriage to a Redwyne and for Baelor to attend the wedding tourney. Five letters are from angry spicemongers and sea captains whose goods were confiscated on Dragonstone. The Manderlys have send a scroll as long as Maekar's thigh, negotiating to sell the crown a number of their ships. There is a much smaller missive from Lord Dondarrion complaining about outlaws coming up the Boneway — he wants Baelor to raise the trouble with his grace, the King. Lady Frey wants to know if there might be some exchequer post for her fifth daughter who has a fine head for numbers or so Lord Tully vouches in his own sharp, sloping script. He must bloody like the alpha if he hasn't fobbed off the task to his maester.
With a bit of charcoal Maekar makes a note to offer this Cersei some high customs post.
"I can smell your maiden blood," Maekar's mother says. Maekar sniffs himself. He smells nothing.
"I'm not cramping," Maekar tells her. "Nor" — his face burns — "is it properly open yet."
That it is his cunt. As a pup it was naught more than a little divot underneath his cock. His lack of stones were what marked him as an omega when he was born. Now, at eighteen, it's developed proper lips and a little hole so tight he can barely wriggle two fingers past the hymen clinging around its opening. Once his maiden blood stops, the slick will come in with his maiden heat.
His mother's maiden heat afflicted her when the was not more then four and ten. His grandmother Falena gave it to King Aegon to win her cousin the post of Grand Maester. She wasn't bred with Maekar those three days — a pup cannot catch during a maiden heat — but he came from her second. Jeyne brought him into the world a moon after she turned five and ten. Aegon had already thrown the Lothstones from court and Myriah had invited her to Dragonstone so Maekar might be raised with her pups and the younger bunch of Aegon's bastards. The Queen had been the first to hold him after the midwife and Jeyne. Once he was cleaned and the afterbirth taken away, he'd been passed down the line of pups, from nine year old Prince Baelor to four year old Brynden Rivers.
"You'll have a fortnight," Jeyne replies.
"I thought it would be a sennight," Maekar knits his brows. That is how long most court omegas have between the start of their bleeding and the first shivers of fever.
"A maiden heat takes longer to build," Jeyne tells him. His mother has not had a heat since he was a pup; the maesters have her mix moon tea with some awful, brackish smelling concoction to treat her Volantine pox. It's rendered her barren but her sores are less virulent. "And it is longer than any other."
"And is hellishly painful, I'm aware. Crone's teats," Maekar groans. "Baelor won't be happy to make do without me."
"If we find you a match in the Riverlands, he'll learn to."
"Or Dorne," Maekar says. Gwenys Rivers, Missy Blackwood's eldest, is Lady Wyl or Wyl, mated to a handsome woman thrice her age with a bevy of heirs. Missy's third born, little alpha Mya is Princess Daenerys' sworn shield in Sunspear.
She's written letters of introduction for half the knights lingering around court, wanting some post or employment or wife or a tax assignment. Dyanna Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, is one. Third born, unmarried and with a bevy of nieces and nephews, she could wed a king's bastard — properly dowered — without shocking half the damned realm..
"We have few friends in the Riverlands," Jeyne says.
"The Lothstons have few friends?" Maekar grunts.
"That means my father has some incentive to make you a good match," Jeyne sighs. His mother is three and thirty and fair when there aren't sores splitting open the skin of her cheeks. She could find a good match if some poxy lord wanted her.
"I am of better use at court."
"You have not been of good use to my father."
Maekar snorts. "Do you want me to be of use to your panderer?"
"No. I mean to make some use of him," Jeyne scoffs. "For once in his damned life. If he can get you an heir or an unmated lord or lady, shall I say no?"
"No," Maekar replies. He is a bastard — a Waters. He shares the surname of half the whores in Fleabottom. Perhaps half of Fleabottom itself. Were it not for the now king, Daeron and Myriah he'd have been left to linger in Harrenhal, living closer to a servant than anything else. His pups would be the sired by some petty merchant or even a household knight, perhaps a minor, impoverished lord. "But it must be a lord or an heir."
He'll have to marry if he wants pup. He won't carry a bastard — lusty and wily, the Septons say of bastards. Born in sin they are weak for it; it is their natural state.
Maekar's gut turns. He knows that well.
"No," Jeyne hums. "You're all but master of Baelor's exchequer. If he'd give you a writ of office —"
"I'd have to pay a bond for that," Maekar replies. Gods knew he didn't have the money for it. "We'll have to dower me if grandfather nets a lord."
He breathes out his nose. His abdomen is tight. Maekar prays once a day but he rarely attends sermons. He loathes his own shame. Some days he thinks he loathes his mother for it — or ought to. Some days, when he was a on the cusp of maidenhood, squiring for Daemon and living in Daena's wild house, he did loath her.
"Daeron —" Jeyne stops. "He wants you lot close. I think he regrets allowing the Rivers girls and Blackfyre away from court."
"Why? There's only trouble with the Marcher Lords and that'll be corrected the moment the Dondarrion's have an omega to give Baelor."
Three unpresented girls is all the Lords of Blackhaven have to offer Baelor. The eldest is sixteen, russet haired and freckled with luminous eyes. The bloody Gods know, the Carons and the Swanns have brats of the right age but those mad fools share a pissing contest as old as the Brackens and Blackwoods; though they've been too busy with the Dornish to turn their knives on eachother. Best not to thrust a dragon into that filthy bird coop. It might be set alight..
The last time Lady Caron came to joust she'd released a thousand nightingales. The birds had roosted in the beams of the tourney stands and shat on the crowds heads. Dyanna's mother's purple whimple was stained white with runny shit.
Lord Swann had the good sense not to unleash one of his infernal, violent, shrieking birds on the crowd.
Jeyne has a habit of pursing her lips taunt over her front teeth when she's worried. It makes her look like she's swallowed an unripe lemon. She speaks slowly, parsing her words.
"He's refused Aegor the right to travel to Braavos," Brynden Rivers is already in Braavos negotiating an interest reduction with the Iron Bank, supposedly.
"He thinks Shiera will have him."
"He knows she won't."
"Then he doesn't want him and Brynden in the same city without Kingsguard to keep them from cutting eachother's throats," Maekar leans his chin on his palm. If he'd been a beta or an alpha he might join the Kingsguard. He might be another Aemon the Dragonknight.
Save he might want pups.
He once heard another omega describe the want for pups as an ache in the belly and the bones. He wonders if that's what his detached interest will become after his first heat or whether it will remain a pleasant inevitability.
Maekar sighs. "You expect he won't offer me a dowry."
"Everything he's ever offered seems to go to Blackfyre," Jeyne says. "Aegor and Brynden are of an age to have their own lands and incomes. The Blackwoods paid for Gwenys' marriage."
"Wyl took her for what? A thousand gold dragons? That's cheap."
"She's her third mate. She wanted a pretty companion more than a good match."
Maekar is not pretty; Maekar is not handsome. That would matter as little as a drop of vinegar in sour wine or piss in the Blackwater Rush if he were a prince but he is a bastard.
"We have time before I need a mate," Maekar reminds her.
"You will only have one maiden heat," Jeyne reminds him. "If —" his mother pauses.
"If I… offer it," Maekar finishes.
To offer a maiden heat — to sell it — is most common in the Reach and the Riverlands. The price often pays a dowry or supplements one. A pup can't catch during a maiden heat. They don't practice it in Dorne and the Storm Lords marry their omegas off at their maiden heat. Maekar doesn't know they do beyond the Neck. Some say they still practice the First Night, where a lord, lady or knight might pay a small fee to any family in a poorer estate and take a bride on their first heat or their wedding night.
Baelor is meant to be touring up from the Riverlands to the Wall in the coming year. Maekar, if unwed and still his Swarn Shield, is like to travel with him and will see for himself.
Or he can ask Prince Aerys. He makes a poor prince, though not so unguarded as sweet Rhaegel, but if a maester recorded it in a book, Aerys will be able to find it.
"I would not choose someone you disliked."
"We ought to have spoken of this months ago," Maekar says, voice contemptuous, leaning back in his chair.
"I could not know your heat was coming months ago," Jeyne replies, clearly affronted.
"Then we ought to have spoken of it years ago."
Jeyne's eyes gloss over — frustration, anger, hurt. Maekar knows not.
"Maekar," She says. Her throat bobs as she hesitates. "I've never told you —"
"What?"
"— but I was grateful to go to bed with Aegon," She continues. Her voice lilts affectless when she says his name. Maekar winces.
The one memory Maekar has of his father is consumed by scent. Standing before him had been like sitting in a sewer pit or a full privy.
"I —" Again she swallows. She sounds as if she's a herald, reading some bit of boring trifle in a mummer's voice "It felt like my belly was trying to crawl from between my legs, Maekar. The pain was near as strong as childbed and the fever was maddening."
He doesn't remember Aegon having hands or feet. He remembers bandages; browned by pus and blood and excrement. He was an overstuffed cloth doll, something for a pup to gnaw on and play mama with. But, gods, the smell.
"I fear to have you suffer alone."
"Better alone than —" Maekar stops. He loathes speaking of his father. He thinks he loathes it as much as Jeyne does. Her eyes — there's something dead behind her eyes now.
"Find me one I like and I'll do it," Maekar agrees. He shifts in his seat and feels blood on his thigh.