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[b]Westeros, King's Landing, Maegor's Holdfast[/b]

Willem Morningwood’s walking made a steady rhythm on the flagstones. First the confident click of his left heel, then the tap of his cane, then the endless sliding of his right foot, with the familiar stabbing pains in the ankle and knee joints, arse and back. Click, tap, pain. The dreadful rhythm of his pace was interrupted by the steps. His face drooped for a moment when he gathered his courage.

In the past, when he was young and widely admired, before the misfortune, he had never really noticed them. He had sprung up or down them two at a time and gone blithely on his way. Going down is worse than going up, he had learnt. It was something most did not realise, until they fell.

Willem knew this particular flight of stairs well. There were fifty-five of them, leading up to the Small Council’s meeting room. Grimacing at the enemy in front of him, he commenced the ascent cursing the architects for not including a banister or anything else to cling to. Pain shot up through his leg, along his backbone and into his neck. Hands atremble, he reached the top of the stairs, panting and suffering a horrifying burning sensation in all of his muscles and nerves. Willem felt his neck and knee click back into place, smiled and pressed on, clutching the ledgers in his talons.

“Whom do you support?” An icy voice reached him when Lame Willie limped into the council’s chamber. Dragging his numb right foot, he came forward and deposited the ledger containing parchment and papers onto the table, at the head of which one of the most powerful men of the realm was seated.

Lame Willie had always felt a discomfort when dealing with the Master of Whisperers. That discomfort had only intensified when Brynden Rivers had lost an eye to his half-brother Aegor when the latter had charged his unit of longbowmen at Redgrass Field. Unlike Brynden and the Talons, Aegor had failed to slay his bastard half-brother. “My lord,” Willie grovelled, “I am merely the assistant to the Master of Coin, I-”

“Please, even if I was foolish enough to not realise you indirectly hold the office, then I would still want to know. The Red Keep will be a battlefield soon enough when Daeron has to make his choice.”

The Reachman sat down in a more humble seat, his back aching as he slowly planted his arse. Bloodraven’s red one-eyed stare stayed on him, like a bloodhound on a scent. A comparison with a hawk and mouse came to mind, except that Willie did not much care about what happened. He existed solely to… to what? [i]I’ll have to think on that later. A goal in life… It’s supposed to keep focus.[/i] Perhaps it was indeed time to step forward, to move out of the immense shadow that Lord Crab Patty literally cast. [i]His part, and mine as his assistant, has been played out.[/i]

“I support those that support me,” he stated plainly.

Bloodraven offered him a cold smile. “Mayhaps I do like you then. A cripple you might be, but slippery as an eel.”

“Takes one to know one,” he gambled. Willie answered the bastard’s smile with his lopsided grin, his tongue flicking over his lips. Bloodraven liked nothing, save for power and that half-Lyseni cunt that bathed in the blood of maidens to stay young. Why were all of these… dragonspawn such vicious twats?