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Westeros, King's Landing, Maegor's Holdfast[/b][/color][/h2]

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. Click, tap, pain.

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. Little shocks of hurt fibrillated through his nerves.

“Whom do you support?” An icy voice reached him when Lame Willie limped into the council’s chamber, fumbling with the door. 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. A man responsible for the recent mend.

While he respected the old Velaryon immensely, Lame Willie had always felt a discomfort when dealing with the Lord of the Tides. Likely it was because of the craftiness the old fellow had, and his honourable reputation. Honourable men were dangerous, Willem knew. That discomfort had only intensified when Corlys Velaryon had re-emerged from the Black Cells beneath the Red Keep. The old lord had warned his legitimised grandsons of their impending dooms, thereby bringing the wrath of the Black Queen on his grey head. Bound and beaten, Corlys was confined to the dungeons which had cost Rhaenyra her fleet, but in time released by her brother Aegon II upon his reclamation of King’s Landing. Willem knew that Corlys had known his share of hardship, and had cheated death more than once. “My lord,” Willie grovelled, “I am merely an assistant to the Master of Coin, I-”

“Please spare me. Even if I was foolish enough to not realise you practically hold the office indirectly, then I would still want to know. The Red Keep will be a battlefield soon enough when these Northmen descend on us. The Dance might be over, but there are still many lines to be drawn.”

The Reachman sat down in a more humble seat, his back aching as he slowly planted his arse. The Sea Snake’s violet 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 at the moment. Accustomed to threats and cajoling, 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] Soon he'd be replaced by Tyland Lannister again.

“I support those who support me,” he stated plainly. Working with funds for whomever was in power, out of the limelight, had ensured he had stayed alive this long. Yet it was as Corlys proffered: lines were being drawn, and if he wanted to move up, Willem would have to make some choices of his own. “I believe in income and expense, my lord.” In fact, it had been Lord Corlys for whom he had most recently brokered a contract. Timber from Crackclaw Point and the Kingswood for the wharves at Driftmark in order to rebuild the Velaryon fleet, which was pretty much synonymous with the royal fleet.

Sea Snake offered him a cold smile. While old, he was still as sharp as ever. The time he spent languishing in the Black Cells had turned him into a wisp of a man, and the image of the Stranger came to Willem’s mind. It was as if death’s shadow hung about him like a cloak. “Mayhaps I do like you then. A cripple you might be, but slippery as an eel.”

“Takes one marine creature to know another,” he gambled. Willie answered the Snake’s smile with his lopsided grin, his tongue flicking over his lips. Humour? “What of Aegon, second of his name? Not the young prince who took your place in the dungeon.” The accountant made another gamble.

“Careful now…” Lord Velaryon let the threat linger in the air, like a shimmer in summer, regarding his close kin. “I have advised his Grace to take the black,” Corlys said, his voice little more than a whisper. He ignored Willem’s presumptuous retort. “Yet it has been a long time since anyone has heeded my words. To no one’s advantage, I may add.”

“His Grace refused then, I take it? Even after word reached him of the Baratheon host’s defeat?” The Northerner’s had soundly beaten the last force standing between them and King’s Landing. Making their way south along the Kingsroad would bring them to the gates of the city within days. A young Steffon Baratheon had brought the news, though Willie measured this action daring rather than stupid. Borros had been the one to inherit all the folly of his House.

Willem, not altogether the most pure of men, still felt dismay when he thought about how Aemond Targaryen had been allowed to slay his kinsman who had flown to Storm’s End for parley. Lord Borros should have prevented such a heinous betrayal. Boy versus man, hatchling versus dragon.

A gentle nod of the old Velaryon confirmed Morningwood’s question. “Aegon thinks he has won, that he is untouchable. Though I reckon that will not be the case for long.” Winter was coming, as it ever did.

“My Lord?”

Corlys stared in the distance as if the walls offered him a vista, seemingly drifting off. “Nothing, Willem. I am just so very tired.” The smile the Sea Snake treated the cripple to, sent more shivers through Willie’s body than when he limbered up his tormented leg in the morning just so he could take a shit. Indeed, he needed to go this very instant. “Just do not underestimate the results of snakes and cripples joining forces, Lord Morningwood.”

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“Cut off his ear and send it to the Lads and Starks as warning,” a shrill voice sneered from across the Small Council room. “If our line dies, then so does that of our bitch sister.” Aegon, second of his name, was the sixth Targaryen to sit the Iron Throne and commanded, without hesitation, the mutilation of his young nephew of the same name.

“Your Grace,” Corlys started, careful as ever. “I suggest once more that you take the black. The Starks are notorious for their swift and deliberate sense of justice. The wolves are at our doorstop. You will not retain your crown.”

The Sea Snake had hoped for support of Larys Strong, the Clubfoot, but the Master of Whisperers merely observed the exchange, his small eyes smouldering. The Clubfoot rarely spoke, preferring to listen. When he did speak it was either to be glib or share words of great importance. As with most masters of whisperers, he was enigmatic and cunning… and of no use to Corlys.

Aegon’s pale lilac eyes blazed with fury, as he tugged on his wispy moustache. “What you say is treason, Lord Velaryon. Did we not save you from the abyss the whore had thrown you in?” The weight on him made his rage look almost comical, making a mockery of his Valyrian features.

“Yes, your Grace,” Corlys admitted. “You did. For which I am most grateful.” While he had the title as Master of Ships in an attempt to win over the Velaryon fleet, the elderly Corlys was also a hostage of the crown. Many knew, and the vast majority of Corlys’s ships remained at Driftmark or had set sail to as of yet unknown waters.

“We shan’t relinquish what is rightfully ours,” the fat monarch yelled, enraged. Lately his sulking moods easily gave way to bouts of anger, likely a result of losing his beloved Sunfyre. The dragon had been one of the few things Aegon II genuinely loved. The other were power and women.

And wine.

His litter arrived, headed by a helmeted member of his Kingsguard. Ser Jon Flowers saluted and announced his arrival. Aegon was still a young man, in his twenties, but already his gluttony had made him heavily overweight. With considerable effort, Aegon II dropped himself in the pillowed pit of the litter. The sausages that were his fingers curled around a silver cup, twitching.

The king did not manage to walk long distances, and even within the Red Keep he was carried around from room to room. Most of his days, his Grace merely rolled from his bed into a litter, only to be brought to another bed where one of his paramours laid awaiting his doughy body. On other days he did not even bother.

The grooms huffed and puffed under his weight, and one joked when they pulled back the drapes of the litter that “he was the coffin bearer’s problem now”. The knight hissed audibly through his visor. For as the curtains were opened, Aegon II was found dead, with blood on his lips and piss in his pants. “Who gave his Grace that wine?” Ser Jon growled, wheeling on the servants. “Who?”

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By the time Lady Alicent Hightower heard of her son’s death, Aegon the Younger had been retrieved from the cells beneath the keep and was sat on the Iron Throne. 

Willem Morningwood heard of it around the same time as the Green Queen, and hurried as fast as his crippled leg could carry him, to the throne room. Entering, he saw the boy seated, his eyes blurry and watery, surrounded by three figures in white, among whom Ser Jon Flowers whose cloak was stained crimson. It seemed the transition from Aegon to Aegon had not gone as smoothly as expected. At least some of the Kingsguard had chosen life over loyalty, though their reasons could be easily explained as allegiance to the soon to be crowned Aegon III.

Tension and fear muddied the air.

“All hail King Aegon, third of his name,” a herald called out to the court as they sunk to one knee. Here and there, Willie discerned armed men and goldcloaks scrutinising the assembled courtiers. “Long may he reign!” Willem too fell to one knee, cursing under his breath for the pain it caused him, his knuckles cracking as he grabbed his cane.

When he was bidden to rise, he saw Corlys standing behind a pillar to the right of his Grace, and Clubfoot to the left. The two men looked at one another but did not flinch or betray a single emotion. Their faces were like ashes and smoke, but they had to be the only ones who knew. [i]When cripples and snakes join forces...[/i]

[i]It is done[/i], Corlys thought. [i]Did the Seven keep me so long for this?[/i] The old man looked at the boy sitting on the Targaryen throne and felt as if a massive weight slipped from his weary shoulders. [i]I am like a drowning sailor clinging to the wreckage of a sunken ship.[/i] He had often said it, and thought it even more. But now there might finally be peace, with Rhaenyra's son on the throne. The ravens had been sent, soon the mending might start. Lord Corlys did not expect to live much longer, not with the ruthless Starks bearing down on them. Death did not frighten him, and he took comfort in the thought the throne now belonged to the rightful king and that Driftmark had a worthy heir in Alyn.

When Corlys's violet eyes locked with Willie Morningwood he could not help but smile from ear to ear, grimly like the leer of a bare skull.


[hider=Summary]
Corlys Velaryon and Willem Morningwood hold conference with one another just prior to a council meeting of Aegon II and his retainers. During said Small Council meeting, Lord Corlys urges his Grace to take the black and give up his crown. Furious, Aegon II refuses and retires to his chambers for the night. However, upon arriving at the royal quarters, Aegon second of his name is found poisoned with bloodied lips. Things move fast, and Aegon the Younger, the dead king's nephew, is brought from the Black Cells and put on the Iron Throne while the court is forced to swear fealty by the now diminished Kingsguard and King's Landings goldcloaks, as well as armed men who do not fly colours. Thus dawns Aegon III's rule.
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