Chapter Text
282 AC (the year of the true spring)
Parry’s head was fucking killing him.
He was on his way to meet Jon One-Eye at The Jolly Mermaid. Most everyone Parry passed while trudging from his room above a wool-dyer’s to the inn looked as poorly as he felt, albeit for a different reason.
The coronation three moons earlier had been a right miserly affair, over and done with in the middle of the night barely a sennight after heralds announced that King Aerys was dead. To make up for it, King Rhaegar had distributed ale and wine, bread and cheese and roast meat in abundance to the smallfolk in celebration of his marriage the night before, and hired scores of pipers and singers, jugglers and tumblers and mummers to keep the city in high cheer. All night, the feasting and singing and dancing had gone on, as had the drinking and brawling and fucking, and now, with the sun just starting to peek over the city wall and invade Flea Bottom’s muddy alleys, everyone who couldn’t keep to their beds still was nursing a murderous headache.
Parry met bloodshot eyes wherever he looked, passed a portly man soaking his head in a barrel of rainwater. The drunkard came up groaning and shook himself like a dog.
“Oy, watch it!” Parry snapped when the grimy water spattered his gold cloak.
The man started to puff himself up for a fight, when he caught sight of the color of Parry’s cloak and the black breastplate with four golden disks marking him out as an officer, and melted away between two houses, muttering.
At his destination, Parry bent his tall frame to pass under the wooden board overhanging the inn’s low lintel. The top of his helmet caught the edge of the board anyway, made it swing on its rusty hinges, the bare teats of the smiling, painted mermaid on the inn’s sign winking to the few other passersby.
Cursing, Parry descended the three steps into the smoky and mostly empty inn and spied his friend already waiting for him over a half-empty tankard of ale.
“Seven hells,” Parry said in lieu of a greeting and received a wordless grunt in response. “Weren’t you on duty last night?”
Jon One-Eye grunted again, tipped the rest of his ale down his gullet, and ran his own bloodshot eyes over Parry.
“The ale was practically runnin’ in the gutters,” Jon said by way of explanation. “Would be a fuckin’ waste not to dip my cup a few times. Anyway, you’re one to talk. What the fuck happened to you?”
Parry pulled a face and regretted it instantly. The left half of his face had showed swollen and the color of a ripe blackberry in his washbasin that morning. Now he thought about it, might be the sight of his face had made the drunk by the rainwater barrel beat a hasty retreat even more than Parry’s watch-captain’s breastplate.
“Took an elbow to the face breaking up a fight, didn’t I?” he muttered while the innkeeper’s little daughter – no taller than Parry’s elbow and likely to be the only other sober person in the city that morning – brought them each a fresh tankard. “May the gods give our king a long and peaceful reign, but it don’t half cause us watchmen trouble when them up Aegon’s High Hill decide to remind the smallfolk why we should love them.”
“Still and all,” Jon said. “I’d rather break up drunken revelry than another bread riot. Can’t be worse with this new king than with the old one.” He spat on the old sawdust on the floor. “The Stranger keep his scabby soul.”
Parry frowned. Jon danced too close to treason with his remarks about the highborn sometimes, and while Parry knew there was no more ill intent in it than in any other wagging tongue out of Flea Bottom, he misliked to think what someone who didn’t know Jon well might make of his words.
He raised his tankard. “To King Rhaegar of House Targaryen, the First of His Name, King of the Andals and all the rest of it. Long may he live and keep us all well.”
Jon clinked his tankard against Parry’s. They drank deeply, and the girl brought them two steaming meat pies carried aloft on a serving platter almost as big across as she was. Parry reached into his purse and threw a copper penny onto the platter. The girl made the coin vanish before it stopped turning in place with a high, thin sound which made Jon grimace, slit-eyed as a cat.
Wiping the foam from his mouth and blowing on his food before he took a bite, Parry decided to give in to his own dangerous urges. The City Watch’s commander had told him on more than one occasion that it would be his curiosity rather than some drunken fool or visiting bravo that would do for him, but he figured if anyone would know what Parry was burning to know, Jon would. Jon’s mother took in washing from several senior servants in the Red Keep, including an attendant to one of the Queen’s – the Queen Dowager’s now, more like – ladies in waiting. Through her, Jon got information about the goings-on inside those red walls, which no amount of Flea Bottom gossip could match.
“Here, Jon,” Parry started casually. “Do you know how come the king had to marry the Red Viper? I understand he owed the Dornish something in return for backing him when he deposed his father, but why him? I’ve never heard of two men marrying before. And don’t the Martells have a sister well past her flowering, or some bastard daughter going spare?”
Jon took his time answering. He gnawed on his pie, chewed and swallowed, and picked his teeth with his tongue. Bastard knew he had Parry hanging on his every word, and was going to milk it for all it was worth.
“Can’t marry a bastard to a royal prince, let alone a king,” he said at last, when Parry was well close to losing his patience. Then Jon spat again and added more loudly than Parry liked, “Even if he is a kinslayer.”
Parry shushed him, looking around wildly. “You want both our heads to festoon the Red Keep? Shut up.”
“A’right, a’right,” Jon muttered. “You fuckin’ asked.”
“I asked about the facts of the marriage, not gossip about the old king’s death. This is why you’ll never climb higher than a serjeant, Jon. You get too easily distracted.” Parry knew he sounded like a prig, but he wanted the best for his friend.
Jon agreed with his silent assessment of his own character, judging from the rude gesture he made in response to Parry’s lecture. “Word is the Martell chit said no when them from King’s Landing came to court her for the prince on the old king’s behalf.”
Parry pulled his thoughts back to their original topic of conversation, turned this new information over in his head. He knew the Dornish allowed their women much more liberty than was wise, but refusing a royal match seemed excessive even for them. And another thing…
“She said no, but the Red Viper said yes?” he asked incredulously.
That didn’t match anything Parry had heard about the mad prince of Dorne, who’d ridden into the city with three hundred warriors in his tail: a wedding party bristling with weapons and pride in search of a slighting.
“I don’t think his brother gave him much choice,” Jon said. “They say Oberyn Martell has a dozen bastards he’s acknowledged already, and him barely five-and-twenty, not to mention all the men he’s crippled in tourneys and all the women he’s made widows in duels. Prince Doran must’ve been glad to make him someone else’s problem.” Jon shook his head. “Why would a man fight in a melee or ride in the lists, only to then poison his rivals? Say what you like about our king, but that’s a misbegotten match if ever I heard of one. I’d hate to be King Rhaegar’s food taster, that’s for sure.”
“I heard the High Septon refused to wed them, which is why the match was sealed by a common septon in the throne room rather than the Great Sept,” Parry said, forgetting for a moment his avowed distaste for gossip. “There was no exchange of cloaks, and men and women all mingled together carried them both to their bedding.”
Jon shrugged and licked the pie crumbs from his greasy fingers. “I expect Ma’ll have some stories to tell, once the court ladies sleep off the Arbor red and bring her their soiled silks and lace to clean.” He added in a speculative tone, “Must have been some bedding. Don’t tell the Lord Commander, but there’s talk of starting a wager on which one of them bent over for the other.”
Parry rolled his eyes and refused to throw away good money on such nonsense. How would they ever know for sure? Though if Parry was honest, he felt curious too.
“I still don’t understand how the Faith allowed the marriage to proceed at all,” he mused, swirling the last mouthful of ale in the bottom of his tankard.
“Rules is different for Targaryens,” Jon said. He thought a moment, wrinkling his brow. “Dornishmen, too.”