Nerd In the North 6-18B (Patreon)

“Under the sea, the young maid sings — I know, I know, I know.” The bells jingled, small silly things sewn into the points of Patches’s motley, each one bouncing with every skip of his boots against the cold stone of the bedchamber. “She wears a crown of silver rings — she knows, she knows, she knows.”

Shireen’s head stayed low, eyes off the fool as he kept going as he had been.If she looked at Patches, she might interrupt his dancing and if he were to stop his dance, his songs would end as well. 

The song was all that filled the quiet.“M-mother.”The world left her very small, barely a breath beneath the song. Soft and quiet and rounded at the edges, she was careful not to take up much space in the sickroom.

A cough, far louder than her words or the fool’s song, tore its way out of the heavy wool blankets with a wet sound of tearing air.

Shireen flinched as the woman in the sickbed hitched a breath, pale thin fingers of her right hand clawing at the thick coverlet.An affliction of the humors; that was what Maester Cressen called it — the Queen’s sickness a ‘simple’ dampness of the lung brought on by the winter soon-to-come. 

Yet Shireen knew the truth, whispers of the servants finding their way to her ears. The rot. The same one the squids had brought when they dragged themselves out of the black water and onto the shores of Dragonstone; the thick brine that the Ironborn had left behind.

More coughs left the bed shuddering, each trembling breath forced out of her mother’s chest with eyes squeezed tight. “Mother…” Shireen leaned forward, over the bed. “Mother, please.”

Yellowed eyes forced themselves open, hard gaze falling on the thick tears falling fast down Shireen’s face. Hot salt tracked over the scaled ruin of her left cheek even as she tried to force them back.

“The water’s weak, the deeps are downed, the drowned men die to be iron crowned, oh oh oh, hee hee hee.” Bells shook with each jig, the well-fed fool spinning in a slow circle; movements almost drunk for one that never touched ale. “A black throne runs red beneath a white tree.”

Those tears kept falling despite Shireen’s wishes, weakness clear on her face. Tears made her face red and her nose run, and they made people look away faster. Father… She shook her head. Father would not weep. No, her father was the King, out there in the world; wielding the blinding white light of the Father’s justice. 

Father… If father were here, he would stand very tall and the sickness would have to leave with a simple command. People listen to kings.

But father wasn’t here, and Shireen was just a girl with a scar who couldn’t stop crying even when she wanted to.

“Stop…” Shireen blinked, raising her head at the reedy rasp. “Stop… crying.” The words pushed out of a throat tight with phlegm, thin and tight and fighting the rot simply to correct her.

As always.

Always a correction.

Yet Shireen could not obey, the tears unwilling to stop.

They thickened her throat, as the sickness did her mother’s, choking her breath into shameful hitches. “Please…” 

She held a hand out, fingers trembling. Maester Cressen said not to touch. Yet her scarred hands reached for her anyway, finding sunken sweating cheeks. “P-please.”Mother tried to pull back, nearly leaning away from her touch as her jaw tightened. Yet, the strength wasn’t there, Selyse Baratheon too weak to fight the pull of Shireen’s small desperate hands.

“The dying king knows only cold, heart of ice, a crown of gold. Snow in the fire, fire in the snow, the dead do dance where the cold winds go. Oh oh oh, I know I know I know.”The tears poured free and the heat burned bright.Shireen’s breath fought her again, a warmth leaving her hands as she held on as tight as she could. Like a cup of sweetened milk on a cold night, it felt a comfort spreading free from her pressing fingers.

Her mother gasped, eyes wide open.The pale blue light bled out of her, a soft pearly glow that seeped into pale slicked skin and sunk deep down into the hollow of her chest.

The rattle stopped, the tearing in her lady mother’s chest quieting to nothing.

Selyse Baratheon took a breath; full and deep, no blood or phlegm to force a struggle.

Judging eyes looked down, sharp and suddenly aware eyes peering at her own hands atop the wool blanket as the sickly grey faded to nothing. Skin blushed a healthy pink, a visible flush rushing into her.

Shireen took a breath of her own, pulling her hands back as she scrambled up to her feet. The cold of the stone had bitten through her skirts, but that was nothing. 

What…  Nothing compared to the shock that ran through her as she stared at her palms as her mother had done, both confusion and terror clear on her face. What was that?The question went without answer as that same light faded into the air like morning mist off the sea.

The bed groaned again, Shireen’s gaze pulled away from her own worry as the once-sick woman pushed herself up. Her hands stayed at her sides, no grasping for the heavy oak of the bedpost to steady her or support her weight. 

There was no wheezing, not from mother or daughter, as Shireen held her breath — awaiting another correction, a reprimand for the unnatural light.

Yet, there was none.Not as the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms dropped from the bed, bare knees striking the cold stone without so much as a grunt. Her mother bowed her head low, brow pressed against the floor before Shireen’s own two feet.“M-mother?” The little girl stared, suddenly aware that the bells no longer danced even as Patches kept at his song.

“The Maiden fair, the maiden fair — dark of hair, and full of fear…”