[Event] The Concerns of the Future

It was a cold, brisk morning of the kind that it seemed that only King’s Landing could muster. The broad maw of the Blackwater Bay seemed to catch the cold sea winds and gather them into the city, leaving the windows whistling and a faint dusting of goosepimples along the back of the neck. It was on days like this especially that Tommos Erranbrook was glad to know that the Red Keep was not the only place in this city that he might call home. Maegor the Cruel, it might surprise one to learn, had not been a man who troubled himself overmuch with the comfort of those who came to stay under his roof. The Red Keep was spectacular, a grand edifice that loomed over the entire city, but the place was so draughty that its walls may as well be made of lace.

It was no place, to be certain, for a baby to be born. Instead, Tommos had retreated to the house in which he had resided when he first came to the city. It was a house he had initially rented but now owned outright, along with the houses adjoining it on either side. It was a place of seclusion, thick and well-insulated walls, a magistrates court and a small trading room. He had set out to make it a central location in the city’s commerce, and for the most part he had succeeded. More importantly, however, it was the place where his family resided. Elsbet despised the Red Keep. She disliked the size of it, the mazelike corridors, the moat of spikes. When he had told her of the tunnels that Maegor’s builders left, she had despised those too. Even when he had been appointed Master of Whisperers, and granted large rooms in the palace from which to conduct his business, she had elected to remain in their home. He had not begrudged her the decision. It gave him an excuse to keep the house, of which he had grown rightly fond, it gave him an excuse to bow away from the noise of the keep from time to time that he might spend time among his kin. Of course, the dispatches from court were a constant reminder, but they were always a more pleasant read when he had the laughter of his sons around him.

At present, mind you, the house was filled less with laughter and more with a kind of nervous anticipation that seemed to cling to the rafters and loom over every room. His wife was delivering to him his fourth child, and while they were now wealthy to the point that they could afford a Maester’s care and all the finest provisions, there were only so many precautions that could be made. People said that whenever a Targaryen was born the gods tossed a coin and the world held its breath, but childbirth was a more risky gamble still. He awaited news in his dining room, sat at the end of a long wooden table, reading missives from the Red Keep as much as a distraction as anything else. He felt, as he had felt the last three times that Esmerra had been delivering, that he ought to be in there with her. Did he not bear a silver link from the Citadel, after all? Was he not trained in the delivering of a child? Had he not, indeed, brought the Crown Prince of the Iron Throne into the world?

But he was the father of this child, he was the husband of Elsbet. He could not account for how those emotions might sway his hand. His finger tapped against the rim of the cup that sat beside him, sending rhythmic ripples through the wine therein. A man in his position was expected to worry. It was rather why the King employed him. He had the depth of knowledge to be intimately familiar with all the possible outcomes, and he knew precisely what they might entail. So as he heard the shouting and the hubbub from upstairs he could not help but envisage his wife, the pain she must be feeling, and all the possible ways she might die.

A relief beyond reckoning then, when Raffard brought word down from the maester that his wife was well, that she had brought him a healthy daughter. He would go to her forthwith, offer his love, his congratulations, his gratitude. As he stood by her bedside, he laid a hand on her sweat-filmed brow and smiled down at her. She, chuckling faintly as she always did when she sensed that there was a plan brewing in that steel trap of a mind, smiled back. “We should call her Ashara, I think,” he said, looking down towards the newborn babe. “A mark of gratitude to the Queen, who has elevated us so high.”

“A bargaining chip, too,” Elsbet sighed, her eyebrows raising archly, “Seeing as you aim to see her taken away from her home and hearth.”

“I aim to see her taken a mile hence, Elsbet, that she might live in the company of a queen. You shall be able to see her whenever you wish,” He replied, eyes rolling a little, wishing that there were anything in this world that might be done simply.

“Will I indeed? And me, the daughter of a humble innkeep?” She shook her head, and he could only smile. She always knew how to remind him that he was but a man, that there were limits to what he knew.

“I don’t mean to be the first and last Erranbrook of any consequence, El,” he said softly, looking at her from the corner of his eyes. “I mean for this family to be safe, secure when I am gone.”

“I know,” she replied, her hand reaching out to clasp his. “I only wish that I did not have to give up the name of one daughter and the presence of another for it.”

He held those words in his head still as he returned to the Red Keep. He was so familiar a presence by now that the guards did not even stop him. Was not that an odd thought. Even his father, he reckoned, would not have achieved such status in the capital. Still, I suppose it was a brave man indeed who tried to bar his path. He glanced up at the tall arches, the architecture invoking both the ancient Valyrian bloodlines of the Targaryen kings and the more rustic sensibilities of the people whom they had come to rule. A long, and decidedly messy tale, a scant twenty years away from its third century. And the gods only know where I will be then. What he did now, he did to ensure that his family might yet endure, long after that day came.

He ascended the stairs, finding himself before the knights of the Kingsguard whose duty it was to protect the Queen’s chambers. “Please inform Her Majesty that I would request a moment of her time.”