Family Secrets
Thirteenth Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC
Denys Mallery was confused to be back home, and though for the first few days after his return he was too happy to just be here and not in Castamere surrounded by strangers, however kindly, it had started to gnaw at him.
My lord father won't look at me, mother won't look anywhere else as though she is afraid I will vanish like a shadow when you move the candle close and Edric... Edric is keeping secrets.
The last part had been the hardest to accept. He had been happy that his brother had told the tale of that night if it meant he got to come home, but to think he turned around and was now keeping secrets from him...
Was this how father and mother felt when he had kept silent about how he got his magic and why? The boy thought guiltily as he stared out the tower window, quill in his hand but the parchment before him wholly forgotten.
Not caring that the ink dribbled over the verses he was supposed to be copying for Septon Meril, Denys set the quill down and jumped to his feet, resolved then and there to find the truth of things rather than risk his lady mother crying herself to sleep over some stupid secret again.
Alas, that conviction alone did not get him the answers he needed. It was a long way down from the tower, one where he could all too easily meet someone who knew he was supposed to be studying, and while his father did not seem angry at him anymore when he came home, more angry at the world, if he got caught dilly-dallying about that could change right quick.
I wish I had magic to make me turn unseen, the thought sneaked into his head like a snark into the pantry, as his old nan used to say. The boy was rather happy he did not have any magic to tempt him to try out. The Old Mother had waited who knows how many hundreds of years, she could wait a little longer.
***
The thump of metal striking padding was loud enough to almost cover Edric's indignant huffs over the blunt sword striking him across the stomach. "Dreaming again, boy?" Ser Lyonel asked gruffly.
Hard as it was to remember at moments like this that the old master-at-arms always had something of a soft spot for him, silently going along with an unseemly amount of practice last month when Edric had wanted to avoid laying eyes on his father. But after everything he had learned that night in the woods, after speaking with King Viserys, his head was up in the clouds looking for dragons, not down here close to the earth looking for where the practice sword would be coming in.
"A bit, Ser, a bit," the young man replied sheepishly, getting his breath back. Looking out over the knight's shoulder he saw his bother looking pale and wide eyed, biting his lip the way he always did when he was about to do something he knew would get him in trouble.
Ser Lyonel followed his gaze. "You'll be needing a bit of a breather the? I'll go for some water..." With that he walked off, giving the two brothers as much privacy as one could hope to have in the middle of a training field.
"What aren't you telling me?" Denys asked, sounding more hurt than angry. "Do you know where father's going to send me, mother doesn't. She is going to worry again all because of the stupid secret."
As it happened Edric knew for a fact that his mother knew as much as he did about the plans for Denys' future, but they had decided not to burden a child with the knowledge given that one of those possible plans involved treason, at least as far as King's Landing was concerned. Unfortunately, it looked like Edric had not been as skilled at keeping that secret off his face.
"Is it because I'm a witch..." Denys' voice caught in his throat.
Cornered, Edric instinctively fell back on the sort of answer that came natural to any elder bother. "You can't be a witch Denys, you're not a
girl."
The teasing thankfully got him to step back from the brink of crying. "You know what I mean," he huffed. Then to Edric's surprise his hand moved through a strange magic gesture and he heard his younger brother's voice whisper in his ear by some sorcery.
"Come on, no one's going to hear like this, where's father sending me?"
"Up North to White Harbor, for a month or two at least while he considers other options," Edric finally replied, hoping his brother would be able to keep this secret better than the two of them had hidden his magic to begin with.
OOC: I thought about doing this as an interlude from Dany's PoV as she spoke to the kid, but it would not click, so here's a Mallery brothers interlude. Viserys knows about the White Harbor move and the fact that Denys is safe from divination in character.
