Sharing Burdens
Fourteenth Day of the First Month 294 AC
Once the Lord Commander and the First Ranger leave you and Dany sit with Maester Aemon in his chambers. In truth, as bright sunlight passing through the window and played across his aged features, he seems more like 'uncle Aemon' and less maester, though his long chain glints with the sheen of a score metals and more. Mostly you speak of lighthearted things, leaving peril and deathly secrets outside the heavy oak door.
The adventurers and misadventures of your younger wards fill up a whole hour, the more amusing anecdotes of Garin's first few weeks of fatherhood about half as long. You speak of the schools you opened and the hope of educating not just those with an inclination towards scholarship, administration or rule, but everyone at least in the fundamentals thus enriching the lives of your citizens and the realm all at once. Not for the first time he compares you to his youngest brother, a wistful smile on his lips.
"You should come to Sorcerer's Deep to see it for yourself," Dany says impulsively, or at least doing a very good job at seeming impulsive, in truth both of you had agreed to try to get Aemon in the south where he would be safer and more comfortable under the blessing of the Dawn Age Tree. "You could study in the library things you will have need of in the days ahead of the Watch, and of the Others also."
"I've been managing well enough with the books you carried to me in dreams, Daenerys," he replies firmly. "A fact for which I do not think I have thanked you enough, it still seems the greatest of all magic to a lover of books is to simply have them appear by my bedside when I wake."
"There are spells over the Deep that lighten the need to sleep and others that sharpen the mind," you point out in turn. "You could study far more of the day way."
"At my age sleep is a fickle thing regardless, Your Grace," he gives a soft laugh that stops just short of becoming a cough. For a long moment he is quiet before continuing. "If I take this offer there will be ill things said of me, of you, of our..."
The silence is much longer now and heavy with the guilt of a word almost spoken.
Our House. Nothing you had not guessed practically from the first letter you received from him, but never so close to being uttered aloud.
"I cannot travel south, it would place Jeor in an almost impossible situation," he says at last. "He would not refuse you,
could not refuse you after all you have done for the Watch, but when word comes from King's Landing asking where his maester is he would have no ready answer, not one that does not count upon warnings few in the south believe."
"You would perhaps be surprised by how many in the south have turned their ears to wiser voices," you interject, thinking of all the lords secretly pledged to you, from the Riverlands to Dorne and the Narrow Sea to the Iron Islands.
"The Grand Maester would call it dereliction of the post I have been assigned and he likely would not be wrong. A few words whispered by sorcery are no replacement for a present maester, able to act with his two hands and see the troubles of the keep with his own eyes..." You can see the resolve hardening in his gaze, and it is hardly the time or place to explain that Pycelle acts in your interests these days and not that of his supposed king.
"What about just a few days out of every month?" Dany asks quickly. "You would still mostly be here to offer counsel and there would be no time for news of your absence to harm the Watch. By the time any letter inquiring as to your whereabouts arrives you would be here to answer it in person."
No matter how charming you might be nor how eloquent your words, you doubt you would ever manage to match that pleading smile, much less the dimples it brings out.
"Five days out of every month," he says ruefully. "I pity the young man who will finally gain your affections, Highness, and not..." he glances at you meaningfully, "for the obvious reasons."
"Well if whoever that may be somehow wins my affection he had best not
be pitiful," Dany sniffs dramatically.
What next?
[] Receive a report (Interlude series)
-[] From Slaver's Bay
-[] From the City of Brass
-[] From Ghoyan Drohe
-[] From Gogossos
-[] Write in
[] Continue to the Reach
-[] Write in where to begin
[] Write in
OOC: Not all you guys hoped, I know, but Aemon is not a man easily swayed from what he considers to be his duty, his entire life is defined by that. 
