"Believe me, I'm terribly confused,
I don't know how to go on.
After all, it was just a joke...
"Ah, it was just a joke?
Don't you dare joke with the team!
(TV series "Petrov and Vasechkin's Holidays")
Arya left the Red Keep by following a path she knew through the underground passages, but what helped her most was that the window of her room in the tower was close to the roof of the neighbouring building. Sansa's window was much higher, and Arya wasn't sure she could not only climb up to her sister, but also climb down with her — if, of course, Sansa was still in her room; it was possible that someone else was already waiting there for possible rescuers.
As she left the castle, Arya heard minor skirmishes and arrests taking place throughout the castle, but she did not think about the reason for their widespread nature: it was too painful to leave her sister behind, and Arya reproached herself for giving in to Lyneol again after the Trident. He had touched her heart so deeply with his unusual attempt to atone for his guilt, and now he had turned out to be such a scoundrel.
The rumours that spread throughout the harbour by the next morning only confirmed Arya's opinion of Lyonel: people were saying that her father had raised a rebellion and killed King Robert, that Eddard had been imprisoned and the young king would surely execute him, that the queen was to blame for everything, and that Littlefinger or Varys would be executed along with Eddard. Arya knew that her father was innocent, and she sometimes wondered how the debauched King Robert and his treacherous son had managed to fool all of King's Landing so thoroughly that there were no bad rumours about them. The only thing people said was that the young king had literally pardoned a religious fanatic who had rushed at him with a dagger from the crowd, or perhaps it was just a blasphemer," and this story made the duplicitous Lionel appear brave and noble, so that one might think that as soon as he appeared in the city, the crowd would greet him with cheers and shout praises to him.
Lionel, having made peace with Sansa, atoned for his guilt to the Starks, and learned of Arya's disappearance, was meanwhile passing through the crowd unrecognised, his hood pulled down over his eyes and the lower part of his face covered with a scarf wrapped around his neck, and he remained deaf to rumours, like any sensible townsman who knew their worth. He searched for Arya in the market crowd, reasoning that she must be buying food, passed through the inns, stepping between the sleeping guests, and even got into a fight when he mistook a small boy for Arya in the semi-darkness and two tall men decided to search his pockets. The young king's anger cost the two men their lives, although their crimes would have earned them no more than twenty lashes with a whip. The boy who escaped kissed the hand that had saved him and called Lionel "my lord." He turned out to be a jeweller's apprentice, and Lionel had forgotten to remove the signet ring with the crown from his finger. Meanwhile, the city fell asleep, plunged into darkness, and Arya also fell asleep, hiding in a burnt-down house and placing her hand on the hilt of her sword, while the tireless young king only dozed a little, leaning against a wall, and after wandering all night through lodgings and inns, he went back to the markets in the morning, looking for Arya among the gluttonous crowds.
Gradually, the search process drove all other thoughts and impressions from Lionel's mind, and the voice of conscience, which at the beginning of the search had told Lionel too strictly what Arya was thinking about him and in what terms, fell silent after a sleepless night and several glasses of wine taken to ward off the morning dampness and generally to cheer himself up. so, catching up with Arya on Flour Street, Lionel touched her shoulder in a friendly manner, hoping that she would be glad to see him after wandering around the city alone, and then he would apologise for unintentionally frightening her three days ago, even though he had only intended to protect her from danger.
If Lionel had not been the real son of King Robert and a student of Ser Barristan, Arya would surely have stabbed him through, because the blade flew out from under her cloak as soon as she heard Lionel's cheerful voice. Lionel parried the first blow with his hard leather sleeve, nearly cutting his hand on the blade, dodged the second, and took the third with his light sword. Arya, however, did not run away, but still intended to impale the young king on her blade like a chicken on a spit. Lionel was much stronger than her, and every time she parried his blows, Arya exposed herself, and Lionel's arms were much longer, so he could have wounded Arya a dozen times, but he didn't even think of it — he was trying to knock her sword out of her hand, and that turned out to be not so easy. A curious crowd had gathered around the fencers, and guards in golden cloaks were running towards them so that the chroniclers could later write in the annals that Lionel Baratheon, first of his name, began his reign by duelling with a ten-year-old girl in the street. Finally, Lionel caught Arya off balance, hooked the thin blade that had flown out of her hand with his sword, caught it with the fingers of his right hand, grabbed the distraught Arya with his left hand and rushed through the crowd, hoping only that his hood, which had so far allowed him to remain unrecognised by anyone except Arya, would not fly off as he ran.
Lionel had inherited many useful things from his father: one of them was powerful legs, thanks to which no one could knock Robert down in battle, and his son now easily escaped from the golden cloaks with the girl in his arms, and the second was the Baratheon family's ability to charm girls — however, in his account of the suppression of a coup that threatened to destroy the right hand, his family and his people, the young King Lionel was almost truthful and spoke with genuine passion.
"You're cunning," Arya admitted, ceasing to glare at Lionel, who sighed with relief, albeit prematurely.
"So, peace?" Lionel suggested.
"No way!" Arya protested. "After you had me locked in my room? Who are you to decide where I can go?"
"He's the king," Arya's inner voice, which sounded like the voice of reason, prompted her. "He's Leo, a cheerful rake and a strangely conscientious bully," Arya replied decisively, rejecting the voice of reason. "And now I'm going to teach him a lesson!"
"It was really dangerous in the castle," Lionel said conciliatorily. "If some Beales had taken you hostage before we took him..."
"I would have slit his throat myself!" Arya declared defiantly. "You saw how I fight."
And then the honest and straightforward young king made a mistake, because he had listened too much to Ser Barristan, who taught that a knight must always tell the truth, and too often romantically believed that the women's favourite King Robert had behaved improperly towards them.
"You fight like shit," Lionel declared, without thinking that it wasn't a good idea to further anger the angry Arya. "I could stab you twenty times in three minutes. You're weaker and your arms are shorter — what were you thinking, getting into a fight? You don't need to block my blows, you need to run away and dodge them.
Arya, of course, understood that Lionel was right, especially since Syrio Forel had told her practically the same thing. But the young king was brief and to the point, while Syrio used exotic and vague phrases about a water dancer, a quick snake, and a fierce wolverine. And that's why the cunning Braavosi was the favourite teacher, and Lionel got a beating.
"Are you illiterate?" Arya snapped at Lionel. "Couldn't you write a note, explain something?"
"I couldn't write it in front of everyone," Lionel tried to argue.
"Just admit that you got your ass kicked again!" continued the angry Arya. She had heard the commotion in the Red Keep, which was covering up the suppression of the rebellion, as she was running away. "But you promised me!
Having barely made peace with Arya two weeks after what happened at the Trident, Lionel had indeed promised Arya that she would never see him drunk again," repeating the vow he had made to Sansa, who had forgiven him immediately and unconditionally. Lionel did not break his vow on the day Arya was now angry with him, but if the girl had made something up, who could dissuade her? And Arya had just made up that Lionel had promised her he would quit drinking altogether.
"Well, I accidentally..." Lionel muttered in bewilderment, trying to remember if he had made such an absurd promise to Arya at the time. Of course, Lionel could have played on her pity by saying that he had been drinking out of grief, but this time it would have been the truth, which was too painful to remember.
"We had this guard, Skinny Ted, who even managed to stand guard while drunk," Arya told Lionel. "And one day he fell off the fortress wall — luckily for him, he didn't break his neck, he fell into a haystack. The fact that he fell into the hay was an accident. But the fact that he fell off the wall drunk was no accident!"
"Let's go home," said Lionel decisively, tired of arguing, and picked Arya up again, pressing her hands to her sides with one arm so she couldn't hit him like she had when they were running from the guards.
"Let me go immediately!" Arya demanded, and Lionel decided to try a well-rehearsed trick.
"You're caught, girl, don't try to get away," said the young king cheekily, already sinful in the eyes of women, and immediately realised that he had stunned Arya, but that she was unlikely to remain silent out of confusion.
"You'll be telling that to someone else!" cried the enraged Arya. "Put me down right now! Damned heartbreaker!"
Lord Eddard did not expect to expose Cersei's infidelity and incest with the help of chronicles and genealogical trees, because chronicles cannot be used as evidence, and he had hoped for the help of science, so he removed the corrupt schemer Pycelle from the Harbour and summoned a new maester from Oldtown, insisting in his letter that they send him an incorruptible and truthful man, suitable for rather delicate investigations. "There is no man in Oldtown more honest and devoted to the truth than Father Mendel," the council of masters readily replied. "But we will not take him back, don't even hope for it."
Papa Mendel and his apprentice Weismann arrived at the Royal Harbour quickly enough for their venerable age — Eddard had expected a young master to be sent, eager to seek the truth, but the letters of recommendation presented by Mendel's father recommended him as a passionate fighter for the truth who had not lost his zeal in his old age, and the eyes of the masters, peering out from under bushy eyebrows, were intelligent and sharp. "Don't worry, bastards and traitors are our business," Maester Wiseman assured Eddard. "And everything will remain between us, of course." Thus, Eddard Stark, without wanting to, became involved in the most unusual investigation in the history of Westeros.
"The point is not that princes have different coloured hair, young man," declared Mendel, who had been called to testify against Cersei, and the greying Eddard, who had ruled the North for fifteen years, tried to remember when he had last been called a "young man." "The point is that black hair is a dominant gene. And so it happens that Prince Lionel has it, but his brother and sister do not?"
"Can you prove that, old Mendel?" asked Eddard, who was already used to "not confusing old Mendel with these titles." "Can you see this gene?"
"Don't make me laugh, young man," Papa Mendel waved him off. "This isn't Valyria. With our level of optical development, I couldn't even make you a pair of glasses to keep you healthy for longer."
"Papa Mendel, don't torment yourself," interjected Weissman. "Mr. Eddard is a knight, why does he need a lorgnette?"
"Shh, Weisman," said Papa Mendel in a friendly tone. "I'm not tormenting myself, I haven't even started talking about probability theory yet."
With these words, Papa Mendel took eight sticks out of his pocket, three long and five short, and gave the first public lecture on genetics in the history of Westeros.
"Dear uneducated ones," Mendel's father addressed his small but very distinguished audience affectionately, and Eddard began to understand why the most learned master in Oldtown would not take him back and how he had ended up there at his age instead of living happily in a castle with a rich lord. "You see, you can't see the short stick because of the long one? The long stick is the dominant gene, and the short one is the recessive gene. If we have a pair of recessive genes from our mother and a pair of dominant genes from our father, it is impossible for a child to inherit a gene from their father, a gene from their mother, and for the dominant gene not to prevail," As proof, Mendel's father waved the sticks around, holding the long ones in one hand and the short ones in the other, and trying to match the sticks in each hand.
"The long ones are black hair, and the short ones are light hair?" asked Eddard, who, like everyone else in Westeros, was confused by long words.
"There is one intelligent person in this room besides myself and Weismann," Mendel's father praised his right-hand man and defender of the realm. "The rest of you, get a grip. Listen carefully: light hair is two short sticks. But black hair is either two long sticks or one long stick and one short stick. And if we take the long one with the short one and the two short ones, then it's fifty-fifty: either you get black hair," and Mendel's father put the long stick from one hand together with the short one from the other, "or light hair," and Mendel's father put the short sticks from different hands together. "Now do you understand where the three-to-one rule comes from?"
Lord Eddard, who was not educated but intelligent, understood that in the first case, Cersei, who had been listening to Mendel's explanations with a smirk, was definitely in trouble, and in the second case she would have to toss a coin, and Eddard even regretted a little that Mendel's father had not stopped at the first case — but Eddard himself had asked for an incorruptible master in Oldtown who would not err against the truth.
"And now," declared Mendel's father, and it was clear that his enthusiasm had made him twenty years younger, "now we take the chronicles, draw family trees, and I will begin to explain to you the theory of probability and the formula of the learned septon Bayes!
"And the holy church cannot persuade the queen to repent?" Eddard asked the High Septon with faint hope, realising that even if science proved anything, neither the prosecution nor the defence would understand it, and Cersei glanced at the High Septon and only smiled.
"Hello, neighbour," a quiet voice whispered from the silently opening door, and everyone in the room felt uncomfortable and gloomy, despite the friendly tone of the northern lord who had joined them. "I can persuade the queen to repent. As a good neighbour, I won't even take any money."
Queen Cersei looked at the colourless face of Lord Bolton as he entered, and she felt a strong urge to repent immediately and even embark on a path of reform.
Lionel and Arya, who were unaware of the meeting of the Mendelian-Wysmanists that had taken place in their absence, managed to make up on the way to the Red Keep, and Lionel even fed the hungry Arya at some tavern. However, the poor market woman, who was loitering between the tables, almost ruined everything by offering Lionel a bouquet for his girlfriend, and Arya gave her a few shoves, but Lionel laughed so heartily that Arya couldn't get to him. Lionel decided not to walk down the crowded Steel Street because Arya still wouldn't let him take her hand, preferring to get lost in the crowd again, so Lionel decided to walk past the sept of Baylor, where he and Arya unexpectedly got caught up in a street crush. The crowd carried them to the sept, and Lionel, wishing to remain incognito, first sat Arya on the pedestal of the statue of Baelor, then pulled his hood over her eyes.
The tall young king saw from the ground how the High Septon blessed Lord Eddard to be regent and Protector of the realm, and even noticed with his keen eye that Lord Eddard did not like it very much — the Lord of the North did not believe in the Seven and considered all the rituals of the state church to be empty affectation.
"Come up here," Arya suggested to Lionel in a low voice, leaning down from the pedestal with her head down and somehow clinging to it with her feet. "Now, when my father announces that Sansa will be your queen, you can wave to the people."
Arya returned to the pedestal, and Lord Eddard announced something completely different from the steps of the Sept of Baelor: he asked the septon to bless Queen Cersei on her long journey to Essos, which she was undertaking of her own free will, accompanied by her younger children and the knight of the Kingsguard, Jaime Lannister.
The young king, unfortunately, understood what was going on: yesterday Lord Eddard had already come to him with a difficult conversation, and, hand on heart, Lionel left the palace not only to find Arya, whose misfortunes he was once again to blame for, but also to avoid participating in an investigation whose outcome he feared. But his father had told him that a man who runs loses the opportunity to choose where to fight, and Lionel took the second blow of fate in a week, hiding among the crowd and leaning against the pedestal of Baylor the Blessed. He couldn't even drink to calm his pounding heart, only a dark streak flashed past his closed eyes, as if in response to a fleeting thought of a merciful blow.
"Leo," whispered Arya, jumping down from the pedestal as soon as she realised from Lionel's reaction that the queen's journey was in fact exile. "I'll talk to my father...""Your father has acted justly and mercifully," replied Lionel, and now Arya truly felt sorry for his wounded noble heart. "But I would prefer my mother to be found innocent. Even if she is exiled, she is still innocent.
"Listen, let's get out of here," suggested Arya, pulling Lionel away from Sept Beylor, and immediately staggered slightly and struggled to keep from crying out, while Lionel bent down to look at the leg Arya had injured when she jumped off the pedestal.
"It's nothing, just a sprain," Arya said, a little embarrassed, and then became even more embarrassed when she flew into the air and found herself in Lionel's arms as he rose from his knees. By Westerosi standards, Arya was almost an adult, and her father hadn't picked her up in a long time, and even before that, it wasn't something they did often. Now she buried her forehead in Lionel's neck, feeling his pulse, and the most natural thing in her position was to hug him around the neck, as if he were...
"Let me climb over to you," Arya suggested, blushing, and even tried to do so, but the only result of her efforts was that she knocked Lionel's hood off, and the crowd around them roared, welcoming their young king, who had probably done another good deed unnoticed.
Lionel moved towards the steps of the sept of Baelor through the crowd parting before him, and only when he was almost at Eddard did Arya realise that she shouldn't scare her father, break free from her saviour and run up the steps herself, trying not to limp too much. However, Eddard had lived long enough to know at a glance that seriously wounded people were not carried in this manner. Women, on the other hand, were carried in this manner.
***
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