Chapter 8: A Taste of Power (77 AC, Age 9)
The death of Weasel the Dreg Rat went entirely unnoticed by the powers of King's Landing. There was no investigation by the City Watch, no outcry from the denizens of Flea Bottom. A man had died in a slum; a wall had collapsed. Such things were the natural order. To the Dreg Rats, Weasel's disappearance was a minor inconvenience, the loss of a mediocre earner who was more trouble than he was worth. Within a week, his absence was a forgotten footnote in the annals of the gutter.
But for two small boys, it had changed the world.
For Finn, the event was a quasi-religious experience. He had been delivered from his tormentors by a miracle he could not comprehend. His loyalty to Maric, once a partnership of convenience and profit, had transmuted into something far deeper, something akin to the fealty a devout soldier gives to a warrior-prophet. He no longer questioned Maric's strange pronouncements or quiet commands; he simply obeyed, his faith absolute. He was the sword, and Maric was the hand that wielded him.
For Maric, the consequences were more complex. The ghost of Weasel lived within him. It was not a haunting, but a presence. A library of ugly, useful knowledge now resided in a locked wing of his mental palace. The chaotic memories of the dead thug were a nuisance, a psychic clutter he had to consciously ignore, but the skills… the skills were a revelation. He now possessed the muscle memory of a hundred street brawls, the instincts of a man who had lived and died by the knife. He felt it in the way he walked, a subtle shift in balance, a new predatory awareness in his posture.
He needed to integrate this new knowledge, to make it his own. He began a new phase of his training in the secrecy of their cellar sanctuary.
"Hit me," Maric commanded one afternoon. He and Finn stood on the packed earth floor, the air thick with the smell of dust and damp stone.
Finn, now a head taller than Maric and wiry with muscle, looked confused. "What? Maric, I ain't gonna hit you."
"You will," Maric said, his voice quiet but absolute. "Try to hit me in the face. As hard as you can."
Hesitantly, Finn swung a clumsy, open-handed blow. Maric didn't move back. He flowed inside the arc of the swing, his small body moving with an unnatural fluidity. In a single, seamless motion, he deflected Finn's arm, stepped on his lead foot to break his balance, and hooked a leg behind Finn's knee. Finn tumbled to the ground with a startled yelp, landing hard on his back. He looked up, stunned, at Maric standing over him, not even breathing heavily.
"How…?" Finn gasped.
"You telegraph your moves," Maric said, the words of a seasoned brawler coming unnaturally from the mouth of a nine-year-old. "Your shoulders tighten before you swing. Get up. Again."
They "sparred" like this for weeks. It was never a contest. Maric, using the crude but effective techniques he had stolen from a dead man, would dismantle Finn's every attack. He twisted wrists, applied painful joint locks, and used Finn's own momentum to throw him to the ground time and time again. He was taking the raw data of Weasel's skills and refining it with his own superior intellect, turning gutter brawling into a brutally efficient science. For Finn, it was a constant, humbling lesson in his friend's terrifying superiority. For Maric, it was practice. It was the forging of a weapon.
The first true test of this new weapon came on a crisp autumn day. Their growing reputation for success had, inevitably, drawn the attention of a new class of predator. They were not gang members, but a pack of older, bigger bullies who roamed the market district, preying on younger children. They cornered Maric and Finn in an alley behind the fish market, their leader a hulking boy of twelve with a brutish, flat face.
"Heard you two are lucky," the boy sneered, cracking his knuckles. He had three others with him, all of them larger and older than Finn. "Time to share some of that luck."
Finn squared his shoulders, ready to fight and lose, as was the way of things. But Maric stepped forward.
"Leave," Maric said. It was not a request.
The bully laughed. "Or what? You'll cry for your ma?" He lunged, his hand reaching for Maric.
What happened next was over in three seconds. Maric did not retreat. He moved forward to meet the attack, a small, dark blur of motion. He slapped the boy's reaching hand away, not with force, but with a precise, stinging strike to the wrist that sent a jolt of pain up the bully's arm. As the boy recoiled in surprise, Maric pivoted, driving the hardened edge of his hand into the soft spot just above the boy's hip. It was a vicious, disabling blow, a dirty trick learned from Weasel's ghost.
The bully's leg went numb. He howled, a sound of shock more than pain, and collapsed to the ground, clutching his side. His cronies stared, mouths agape, at their fallen leader. They had expected a scuffle, a beating. They had not expected this sudden, surgical violence from a boy half their size. They saw the cold, dead look in Maric's eyes, and what they saw there was not a child.
They fled without a backward glance, dragging their whimpering leader with them.
Finn stared at Maric, his awe now complete. "You didn't even kill him," he whispered, as if that were the most shocking part.
"He was not a threat," Maric replied, his gaze distant. "He was an annoyance. You don't use a war-hammer to kill a fly."
The incident solidified their new reputation. They were no longer just lucky. They were dangerous. The petty predators of Flea Bottom learned to give the two boys a wide berth. The confidence Maric gained from the encounter was profound. He had a taste of real power, the ability to impose his will on the physical world, and he found that he liked it. But it also sparked a new, more chilling ambition.
The power he had taken from Weasel was potent, but it was… dirty. The chaotic memories, the constant, low-level hum of another man's violence in his soul—it was a price, a form of contamination. He began to wonder, to theorize. What if he could harvest essence without the psychic filth? Weasel had been a man of violence and passion. What would he get from a man whose life was the opposite? A man of quiet desperation? A life of simplicity might yield a "cleaner" essence, a purer form of vitality.
This was no longer about survival or protection. This was about optimization. This was an experiment. And every experiment needed a subject.
He found him during the first biting cold of winter. He was an old beggar Maric had seen for years, a permanent fixture at the corner of a forgotten street near the city's western wall. He had no name that anyone knew. He was just the old man. His life was a slow, quiet study in suffering. He sat all day, huddled in a threadbare blanket, his hand outstretched, his eyes clouded with cataracts. He rarely spoke. He simply endured. He was dying. A wet, hacking cough wracked his thin frame, and Maric, with his analytical gaze, recognized the final, rattling stages of gutter-lung.
He was the perfect specimen. He was alone, without friends, family, or gang affiliation. His death would be a blessing, a release from pain. No one would investigate. No one would mourn. He was a resource node, ripe for harvest, and one whose life force was uncontaminated by the complexities of violence or ambition.
The decision was made without a shred of malice or pity. It was a business decision. Maric began his stalk.
For a week, he observed the old beggar, whom he mentally christened 'Silas', a name that felt grey and dusty, like the man himself. He watched him with the detached curiosity of a naturalist studying an insect. He noted his routine: the pre-dawn fit of coughing, the slow shuffle to his corner, the long, empty hours of sitting, the meager meal of a stale crust of bread, the retreat at night to a secluded alcove behind a collapsed smithy. He was a creature of absolute, predictable misery.
Maric planned the harvest for a night when the cold was at its most severe, a night that promised a frost that would kill the weak and the unprepared. Such a night would provide the perfect cover. An old, sick beggar found frozen in an alley would be the most natural death imaginable.
He told his family he was spending the night in the cellar with Finn, who had a "cough." Lara, who now trusted him implicitly, gave him an extra blanket and a pat on the head. He made sure Finn was asleep, then slipped out into the biting cold of the King's Landing night.
The city was a different beast in the dark. The usual cacophony was replaced by a hushed, furtive silence, punctuated by the distant sounds of drunken shouting or a woman's sharp cry. Maric moved through the shadows, his small form all but invisible against the grime. The fighting instincts he'd absorbed made him preternaturally aware of his surroundings, his head on a constant swivel, his path weaving to avoid open spaces.
He found Silas in his usual alcove, a pathetic bundle of rags shivering uncontrollably. The old man was barely conscious, his breaths shallow, rasping whistles. This was it. The moment of the experiment.
Maric felt a flicker of something as he approached. It was not guilt. It was the faint, vestigial echo of Marco Bellini's sensibilities. This was undignified. Killing a rival in a power play had a certain brutal logic. But this… this was like stepping on a dying insect. It was beneath him. He crushed the feeling. Sentiment was a weakness. The goal was the data.
He knelt beside the old man. Silas's eyes fluttered open. The clouded orbs stared up at Maric, but it was unclear if they registered his presence. There was no fear, no recognition. Only a deep, bottomless weariness.
The method had to be quiet, untraceable. A knife was too messy. Strangling would leave marks. Maric took the extra blanket his mother had given him. It was thick, coarse wool. He gently, almost tenderly, folded it. Then, with a smooth, dispassionate movement, he pressed it firmly over the old man's face, covering his nose and mouth.
Silas didn't struggle. There was a brief, fluttering movement beneath the rags, a faint, muffled gasp. His thin, bird-like chest hitched once, twice. Maric held the blanket steady, applying firm, even pressure. He felt the last, weak tremor of the man's life through the wool, and then… stillness.
He waited a full minute before removing the blanket. Silas's face was peaceful in the gloom, the lines of suffering eased by the finality of death. And then, Maric felt the transfer.
It was utterly different from the torrent from Weasel. There was no fire, no chaotic rush. It was like a slow, deep, cold river pouring into him. It was an infusion of pure, ancient endurance. It filled him not with energy, but with a profound, unshakable solidity. It was the essence of a life spent waiting, watching, and surviving against all odds.
Then came the memories. They were not the violent, jarring flashes of Weasel's life. They were like grey dust motes settling in his mind.
Decades of seasons changing from a single street corner. The heat of summer on the cobblestones. The bite of winter wind. The taste of rain.
The faces of thousands upon thousands of people, a flowing river of humanity that never saw him.
The memory of a wife, long dead, her face already fading, a phantom warmth.
The slow, grinding pain of hunger, not as a temporary state, but as a lifelong companion.
A moment of simple, forgotten pleasure: the taste of a sweet plum, given by a kind child fifty years ago.
The quiet observation of the city's secrets from a position of utter invisibility. Knowing which merchants were cheating their wives, which nobles visited which brothels, which Gold Cloaks were on the take, all from simply sitting and listening for a lifetime.
The memories were not a contamination. They were an archive. A vast, quiet library of patience and observation. Maric sifted through them, and a slow smile touched his lips in the darkness. The experiment was a resounding success. He felt no guilt. He felt no remorse. He felt only the deep, cold satisfaction of a hypothesis proven correct. He had taken a life for no other reason than to claim its resources, and the result was a new, more subtle form of power.
He stood up, leaving the body arranged as if the man had simply fallen asleep and succumbed to the cold. He was stronger now, not just in body, but in his very soul. He possessed the brawler's violence and the beggar's endurance. He was becoming a collage of dead men, a mosaic of stolen lives.
He walked back through the sleeping city, a nine-year-old boy containing multitudes. He had tasted power in its rawest forms. He had taken it by force, and he had harvested it in the quiet of the night. He had confirmed his own monstrosity and found it to be a comfortable, well-fitting garment. He was confident, not with the empty bravado of a bully, but with the cold, absolute certainty of a predator who has mastered his craft.
His gaze swept over the slumbering hovels of Flea Bottom and drifted up towards the distant, dark mass of the Red Keep on Aegon's High Hill. This slum, this city, was just a field. A vast, fallow field of souls, each with its own unique essence, its own skills, its own memories, its own sliver of life. And he was the harvester. His ambition, once a flickering candle, now burned like a star, cold and brilliant and utterly without warmth. The game was so much bigger than he had first imagined.