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March 3 - April 2, 2014
“You would not believe half of what is happening in King’s Landing, sweetling. Cersei stumbles from one idiocy to the next, helped along by her council of the deaf, the dim, and the blind. I always anticipated that she would beggar the realm and destroy herself, but I never expected she would do it quite so fast. It is quite vexing. I had hoped to have four or five quiet years to plant some seeds and allow some fruits to ripen, but now … it is a good thing that I thrive on chaos. What little peace and order the five kings left us will not long survive the three queens, I fear.”
“When Robert dies. Our poor brave Sweetrobin is such a sickly boy, it is only a matter of time. When Robert dies, Harry the Heir becomes Lord Harrold, Defender of the Vale and Lord of the Eyrie. Jon Arryn’s bannermen will never love me, nor our silly, shaking Robert, but they will love their Young Falcon … and when they come together for his wedding, and you come out with your long auburn hair, clad in a maiden’s cloak of white and grey with a direwolf emblazoned on the back … why, every knight in the Vale will pledge his sword to win you back your birthright. So those are your gifts from me,
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Untie my hands. Please. Have pity. The ropes are chafing my wrists. I’m bleeding.” “It’s not allowed. You’re to stay bound, till …” “… till you stand before m’lady.” Renly stood behind the girl, pushing his black hair out of his eyes. Not Renly. Gendry. “M’lady means for you to answer for your crimes.” “M’lady.” The wine was making her head spin. It was hard to think. “Stoneheart. Is that who you mean?” Lord Randyll had spoken of her, back at Maidenpool. “Lady Stoneheart.” “Some call her that. Some call her other things. The Silent Sister. Mother Merciless. The Hangwoman.” The Hangwoman. When
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you.” The Hound laughed. “You got that backwards. It’ll be me killing you. I’d do it now, but m’lady wants to see you hanged.” Hanged. The word sent a jolt of fear through her. She looked at the girl, Jeyne. She is too young to be so hard. “Bread and salt,” Brienne gasped. “The inn … Septon Meribald fed the children … we broke bread with your sister …” “Guest right don’t mean so much as it used to,” said the girl. “Not since m’lady come back from the wedding. Some o’ them swinging down by the river figured they was guests too.”
The stew was cold and greasy, the bread hard, the cheese harder. Brienne had never eaten anything half so good.
“A boy,” she said again. “Have pity.” “My lady,” Thoros said, “I do not doubt that kindness and mercy and forgiveness can still be found somewhere in these Seven Kingdoms, but do not look for them here. This is a cave, not a temple. When men must live like rats in the dark beneath the earth, they soon run out of pity, as they do of milk and honey.”
Brienne heard their footsteps and saw torchlight flickering in the passage. “You told me she had gone to Fairmarket.” “And so she had. She returned whilst we were sleeping. She never sleeps herself.”
Thoros sucked in his breath in dismay. “Is this true? A dead man’s helm? Have we fallen that low?” The big man scowled at him. “It’s good steel.” “There is nothing good about that helm, nor the men who wore it,” said the red priest. “Sandor Clegane was a man in torment, and Rorge a beast in human skin.”
Finally, she reached up under her jaw and grasped her neck, as if she meant to throttle herself. Instead she spoke … Her voice was halting, broken, tortured. The sound seemed to come from her throat, part croak, part wheeze, part death rattle. The language of the damned, thought Brienne.
The woman in grey hissed through her fingers. Her eyes were two red pits burning in the shadows.
She names it False Friend. Like you.” “To whom have I been false?” “To her,” the northman said. “Can it be that my lady has forgotten that you once swore her your service?” There was only one woman that the Maid of Tarth had ever sworn to serve. “That cannot be,” she said. “She’s dead.” “Death and guest right,” muttered Long Jeyne Heddle. “They don’t mean so much as they used to, neither one.”
Her face, Brienne thought. Her face was so strong and handsome, her skin so smooth and soft. “Lady Catelyn?” Tears filled her eyes. “They said … they said that you were dead.” “She is,” said Thoros of Myr. “The Freys slashed her throat from ear to ear. When we found her by the river she was three days dead. Harwin begged me to give her the kiss of life, but it had been too long. I would not do it, so Lord Beric put his lips to hers instead, and the flame of life passed from him to her. And … she rose. May the Lord of Light protect us. She rose.”
The thing that had been Catelyn Stark took hold of her throat again, fingers pinching at the ghastly long slash in her neck, and choked out more sounds.
She screamed a word.
I do hope the little queen and her cousins enjoyed those rides of theirs.
The picture of this sour old crone poking her wrinkled fingers up Margaery’s little pink cunt was so droll that Cersei almost laughed.
With your leave, I will take Ser Osney Kettleblack back with me. The small council will want to question him, and hear his accusations for themselves.” “No,” said the High Septon. It was only a word, one little word, but to Cersei it felt like a splash of icy water in the face. She blinked, and her certainty flickered, just a little.
“He is mad,” said Cersei. “You have driven him mad.” “Ser Osney,” said the High Septon, in a firm, clear voice, “did you have carnal knowledge of the queen?” “Aye.” The chains rattled softly as Osney twisted in his shackles. “That one there. She’s the queen I fucked, the one sent me to kill the old High Septon. He never had no guards. I just come in when he was sleeping and pushed a pillow down across his face.” Cersei whirled, and ran.
“His natural daughter?” Lady Sybell looked as if she had swallowed a lemon. “You want a Westerling to wed a bastard?” “No more than I want Joy to marry the son of some scheming turncloak bitch. She deserves better.”
Ser Ilyn smiled in a way Jaime did not like. An ugly smile. An ugly soul. “You talk too much,” he told the man.
Somehow he did not think the maesters were like to confuse him with Prince Aemon the Dragonknight when they wrote their histories. Still, he felt curiously content. The war was all but won. Dragonstone had fallen and Storm’s End would soon enough, he could not doubt, and Stannis was welcome to the Wall. The northmen would love him no more than the storm lords had. If Roose Bolton did not destroy him, winter would.
My place is with my king. With my son. Would Tommen want to know that? The truth could cost the boy his throne. Would you sooner have a father or a chair, lad? Jaime wished he knew the answer.
There would be no more plantings, no more hopes of one last harvest. He found himself wondering what his father would do to feed the realm, before he remembered that Tywin Lannister was dead.
Come morning, as the Cinnamon Wind continued on toward Oldtown, she began to bump up against corpses drifting down to the sea. Some of the bodies carried complements of crows, who rose into the air complaining noisily when the swan ship disturbed their grotesquely swollen rafts.
“Who would be so mad as to raid this close to Oldtown?” Xhondo pointed at a half-sunken longship in the shallows. The remnants of a banner drooped from her stern, smoke-stained and ragged. The charge was one Sam had never seen before: a red eye with a black pupil, beneath a black iron crown supported by two crows. “Whose banner is that?” Sam asked. Xhondo only shrugged.
“It grieves me that honest men must suffer such discourtesy, but sooner that than ironmen in Oldtown. Only a fortnight ago some of those bloody bastards captured a Tyroshi merchantman in the straits. They killed her crew, donned their clothes, and used the dyes they found to color their whiskers half a hundred colors. Once inside the walls they meant to set the port ablaze and open a gate from within whilst we fought the fire.
“These are no mere reavers. The ironmen have always raided where they could. They would strike sudden from the sea, carry off some gold and girls, and sail away, but there were seldom more than one or two longships, and never more than half a dozen. Hundreds of their ships afflict us now, sailing out of the Shield Islands and some of the rocks around the Arbor.
I should have come here when I was their age, Sam thought. If I had run off and taken a false name, I could have disappeared amongst the other novices. Father could have pretended that Dickon was his only son. I doubt he would even have troubled to search for me, unless I took a mule to ride. Then he would have hunted me down, but only for the mule.
“Are you still a craven?” “No,” lied Sam. Jon had made it a command. “I went beyond the Wall and fought in battles. They call me Sam the Slayer.” He did not know why he said it. The words just tumbled out.
“Who do you think killed all the dragons the last time around? Gallant dragonslayers armed with swords?” He spat. “The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons. Ask yourself why Aemon Targaryen was allowed to waste his life upon the Wall, when by rights he should have been raised to archmaester. His blood was why. He could not be trusted.
Marwyn glanced at Sam again, and frowned. “You … you should stay and forge your chain. If I were you, I would do it quickly. A time will come when you’ll be needed on the Wall.”
Marwyn snatched a stained leather cloak off a peg near the door and tied it tight. “Sphinx, look after this one.” “I will,” Alleras answered, but the archmaester was already gone. They heard his boots stomping down the steps. “Where has he gone?” asked Sam, bewildered. “To the docks. The Mage is not a man who believes in wasting time.”
Alleras smiled. “I have a confession. Ours was no chance encounter, Sam. The Mage sent me to snatch you up before you spoke to Theobald. He knew that you were coming.” “How?” Alleras nodded at the glass candle.
“My thanks.” There was something about the pale, soft youth that he misliked, but he did not want to seem discourteous, so he added, “My name’s not Slayer, truly. I’m Sam. Samwell Tarly.” “I’m Pate,” the other said, “like the pig boy.”
