JAIME
King's Landing could always be smelled long before it was seen. Even on a day like today: cold and sour, with forbidding clouds piling up in the sky and the threat of snow hanging tangibly in the air. His captors had refused to tell him where they were going, but if they really wanted to keep him in suspense, they should have cut off his nose. Besides, Jaime was sufficiently familiar with the back roads and byways of the crownlands to be sure of where they were – when they took off his blindfold, that was. It all reeked of a petty, purposefully obnoxious use of power, the sort he'd seen a thousand times before and always to no good end: because he was there, he was available to torment, and that was it. For all the fussing the maesters and septons did over the problem of war, in Jaime's opinion and experience it boiled down to something far simpler. Men like to hurt each other. That's it.
By Jaime's reckoning, it had been just over three weeks since his arrest on the Quiet Isle. He found the pretext for his seizure flimsier every day; they'd asked him barely half a dozen questions about Sansa, to which his genuinely ignorant replies seemed to amuse more than vex them. Like as not they'd already turfed up the girl somewhere else, were busily packaging her back off to the Vale and cackling at their ingenuity at framing him for the crime. As for Brienne. . . even if the gods had been so unwontedly good as to let her find Sansa, the wench wouldn't have known when to stop fighting, pigheaded brave bitch that she was. If that was the case, she was rotting in a ditch somewhere even now. Quests only have a happy ending in the songs.
Brienne. Jaime had tried to avoid thinking about her, a task which was akin to attempting to stop eating, breathing, or shitting. His wound had patched up enough that he hadn't yet bled to death, but he still felt Lem's phantom sword stabbing him with every mile – matched only by the pain in his head.
He hadn't meant to have her there on the beach. Hadn't wanted to, really. She was still the ugliest wench he'd ever laid eyes on, and some part of him had been proud of the fact that while Cersei backstabbed and whored her way to power – Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know – he was going to remain defiantly chaste, hold to his vows from now on. Aye, Kingslayer, that's you. Pure as the driven snow. And besides, assuming this war ever ended, Brienne might want to take a husband someday. Even if she was the heiress to Tarth, it had been difficult enough for her father to find her a match with her maidenhead intact. Now that it had been given up to no less an infamous personage than himself, the odds went from steep to almost impossible. But in the need of the moment, neither of them had been able to do any differently.
Several times, Jaime found himself wondering if it had been similar for Robb Stark. Within limits, of course. Robb Stark hadn't been the best swordsman in the realm at the age of fifteen, named to guard a mad king with the aims both of spiting his lord father and staying near the twin sister who was, until recently, the only woman he'd slept with. Hadn't later killed that king, been disinherited by that father, caught in flagrante with that sister and forced to pitch an eight-year-old boy out a tower window. None of that. But Robb Stark's need in the face of calamity, in Jeyne Westerling's bed, had had, even Jaime was willing to admit, far more cataclysmic consequences. Stark had been a rebel and a traitor, but he hadn't deserved the hideous fate which had befallen him.
In the rare moments he could manage not to think about Brienne, Jaime ended up thinking about the Young Wolf's widow instead. He very much hoped she hadn't tried anything foolish; those archers he'd set around her wouldn't miss. Mayhaps she was back at the Crag, and the memories were starting to come less frequently. Mayhaps she no longer woke in the night, looking for him. Mayhaps. Jaime would have dismissed it as a youthful passion, if nothing else than to assuage his guilt, but he too had been in love at fifteen, and that love had forever shattered the world around him. Rest in peace, Stark. Wherever your soul ended up. Knowing the northerners, in a tree.
Jaime's only solace about his impending arrival in King's Landing was that he would shortly have a whole new host of things to worry about. It made sense that they hadn't taken him to the Vale – there was no surer way to cast a blaze of light on whatever in hell Petyr Baelish was doing, which Petyr Baelish doubtless preferred to keep safely in the dark – and if he knew the man at all, this was going to be spun off somehow as someone else's crime. In all likelihood, the Tyrells. His sweet sister had already done everything except attack Lord Mace with teeth and claws, and an outrage such as this would sunder the foundations for good. For years, nobody had given Littlefinger much notice – a man of such modest birth, charming and friendly to all, and a crack shot at getting the king gold when the king required it, a talent which might have excused crimes greater than Gregor Clegane's. Only now was Jaime realizing that that must have been his plan all along. And perhaps he understood more of that man, as well, than he thought. The things I do for love.
Winter's first snow had not yet fallen on the capital, but it looked as cold and forbidding as if it had. The high towers of the Great Sept of Baelor were buried in fog, and the usual raucous commerce on the docks had dwindled to a miserable trickle. Squinting, Jaime could see that Tommen's banners, the counterchanged stag and lion, still flew atop the Red Keep. He could also hear – faint, but growing louder – shouting.
"What would that be, do you think?" he asked pleasantly. "Might we potentially be about to ride into the middle of a mob?"
"Mobs are a damned near everyday occurrence in this city, thanks to your fucking family," one of the Corbrays snapped. Not that he looked like a Corbray; the lot of them had carefully removed every bit of regalia that identified them as being from the Vale, confirming Jaime's suspicions that this was all an elaborate piece of theater staged under Littlefinger's orchestration. "Are you frightened of a few peasants, Kingslayer?"
"I tremble in my boots. When there's hundreds of them and only one of me, that is, and especially when there are a few pitchforks thrown in the mix. Don't be a fool. Take us into the streets now, and they'll drag you down and stone you. Or you'll be raped half a hundred times and end up with a bastard in your belly, like Lollys Stokeworth."
That got him another cuff, which Jaime could not quite dodge. Reflecting that his resolve to hold his tongue almost never outlived the first few moments of an encounter with a pompous windbag, he tried another tack. "I'm not going to be much use to you with my head smashed in, am I? You'd not be able to put it in your chamber pot to piss on – very unaesthetic. On the other hand, if – "
The Corbray man drew his sword and pointed at the city gates with a grin. "You first."
Bloody hell.
Slowly, loathingly, gritting his teeth at the hot jars of pain in his chest, Jaime spurred forward. They had given him a halfway decent horse, if only since it would have been too much of a bother to cart him hog-tied on one of theirs. For a moment, he entertained a ridiculous thought of trying to lose them in the streets, making his way to one of the other gates and absconding that way. Where to, he had no idea. Casterly Rock. Tarth. Hell.
With death before him and steel behind him, Jaime Lannister made his triumphant return to King's Landing.
Inside, he was surprised to discover that the frothing mob he'd pictured was in fact nowhere in evidence. The streets were almost deserted – the shouting all seemed to be coming from one place, and as they switchbacked up the sprawling closes of Flea Bottom, Jaime was unsettled to realize that it was the Great Sept of Baelor. What is this, Ned Stark all over again? Or mayhaps someone exceptionally stupid had decided to end the sparrows' occupation by force of arms, and the sparrows had perforce fought back. At Baelor's, it wasn't going to be a disagreement over the price of a loaf of bread.
Seven hells. Jaime's stomach sank. It's worse than I thought.
Not waiting for his captors, he urged his horse into a gallop, its hooves echoing off the filthy stone. They were shouting at him, cursing, but they'd told him to go first, and he was damned well going to. Jaime climbed madly through the streets, nearly riding down a pair of grubby children who appeared from nowhere and attempted to inveigle for alms. He let the horse stretch its neck out, ducked an effusion of piss upended out a window, and could hear nothing but the rising pitch of the shouts. From the sound of it, the whole city was there, watching – or protesting – what?
Jaime tore through the last cluster of stone townhouses, swearing nonstop under his breath. Then he turned a corner, emerged in the broad plaza before Baelor's – and saw that it was, in fact, worse than he'd ever imagined. So much worse that his mind boggled trying to comprehend it.
A great scaffold had been raised in the plaza, watched over by the same serene statue of Baelor that had presided over Ned Stark's demise. But this time, not one but five people stood on it, bound and blindfolded. A middle-aged lord, a woman who must be his wife, a pretty brown-haired girl, and a young boy. He knew them. He knew them in an instant. The Westerlings. And beside them –
Another pretty brown-haired girl, slender and milky-skinned, heavily pregnant. Her gown was muddy red and blue. Roslin Tully. Lord Edmure's wife. Supposed to be delivered of her child and then to her husband at Casterly Rock, as he'd ordered. Not this – not this –
Jaime recognized the men standing guard around the prisoners: Boros Blount and Meryn Trant. One of the Kettleblacks to boot. And dozens of Lannister guardsmen and gold cloaks – seven hells, where was Ser Addam? Marbrand would have recognized the idiocy of this at once. There was a swarm of sparrows clamoring at the foot of the scaffold, held off brutally by more gold cloaks, and it was just possible to hear a herald struggling to read a writ of execution at the top of his voice: these traitors had transgressed unforgivably against King Tommen Baratheon, the First of his Name. They had spit on the pardons offered for their previous misdeeds, and for that, by order of the Faith and His Grace alike, they were here and now to die.
Another of the sparrows was howling that the High Septon had never signed any such thing. The herald held up a piece of parchment, apparently aimed at proving him wrong. The Westerling girl – Jeyne, it was bloody Jeyne – began to scream hysterically as Meryn Trant forced her father, Lord Gawen, to his knees at the block.
And Jaime Lannister went mad.
"DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE, TRANT!" He kicked his horse and plunged into the plaza, taking not the barest notice of the citizens scrambling to get out of the way. "GODS DAMN YOU, DON'T YOU DARE!"
Trant looked up with a start, saw Jaime, and hesitated. Then after a glance back at the herald, he drew his sword. No Payne. Where the fuck was Ilyn? Had even the King's Justice thought better of carrying out this order – a man whose unquestioning obedience was as terrifying as his scarred face and sliced tongue – because he too knew that it was –
The sword came down. Lord Gawen's legs jerked furiously, then went still.
Jaime had never known such devouring fury in his life. He vaulted down from his horse, riding over a gold cloak as he did, and wrenched the corpse's longsword out of its hand. Lady Sybell was going to her knees now, the entire city was screaming like the maw of the beast, bells were sounding, a sparrow was praying for the gods to rain down their wrath and end the world right now, for this sacrilege could never be scrubbed out. Cersei. Without any other need of proof, Jaime could see her hand at work in this. And that if nothing else sent him up the scaffold steps, swearing and screaming.
Too slow. He was too fucking slow. His chest throbbed as if it was about to burst open. If I had my right hand, I'd be on that platform now. Nobody could have stopped me. As it was, however, he had only his left and a golden mockery. Which is what I am. Goldenhand the Just. Goldenhand the Lie.
He thought Lady Sybell might have been whispering a prayer as the blade came down.
Jaime's view was partially blocked, but he saw Jeyne faint, crumpling to her knees as her mother's head rolled after her father's. He slashed back and forth, roaring. "FUCK YOU – I'M THE LORD COMMANDER – BLOODY FUCKING STOP! NOW!"
Blount and Trant glanced at each other again, then at the slender, golden-haired woman in septa's robes, standing nearby. And carried Jeyne to the block after her parents.
Jaime, however, was finally free. He raced onto the scaffold, reached Trant with the next step, and killed him with the third. Then Blount on the other side – gods, that had been a long time in coming. They'll have to change my name now, but Kingsguardslayer doesn't quite roll off the tongue the same way. No matter how this played out, he was done for, but he no longer had it in him to care. Just give me one chance at Cersei before the end. One chance, that's all I ask.
The gold cloaks were scrambling after him like locusts – those that weren't already preoccupied trying to fend off the crowd and the sparrows, that was. Whichever Kettleblack it was, Jaime killed it. He hoped it was Osmund. The blade was alive in his hand in a way it hadn't been since before he'd lost the other. Let me stop this. Gods, let me stop this. Just that, that and Cersei.
His head was going light. Black static swam before his eyes. He shouldn't have exerted himself like this, he was going to pass out. All he could hear was his heart resounding like a drum, and taste the salt of tears. Then the sky was closing in on him, and the ground, and the swords, and everything was down, down, down into nothing but hell and darkness.
It remained that way for what must have been forever. He had, somewhere, a dreamy realization that he must finally be dead, and couldn't even summon up the wherewithal to give a damn. Blood and fire tore at him, screaming. Brienne, he tried to whisper, Mother, but the words incinerated on his lips. It was like the fever that had gotten him after he'd lost his hand, but worse.
When he opened his eyes, he was lying in a white bed in a small spare white room. My room. The Lord Commander's chambers in White Sword Tower. But what in seven hells was he doing here?
Jaime lay motionless. Everything hurt too much, he couldn't breathe, his throat and eyes and heart were hot and sticky and sore, and he was resentfully forced to conclude that he was still alive. Someone must have saved him from the riot, and –
The riot. Gods be good, the riot. What about Jeyne and her brother and Roslin? He'd checked out of the proceedings before finding what had happened to them. He'd killed Blount and Trant and Kettleblack, but that wouldn't have been enough – he hadn't been able to save Lord Gawen and Lady Sybell –
A knock on the door scared him out of his abused wits. Jaime tried to say something, but it wouldn't come out, so he made an indistinct grunting noise instead. Apparently taking this for assent, the door opened. And into the room, accompanied by the same beautiful golden-haired septa to whom Blount and Trant had been looking for orders, walked his royal son.
"Ser Uncle!" Tommen's round face was full of concern. He ran to the bed and planted a tremulous kiss on Jaime's unshaven, dirty cheek. "I've been so awfully worried about you! Lady Tyene says you were really brave and fought really hard, but they had to carry you up here and you almost died. Here, I brought Ser Pounce to make you feel better." Plump hands carefully cupped around a ball of fur, he deposited it under Jaime's nose. It was apparently a kitten.
"Now, Your Grace," the young septa said. "We don't want to overexert your poor uncle. He was so brave trying to hold back those who would have spared the traitors, wasn't he? But he – "
"You." Tommen jumped, and Jaime startled even himself with the word. "Get out."
The septa looked down at him with an expression that was all solicitous sweetness, but Jaime caught the foul taste of poison underneath. Something in her eyes, unsettlingly, reminded him of a serpent. But in case she'd missed the point, he repeated it. "Get out. I will speak with my – with the king in private. Now."
"As you wish, Lord Commander." Whoever she was, she was good at this. With only a curtsey and a sidelong smile at Tommen, she glided out.
"Who is she?" Jaime rasped, when he and Tommen were alone. "Bloody hell!"
"That's – that's Lady Tyene." Tommen looked nervous. "She's the septa who has been keeping Mother company. She's good, don't worry. She likes kittens too."
Aha. Jaime sank back into his pillow with a long, shuddering sigh. A connection to his sweet sister, but bugger him if he could see what exactly. "I don't care who she says she is or what sort of kittens she likes. Henceforth, you are never to be alone with her again."
Tommen's lip trembled. "But I like her. Why would you say that?"
Because I'm your father, gods damn me. Never in his life had Jaime been so close to blurting it out. "Because unless I very badly miss my guess, she just helped cost you your kingdom yesterday. Are you insane? Are you that bloody stupid? Why did you sign those warrants? Who told you it was a good idea?" He tangled his golden hand in Tommen's tunic and dragged him closer. "Who?"
Tommen's big green eyes filled with tears. "Ser Uncle, you're scaring me."
"Good." No way of telling how much time they had until that pretty murderess burst back in. Both or either of them. "You're the king. You can read what's put in front of you, you know. I know you dutifully sign everything, but – "
The futility of Jaime's anger almost overwhelmed him. He was accomplishing absolutely nothing by shouting at Tommen, he knew. The spinners of this foul web had only taken advantage of the boy's meek, trusting nature and position of power. If I had a king under my control who'd do whatever I said, I might abuse it too. But his sister had been imprisoned, stripped of her authority, had sent that desperate letter which he had burned in the fire. How in hell had she then managed this, and for what fucking purpose?
In a coat of gold or coat of red, a lion still has claws. And mine are long and sharp, my lord, as long and sharp as yours.
Jaime's head was about to split open. He let go of Tommen and fell back in the bed. Not wanting to hear the answer, he said, "What became of Jeyne and Rollam Westerling, and Roslin Tully?"
Tommen hesitated, and that awful silence was all the proof Jaime needed. Finally the king said in a very small voice, "They're dead."
Dead. His suicide charge up the scaffold had been utterly for naught after all. Tears boiled under his closed lids. Finally he said in a guttural rasp, "Tommen. Leave me."
The king didn't need to be told twice. He gathered up his kitten and fled.
This is the end, Jaime thought. How could it not be? The westerlands, the riverlands, and the Freys would revolt the instant the ravens reached them. They were all prisoners here in the Red Keep, the Faith would be breathing fire, and Tommen had brought him a damned kitten in hopes of making him feel better. He did not at all envy Mace Tyrell just now, and that was saying a deal. The Fat Flower's authority, if he ever had any, had just collapsed beneath him like a tide-scoured sandbank, and he may very well have just condemned his daughter to death. The Faith might be inclined to believe his pleas that he'd had nothing to do with this atrocity, but it would be a poor man indeed who wagered on it.
Jaime did not want to move, think, breathe, or exist, now or ever again. He just lay listening to a life's work and a family's legacy come crashing down around him. And still the rains weep o'er his hall, with not a soul to hear.
The room was starting to be shadowed in twilight when the door opened.
He knew who it was at once. He always knew when she was near, the other half of him calling out to be completed. She still smelled the same, had the same sound to her breathing. As long as he kept his eyes closed, he could see the golden girl of fifteen, sneaking off to meet him in Eel Alley dressed as a maidservant, and the love they'd made that night that had set the world afire. As soon as he opened them, he'd see what she had become. And worse, what he had.
"I heard what you did," Cersei said at last. Her voice echoed in the silent room.
Which one? Jaime kept his eyes closed.
"You got what you deserved." He heard her take a few steps closer. "How dare you try to stop them from lawfully executing the traitors? The Westerlings broke their word and betrayed Tommen. That girl who died wasn't the little queen. It was her sister, Elenya. The real Jeyne got away from Riverrun, with Brynden Tully. And I know you helped her do it. Tyene told me."
Jaime had not thought he still possessed the capacity to be shocked, but that did the trick. His eyes bolted open, and he saw her standing across from him, hair as short as a boy's from where they'd shorn it for her walk of penance. She always wanted to be a man. Her dress was brown wool, her face pale and puffy, green eyes glittering with what he'd seen in Aerys Targaryen's purple ones and known well enough. He thought of her burning the Tower of the Hand with wildfire, and his golden sword stained with blood.
"Cersei," he said. "You're mad."
She smiled. "Maybe. But you're dead, my love. You don't betray House Lannister as unforgivably as you have, and walk away without a scratch."
I have scratches aplenty. "What House Lannister? Where? Cersei, you've destroyed it. All of it. I don't know how you arranged yesterday, but you mad, dangerous, deluded – "
"I've destroyed it?" Furious tears filled those lovely, lunatic eyes, reminding him stomach-churningly of Tommen. "How dare you? What do you call what you've done? Hiding away Sansa Stark and Tyrion, who killed Joff? Letting the Westerling girl escape? Deserting me when I needed you so badly? I'd slap you, but from the looks of you, it might kill you straightaway, and your dying will be slow. I vow it."
Jaime's breath caught. Does she know? How does she know? Does she know it was me that freed Tyrion that night, before he went and killed Father? That I tried to protect Sansa and hide her away – but Riverrun, not at Riverrun, I didn't – how could it not be Jeyne – dead, all dead –
"I'll tell you what will become of you." Cersei turned on her heel. "You'll be the champion for my trial. For the Faith. They'll be slavering for it, after seeing what you did."
Trant and Blount were always your creatures. "For the Faith," Jaime repeated woodenly.
"Aye." She smiled again. "I have a champion of my own, you see. His name is Ser Robert Strong, and there's no man alive who can beat him. Particularly not a wounded, crippled traitor like you. He just needs to hurt you enough to stop you getting up, which won't be hard. Do try to give the masses a show. After which, I'm handing you over to Qyburn. Mayhaps you too will be more use to me dead than you ever were alive."
Jaime just stared at her. Everything he could have said in response to that shriveled up and died like a rose in frost. "Cersei – gods be good, Cersei – "
"You chose your path." Her voice was remote. As she stood there, drowned in dusk, she looked part queen, part goddess, and wholly demon. "I am done with you. Now and forever, I am done with you."
The door closed behind her with a gentle click.