Tyrion was surprised. “Truly? His own daughter?” Sansa had always seemed such a sweet child, tender and courteous.
“The girl was wet with love. She would have done anything for Joffrey, until he cut off her father’s head and called it mercy. That put an end to that.”
“His Grace has a unique way of winning the hearts of his subjects,” Tyrion said with a crooked smile. “Was it Joffrey’s wish to dismiss Ser Barristan Selmy from his Kingsguard too?”
Cersei sighed. “Joff wanted someone to blame for Robert’s death. Varys suggested Ser Barristan. Why not? It gave Jaime command of the Kingsguard and a seat on the small council, and allowed Joff to throw a bone to his dog. He is very fond of Sandor Clegane. We were prepared to offer Selmy some land and a towerhouse, more than the useless old fool deserved.”
“I hear that useless old fool slew two of Slynt’s gold cloaks when they tried to seize him at the Mud Gate.”
His sister looked very unhappy. “Janos should have sent more men. He is not as competent as might be wished.”
“Ser Barristan was the Lord Commander of Robert Baratheon’s Kingsguard,” Tyrion reminded her pointedly. “He and Jaime are the only survivors of Aerys Targaryen’s seven. The smallfolk talk of him in the same way they talk of Serwyn of the Mirror Shield and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight. What do you imagine they’ll think when they see Barristan the Bold riding beside Robb Stark or Stannis Baratheon?”
Cersei glanced away. “I had not considered that.”
“Father did,” said Tyrion. “That is why he sent me. To put an end to these follies and bring your son to heel.”
“Joff will be no more tractable for you than for me.”
“He might.”
“Why should he?”
“He knows you would never hurt him.”
Cersei’s eyes narrowed. “If you believe I’d ever allow you to harm my son, you’re sick with fever.”
Tyrion sighed. She’d missed the point, as she did so often. “Joffrey is as safe with me as he is with you,” he assured her, “but so long as the boy feels threatened, he’ll be more inclined to listen.” He took her hand. “I am your brother, you know. You need me, whether you care to admit it or no. Your son needs me, if he’s to have a hope of retaining that ugly iron chair.”
His sister seemed shocked that he would touch her. “You have always been cunning.”
“In my own small way.” He grinned.
“It may be worth the trying . . . but make no mistake, Tyrion. If I accept you, you shall be the King’s Hand in name, but my Hand in truth. You will share all your plans and intentions with me before you act, and you will do nothing without my consent. Do you understand?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Do you agree?”
“Certainly,” he lied. “I am yours, sister.” For as long as I need to be. “So, now that we are of one purpose, we ought have no more secrets between us. You say Joffrey had Lord Eddard killed, Varys dismissed Ser Barristan, and Littlefinger gifted us with Lord Slynt. Who murdered Jon Arryn?”
Cersei yanked her hand back. “How should I know?”
“The grieving widow in the Eyrie seems to think it was me. Where did she come by that notion, I wonder?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. That fool Eddard Stark accused me of the same thing. He hinted that Lord Arryn suspected or . . . well, believed . . .”
“That you were fucking our sweet Jaime?”
She slapped him.
“Did you think I was as blind as Father?” Tyrion rubbed his cheek. “Who you lie with is no matter to me . . . although it doesn’t seem quite just that you should open your legs for one brother and not the other.”
She slapped him.
“Be gentle, Cersei, I’m only jesting with you. If truth be told, I’d sooner have a nice whore. I never understood what Jaime saw in you, apart from his own reflection.”
She slapped him.
His cheeks were red and burning, yet he smiled. “If you keep doing that, I may get angry.”
That stayed her hand. “Why should I care if you do?”
“I have some new friends,” Tyrion confessed. “You won’t like them at all. How did you kill Robert?”
“He did that himself. All we did was help. When Lancel saw that Robert was going after boar, he gave him strongwine. His favorite sour red, but fortified, three times as potent as he was used to. The great stinking fool loved it. He could have stopped swilling it down anytime he cared to, but no, he drained one skin and told Lancel to fetch another. The boar did the rest. You should have been at the feast, Tyrion. There has never been a boar so delicious. They cooked it with mushrooms and apples, and it tasted like triumph.”
“Truly, sister, you were born to be a widow.” Tyrion had rather liked Robert Baratheon, great blustering oaf that he was . . . doubtless in part because his sister loathed him so. “Now, if you are done slapping me, I will be off.” He twisted his legs around and clambered down awkwardly from the chair.
Cersei frowned. “I haven’t given you leave to depart. I want to know how you intend to free Jaime.”
“I’ll tell you when I know. Schemes are like fruit, they require a certain ripening. Right now, I have a mind to ride through the streets and take the measure of this city.” Tyrion rested his hand on the head of the sphinx beside the door. “One parting request. Kindly make certain no harm comes to Sansa Stark. It would not do to lose both the daughters.”
Outside the council chamber, Tyrion nodded to Ser Mandon and made his way down the long vaulted hall. Bronn fell in beside him. Of Timett son of Timett there was no sign. “Where’s our red hand?” Tyrion asked.
“He felt an urge to explore. His kind was not made for waiting about in halls.”
“I hope he doesn’t kill anyone important.” The clansmen Tyrion had brought down from their fastnesses in the Mountains of the Moon were loyal in their own fierce way, but they were proud and quarrelsome as well, prone to answer insults real or imagined with steel. “Try to find him. And while you are at it, see that the rest have been quartered and fed. I want them in the barracks beneath the Tower of the Hand, but don’t let the steward put the Stone Crows near the Moon Brothers, and tell him the Burned Men must have a hall all to themselves.”
“Where will you be?”
“I’m riding back to the Broken Anvil.”
Bronn grinned insolently. “Need an escort? The talk is, the streets are dangerous.”
“I’ll call upon the captain of my sister’s household guard, and remind him that I am no less a Lannister than she is. He needs to recall that his oath is to Casterly Rock, not to Cersei or Joffrey.”
An hour later, Tyrion rode from the Red Keep accompanied by a dozen Lannister guardsmen in crimson cloaks and lion-crested halfhelms. As they passed beneath the portcullis, he noted the heads mounted atop the walls. Black with rot and old tar, they had long since become unrecognizable. “Captain Vylarr,” he called, “I want those taken down on the morrow. Give them to the silent sisters for cleaning.” It would be hell to match them with the bodies, he supposed, yet it must be done. Even in the midst of war, certain decencies needed to be observed.
Vylarr grew hesitant. “His Grace has told us he wishes the traitors’ heads to remain on the walls until he fills those last three empty spikes there on the end.”
“Let me hazard a wild stab. One is for Robb Stark, the others for Lords Stannis and Renly. Would that be right?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“My nephew is thirteen years old today, Vylarr. Try and recall that. I’ll have the heads down on the morrow, or one of those empty spikes may have a different lodger. Do you take my meaning, Captain?”
“I’ll see that they’re taken down myself, my lord.”
“Good.” Tyrion put his heels into his horse and trotted away, leaving the red cloaks to follow as best they could.
He had told Cersei he intended to take the measure of the city. That was not entirely a lie. Tyrion Lann
ister was not pleased by much of what he saw. The streets of King’s Landing had always been teeming and raucous and noisy, but now they reeked of danger in a way that he did not recall from past visits. A naked corpse sprawled in the gutter near the Street of Looms, being torn at by a pack of feral dogs, yet no one seemed to care. Watchmen were much in evidence, moving in pairs through the alleys in their gold cloaks and shirts of black ringmail, iron cudgels never far from their hands. The markets were crowded with ragged men selling their household goods for any price they could get . . . and conspicuously empty of farmers selling food. What little produce he did see was three times as costly as it had been a year ago. One peddler was hawking rats roasted on a skewer. “Fresh rats,” he cried loudly, “fresh rats.” Doubtless fresh rats were to be preferred to old stale rotten rats. The frightening thing was, the rats looked more appetizing than most of what the butchers were selling. On the Street of Flour, Tyrion saw guards at every other shop door. When times grew lean, even bakers found sellswords cheaper than bread, he reflected.
“There is no food coming in, is there?” he said to Vylarr.
“Little enough,” the captain admitted. “With the war in the riverlands and Lord Renly raising rebels in Highgarden, the roads are closed to south and west.”
“And what has my good sister done about this?”
“She is taking steps to restore the king’s peace,” Vylarr assured him. “Lord Slynt has tripled the size of the City Watch, and the queen has put a thousand craftsmen to work on our defenses. The stonemasons are strengthening the walls, carpenters are building scorpions and catapults by the hundred, fletchers are making arrows, the smiths are forging blades, and the Alchemists’ Guild has pledged ten thousand jars of wildfire.”
Tyrion shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. He was pleased that Cersei had not been idle, but wildfire was treacherous stuff, and ten thousand jars were enough to turn all of King’s Landing into cinders. “Where has my sister found the coin to pay for all of this?” It was no secret that King Robert had left the crown vastly in debt, and alchemists were seldom mistaken for altruists.
“Lord Littlefinger always finds a way, my lord. He has imposed a tax on those wishing to enter the city.”
“Yes, that would work,” Tyrion said, thinking, Clever. Clever and cruel. Tens of thousands had fled the fighting for the supposed safety of King’s Landing. He had seen them on the kingsroad, troupes of mothers and children and anxious fathers who had gazed on his horses and wagons with covetous eyes. Once they reached the city they would doubtless pay over all they had to put those high comforting walls between them and the war . . . though they might think twice if they knew about the wildfire.
The inn beneath the sign of the broken anvil stood within sight of those walls, near the Gate of the Gods where they had entered that morning. As they rode into its courtyard, a boy ran out to help Tyrion down from his horse. “Take your men back to the castle,” he told Vylarr. “I’ll be spending the night here.”
The captain looked dubious. “Will you be safe, my lord?”
“Well, as to that, Captain, when I left the inn this morning it was full of Black Ears. One is never quite safe when Chella daughter of Cheyk is about.” Tyrion waddled toward the door, leaving Vylarr to puzzle at his meaning.
A gust of merriment greeted him as he shoved into the inn’s common room. He recognized Chella’s throaty chuckle and the lighter music of Shae’s laughter. The girl was seated by the hearth, sipping wine at a round wooden table with three of the Black Ears he’d left to guard her and a plump man whose back was to him. The innkeeper, he assumed . . . until Shae called Tyrion by name and the intruder rose. “My good lord, I am so pleased to see you,” he gushed, a soft eunuch’s smile on his powdered face.
Tyrion stumbled. “Lord Varys. I had not thought to see you here.” The Others take him, how did he find them so quickly?
“Forgive me if I intrude,” Varys said. “I was taken by a sudden urge to meet your young lady.”
“Young lady,” Shae repeated, savoring the words. “You’re half right, m’lord. I’m young.”
Eighteen, Tyrion thought. Eighteen, and a whore, but quick of wit, nimble as a cat between the sheets, with large dark eyes and fine black hair and a sweet, soft, hungry little mouth . . . and mine! Damn you, eunuch. “I fear I’m the intruder, Lord Varys,” he said with forced courtesy. “When I came in, you were in the midst of some merriment.”
“M’lord Varys complimented Chella on her ears and said she must have killed many men to have such a fine necklace,” Shae explained. It grated on him to hear her call Varys m’lord in that tone; that was what she called him in their pillow play. “And Chella told him only cowards kill the vanquished.”
“Braver to leave the man alive, with a chance to cleanse his shame by winning back his ear,” explained Chella, a small dark woman whose grisly neckware was hung with no less than forty-six dried, wrinkled ears. Tyrion had counted them once. “Only so can you prove you do not fear your enemies.”
Shae hooted. “And then m’lord says if he was a Black Ear he’d never sleep, for dreams of one-eared men.”
“A problem I will never need face,” Tyrion said. “I’m terrified of my enemies, so I kill them all.”
Varys giggled. “Will you take some wine with us, my lord?”
“I’ll take some wine.” Tyrion seated himself beside Shae. He understood what was happening here, if Chella and the girl did not. Varys was delivering a message. When he said, I was taken by a sudden urge to meet your young lady, what he meant was, You tried to hide her, but I knew where she was, and who she was, and here I am. He wondered who had betrayed him. The innkeeper, that boy in the stable, a guard on the gate . . . or one of his own?
“I always like to return to the city through the Gate of the Gods,” Varys told Shae as he filled the wine cups. “The carvings on the gatehouse are exquisite, they make me weep each time I see them. The eyes . . . so expressive, don’t you think? They almost seem to follow you as you ride beneath the portcullis.”
“I never noticed, m’lord,” Shae replied. “I’ll look again on the morrow, if it please you.”
Don’t bother, sweetling, Tyrion thought, swirling the wine in the cup. He cares not a whit about carvings. The eyes he boasts of are his own. What he means is that he was watching, that he knew we were here the moment we passed through the gates.
“Do be careful, child,” Varys urged. “King’s Landing is not wholly safe these days. I know these streets well, and yet I almost feared to come today, alone and unarmed as I was. Lawless men are everywhere in this dark time, oh, yes. Men with cold steel and colder hearts.” Where I can come alone and unarmed, others can come with swords in their fists, he was saying.
Shae only laughed. “If they try and bother me, they’ll be one ear short when Chella runs them off.”
Varys hooted as if that was the funniest thing he had ever heard, but there was no laughter in his eyes when he turned them on Tyrion. “Your young lady has an amiable way to her. I should take very good care of her if I were you.”
“I intend to. Any man who tries to harm her—well, I’m too small to be a Black Ear, and I make no claims to courage.” See? I speak the same tongue you do, eunuch. Hurt her, and I’ll have your head.
“I will leave you.” Varys rose. “I know how weary you must be. I only wished to welcome you, my lord, and tell you how very pleased I am by your arrival. We have dire need of you on the council. Have you seen the comet?”
“I’m short, not blind,” Tyrion said. Out on the kingsroad, it had seemed to cover half the sky, outshining the crescent moon.
“In the streets, they call it the Red Messenger,” Varys said. “They say it comes as a herald before a king, to warn of fire and blood to follow.” The eunuch rubbed his powdered hands together. “May I leave you with a bit of a riddle, Lord Tyrion?” He did not wait for an answer. “In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them s
tands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it,’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it,’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’ ‘Do it,’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours.’ So tell me—who lives and who dies?” Bowing deeply, the eunuch hurried from the common room on soft slippered feet.
When he was gone, Chella gave a snort and Shae wrinkled up her pretty face. “The rich man lives. Doesn’t he?”
Tyrion sipped at his wine, thoughtful. “Perhaps. Or not. That would depend on the sellsword, it seems.” He set down his cup. “Come, let’s go upstairs.”
She had to wait for him at the top of the steps, for her legs were slim and supple while his were short and stunted and full of aches. But she was smiling when he reached her. “Did you miss me?” she teased as she took his hand.
“Desperately,” Tyrion admitted. Shae only stood a shade over five feet, yet still he must look up to her . . . but in her case he found he did not mind. She was sweet to look up at.
“You’ll miss me all the time in your Red Keep,” she said as she led him to her room. “All alone in your cold bed in your Tower of the Hand.”
“Too true.” Tyrion would gladly have kept her with him, but his lord father had forbidden it. You will not take the whore to court, Lord Tywin had commanded. Bringing her to the city was as much defiance as he dared. All his authority derived from his father, the girl had to understand that. “You won’t be far,” he promised. “You’ll have a house, with guards and servants, and I’ll visit as often as I’m able.”
Shae kicked shut the door. Through the cloudy panes of the narrow window, he could make out the Great Sept of Baelor crowning Visenya’s Hill, but Tyrion was distracted by a different sight. Bending, Shae took her gown by the hem, drew it over her head, and tossed it aside. She did not believe in smallclothes. “You’ll never be able to rest,” she said as she stood before him, pink and nude and lovely, one hand braced on her hip. “You’ll think of me every time you go to bed. Then you’ll get hard and you’ll have no one to help you and you’ll never be able to sleep unless you”—she grinned that wicked grin Tyrion liked so well—“is that why they call it the Tower of the Hand, m’lord?”
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