The Song Of Ice and Fire (510 page)

“At this hour?” snapped Cersei. “Has Falyse lost her wits? Tell her I have retired. Tell her that smallfolk on the Shields are being slaughtered. Tell her that I have been awake for half the night. I will see her on the morrow.”

The guard hesitated. “If it please Your Grace, she’s … she’s not in a good way, if you take my meaning.”

Cersei frowned. She had assumed Falyse was here to tell her that Bronn was dead. “Very well. I shall need to dress. Take her to my solar and have her wait.” When Lady Merryweather made to rise and come with her, the queen demurred. “No, stay. One of us should get some rest, at least. I shan’t be long.”

Lady Falyse’s face was bruised and swollen, her eyes red from her tears. Her lower lip was broken, her clothing soiled and torn. “Gods be good,” Cersei said as she ushered her into the solar and closed the door. “What has happened to your face?”

Falyse did not seem to hear the question. “He
killed
him,” she said in a quavery voice. “Mother have mercy, he … he …” She broke down sobbing, her whole body trembling.

Cersei poured a cup of wine and took it to the weeping woman. “Drink this. The wine will calm you. That’s it. A little more now. Stop that weeping and tell me why you’re here.”

It took the rest of the flagon before the queen was finally able to coax the whole sad tale out of Lady Falyse. Once she had, she did not know whether to laugh or rage. “Single combat,” she repeated.
Is there no one in the Seven Kingdoms that I can rely upon? Am I the only one in Westeros with a pinch of wits?
“You are telling me Ser Balman challenged Bronn to
single combat?
”

“He said it would be s-s-simple. The lance is a kn-knight’s weapon, he said, and B-Bronn was no true knight. Balman said he would unhorse him and finish him as he lay st-st-stunned.”

Bronn was no knight, that was true. Bronn was a battle-hardened killer.
Your cretin of a husband wrote his own death warrant.
“A splendid plan. Dare I ask how it went awry?”

“B-Bronn drove his lance through the chest of Balman’s poor
h-h-h-horse.
Balman, he … his legs were crushed when the beast fell. He screamed so piteously …”

Sellswords have no pity,
Cersei might have said. “I asked you to arrange a hunting mishap. An arrow gone astray, a fall from a horse, an angry boar … there are so many ways a man can die in the woods. None of them involving
lances.
”

Falyse did not seem to hear her. “When I tried to run to my Balman, he, he, he
struck
me in the face. He made my lord c-c-confess. Balman was crying out for Maester Frenken to attend him, but the sellsword, he, he, he …”

“Confess?” Cersei did not like that word. “I trust our brave Ser Balman held his tongue.”

“Bronn put a dagger in his
eye,
and told me I had best be gone from Stokeworth before the sun went down or I’d get the same. He said he’d pass me around to the g-g-garrison, if any of them would have me. When I ordered Bronn seized, one of his knights had the insolence to say that I should do as Lord Stokeworth said. He called him
Lord Stokeworth!
” Lady Falyse clutched at the queen’s hand. “Your Grace must give me knights. A hundred knights! And crossbowmen, to take my castle back. Stokeworth is mine! They would not even permit me to gather up my
clothes!
Bronn said they were his wife’s clothes now, all my s-silks and velvets.”

Your rags are the least of your concern.
The queen pulled her fingers free of the other woman’s clammy grasp. “I asked you to snuff out a candle to help protect the king. Instead you heaved a pot of wildfire at it. Did your witless Balman bring my name into this? Tell me he did not.”

Falyse licked her lips. “He … he was in pain, his legs were broken. Bronn said he would show him mercy, but … What will happen to my poor m-m-mother?”

I imagine she will die.
“What do you think?” Lady Tanda might well be dead already. Bronn did not seem the sort of man who would expend much effort nursing an old woman with a broken hip.

“You have to help me. Where am I to go? What will I do?”

Perhaps you might wed Moon Boy,
Cersei almost said.
He is nigh as big a fool as your late husband.
She could not risk a war on the very doorstep of King’s Landing, not now. “The silent sisters are always glad to welcome widows,” she said. “Theirs is a serene life, a life of prayer and contemplation and good works. They bring solace to the living and peace to the dead.”
And they do not talk.
She could not have the woman running about the Seven Kingdoms spreading dangerous tales.

Falyse was deaf to good sense. “All we did, we did in service to Your Grace.
Proud to Be Faithful.
You said …”

“I recall.” Cersei forced a smile. “You shall stay here with us, my lady, until such time as we find a way to win your castle back. Let me pour you another cup of wine. It will help you sleep. You are weary and sick of heart, that’s plain to see. My poor dear Falyse. That’s it, drink up.”

As her guest was working on the flagon, Cersei went to the door and called her maids. She told Dorcas to find Lord Qyburn for her and bring him here at once. Jocelyn Swyft she dispatched to the kitchens. “Bring bread and cheese, a meat pie and some apples. And wine. We have a thirst.”

Qyburn arrived before the food. Lady Falyse had put down three more cups by then, and was beginning to nod, though from time to time she would rouse and give another sob. The queen took Qyburn aside and told him of Ser Balman’s folly. “I cannot have Falyse spreading tales about the city. Her grief has made her witless. Do you still need women for your … work?”

“I do, Your Grace. The puppeteers are quite used up.”

“Take her and do with her as you will, then. But once she goes down into the black cells … need I say more?”

“No, Your Grace. I understand.”

“Good.” The queen donned her smile once again. “Sweet Falyse, Maester Qyburn’s here. He’ll help you rest.”

“Oh,” said Falyse vaguely. “Oh, good.”

When the door closed behind them Cersei poured herself another cup of wine. “I am surrounded by enemies and imbeciles,” she said. She could not even trust to her own blood and kin, nor Jaime, who had once been her other half.
He was meant to be my sword and shield, my strong right arm. Why does he insist on vexing me?

Bronn was no more than an annoyance, to be sure. She had never truly believed that he was harboring the Imp. Her twisted little brother was too clever to allow Lollys to name her wretched ill-begotten bastard after him, knowing it was sure to draw the queen’s wroth down upon her. Lady Merryweather had pointed that out, and she was right. The mockery was almost certainly the sellsword’s doing. She could picture him watching his wrinkled red stepson sucking on one of Lollys’s swollen dugs, a cup of wine in his hand and an insolent smile on his face.
Grin all you wish, Ser Bronn, you’ll be screaming soon enough. Enjoy your lackwit lady and your stolen castle whilst you can. When the time comes, I shall swat you as if you were a fly.
Perhaps she would send Loras Tyrell to do the swatting, if the Knight of Flowers should somehow return alive from Dragonstone.
That would be delicious. If the gods were good, each of them would kill the other, like Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk.
As for Stokeworth … no, she was sick of thinking about Stokeworth.

Taena had drifted back to sleep by the time the queen returned to the bedchamber, her head spinning.
Too much wine and too little sleep,
she told herself. It was not every night that she was awakened twice with such desperate tidings.
At least I could awaken. Robert would have been too drunk to rise, let alone rule. It would have fallen to Jon Arryn to deal with all of this.
It pleased her to think that she made a better king than Robert.

The sky outside the window was already beginning to lighten. Cersei sat on the bed beside Lady Merryweather, listening to her soft breathing, watching her breasts rise and fall.
Does she dream of Myr?
she wondered.
Or is it her lover with the scar, the dangerous dark-haired man who would not be refused?
She was quite certain Taena was not dreaming of Lord Orton.

Cersei cupped the other woman’s breast. Softly at first, hardly touching, feeling the warmth of it beneath her palm, the skin as smooth as satin. She gave it a gentle squeeze, then ran her thumbnail lightly across the big dark nipple, back and forth and back and forth until she felt it stiffen. When she glanced up, Taena’s eyes were open. “Does that feel good?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Lady Merryweather.

“And this?” Cersei pinched the nipple now, pulling on it hard, twisting it between her fingers.

The Myrish woman gave a gasp of pain. “You’re hurting me.”

“It’s just the wine. I had a flagon with my supper, and another with the widow Stokeworth. I had to drink to keep her calm.” She twisted Taena’s other nipple too, pulling until the other woman gasped. “I am the queen. I mean to claim my rights.”

“Do what you will.” Taena’s hair was as black as Robert’s, even down between her legs, and when Cersei touched her there she found her hair all sopping wet, where Robert’s had been coarse and dry. “Please,” the Myrish woman said, “go on, my queen. Do as you will with me. I’m yours.”

But it was no good. She could not feel it, whatever Robert felt on the nights he took her. There was no pleasure in it, not for her. For Taena, yes. Her nipples were two black diamonds, her sex slick and steamy.
Robert would have loved you, for an hour.
The queen slid a finger into that Myrish swamp, then another, moving them in and out,
but once he spent himself inside you, he would have been hard-pressed to recall your name.

She wanted to see if it would be as easy with a woman as it had always been with Robert.
Ten thousand of your children perished in my palm, Your Grace,
she thought, slipping a third finger into Myr.
Whilst you snored, I would lick your sons off my face and fingers one by one, all those pale sticky princes. You claimed your rights, my lord, but in the darkness I would eat your heirs.
Taena gave a shudder. She gasped some words in a foreign tongue, then shuddered again and arched her back and screamed.
She sounds as if she is being gored,
the queen thought. For a moment she let herself imagine that her fingers were a bore’s tusks, ripping the Myrish woman apart from groin to throat.

It was still no good.

It had never been any good with anyone but Jaime.

When she tried to take her hand away, Taena caught it and kissed her fingers. “Sweet queen, how shall I pleasure you?” She slid her hand down Cersei’s side and touched her sex. “Tell me what you would have of me, my love.”

“Leave me.” Cersei rolled away and pulled up the bedclothes to cover herself, shivering. Dawn was breaking. It would be morning soon, and all of this would be forgotten.

It had never happened.

JAIME

T
he trumpets made a brazen blare, and cut the still blue air of dusk. Josmyn Peckledon was on his feet at once, scrambling for his master’s swordbelt.

The boy has good instincts.
“Outlaws don’t blow trumpets to herald their arrival,” Jaime told him. “I shan’t need my sword. That will be my cousin, the Warden of the West.”

The riders were dismounting when he emerged from his tent; half a dozen knights, and twoscore mounted archers and men-at-arms. “
Jaime!
” roared a shaggy man clad in gilded ringmail and a fox-fur cloak. “So gaunt, and all in white! And bearded too!”

“This? Mere stubble, against that mane of yours, coz.” Ser Daven’s bristling beard and bushy mustache grew into sidewhiskers as thick as a hedgerow, and those into the tangled yellow thicket atop his head, matted down by the helm he was removing. Somewhere in the midst of all that hair lurked a pug nose and a pair of lively hazel eyes. “Did some outlaw steal your razor?”

“I vowed I would not let my hair be cut until my father was avenged.” For a man who looked so leonine, Daven Lannister sounded oddly sheepish. “The Young Wolf got to Karstark first, though. Robbed me of my vengeance.” He handed his helm to a squire and pushed his fingers through his hair where the weight of the steel had crushed it down. “I like a bit of hair. The nights grow colder, and a little foliage helps to keep your face warm. Aye, and Aunt Genna always said I had a brick for a chin.” He clasped Jaime by the arms. “We feared for you after the Whispering Wood. Heard Stark’s direwolf tore out your throat.”

“Did you weep bitter tears for me, coz?”

“Half of Lannisport was mourning. The female half.” Ser Daven’s gaze went to Jaime’s stump. “So it’s true. The bastards took your sword hand.”

“I have a new one, made of gold. There’s much to be said for being one-handed. I drink less wine for fear of spilling and am seldom inclined to scratch my arse at court.”

“Aye, there’s that. Maybe I should have mine off as well.” His cousin laughed. “Was it Catelyn Stark who took it?”