20. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 561-586

Jaime

Bryden Tully comes out to meet Jaime for the parley, but it is clear from the beginning -- when the Blackfish addresses Jaime as "Kingslayer" -- that it is not going to go well. He also forces Jaime to admit that he has not fulfilled his promise to Catelyn: to return Sansa and Arya. And when Jaime promises to return Edmure in exchange for Lady Sybelle Westerling and her three children, Tully uses it again: "As you returned Lady Catelyn's daughters?" In short, the Blackfish is determined not to trust anything Jaime says.

Finally, Jaime proposes they settle their differences by single combat, each of them to name a champion. But the Blackfish throws that in his face as well: "Why not you against me, ser?" Jaime knows that he is disadvantaged by his lack of a sword hand, but he has another reason to advance for not fighting Ser Brynden: His oath to Catelyn not to take up arms against Starks or Tullys. But he bluffs his way through by saying that if the Blackfish will free him from that pledge, he will fight him. "If I win, Riverrun is ours. If you slay me, we'll lift the siege."

But Tully will not take him up on the offer, and ends the matter by saying there are no terms under which he will surrender the castle. He came to parley only because "A siege is deadly dull. I wanted to see this stump of yours and hear whatever excuses you cared to offer up for your latest enormities. They were feebler than I hoped." And he turns and rides back into the castle, leaving Jaime to seethe.

Back at camp, he summons a war council. But it quickly degenerates into squabbling among various factions of the Frey family and others, and Jaime has to silence them. He announces, "We attack at first light." Then he decides to visit the gallows where Edmure Tully stands with a noose around his neck. He takes Ilyn Payne with him, and when he reaches the platform on which Edmure is standing, Edmure says, "Better a sword than a rope. Do it, Payne." Jaime responds by telling Payne, "You heard Lord Tully. Do it."

Shouting "No! Stop!" Edwyn Frey appears, followed by his father, Ser Ryman, by whose orders Edmure had been posted on the gallows. Ryman is accompanied by "a straw-haired slattern as drunk as he was." When Ryman protests, Jaime backhands him with his golden hand and threatens to have Ser Ilyn take off his head. He dismisses Ryman and replaces him with Edwyn, then takes Edmure with him: Ser Ilyn had cut the rope in two, and Edmure had collapsed on the scaffold.

As he returns to the camp with Edmure, Jaime sees a singer and has him follow. Edmure asks Jaime why he had him cut down, and Jaime says, "Consider it a wedding gift." When they reach Jaime's pavilion he has a bath prepared for Edmure, along with wine and some food. "Once you've eaten, my men will escort you to Riverrun. What happens after that is up to you.

"Yield the castle and no one dies. Your smallfolk may go in peace or stay to serve Lord Emmon. Ser Brynden will be allowed to take the black, along with as many of the garrison as choose to join him. You as well, if the Wall appeals to you. Or you may go to Casterly Rock as my captive and enjoy all the comforts and courtesy that befits a hostage of your rank. I'll send your wife to join you, if you like. If her child is a boy, he will serve House Lannister as a page and a squire, and when he earns his knighthood we'll bestow some lands upon him. Should Roslin give you a daughter, I'll see her well dowered when she's old enough to wed. You yourself may even be granted parole, once the war is done. All you need do is yield the castle."

Otherwise, he tells Edmure, the castle will be razed and the people in it butchered. And when his child is born, Jaime says, he'll send him to Edmure. "With a trebuchet." Then he says he will leave Edmure to eat while the singer plays "The Rains of Castamere." Edmure suddenly recognizes the singer from the Red Wedding: "No. Not him. Get him away from me."

"'Why, it's just a song,' said Jaime. 'He cannot have that bad a voice.'"

Cersei

Lord Gyles Rosby has died, and Cersei is blaming his death on Grand Maester Pycelle. And on Margaery: "Tell me," she says to Pycelle, "was it our little queen who commanded you to kill Lord Gyles?" Pycelle is astonished and terrified at Cersei's accusations. And finally she bullies him into a confession: Margaery has ordered "moon tea," an abortifacient, from him. She also forces him into lying that Lord Gyles's dying wish was "to leave all his lands and wealth to Tommen." Pycelle protests that Gyles had a ward, but Cersei dismisses that as inconsequential and sends Pycelle scurrying.

The moon tea is all the evidence Cersei needs: "My son has been betrayed. Margaery has a lover. That is high treason, punishable by death." Ser Osmund Kettleblack proposes to take off her head, since Ser Ilyn is away with Jaime, but Taena Merryweather points out that the Tyrells have armies who might not take kindly to summary execution. And Cersei knows that she still needs Mace Tyrell's support in her campaign against Stannis. So she needs a more substantial proof of Margaery's infidelity.

So she has Lady Taena tell her husband, Lord Orton Merryweather, to join her at dinner, "And of course we must have some music, to help with our digestion." Taena knows what Cersei means, and leaves Cersei to plot with Ser Osmund and with Qyburn. At dinner, she tells Orton Merryweather that she plans to put Ser Harys in Gyles's position as treasurer, and to promote him to Hand. And then she turns to the singer Taena has provided, the Blue Bard, and tells him he deserves a reward for his singing.

She asks to see his lute, plucks a string, and then asks him, "the first time you took Margaery to bed, was that before she wed my son, or after?" Astonished, he protests that he has never slept with Margaery, but Cersei screams, "Liar!" and smashes the lute in his face. Then she orders Lord Orton to take the Blue Bard to the dungeon. There she watches as Qyburn interrogates the singer, who persists in denying any sort of affair with Margaery. When Qyburn takes a razor and cuts off one of the Blue Bard's nipples, she feels ill, "But she was the queen and this was treason. Lord Tywin would not have turned away."

By dawn the singer's high blue boots were full of blood, and he had told them how Margaery would fondle herself as she watched her cousins pleasuring him with their mouths. At other times he would sing for her whilst she sated her lusts with other lovers. "Who were they?" the queen demanded, and the wretched Wat named Ser Tallad the Tall, Lambert Turnberry, Jalabar Xho, the Redwyne twins, Osney Kettleblack, Hugh Clifton, and the Knight of Flowers. That displeased her. She dare not besmirch the name of the hero of Dragonstone. Besides, no one who knew Ser Loras would ever believe it.

So she persuades him to recant on Ser Loras and the Redwynes, whose fleet of ships she needs. She tells the singer he can take the black, and has Qyburn tend to his wounds.

Congratulating herself that she has thwarted the prophecy of Maggy the Frog, she returns to her rooms and to Taena Merryweather, deciding that she'll let her spy have sex with her as a way of keeping her loyalty. As they are sharing a bath, she refines her plot, deciding to spare one of Margaery's cousins in return for her testimony against Margaery, and to spare Tommen from losing all of his friends at once.

But when she goes to bed she dreams that she is the one being tortured in the black cells, and that the torturer is Tyrion. She wakes Taena and tells her about the dream. Taena asks, "Was it the dwarf again? Why does he frighten you so, this silly little man?" Cersei tells her about Maggy the Frog's prophecy, and her belief that Tyrion is the valonqar who will kill her. "Do you use that word in Myr?" she asks Taena. "It's High Valyrian, it means little brother." Taena tries to persuade Cersei that Maggy the Frog was just an ugly old woman who was jealous of her youth and beauty.

She feels better after breakfasting with Tommen, who tells her that Margaery is fasting and purifying herself for Maiden's Day. And this reminds her that only virgins can participate in the rituals of the day. After breakfast she sends for Osney Kettleblack and tells him he has to confess his treason. He protests that Margaery only teases and never lets him do anything, but she tells him "you must take yourself to the Great Sept of Baelor this very night and speak with the High Septon.... Tell him how you bedded Margaery and her cousins," Megga and Elinor, but not Alla.

Osney is confused, and worries, "I never lied to no High Septon before. I think you go to some hell for that. One o' the bad ones." But she has her own way of sealing the deal, and he tells her, "You can keep the crown on. I like you in the crown."

9. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 226-254

Jaime

Lord Tywin's body is leaving King's Landing with a splendid honor guard, and Jaime rides out to say farewell to his uncle. But Kevan observes that Cersei has not done likewise. Any rift between them is her doing, he tells Jaime. Kevan is off to see his son Lancel married at Darry, and Jaime is reminded once again of Tyrion's claim: "...fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know." Kevan is in no mood to be nice to his nephew, and when Jaime brings up the spurned offer to be Tommen's Hand, he replies, "Your sister knows my terms. They have not changed. Tell her that, the next time you are in her bedchamber." He rides off.

Jaime is stung by his awareness that Kevan knows about his incest with Cersei, though he had hoped she had been mistaken about that. He worries that Cersei may try to kill Kevan: "When sons were killing fathers, what was there to stop a niece from ordering an uncle slain? An inconvenient uncle, who knows too much." As Lancel passes by, he congratulates him on his coming marriage, and makes a bawdy joke, which gets only a pious reply from Lancel and a disapproving look from the septon accompanying him. Jaime decides, "The Imp was lying. Cersei would sooner have Robert's corpse between her legs than a pious fool like Lancel."

With the Tyrell contingent gone, and the Lannister forces waiting for ships to take them to attack Dragonstone, the city seems empty. He goes to Cersei's solar, where she is with Tommen, Lady Merryweather, and Grand Maester Pycelle. He observes that Cersei is, as usual, drinking. Pycelle has received news from Lady Tanda that Lollys has given birth to a son and named him Tyrion. Cersei blames it on Lollys's husband, Bronn, who is no doubt "smirking at his little insolence."

Jaime asks if he may speak with his sister privately, and the others leave. He comments on her friendship with Lady Merryweather, and Cersei says she "may be a serpent, but she is far from stupid. She knows I can do more for her than Margaery, so she makes herself useful to me." He tells her that Kevan mentioned her absence from his departure, and she expresses contempt for her uncle. When he asks about the position of Hand, she suggests that she might give it to Lord Merryweather, which surprises him: "Is this about pleasing some Myrish whore? Here I thought it was about governing the realm."

She replies that she governs the realm, and he thinks,

Seven save us all, you do. His sister liked to think of herself as Lord Tywin with teats, but she was wrong. Their father had been as relentless and implacable as a glacier, where Cersei was all wildfire, especially when thwarted. She had been giddy as a maiden when she learned that Stannis had abandoned Dragonstone, certain that he had finally given up the fight and sailed away to exile. When word came down from the north that he had turned up again at the Wall, her fury had been fearful to behold. She does not lack for wits, but she has no judgment, and no patience.

He says he has heard that she plans to make Aurane Waters master of ships, and objects that he is too young. She says Tommen needs "some young men about him in place of all these wrinkled greybeards. Aurane is strong and vigorous." Once again, Jaime remembers Tyrion's taunt about Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy. He suggests Paxter Redwyne instead, but Cersei objects to him as one of Tyrell's bannermen. Then he criticizes her dependence on Qyburn: "gods be good, Cersei, he rode with Vargo Hoat. The Citadel stripped him of his chain!" But she says Qyburn is "useful" and "loyal, which is more than I can say of mine own kin."

He begs her to come to her senses and to realize that neither he nor Kevan is her enemy. "The crows will feast upon us all if you go on this way, sweet sister," he thinks. But she orders him out. "I am sick of looking at that ugly stump of yours," she says, and throws her wine cup at him.

Later, in the common room of the tower of the Kingsguard, he is reading in the White Book when Ser Loras enters and observes, "Lord Renly always said that books were for maesters." Jaime defends book-learning, and suggests that Loras should be more familiar with the history of some of the Kingsguard, such is "Criston Cole, who served the first Viserys and the second Aegon.... They called him Kingmaker."

Cersei

She receives three ugly, unwashed, ragged men, who claim to have Tyrion's head. But when they produce the rotting item from a sack it has a nose, she observes, "A rather bulbous one." (Like the dwarf Brienne met in Duskendale.) She sends them away. "This was the third head that had been delivered to her. At least this one was a dwarf. The last had simply been an ugly child."

She has dreamed again of Maggy the Frog, the prophet she had gone to in Lannisport when she was a girl, and she is in a foul mood. She leaves for her council on Qyburn's arm and asks him if he has finished preparing the head to send to Prince Doran. He tells her it has taken a long time for the beetles to clean the flesh off the skull, and that he has prepared a box of ebony and silver lined with felt for the presentation. Outside the bells are ringing for the death of the High Septon, the one she suspected of being in league with Tyrion. Qyburn assures her that the bells will stop at sunset, and she thinks again of how Varys had been thought irreplaceable. "It was teh silver all along, not the Spider. Qyburn will serve us just as well."

She enters the council chamber and introduces him as Lord Qyburn, which immediately gets the surprised reaction she wanted from Pycelle, who calls him "unfit." She turns on Pycelle and says, "Do not presume to speak to me of fitness. Not after the stinking mockery you made of my lord father's corpse." Qyburn takes his seat at the table between Orton Merryweather, Cersei's new justiciar, and Gyles Rosby, the treasurer. Aurane Waters is the new grand admiral, and Ser Harys Swyft the Hand. They have all been chosen for their loyalty to her. Swyft's daughter is married to Cersei's uncle. "So long as she had Ser Harys in hand, Kevan Lannister must needs think twice about opposing her."

The king is not there: "His Grace is still too young to comprehend affairs of state," she explains. And "Ser Jaime is at his armorer's being fitted for a hand. I know we were all tired of that ugly stump." She calls for some wine, and asks for a report on events in Dorne. Pycelle informs them that Prince Doran has imprisoned the Sand Snakes, and that he is still awaiting Gregor Clegane's head. She says she is sending Ser Balon Swann to Sunspear. Ser Harys Swyft hasn't been informed of the Mountain's death, and she says that he "perished of his wounds, just as Grand Maester Pycelle foretold."

She asks Ser Harys what he was talking about when she entered, and he says it was the sparrows, the religious pilgrims who are arriving every day. "Their leaders preach of doom and demon worship." Cersei sips her wine and says, "What would you call this red god that Stannis worships, if not a demon? The Faith should oppose such evil." She had been reminded of that by Qyburn. The talk turns to the successor to the High Septon, which bores Cersei, who is contemplating Aurane Waters's good looks. But she puts an end to the talk about septons by saying that whoever takes the position "must pronounce an anathema upon the Imp."

She turns to Pycelle, who has a declaration from the lords of the Vale about their plans "to remove Littlefinger as Lord Protector of the Vale, forcibly if need be." She observes that Littlefinger doesn't seem at all concerned about it, and tells Pycelle to tell the lords not to harm Littlefinger and that the crown is willing to let them sort it out among themselves. Then they discuss the rebuilding of the fleet, and Merryweather wonders if they could make an alliance with the ironmen. There is brief talk of who will succeed Balon Greyjoy, but no one seems very well informed about that, to Cersei's irritation: "Varys would have known," she thinks.

When they talk about how they can pay for the rebuilding of the fleet, Lord Gyles is seized with a fit of coughing, so Cersei declares that they will defer repaying what they owe the church and the Iron Bank of Braavos until after the war. Pycelle worries about the reaction of the Iron Bank, but she says Braavos is "far across the sea" and "A Lannister pays his debts."

Ser Harys says that Lord Frey has made some demands, and Qyburn notes that there is suspicion that the crown may have had something to do with the Red Wedding. The sparrows, he says,  have called it "an affront to all the laws of gods and men, ... and those who had a hand in it are damned." Cersei says Lord Walder is very old, and that it has nothing to do with them, but Qyburn suggests that "it would also be useful if someone were to by punished for the Red Wedding. A few Frey heads would do much to mollify the north."

Aurane Waters says he has heard that Stannis is hiring ships from across the sea, but Cersei is unperturbed.

"Only a blind man could fail to see our war is all but won. Lord Tyrell has Storm's End invested. Riverrun is besieged by the Freys and my cousin Daven, our new Warden of the West. Lord Redwyne's ships have passed through the Straits of Tarth and are moving swiftly up the coast. Only a few fishing boats remain on Dragonstone to oppose Redwyne's landing. The castle may hold for some time, but once we have the port we can cut the garrison off from the sea. Then only Stannis himself will remain to vex us." 

Pycelle observes that Janos Slynt has reported that Stannis "is trying to make common cause with the wildlings," but no one thinks that an alliance with what Merryweather calls "Savages in skins" is much of a threat. Cersei thinks, "One day she must light a candle to the Stranger for carrying Renly off and leaving Stannis."

The subject of Sansa Stark comes up, but Cersei's anger puts an end to discussion. She notes that the faux Arya Stark is to marry Ramsay Bolton. "Another problem has arisen on the Wall, however. The brothers of the Night's Watch have taken leave of their wits and chosen Ned Stark's bastard to be their Lord Commander." She thinks, "Catelyn Tully was a mouse, or she would have smothered this Jon Snow in his cradle. Instead, she's left the filthy task to me." She proclaims Jon a traitor for giving "lands and castles" to Stannis. "The bastard boy has written us to avow that the Night's Watch takes no side, but his actions give the lie to his words. He has given Stannis food and shelter, yet has the insolence to plead with us for arms and men." A general outrage is expressed by all, but Qyburn has an idea: Send a hundred men to the Wall, all pledged to remove Jon Snow as Lord Commander. Cersei is delighted with the idea.

Finally, Aurane Waters hesitantly brings up the rumor of dragons that sailors from the east have been spreading. Cersei laughs it off and says, "Come back to me when you hear talk of dwarfs, my lord," and calls an end to the meeting.

Back in her chambers, Lady Merryweather and Cersei's maids are laughing over the fact that the Redwyne twins have fallen in love with Lady Margaery. Cersei muses on what might happen if either of them were found in Margaery's bed, and tells the maid Dorcas to fetch Ser Osney Kettleblack. When he arrives, she dismisses the women and begins to seduce him, letting him feel her breasts and giving his erection a squeeze through his breeches. Then she asks, "Tell me true. Do you think our little queen is pretty?" His erection begins to wilt as she unfolds her plot: He will seduce Margaery and get caught. She will lose her head and he will be sent to the Wall. There he will kill Jon Snow, the king will pardon him, and he'll be made a lord. "Bed a girl and kill a boy and I am yours," she says.

When he is gone, she preens herself on her cleverness. "Even Mace Tyrell would not dare defend his darling daughter if she was caught in the act with the likes of Osney Kettleblack, and neither Stannis Baratheon nor Jon Snow would have cause to wonder why Osney was being sent to the Wall." That night she sends for Taena Merryweather and involves her in the plot, having her tell Margaery that she has a secret admirer. Then she goes to sleep and dreams that the head the men had brought her had been Tyrion's. "She had it bronzed, and kept it in her chamber pot."