19. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 529-560

Cersei

Sweet Cersei has returned from Dragonstone with the welcome news that Stannis's former citadel has fallen. This means that Cersei can devote the fleet's attention to the Shield Islands and the Mander, where the ironmen have been conducting raids. And word now has it that Euron's forces are preparing to attack Oldtown.

But the attack on Dragonstone has been costly: A thousand men have fallen, and Ser Loras is seriously wounded. Cersei hides her pleasure at this news and listens as Aurane Waters tells the full story. Then she goes to find Margaery and tells her that her brother is a hero, but first he was wounded in the thigh with an arrow and then some ribs were broken by a blow from a mace. But worst of all, "He was doused with boiling oil." The maesters believe he will not survive.

"Dying is not dead," Margaery replies, and won't listen to Cersei's assurances that the burns are too severe. Cersei retreats to her room, where she prides herself on doing something that her father would have approved of. She will raise a statue to Ser Loras, and everyone will be grateful. "As for his lady mother, if the gods are good this news will kill her." Taena arrives in the morning, after a sunrise that "was the prettiest that Cersei had seen in years," to tell her they had grieved all night but that Margaery still refuses to believe that Loras will die.

Ser Osmund comes a little later to tell her that four men have come to her with news about Tyrion, and one of them has brought a head. She sees the one with the head first, but it isn't Tyrion's, and she has the man hauled off for Qyburn to deal with. Another of the men claims that Tyrion is hiding in a brothel in Oldtown, "pleasuring men with his mouth." The second says he is in "a mummer's show in Braavos," and the third claims he's a hermit in the riverlands. Cersei suggests that each of them lead some of her knights to the dwarf and if it proves true they will be rewarded. "If not ... well, my knights have little patience for deception, nor fools who send them chasing after shadows. A man could lose his tongue." The men suddenly decide "that perhaps it might have been some other dwarf they saw."

She then goes to court, where she deals with various pleas, and meets a delegation from the Faith. She is displeased to see Lancel Lannister among the "pious fools," and that the High Septon has not attended in person. She is also annoyed that the Warrior's Sons have taken in on themselves to "battle wickedness" by preaching and praying against the local brothels.

"These sinners feed the royal coffers," the queen said bluntly, "and their pennies help pay the wages of my gold cloaks and build galleys to defend our shores. There is trade to be considered as well. If King's Landing had no brothels, the ships would go to Duskendale or Gulltown. His High Holiness promised me peace in my streets. Whoring helps to keep that peace. Common men deprived of whores are apt to turn to rape. Henceforth let His High Holiness do his praying in the sept where it belongs." 

Pycelle reports that Gyles Rosby is gravely ill, but Cersei scoffs at the report: "Lord Gyles has had that cough for years, and it never killed him before." She suggests that someone is trying to do him in, perhaps the Tyrells, perhaps Pycelle himself. She huffs, "You will return to Lord Gyles and inform him that he does not have my leave to die."

Finally all the tedious business is done, and she goes to have supper with Tommen, who is upset about Ser Loras's condition. He also says that Margaery says he should go to court and listen, which is the last straw for Cersei. Margaery talks too much, Cersei says. "For half a groat I'd gladly have her tongue torn out." To her surprise, Tommen grows angry and says, "Don't you touch her. I'm the king, not you." Furiously, she hauls Tommen by the ear to the door and tells Ser Boros Blount, who is standing guard, to take Tommen to his bedchamber and bring the whipping boy, Pate, to him. "This time I want Tommen to whip the boy himself. He is to continue until the boy is bleeding from both cheeks. If His Grace refuses, or says one word of protest, summon Qyburn and tell him to remove Pate's tongue, so His Grace can learn the cost of insolence."

When she goes to bed, she thinks about Lady Falyse, whom Qyburn has put in the black cells. She has received word of the death of Lady Tanda and of Lollys's ascension to Lady Stokeworth, with Bronn as her lord. And then she dreams of the visit she and Jeyne Farman and Melara Hetherspoon had made to the sorceress, Maggy the Frog. Jeyne had been so frightened she ran away, and Cersei reflects, "She was the wise one, though." Jeyne was still alive, married, and mother of a dozen children.

The old woman had tasted their blood and said they could each ask three questions. Cersei had asked when she would marry Prince Rhaegar, and Maggy had replied, "Never. You will wed the king." And that she would be queen "until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear." And when she asked if she and the king will have children, Maggy said, "Oh, aye. Six-and-ten for him, and three for you." Their crowns and their shrouds will be gold, "And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white neck and choke the life from you." Cersei didn't know what a valonqar is, and Maggy didn't tell her. But she had heard enough and told Melara to leave with her.

Melara hadn't had her three questions, however, and insisted on asking if she will marry Jaime. But Maggy said she won't marry anyone: "Your death is here tonight, little one." Cersei was eager to get away, so she picked up a potion from a table and threw it in the old woman's eyes. Maggy cursed her, but now in the dream Cersei hears again "The valonqar shall wrap his hands about your throat." And Tyrion's face leers down at her as his fingers dig into her throat. She wakes to find the coverlet wrapped around her neck, and sends her maid, Dorcas, to fetch Pycelle. She asks him for something to help her sleep without dreaming.

She breakfasts with Tommen, and feels better, then sends for Qyburn, whom she asks if Falyse is still alive. "Alive, yes. Perhaps not entirely ... comfortable." She asks if perhaps they should produce her, in an attempt to thwart Bronn, but Qyburn tells her, "I fear that Lady Falyse is no longer capable of ruling Stokeworth. Or, indeed, of feeding herself." He has learned quite a bit from her, however. So Cersei changes the subject. She asks him about her dream and about the sorceress: "The smallfolk used to call her Maggy." Qyburn asks, "Maegi?" and tells her that "Bloodmagic is the darkest kind of sorcery." Melara, whose death the maegi had foretold, "was one-and-ten, healthy as a little horse and safe within the Rock. Yet she soon fell down a well and drowned."

Qyburn asks if she is still grieving for her childhood friend, but Cersei can't even remember what she looked like. What she wants to know is if the prophecy the maegi made about her, about "another queen, who would take from me all I loved," can be prevented. Qyburn says that it can, and when she asks how, says, "I think Your Grace knows how."

And yes, she does. Several ways, in fact. She begins laying her plot by asking Ser Osmund Kettleblack if his brother Osney could defeat Ser Boros Blount in combat. He assures her that Osney could.

Brienne

They are traveling on, and they begin to find corpses hanging from the trees. Ser Hyle Hunt says what they are all thinking: "These are the men who raided Saltpans." But Brienne is more concerned about who had hanged them: "The noose was the preferred method of execution for Beric Dondarrion and his band of outlaws, it was said."

Finally they reach the inn that Septon Meribald knew was along the route, and they hear the sound of a forge. There are children in the inn yard, and Brienne introduces herself, Meribald, Podrick, and Ser Hyle. One of the children runs off to the forge and the hammering stops. A girl on the porch says her name is Willow and asks if they want beds. She tells them her sister Jeyne runs the inn, and they don't have many guests. "It's mostly sparrows on the roads these days, or worse." A boy's voice explains, "Thieves.... Robbers."

Brienne turns and sees the boy who had spoken, and gasps, "My lord?" For a moment she has taken the boy for Renly Baratheon. But he is, of course, Gendry, and she realizes that "Lord Renly's eyes had always been warm and welcoming, full of laughter, whereas this boy's eyes brimmed with anger and suspicion." When Septon Meribald asks if they have rooms for them, he says no, but Willow says yes. "They have food, Gendry. The little ones are hungry." The children, she explains, have just turned up there, sometimes having been brought by sparrows.

She and Podrick share a room. Septon Meribald will be going his own way from there on, Brienne plans to rise early and leave before Ser Hyle awakes. But when Podrick asks where they are going, she doesn't have an answer: East would take them to the Vale of Arryn, west to Riverrun, and north to Winterfell. Or, she thinks, she could just give up the quest, go south to King's Landing, confess her failure to Jaime, and take a ship home to Tarth.

The inn is full of children, and while they are waiting for dinner, Ser Hyle sits down by the fire with Brienne and proposes that they get married. She tells him to get lost. When dinner is served, Septon Meribald says grace, but notices that Gendry doesn't join in the prayer. When Meribald asks if Gendry doesn't love the gods, he says, "Not your gods," and leaves without eating. One little boy says that Gendry's god is the Lord of Light, and Willow hits him with her spoon to shut him up.

Brienne wraps some food in a cloth and takes it out to the forge for Gendry, telling Podrick to stay behind. She watches Gendry at the forge and thinks, "He has Renly's eyes and Renly's hair, but not his build. Lord Renly was more lithe than brawny ... not like his brother Robert, whose strength was fabled." He is sullen when she speaks to him, but she persists. She knows from his speech that he was born in King's Landing, and she says, "You have black hair and blue eyes, and you were born in the shadow of the Red Keep. Has no one ever remarked upon your face? ... In King's Landing you must have seen King Robert."

But before she can pursue her questioning, riders arrive. She counts seven of them, and tells Gendry, "you'll want a sword, and armor. These are not your friends. They're no one's friends." Then they see that the lead rider is wearing a helmet with "an iron snout and rows of steel teeth, snarling." Gendry says, "Him." But she says it isn't the Hound, just his helmet. Willow comes to the porch with a crossbow, but the lead rider threatens her obscenely. So Brienne steps forward with Oathkeeper drawn.

She has recognized her old tormentor, Rorge, and provokes him deliberately: "Shagwell said they cut your manhood off when they took your nose." He charges with his battleaxe, but she is the better fighter, and she cuts him down. "'Sapphires, she whispered at him, as she gave her blade a hard twist that made him shudder." But when she steps back to let him fall, she is attacked by Biter and loses her grip on Oathkeeper. He is on top of her, and she gropes for her dagger. He repeated slams her head into the ground, but she is able to slit his belly. Still, he gets the dagger out of her grip and breaks her forearm as he tries to wrench her head off.

Then he bites her cheek and tears off a mouthful of flesh. "He is eating me, she realized, but she had no strength left to fight him any longer. He opens his mouth again, and then his tongue sticks out at her, dripping blood. "His tongue is a foot long, Brienne thought, just before the darkness took her. Why, it looks almost like a sword."

13. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 344-376

Cersei

King Tommen wants to sit on the Iron Throne, but Cersei is not having any rebelliousness, partly because she suspects that Lady Margaery is putting him up to it. She threatens to send for his whipping boy, Pate, "and have him beaten till he bleeds." He confesses that it was Margaery's suggestion, and Cersei probes until he admits that she suggested he attend council meetings too: "She says I have to learn to be king." She says he would just be bored and fall asleep. "The rule was hers; Cersei did not mean to give it up until Tommen came of age. I waited, so can he. I waited half my life."

This little quarrel puts her in a bad mood until Grand Maester Pycelle arrives with some good news: "Wyman Manderly has done as you commanded, and beheaded Lord Stannis's onion knight." Even then, Cersei is skeptical that Davos has really been killed, but Pycell says that his head and hands have been mounted on the walls of White Harbor and that one of the hands has Davos's shortened fingers.

After an annoying meeting the envoy from Braavos, Noho Dimittis, who is pressing for repayment of the debt and claims that all Lord Gyles does is cough at him, Cersei returns to her apartments to bathe and change for dinner. She is accompanied by Ser Osmund Kettleblack, whom she presses on the matter of his brother Osney's seduction of Lady Margaery. The problem, he tells Cersei, is that Osney and Margaery are never alone together. But when he says that there are often men about her, Cersei thinks she can do something with that and asks what men. Osmund says she likes "singers and jugglers and such," and that Ser Tallad is often there, along with the Redwyne twins and Jalabhar Xho.

As they pass by the ruins of the Tower of the Hand, she sees that across the yard Margaery and her group are cheering a squire who has been jousting with the quintain. Then she realizes that the boy is Tommen. When she reaches him, he is being helped from his horse by Loras Tyrell, who praises Tommen and says he must continue to practice. Cersei's arrival puts a chill on the celebration of Tommen, but she says when he is grown he will be as great a champion as his father.

Margaery asks what tourneys Robert won that Tommen should know about, causing Cersei to flush: She had been thinking about Tommen's real father, Jaime, when she spoke. She says that Robert defeated Prince Rhaegar at the tourney of the Trident and named her "his queen of love and beauty," then hurriedly leaves, asking Osmund to help Tommen with his armor and Ser Loras to accompany her. She berates Loras for putting Tommen at risk and says that any training he receives should be conducted by the master-at-arms -- which, Loras reminds her, they currently don't have. "She did not want Tommen growing close to Loras Tyrell. The Knight of Flowers was no sort of man for any boy to emulate." (Again, Loras's homosexuality is only hinted at.) She says she'll look into the matter of appointing a new master-at-arms, but in the meantime, his job is to protect Tommen. "No more."

Lord Qyburn is waiting for her in her solar. He has various reports for her, including the slave revolt that has spread from Astapor to Meereen, and numerous reports of dragons. She says they must mean harpies -- "'It is harpies in Meereen.' She remembered that from somewhere." And why should she care about slave revolts, since they don't have slaves in Westeros? There is also a report from Dorne that Prince Doran has imprisoned Ser Daemon Sand and that the daughter of the Knight of Spottswood has been betrothed to the elderly Lord Estermont. Both of them were close to Doran's daughter, Arianne, Qyburn says, but again Cersei doesn't know why she should be bothered by this.

Finally, there is another "trifling matter." A puppet show has become popular in King's Landing in which puppet lions ruling a kingdom devour a stag but at the end are devoured by a dragon. "The ending took the puppet show from simple insolence to treason," Cersei realizes, so she orders spies sent to the shows and the names of any "men of note" taken down. They can fine the ones who have money, put out an eye of anyone who doesn't, and cut off the heads of the puppeteers. Qyburn asks if he can imprison a couple of the puppeteers, especially a woman, and she agrees.

She is soaking in her bath when Jaime enters with Tommen. The king insists on being allowed to train and that Ser Loras should be his trainer: "Margaery says that everyone has to do what the king says. I want my white courser saddled on the morrow so Ser Loras can teach me how to joust. I want a kitten too, and I don't want to eat beets." Jaime laughs, but Cersei doesn't. Tommen is afraid when she tells him to come closer, but he does, and she promises him that he will learn to joust, but not from Loras because "knights of the Kingsguard have more important duties than playing with a child." When she calls on Jaime to agree he says, sarcastically, "Riding around the city walls, for an instance." Finally, Tommen gives in when she promises him a kitten.

When he's gone, Jaime asks, "Are you drunk, or merely stupid?" They fight about Ser Loras, and Cersei is incensed that she is getting so much resistance: "No one had ever balked her lord father. When Tywin Lannister spoke, men obeyed. When Cersei spoke, they felt free to counsel her, to contradict her, even refuse her." Finally, she orders him out. She has ordered an expensive new dress because "her wretched washerwomen had shrunk several of her old gowns so they no longer fit," but she took the price of the new gowns out of the washerwomen's wages.

Her guests include Lady Falyse, whose mother, Lady Tanda, has suffered a broken hip in a fall from a horse. Ser Balman Byrch explains that the saddle girth broke, and that the stableboy should have seen that it was worn. He talks about the "sparrows" they encountered on the road, and Cersei observes that the new High Septon will have to deal with them once he's chosen. There had been a leading candidate for the position until the sparrows found him in a brothel.

Ser Balman then brings up the unpleasant subject of the naming of Lollys's son: Tyrion. He assures Cersei that neither he nor Falyse had any role in it. "Lollys is a simple creature, and her husband is given to black humors." Cersei decides to use it to enlist them in her cause, and talks about her fear that the Imp will attack her next, and that Bronn is working on his behalf. "I ... I would sleep more easily of a night if I were to hear that Ser Bronn had suffered a ... a mishap ... whilst hunting, perhaps." Ser Balman gets the message.

Cersei checks in on Tommen after dinner and is surprised to find three black kittens asleep in bed with him. Ser Meryn Trant, on guard, says that Margaery had given them to him, and he had been unable to decide which one to keep. Cersei wishes they weren't black, which is unlucky. And she is reminded of the murder of Rhaegar's daughter, who might have been hers if King Aerys hadn't thwarted Tywin's plan to marry Cersei to Rhaegar. "Next to Rhaegar, even her beautiful Jaime had seemed no more than a callow boy." The day she met Rhaegar was the day she had visited Maggy the Frog. "She had only done it to show Jeyne and Melara that the lioness fears nothing." They had laughed at the old woman's prophecies, but at the end of the tourney Tywin had informed her that Aerys had rejected the idea of betrothing her to Rhaegar.

Brienne


Hyle Hunt decides to take the heads of Shagwell, Pyg, and Timeon with them as they journey back the way they came. But by the time they reach Maidenpool, the stench of the heads has Brienne and Podrick keeping their distance from Hunt, who gives them to a guard and tells him to mount them on the wall above the gate. Randyll Tarly is astonished when he hears that Brienne had killed all three of them, but he sticks to his conviction that she has no business carrying on like a knight: "It's time you took off that mail and donned proper clothes again," he says, telling her to find a ship in the harbor that will take her to Tarth.


Brienne refuses, of course, and insists on continuing her search for Sansa. She suggests seeking out Sandor Clegane, but Tarly scoffs at the idea. Clegane has joined the outlaws, he says, and they have eluded his efforts to track them down and kill them. "We've hanged dozens of outlaws, but the leaders still elude us. Clegane, Dondarrion, the red priest, and now this woman Stoneheart ... how do you propose to find them, when I cannot?" He decides that if he can't stop her, he'll let her try, but when she asks if she and Podrick might stay there for the night he refuses. "No man deserves to be cursed with such as you. Live or die, Lady Brienne, do not return to Maidenpool whilst I rule here."


There are no rooms for them at any of the inns, but Podrick suggests they see if they can find a place to sleep that night on one of the ships in the harbor. They finally find shelter on a galley that has suffered damage in a storm and is waiting until the captain can get enough money together to have her repaired. Brienne spends a restless night dreaming about the men she had killed.


They have agreed to meet Hyle Hunt at the Stinking Goose in the morning, and they breakfast there -- to Hunt's dismay when he arrives: "Gods, I hope you did not eat the food here," he says. He has inquired about Clegane and tells them he was last seen at Saltpans before riding west along the Trident. He hasn't joined the outlaws, but in fact the outlaws are looking for him. Saltpans, he suggests, would be the best place to start looking for the Hound. There is a septon named Meribald who knows the territory intimately and is leaving tomorrow to go in the direction of Saltpans. Hunt says he's going with him. "You and Podrick can go wherever you bloody well like."


Brienne suspects that Lord Randyll has put him up to this, but he tells her he has been dismissed from Tarly's service. He has decided to become a hedge knight, and if he happens to find Sansa Stark, so much the better. Brienne gives in and she and Podrick join up with Hunt and Septon Meribald, "a septon without a sept, only one step up from a begging brother in the hierarchy of the faith." He has a donkey laden with "Food for the poor and hungry of the riverlands," he tells her. He also has a large dog, who is called Dog. Meribald is barefoot, and says he hasn't worn shoes for twenty years; he has "the biggest feet that Brienne had ever seen, bare and black and hard as horn."


They make their way through the marshlands, where Meribald is well-known by the people who live there, and he tells them about how bad the wolves have grown lately. "They say the pack is led by a monstrous she-wolf, a stalking shadow grim and grey and huge." (The reader remembers Nymeria, Arya's direwolf, driven away at the Trident.) He warns them not to go out onto the mudflats by themselves, or the mud may swallow them up. And he tells them of the "broken men" who have gone off to fight in some lord or other's wars and finally are so undone by their experiences that they desert and find themselves living "from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man.... In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them ... but he should pity them as well."


Brienne realizes that Meribald himself had been one of the broken men.

7. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 172-198

Cersei

The wedding of Tommen and Margaery is taking place, and Cersei is in a snit. When Jaime arrives to assure her that every precaution is being taken to prevent poisoning another king, she wants him to make sure that Tommen is safe from his wife's family as well: "I will not have Tommen alone with Margaery, not for so much as half a heartbeat," she tells him. She had not even wanted them to share a bed, but the Tyrells had insisted on it. It was bad luck for a man and wife not to share a bed on their wedding night. So Cersei has been forced to allow it "for that one night" and no more. And she wants someone watching the couple at all times.

Jaime points out that there's no chance the union will be consummated in any case, but Cersei cannot be overruled. He asks her if she also plans to go through with burning down the Tower of the Hand, and she says yes: "It was the only part of the day's festivities that Cersei thought she might enjoy." She is still persuaded that Tyrion or Varys or the missing jailer, or all three, are hiding in it somewhere. The pyromancers have been concocting wildfire to take care of destroying the tower, and Cersei almost hopes it spreads to the rest of the castle: After the war, she plans to build a new palace on the other side of the river, "long leagues from the stinks and noise of King's Landing."

The wedding is to be a smaller affair than the one of Joffrey and Margaery, and the bride is wearing the same dress she wore to that one. Cersei had planned for Tommen to give Margaery the cloak that Joffrey had used at his wedding, the one Tywin had used when he married Cersei's mother, but the Queen of Thorns had pointed out that Tommen was a Baratheon, not a Lannister: "In my day a bride donned her husband's colors, not his lady mother's." So Cersei is forced to have Tommen use the one Robert had given her on their wedding day. She knows that Lady Olenna is aware of the truth about Tommen's parentage.

After the wedding, she speaks to Kevan Lannister, who is taking his son Lancel to Darry castle to marry one of the Freys. They talk about the rumor that Sandor Clegane has joined with Beric Dondarrion's outlaws: "Saltpans had been savagely raided by a band of outlaws, and some of the survivors claimed a roaring brute in a hound's head helm was amongst the raiders. Supposedly he'd killed a dozen men and raped a girl of twelve."

As Jaime escorts her to the wedding feast, she blames him for the fact that the wedding took place so quickly, and proclaims her belief that Margaery is not a virgin. "Renly had a cock, didn't he? He was Robert's brother, he surely had a cock." She complains again about the Queen of Thorns, whom she calls a "disgusting old crone." Jaime tells her that Lady Olenna is leaving tomorrow, but "Cersei did not trust any Tyrell promise." He assures her that half of the Tyrells are going to Storm's End and the other half to the Reach.

There are only seven courses to the feast, and only one singer. "'What a disappointment,' Lady Olenna complained loudly. 'I was hoping for "The Rains of Castamere."'" The Queen of Thorns reminds Cersei of Maggy the Frog, who had once told her fortune: "Queen you shall be, the old woman had promised, ... until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear." Cersei looks at Margaery and thinks, "Only a fool would ever claim she was more beautiful than I. The world was full of fools, however." The death of Joffrey looms over the feast, and once, when Tommen coughs, Cersei leaps up to see about him, only to be assured by Margaery that he'd swallowed some wine the wrong way.

Cersei leaves the feast for a moment, fearing that her tears will show. Thinking she is alone, she lets out a sob, but then she is approached by Lord Orton Merryweather's wife, Taena, a Myrish woman. She tells Cersei that one of the queen's maids is a spy for Margaery. Lady Merryweather is one of Margaery's companions, and Cersei asks why she would reveal this secret. She says that her only loyalty is to her husband and son, and she wants what's best for them. Cersei remembers that Lady Merryweather testified against Tyrion at the trial, and recognizes that she is trying to get in her good graces, so she promises to look into this charge and reward her if it's true, thinking, "And if you've lied to me, I'll have your tongue, and your lord husband's lands and gold as well."

When she returns to the hall, Jaime assures her that he was frightened by Tommen's cough as well, but that all is well. Cersei looks around the room and decides that there is no one there whom she can really trust. "I will need to sweep them all away and surround the king with mine own people." Dancing begins, but she refuses offers from Jaime -- because of his stump -- and with Mace Tyrell and Lancel. She observes "the handsome young Bastard of Driftmark, Aurane Waters," with some interest, however. She sees Tommen talking with Ser Garlan Tyrell and wonders what they have to talk about, and she begins to brood on her suspicions, such as the gold coin from Highgarden that was found under the missing jailer's chamberpot and the allegation that Margaery was spying on her.

Jaime suggests that she has had enough to drink, and she staggers as she rises to her feet to tell everyone to go outside to watch the burning of the Tower of the Hand. As the wildfire consumes the tower, Cersei thinks of all the King's Hands who had served there, including Eddard Stark, Tyrion, and her father. "They are dead and burning, every one, with all their plots and schemes and betrayals. It is my castle and my kingdom."

When the rest of the court retires for the night, Cersei, with Ser Osmund Kettleblack in attendance, stays and watches the fire.

The Soiled Knight

Ser Arys Oakheart is the member of the Kingsguard charged with protecting Princess Myrcella at the Dornish court in Sunspear. Leaving Myrcella playing a game called cyvasse with Prince Trystane, he goes to see Prince Doran, who had imprisoned the Sand Snakes. Doran tells him, "It would gladden my heart if I could assure you that the Sand Snakes were alone in wanting war, but I will not tell you lies, ser. You have heard my smallfolk in the streets, crying out for me to call my spears. Half my lords agree with them, I fear." He tells Arys that he plans to return to the Water Gardens as soon as possible, and to take Myrcella with him. Arys will accompany them, but Doran tells him not to write to King's Landing about this plan.

Arys is wondering about this as he goes to an assignation with Doran's daughter, Princess Arianne. After a bout of passionate lovemaking, however, Arys feels racked with guilt for breaking his vow as a knight of the Kingsguard, and tries to leave. She holds him back, however, and when he worries about what might happen if her father found out, she tells him "Nothing. My father is very good at doing nothing. He calls it thinking." But he insists that he has dishonored himself by his relationship with her: "I will not be remembered as Ser Arys the Unworthy.... I will not soil my cloak."

She says she knows all about white cloaks: Her great-uncle, Prince Lewyn, wore one. Arys says "he was a great knight," and she tells him he, too, had a lover. "My uncle always said that it was the sword in a man's hand that determined his worth, not the one between his legs, ... so spare me all your pious talk of soiled cloaks. It is not our love that has dishonored you, it is the monsters you have served and the brutes you've called your brothers." Ser Arys remembers with sham having to strike Sansa Stark on Joffrey's orders.

He tells her that Tommen isn't Joffrey, and she comments, "Nor is he his sister."

It was true. Tommen was a good-hearted little man who always tried his best, but the last time Ser Arys saw him he had been weeping on the quay. Myrcella never shed a tear, though it was she who was leaving hearth and home to seal an alliance with her maidenhood. The truth was, the princess was braver than her brother, and brighter and more confident as well. Her wits were quicker, her courtesies more polished. Nothing ever daunted her, not even Joffrey. The women are the strong ones, truly. He was thinking not only of Myrcella, but of her mother and his own, of the Queen of thorns, of the Red Viper's pretty, deadly Sand Snakes. And of Princess Arianne Martell, her most of all.

And this is precisely what Arianne wants him to think. She points out that she is heir to her father's house. He says, "Dorne is different. The Seven Kingdoms have never had a ruling queen." She replies that the first King Viserys wanted his daughter to succeed him, but it was the plotting of the Lord Commander of his Kingsguard, Ser Criston Cole, called the Kingmaker, who put an end to it by setting brother against sister and starting the war known as the Dance of the Dragons.

Arianne tells him that Doran wants to take Myrcella to the Water Gardens not to keep her safe, but "To keep her away from those who'd seek to crown her. Prince Oberyn Viper would have placed the crown upon her head himself if he had lived, but my father lacks the courage." Myrcella will be imprisoned at the Water Gardens, with Hotah as the chief guard. She urges Arys to support Myrcella's right to the throne. Tommen will inherit both Storm's End and Casterly Rock. "He will be as great a lord as any in the realm ... but Myrcella by rights should sit the Iron Throne." As for the vows of the Kingsguard, she says, those can be changed, just as Joffrey changed the law that the knights of the Kingsguard serve for life when he dismissed Ser Barristan Selmy and named Sandor Clegane to his guard. Myrcella, Arianne says, "will give us leave to marry if we ask."

He is weakening, and she knows it. She says she is afraid she'll be imprisoned, like the Sand Snakes, for supporting Myrcella's cause. He argues that the Sand Snakes were "speaking treason, fomenting war," but she scoffs, "Loreza is six, Dorea eight. What wars could they foment?" Her father is weak and afraid, she says, and he doesn't want her to be his heir. She says she found a letter from Doran to her brother Quentyn, who is supposedly being fostered by Lord Yronwood, saying that Quentyn "will sit where I sit and rule all Dorne." She claims that Yronwood is actually grooming Quentyn to usurp her rightful place as Doran's heir.

"So your two princesses share a common cause, ser ... and they share as well a knight who claims to love them both, but will not fight for them." Arys is won over, and pledges to fight for her right and first for Myrcella's.

5. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 116-144

Jaime

He has resisted offers from other members of the Kingsguard, such as Loras Tyrell, to stand vigil over his father's bier, though his joints are stiffening and he feels a throbbing where his sword hand should be. "My hand is hungry for a sword. I need to kill someone. Varys, for a start, but first I'd need to find the rock he's hiding under." He had waited for Varys the night of Tyrion's escape, taking the eunuch by surprise in his own chambers and drawing him into the plot to free Tyrion. He now wonders if Tyrion killed Varys, too, and thinks about the maze of tunnels and passages that he had discovered in the castle after his father's death. If Tyrion had killed Varys, "it might be years before his bones were found."

During the search he had found a mosaic of the three-headed dragon, and remembers when he last saw Prince Rhaegar, whom he had begged to let someone beside himself guard the king. Rhaegar had told him that he planned to call a council to deal with the problems caused by the madness of Rhaegar's father, but of course he never returned from the battle. "He was right more than he knew. When the battle was done, there were changes made," changes that resulted from Jaime's killing King Aerys.

He is surprised that he feels no grief standing over his father's corpse, as first the lords and ladies do homage and later the common people. He thinks about how the investigation of the murder had been botched: The turnkeys who had been found asleep were killed, and Ser Boros Blount claimed that Cersei had ordered it, so Ser Osmund and his brothers did the deed. "I told Varys no one was to be harmed in this escape, Jaime thought, but I should have told my brother and my sister." And he remembers what Tyrion had told him about Cersei: "... she's been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know...."

As the stench from the corpse increases, he thinks of the smell of the battlefield where the crows feasted on the slain: "How much can a crown be worth, when a crow can dine upon a king?" He knows the crows are gathering over Baelor's Sept.

Every crow in the Seven Kingdoms should pay homage to you, Father. From Castamere to the Blackwater, you fed them well. That notion pleased Lord Tywin; his smile widened further. Bloody hell, he's grinning like a bridegroom at his bedding.

Jaime laughs outloud at this notion, aware that the smile on Tywin's face is caused by the accelerating decomposition, and at the irony of "standing vigil for a father I helped to slay, sending men forth to capture the brother I helped to free." He thinks of Brienne on her quest for Sansa, and alternates between "Stupid stubborn ugly wench" and praying, "Father, give her strength," uncertain whether the Father he invoked was the deity imaged in the sept or the one lying dead before him.

At midnight the septons and septas enter for their devotionals, and after they have left Cersei enters. She is dripping wet from the rain, and is disguised as "a tavern wench in a heavy roughspun cloak." She reminds him of the time she disguised herself to get past their father's guards so they could meet at an inn. She tells him that Kevan has refused to serve as Hand, and that he had revealed his knowledge of their incest. She also voices her suspicions that the High Septon knows as well, and pleads with him again to become Tommen's Hand, and speaks of him as "our son." He refuses, harshly, and says, "Tommen is no son of mine, no more Joffrey was.... You made them Robert's too." For a moment he wants to take her in his arms, but he resists, even when she pleads. "I was made for a battlefield, not a council chamber. And now it may be that I am unfit even for that." She leaves, angrily.

When dawn comes and the light shines in on the corpse, it is "rotting visibly. His face had taken on a greenish tinge, and his eyes were deeply sunken, two black pits. Fissures had opened in his cheeks, and a foul white fluid was seeping through the joints of his splendid gold-and-crimson armor to pool beneath his body." One of the septons faints during the morning devotions, and the addition of incense creates "a sweet rotten smell that made Jaime want to gag."

When the nobility arrives that morning, Cersei and Tommen are accompanied by Ser Osmund Kettleblack, and Jaime remembers Tyrion's mocking accusation that she had been fucking him. Having seen Ser Osmund naked in the baths, Jaime is revolted by the image that comes to mind and assures himself, "She would not do that. The Imp lied." She and Tommen climb the steps to kneel before the bier, but Tommen is horror-stricken.

"Pray," she whispered, and Tommen tried. But he was only eight and Lord Tywin was a horror. One desperate breath of air, then the king began to sob. "Stop that!" Cersei said. Tommen turned his head and doubled over, retching. His crown fell off and rolled across the marble floor. His mother pulled back in disgust, and all at once the king was running for the doors, as fast as his eight-year-old legs could carry him.

Jaime calls for Ser Osmund to relieve him and goes after Tommen, whom he takes outside "where the air was as fresh and clean as King's Landing ever got." He consoles the boy, who asks Jaime how he could bear the smell. Jaime recalls having his own rotting hand hanging around his neck, and tells him, "A man can bear most anything, if he must." He had smelled a man being roasted alive by King Aerys. "The world is full of horrors, Tommen. You can fight them, or laugh at them, or look without seeing ... go away inside."

Tommen knows what he means: "I ... I used to go away inside sometimes ... when Joffy...." But he doesn't get a chance to name what his brother had inflicted on him, because Cersei appears behind them and corrects the name to Joffrey and chides Tommen for shaming her. She continues to scold him until Jaime says, "Cersei, enough." She retorts that he was supposed to stand vigil for seven days and seven nights until the wake was over, but he says it's over: "Go look at him." Their argument is interrupted by the arrival of Mace Tyrell, who expresses concern about Tommen and asks if he can do anything. Jaime suggests that he take supper with Cersei and discuss it.

When he leaves, Cersei rounds on Jaime and asks, "why am I having supper with that grasping fool and his puerile wife?" She is not going to name him Hand, if that's what Jaime wants. It isn't: Jaime wants her to ask him to take Storm's End. "Either he will deliver Storm's End to you, or he will muck it up and look like a fool. Either way, you win." Cersei considers the idea, but says that Tyrell plans to stay until the marriage of Tommen and Margaery. So let the marriage take place right away, Jaime says, "and send him off to play at war."

"Why, our Lord of Highgarden might even lose his life in such a venture," Cersei says with a smile. And Jaime replies, "Especially if his patience runs thin this time, and he elects to storm the gate." To which Cersei observes, "for a moment you sounded quite like Father."

Brienne

She has reached Duskendale, but the gates are shut, and she has to stay outside with farmers and other people who are waiting for them to open. She is halted at the gate by the captain of the guards, who wants to know her business in the town, and she says she is there to see the Lord of Duskendale or his maester. The captain notices the emblem on her shield, and she explains that the arms aren't hers. As it happens, he says, his sister paints arms on shields, and tells Brienne where to find her.

Brienne takes his advice and goes directly to the captain's sister, who tells her she can have the work done by the next morning. So she takes a room in the inn nearby and bathes, remembering how Jaime had gotten into the tub with her at Harrenhal. She tries to think of Renly instead, but can't remember his face. Then she goes to the castle, but finds that the lord is away, so she speaks with the castellan, Ser Rufus Leek. She presents the letter with Tommen's signature that Jaime had given her, but Ser Rufus can't read, so he sends her to the maester.

He tells her that he's been deluged with requests for information about Dontos Hollard, but he can only retell the history of the destruction of House Hollard, of which Dontos was the last. So she has run up on another dead end. Pondering her options, Brienne decides that the best would be to try the Eyrie, because "Lady Lysa would surely welcome her sister's daughter." But as she is thinking, she takes a wrong turn, and backtracking she collides with "a scrawny lad with straight, thin hair and a sty beneath one eye." He looks "vaguely familiar" to her, but when she asks if they know each other, he turns and runs away.

She returns to the inn, where the common room has become crowded. But someone behind her offers his seat, and when she turns around she sees that he's a dwarf with a "veined and bulbous" nose and "dressed in the brown roughspun robes of a holy brother." She tells him she had met other brothers on the road, and he says there are hundreds of them heading for King's Landing. He asks for her story and she says she's looking for her sister, who may be traveling with a knight or perhaps a fool. He remembers seeing a fool at Maidenpool. "He had a furtive air to him," the dwarf says, and he saw him once again at the Stinking Goose, where he "was seeking passage for three across the narrow sea."

She wonders why Ser Dontos would seek passage for three instead of just two; perhaps the third was Tyrion? Then later "some of Lord Tarly's soldiers visited the Goose looking for him, and a few days later I heard another man boasting that he'd fooled a fool and had the gold to prove it." The man's name was Nimble Dick, the dwarf recalls. Brienne tries to decide if this fool could have been Ser Dontos, and whether she should go "To Maidenpool, to look for a man named Nimble Dick in a place called the Stinking Goose?" She could take a ship that would take her north from Maidenpool if the contact with Nimble Dick doesn't pan out.

She listens to the talk at the other tables about the death of Lord Tywin and the "vile little dwarf" who killed him. There is talk about who will rule until Tommen comes of age, and someone suggests the Kingslayer, but the innkeep spits in the fire and calls Jaime an "oathbreaker," so Brienne decides she's heard enough. She goes to her room where she dreams of Renly's death again, except that when she looks "the dying king was not Renly after all but Jaime Lannister, and she had failed him."

In the morning the captain's sister brings her the freshly painted shield, which is so beautifully done that Brienne pays her half again what they had agreed upon. And she sets off, traveling north toward Maidenpool. She finds a marker at the burial site of the northern troops who had been killed in a battle with Lord Randyll Tarly, and says a prayer for them and for Catelyn and Robb. She is reminded of the night when Catelyn had been told that Bran and Rickon were dead, and how Catelyn talked about brushing Sansa's hair. Brienne vows again to find Sansa.

It begins to rain, and she takes shelter in the ruins of what she realizes is a Hollard castle, where Ser Dontos might have been born. She is looking for wood to make a fire when she hears the sound of a rider. It turns out to be the boy she bumped into in Duskendale. He rides past the castle. "He is stalking me, she realized, but that's a game that two can play." She follows him, with the rain muffling the sound of her horse, sneaks up behind him, and gives his piebald horse a smack on the rump with the flat of her sword.

The horse throws the boy, and she stands over him and demands to know who he is. His mouth is full of dirt from the fall, but finally he stammers out his name: Podrick Payne. She asks if he is spying on her for Varys or the queen, but he explains that he is Tyrion's squire, and he's looking for Sansa. "His face twisted in sudden anguish. 'I'm his squire,' he repeated, as the rain ran down his face, 'but he left me.'"  





 

4. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 87-115

Arya

She is aboard the Titan's Daughter, heading for Braavos, which the captain's son tells her is home.

But that was stupid. Her home was gone, her parents dead, and all her brothers slain but Jon Snow on the Wall. That was where she had wanted to go. She told the captain as much, but even the iron coin did not sway him. Arya never seemed to find the places she set out to reach. Yoren had sworn to deliver her to Winterfell, only she had ended up in Harrenhal and Yoren in his grave. When she escaped Harrenhal for Riverrun, Lem and Anguy and Tom o' Sevens took her captive and dragged her to the hollow hill instead. Then the Hound had stolen her and dragged her to the Twins. Arya had left him dying by the river and gone ahead to Saltpans, hoping to take passage for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, only....

Only now she was going to Braavos, which might not be so bad, she guesses, since Syrio Forel and Jaqen H'ghar had been from Braavos.

She has a new name: Salty, because she had come aboard at Saltpans. And now they are approaching the colossus, the Titan of Braavos, which she had heard about in Old Nan's stories, except in them it was a living giant, and in fact it's only a statue. The thought of Old Nan reminds her of Winterfell, but she puts it out of mind: "All men must die," she tells herself, remembering the Braavosi phrase Valar morghulis, which had gained her passage on the ship. She has learned a few more Braavosi words and phrases on the ship, some of them from Denyo, the captain's youngest son.

She asks Denyo if the Titan is the god of Braavos, and he tells her, "All gods are honored in Braavos," where there are temples of various religions. But for Arya, none of the gods have any meaning, since they didn't protect her family from harm. In her mind she recites once again the list of people she wants dead, but there are only six left, now that Joffrey and Polliver and the Tickler are dead, and she had left the Hound dying without giving him the coup de grâce he had asked for.

As they get closer to Braavos, the gigantic statue bestriding the entrance to the harbor becomes visible. Suddenly it gives out "a mighty roar," startling Arya. The ship sails between its legs and she looks up to see faces peering out of the murder holes above it. They pass by what Denyo tells her is "The Arsenal of Braavos," which is "bristling with scorpions, spitfires, and trebuchets," and pass countless ships and docks and quays. She is surprised that the city has no walls, but Denyo tells her, "Our galleys are our walls. We need no other."

The captain, Ternesio Terys, appears and tells her that a boat will take her ashore. She had wanted to stay with the ship, but he has no need for her on the crew. So she finds herself in a boat gliding among the many islands that compose the city, along canals crossed by bridges. "They have no trees, she realized. Braavos is all stone, a grey city in a green sea." In the distance she sees "a massive  grey stone roadway of some kind, supported by three tiers of mighty arches marching away south into the haze." The boatman, Yorko Terys, explains that it is an aqueduct that "brings fresh water from the mainland."

They pass by a variety of temples, including one to R'hllor, with whom Arya is familiar from her encounter with Thoros of Myr.  Finally Yorko deposits at a dock with steps leading to a temple with a black tile roof. Bidding her "Valar dohaeris," he rows away. She tells herself, "I am a wolf, and will not be afraid," pats the hilt of Needle, and takes the steps two at a time to the doors at the top. The left-hand door is pale weirwood that reminds her of the heart tree at Winterfell. The right-hand door is ebony, and in the center of each is a carved moon face. She tries to open them, but they don't budge, then pounds on them. Finally she takes out the iron coin and says "Valar morghulis," and the doors open.

When the doors close behind her, it takes a while for her eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. She hears whispering and weeping and other sounds, including water. Statues of all sorts of gods surround her. When she reaches the center of the temple she finds a pool of water ten feet across, and a young man weeping by it. He dips his fingers in the water and sucks them. She decides he must be thirsty, so she takes a stone cup, dips it in the pool, and gives it to him. He says, "Valar morghulis" and she replies, "Valar dohaeris." Then he drinks from the cup and stands up, revealing a blood stain below his belt. "You're stabbed," she says, but he doesn't answer. He goes to an alcove in the wall, and she realizes that there are people in other alcoves who are dead or dying.

She startles when someone touches her, then realizes it's a small girl with hollow cheeks, who speaks to her in a language she doesn't recognize. Arya asks if she knows the Common Tongue and a voice behind her says, "I do." It is a tall man in a hooded robe like the one the little girl is wearing: the right side is black and the left side is white. He tells her she is in the House of Black and White. She says she is looking for Jaqen H'ghar, but he doesn't know the name. Then he asks for hers. When she says "Salty," he says, "No.... Tell me your name." She tries Squab, and Nan, and Weasel, and Arry, but he knows they aren't her real name. Finally she says, "I am Arya, of House Stark."

He accepts that as her real name, and says, "the House of Black and White is no place for Arya, of House Stark." She has no place to go, she says. "Do you fear death?" he asks, and when she says no, he lowers his cowl. "Beneath he had no face; only a yellowed skull with a few scraps of skin still clinging to the cheeks, and a white worm wriggling from one empty eye socket." He croaks, "Kiss me, child."

Arya decides not to be frightened, so she kisses him where his nose would be, then takes the worm and starts to eat it. It fades away before she can put it in her mouth. "The yellow skull was melting too, and the kindliest old man that she had ever seen was smiling down at her." He says no one has ever tried to eat the worm before and asks if she is hungry.

"Yes, she thought, but not for food."

Cersei

She and Tommen are on their way to Tywin's funeral. She is fussing at him for wanting to ride his horse and throw pennies to people, for opening the curtains to the litter, for not sitting up straight, and then getting annoyed because he is so obedient: "A king had to be strong. Joffrey would have argued." He observes that there aren't many people in the street, and she blames it on the rain though she knows that there was no love for Tywin Lannister in the city.

There aren't many mourners at the Great Sept of Baelor, either. The morning service is for the aristocracy, and Cersei knows she will have to return for the evening service for the common people, "so that the smallfolk might see her mourn. The mob must have its show. It was a nuisance. She had offices to fill, a war to win, a realm to rule. Her father would have understood that."

The elderly High Septon meets them, wearing the crystal-and-gold crown that Tywin had given him to replace the one that was lost when the mob tore the previous High Septon to pieces on the day Myrcella sailed for Dorne. Cersei realizes to her annoyance that this High Septon had been appointed by Tyrion. She examines his expression to try to discover what Tyrion might have told him about her.

At least I will not be expected to don mourning for Tyrion. I shall dress in crimson silk and cloth-of-gold for that, and wear rubies in my hair. The man who brought her the dwarf's head would be raised to lordship, she had proclaimed, no matter how mean or low his birth or station. Ravens were carrying her promise to every part of the Seven Kingdoms, and soon enough word would cross the narrow sea to the Nine Free Cities and the lands beyond. Let the Imp run to the ends of the earth, he will not escape me. 

Jaime is standing vigil at the head of Lord Tywin's bier. She leads Tommen up to kneel by the body, telling him, "Weep quietly.... You are a king, not a squalling child. Your lords are watching you." The body is dressed in splendid armor, but Cersei is bothered by the expression on her father's face: "The corners of her father's lips curved upward ever so slightly, giving him a look of vague bemusement." She blames Pycelle for the preparation of the corpse. "He had been a great man," she thinks. "I shall be greater, though. A thousand years from now, when the maesters write about this time, you shall be remembered only as Queen Cersei's sire."

Tommen interrupts her thoughts by asking her, "What smells so bad?" She thinks, "My lord father," but she says, "Death." Tommen begins to fidget and her knees begin to ache as the service goes on. She sees her Uncle Kevan kneeling with his son Lancel beside him, and thinks Lancel looks worse than her father does. Lord Gyles is coughing and covering his nose with a red silk handkerchief, and she realizes that he can smell it, too. Pycelle's eyes are closed, and she vows to have him whipped if he has fallen asleep. She sees Margaery Tyrell, Tommen's future wife, and notices how much like her brother, the Knight of Flowers, she looks. She wonders "if they had other things in common," and reflects on how many ladies she has in attendance on her. This is yet another glance at Loras Tyrell's homosexuality, but also a segue into Cersei's wondering which of Margaery's attendants she can recruit to spy on her.

By the time the service ends the smell has grown stronger, and she thinks she hears someone say "privy," but can't locate the offender. Lady Falyse approaches her outside and says that her sister Lollys has gone into labor and that her mother wants to name the child, if it's a boy, Tywin. Cersei is furious at the idea: "Your lackwit sister gets herself raped by half of King's Landing, and Tanda thinks to honor the bastard with my lord father's name? I think not." Falyse looks like she has been slapped.

Then she encounters the aged-looking Lancel, and comments on his coming marriage to one of the Freys, but he is unhappy. "It is cruel, Cersei. Your Grace knows that I love--." She cuts him off and finishes the sentence, "--House Lannister." Lancel goes on about how the High Septon had helped him when he was ill, and how he said Lancel was spared "for some holy purpose, so I might atone for my sins." Cersei wonders, "What has this mewling fool told the High Septon? And what will he tell his little Frey when they lie together in the dark?" She regrets having slept with Lancel, but not so much that he will talk about it -- she could always denounce it as a lie, "the braggadocio of a callow boy smitten by her beauty" -- as that he'll talk about having gotten Robert Baratheon drunk on drugged wine before the hunt in which he was killed.

She gets some good news from Lady Merryweather, who is from Myr, and tells her that she has written to her friends in the Free Cities, telling them so seize Tyrion if he should appear there. Cersei is intrigued by the beautiful and voluptuous woman. "This one is ambitious, and her lord is proud but poor." She calls her by her first name, Taena, and says, "I know that we shall be great friends." But they are interrupted by Mace Tyrell, who says, "We shall never see his like again." Cersei thinks, "You are looking at his like, fool." And then he tells her that Tywin had promised the office of master of coin to his uncle Garth, and that he's on his way to take up the position. She puts a stop to this quickly, telling him, "I have asked Lord Gyles Rosby to serve as our new master of coin, and he has done me the honor of accepting." Tyrell is taken aback, and sputters that "your lord father assured me...." But his mother, Lady Olenna, the Queen of Thorns," intervenes:

"It would seem that Lord Tywin did not share his plans with our regent, I can't imagine why. Still, there 'tis, no use hectoring Her Grace. She is quite right, you must write Lord Leyton before Garth boards a ship. You know the sea will sicken him and make his farting worse." Lady Olenna gave Cersei a toothless smile. "Your council chambers will smell sweeter with Lord Gyles, though I daresay that coughing would drive me to distraction. We all adore dear old uncle Garth, but the man is flatulent, that cannot be gainsaid. I do abhor foul smells." Her wrinkled face wrinkled up even more. "I caught a whiff of something unpleasant in the holy sept, in truth. Maybe you smelled it too?" 

Cersei lies and says she didn't, and vows to get rid of Lady Olenna as soon as possible. She retrieves Tommen and asks Lord Gyles to share the litter with them. When she offers him the job of master of coin that he has supposedly already accepted, "he began coughing so violently that she feared he might die right then and there." After he accepts, she tells him, "should the question arise, you joined the council yesterday." He coughs "into a square of red silk, as if to hide the blood in his spittle. Cersei pretended not to notice." She can get someone else when he dies, and perhaps recall Littlefinger, who is already having trouble with the lords of the Vale.

Back in her rooms, she is visited by Qyburn, who tells her that when Tyrion and Varys disappeared, a jailer named Rugen also vanished. She knows this, but he adds that under Rugen's chamber pot there was a loose stone that covered a hiding place for valuables. The hole was empty, but Qyburn dug in it and finds an old gold coin bearing "the sigil of House Gardener," the precusor of Highgarden. Cersei wonders if this indicates that Mace Tyrell had been secretly plotting with Tyrion. She warns Qyburn not to tell anyone about it, and pockets the coin.

Qyburn has more news: "The poison on the Viper's spear was manticore venom from the east." Cersei says that Pycelle ruled that out because manticore venom kills instantly. But Qyburn says the poison had been "thickened somehow, so as to draw out the Mountain's dying." It may have been the result of a spell. Cersei scoffs at the idea of magic, but Qyburn proceeds, saying that Ser Gregor's "veins have turned black from head to heel, his water is clouded with pus, and the venom has eaten a hole in his side as large as my fist. It is a wonder that the man is still alive, if truth be told." Cersei complains that his screaming frightens Tommen and wakens her sometimes. She thinks they should call in Ilen Payne to put an end to him. But Qyburn wants to move Ser Gregor to the dungeons, where his screaming won't be so troublesome, and he can "tend to him more freely." In short, he wants to know more about this poison.

Cersei gets the point, and asks why the Citadel took away his chain. Qyburn calls the archmaesters "craven" and cites Marwyn, the ones the novices referred to as the Mage, as calling them "The grey sheep." Qyburn wanted to do some unconventional experimentation:

"For hundreds of years the men of the Citadel have opened the bodies of the dead, to study the nature of life. I wished to understand the nature of death, so I opened the bodies of the living. For that crime the grey sheep shamed me and forced me into exile ... but I understand the nature of life and death better than any man in Oldtown." 

Cersei is, to say the least, "intrigued." She lets Qyburn take charge of the Mountain, reminding him that she needs the head to send to Dorne. She tells him she will provide him with the finances he needs and that he should buy some new robes. "Need I say that it will go ill for you if any word of your ... labors ... should pass beyond these walls?" Her secrets are safe with him, he assures her.

Her mind goes back to the gold coin from Highgarden and what link it might have to her father's death. She wonders if Tyrion has anything to do with the swift decomposition of Tywin's body, and if there's a possibility that he influenced Pycelle or the High Septon to bring it about. But her suspicions are interrupted by the arrival of her uncle Kevan to dine with her. Before she can ask him to become the Hand, he anticipates the offer, noting that Jaime has refused the job. She needs someone older anyway, she says, and he points out that Mace Tyrell is older. "Never," she says, adding, "The Tyrells overreach themselves." He admits that Tyrell would be a bad choice as hand, but cautions her against making an enemy of him. He has heard about the encounter over the position of master of coin, and says she was "unwise to shame him in front of half the court."

But as for the matter of becoming the Hand, he will do it only "so long as you name me regent as well as Hand and take yourself back to Casterly Rock." Tywin had told him of his plans to send her "back to the Rock and find a new husband for you." Her anger grows, but she controls it. He persists: "Open your eyes and look about you, Cersei. The kingdom is in ruins. Tywin might have been able to set matters aright, but...." She says she will set it aright with his help, but he persists, and the argument rages until she shouts "The king is my son!" and he replies, "from what I saw of Joffrey, you are as unfit a mother as you are a ruler."

She flings a cup of wine in his face. He rises with "a ponderous dignity" and asks her leave to go, warning, "You would be wise not to take me lightly, Your Grace ... and wiser still not to make of me a foe." She asks if this is a threat, and he says he is counseling her. "If you will not yield the regency to me, name me your castellan for Casterly Rock and make either Mathis Rowan or Randyll Tarly the Hand of the King." Both of them are bannermen for the Tyrells, which only adds to Cersei's suspicions. But he makes the point that by making either of them hers, she strengthens herself and weakens Highgarden. At the same time he realizes that his advice is futile: "You may make Moon Boy your Hand for all I care. My brother is dead, woman. I am going to take him home."


She wonders how much Mace Tyrell had paid him. And as he leaves, he reveals that he knows that Jaime is Tommen's father.

29. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 996-1026

Jaime

King Tommen is signing official documents as his council watches. Jaime is bored and sore, he has tried to use his left hand in a sparring match with Ser Addam Marbrand and got soundly beaten. Now he worries that Ser Addam will get drunk and spill the news that he beat the Kingslayer soundly in three matches.


Most of the papers Tommen is signing have to do with the aftermath of the death of Robb Stark: retribution against the Tullys, rewards for the Boltons, pardons for the Westerlings. Finally, Jaime leaves the signings in the supervision of his uncle, Kevan. Outside, he meets Steelshanks Walton who is accompanying "a skinny hollow-eyed girl wrapped in a heavy cloak." She greets him and says that perhaps he doesn't remember him, but they met "at Winterfell when King Robert came to visit my father Lord Eddard.... I'm Arya Stark."


It seems to Jaime that this girl is much older than the Arya Stark he met, but he doesn't comment on it. He says he hears that she is to be married, and she says her husband-to-be is Lord Bolton's son, who used to be Ramsay Snow, but Tommen has just signed a paper legitimizing him as a Bolton. As she departs, he wonders if she looks much like the real Arya who "was buried in some unmarked grave in Flea Bottom in all likelihood. With her brothers dead, and both parents, who would dare name this one a fraud?"


He passes the place where Gregor Clegane killed a stableboy in his duel with Prince Oberyn, and thinks that Clegane is paying the price for it, howling in agony as his wounds are being treated. Grand Maester Pycelle can't identify the poison Oberyn must have tipped his spear with when he wounded the Mountain. Tywin has ordered Pycelle to cure him, whatever it takes. He has promised Prince Doran of Dorne that Gregor will die, "But it must be seen to be the sword of the King's Justice that slays him, not a poisoned spear." News has also come from Dragonstone that Stannis has left the island with only a token guard, and that the Lyseni ships have left with most of Stannis's army. Tywin suspects that they are headed for Storm's End to try to rally support there, so he needs to keep the Dornishmen on his side.


Jaime goes to his quarters, where he finds Cersei waiting. She is upset because Tywin has dismissed her from the council and wants to send her to Casterly Rock, far away from Tommen, who is now to be married to Margaery. Jaime has no problem with the marriage: "Tommen's been lonely since Myrcella went to Dorne. He likes having Margaery and her ladies about." Cersei reminds him that Tommen is his son, too, and wants Jaime's support. He says he has always supported her, to the extent that he tried to kill Bran Stark. She replies that she didn't tell Jaime to throw Bran from the window. "If you'd gone hunting as I begged you, nothing would have happened. But no, you had to have me, you could not wait until we returned to the city."


Jaime takes this opportunity to ask Cersei if she was the one who sent the assassin to Bran's room, but she denies it. She says that even Robert Baratheon thought that Bran's death "would have been for the best. 'We kill our horses when they break a leg, and our dogs when they go blind, but we are too weak to give the same mercy to crippled children,' he told me." Her own children were present when he said it, she remembers, and jokes, "Perhaps Myrcella sent this man with the dagger, do you think so?" Jaime suddenly has the same realization that Tyrion had had: "Not Myrcella. Joffrey."


Cersei is puzzled, but Jaime explains that Joffrey had always wanted approbation from the man he thought was his father. "Tyrion almost died because of this bloody dagger," Jaime says. Perhaps he killed Joffrey to get even for that. But Cersei doesn't care why Tyrion killed Joffrey. The fact is, he's dead, and her daughter is in Dorne. "Tommen's all I have left. You mustn't let Father take him from me." She begs him to intercede with Tywin, telling him, "unless you stop him, Father is going to force me to wed again!"


Jaime's answer to this is to suggest she go tell their father that the only person she wants to be with is Jaime. She rejects this as insane: "Would you have us ripped apart, as Mother did that time she caught us playing?" The Targaryens married brothers and sisters, he insists, why not the Lannisters?  "We are not Targaryens!" she yells at him, and he tells her to quiet down. She insists that they can still do it, and begins to try to untie his breeches, but he stops her: not in the Lord Commander's chambers, he says, even though, as she points out, they did it in the sept.


She turns on him when he pushes her away, impugning his masculinity and saying, "You lacked the courage to avenge Joffrey, why would I think that you'd protect Tommen?" What if Tyrion had killed all three of their children? Would he have acted then? His reply only makes her more angry: "Tyrion is not going to harm Tommen or Myrcella. I am still not certain he killed Joffrey." She calls him a "great golden fool" and suggests that Ser Ilyn should give him Tyrion's head as a keepsake.


She should go, he says; she's making him angry. And she retorts, "Oh, an angry cripple. How terrifying." It's too bad that their father never had a real son: "I could have been the heir he wanted, but I lacked the cock." And she mocks his own, hanging from his breeches. When she has gone, he thinks, "I've lost a hand, a father, a son, a sister, and a lover, and soon enough I will lose a brother. And yet they keep telling me House Lannister won this war."


He sends for Ser Loras Tyrell and Brienne. Loras admits that, after talking with her, that Renly's death may have happened as she says. He dismisses Loras and asks Brienne to stay. He compliments her dress, saying the blue matches her eyes and thinking, "She does have astonishing eyes." She returns the compliment about his white cloak. Then he tells her about the false Arya Stark being sent to wed Ramsay Bolton, saying he wanted to prevent her from "galloping off to rescue her." She worries about what will happen when Bolton discovers the truth, but he thinks he already knows: "Lannisters lie, remember? It makes no matter, this girl serves his purpose just as well" since all the rest of her family is dead except for Sansa, who has vanished.


Brienne says she doesn't believe that Sansa killed Joffrey, and from Jaime's responses she realizes that he doubts that Tyrion did it either. He smiles. "See, wench? We know each other too well. Tyrion's wanted to be me since he took his first step, but he'd never follow me in kingslaying." He
thinks Sansa did it and Tyrion is protecting her. When she insists on Sansa's innocence, he says, "There's the stubborn stupid wench that I remember." As always, she starts to correct him: "My name is...." "Brienne of Tarth," he finishes for her, and then says he has a gift for her.


It is the magnificent sword of Valyrian steel. He order her to take it, and to call it Oathkeeper. But, he adds, it "comes with a price." He wants her to find Sansa and keep her safe. "How else are the two of us going to make good our stupid vows to your precious Lady Catelyn?" She stammers in surprise, having expected anything but this from Jaime, "I ... I though...."

"I know what you thought." Suddenly Jaime was sick of the sight of her. She bleats like a bloody sheep. "When Ned Stark died, his greatsword was given to the King's Justice," he told her. "But my father felt that such a fine blade was wasted on a mere headsman. He gave Ser Ilyn a new sword, and had Ice melted down and reforged. There was enough metal for two new blades. You're holding one. So you'll be defending Ned Stark's daughter with Ned Stark's own steel, if that makes any difference to you." 

She starts to apologize, but he cuts her off and tells her to do whatever she wants. "I don't want to look at you anymore." She says, "Jaime...." But he cuts her off: "'Kingslayer,' he reminded her." She persists, trying to ask why he would protect someone who killed Joffrey. He thinks, "Because Joff was no more to me than a squirt of seed in Cersei's cunt. And because he deserved to die." But he says, "Sansa Stark is my last chance for honor," and dismisses her.


When she is gone, he opens the White Book and brings his entry up to date, including the loss of his hand and his rescue by Brienne.


Jon


Jon is in a literal cage, buffeted by winds, suspended over nothingness, after four days "in a cell five by five by five, too low for him to stand, too tight for him to stretch out on his back." Ser Alliser had told him he would die there in one of the rooms carved out of the base of the Wall and originally designed to store food. But Maester Aemon had informed Janos Slynt that he couldn't hang Jon, and had written to Cotter Pyke, who testified that Jon wasn't a turncloak. So he and Alliser Thorne have decided to send Jon to parley with Mance Rayder, who has requested the meeting.


Jon realizes that he has no choice: Rayder is likely to kill him, but so are Thorne and Slynt if he refuses the assignment. Jon asks what terms they are attempting to reach with Rayder, but Janos Slynt says, "Janos Slynt does not make terms with lawless savages, Lord Snow. No, he does not." Ser Alliser is more direct: "We're not sending you to talk with Mance Rayder.... We're sending you to kill him." So now, as the cage is being lowered, Jon realizes, "With Maester Aemon insisting on Jon's innocence, Lord Janos had not dared to leave him in the ice to die." But he knows that even if he kills Mance Rayder, or just attempts to kill him, the others of the free folk would take his own life.


He walks through the corpses at the foot of the Wall toward the camp, and sees a rider coming out to meet him. It is Tormund, who offers him a ride. Jon says he'd rather walk, and as they go Tormund congratulates him on the fight the Watch had put up. He asks about Jon's limp, and Jon tells him that it was from one of Ygritte's arrows. Tormund drinks from his waterskin to Ygritte's memory, which he offers to Jon, who swallows the fiery mead it contains and repeats Tormund's tribute: "To Ygritte, kissed by fire!" He thinks of Ygritte, "You died brave in battle, storming the castle of a foe. I'm going to die a turncloak and a killer."


Rayder is waiting outside his tent, and says, "You must be very brave or very stupid, Jon Snow, ... to come back to us wearing a black cloak." Harma Dogshead is with him and says they should kill him and send his body back up and ask for someone else. The skinchanger adds that he "can soar above the Wall, and see with eagle eyes," which, as Rayder says, means that they know how undermanned and ill-provided the Watch is. He tells Jon to come inside the tent and for everyone else to remain outside.


Dalla is lying under a pile of furs inside, attended by Val. Jon tells her he was sorry when Jarl fell from the Wall, and she replies, "He always climbed too fast." Mance says they will stay, as they know what he has to say. Jon realizes that he will have to kill him in front of them, just as Mance and Dalla's child is about to be born. Rayder is wearing his sword, but no armor, and Jon looks around at the other weapons stored there.


Then he spots "A warhorn, a great bloody warhorn." And Rayder confirms that it's "The Horn of Winter, that Joramun once blew to wake giants from the earth." He has had it all along. Jon asks, "If this horn is all the songs say, why not just sound it and be done?" It is Dalla who replies:

"We free folk know things you kneelers have forgotten. Sometimes the short road is not the safest, Jon Snow. The Horned Lord once said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it."

And Rayder says that he had hoped not to use it, that his attacks would succeed. But even now, he says, "The truth is, you are too few and we are too many." He could continue the fight and eventually prevail, attacking on all fronts, he says, "but you'd bleed me, and my people have bled enough." But now there's something else to be considered: "You saw the Fist of the First Men. You know what happened there. You know what we are facing." The Others are growing stronger. He has brought his people to the Wall ostensibly to attack it, but in fact, "I've come with my tail between my legs to hide behind your Wall." If he sounds the Horn of Winter, the Wall may fall, and plenty of his followers want him to do that. But if the Wall falls, Dalla says, "what will stop the Others?"


So Mance Rayder asks the Night's Watch to open the gate and let them settle on the other side of the Wall. "If they do, I will give them the horn, and the Wall will stand until the end of days." Jon ponders the consequences of such a massive influx of people into the Seven Kingdoms and asks, "If we let your people pass, are you strong enough to to make them keep the king's peace and obey the laws?" But Rayder says they will make their own laws. "We will not kneel to you."

Jon knows that there is no way to persuade Slynt and Thorne to accept the offer. Rayder says that if it's refused, Tormund "will sound the Horn of Winter three days hence, at dawn." Jon also knows that if he returns without killing Rayder, Slynt and Thorn will take it as proof that he is a turncloak. He is pondering the options, which include destroying the horn here and now, when he hears the sound of another horn. He and Rayder go outside to see what it means.

Something is coming from the east. Jon asks if it's the Others, but Mance says they never come during daylight. He calls for his horse and his armor, and Varamyr the skinchanger summons up second sight to report that an army is approaching: "Men. Men on horses. Men in steel and men in black." Mance turns angrily to Jon, who vows that he has no idea what is happening. All around them people are preparing to fight. Jon reaches for Longclaw and then sees rangers emerging from the woods. "They wore black mail, black halfhelms, and black cloaks." They begin their attack on the wildling camp, as Jon assures Mance that he had no knowledge of it.

Mance admits that Jon may be telling the truth: "Those look like Eastwatch men. Sailors on horses." And then a scout rides in to tell him that more, "a host of iron men," are arriving.  Mance leaves Varamyr to look after Dalla and to keep an eye on Jon. "The skinchanger was a head shorter than Jon, slumped and soft, but that shadowcat could disembowel him with one paw." It blocks Jon's way into the tent, where the Horn of Winter is.

But suddenly the skinchanger is screaming in agony, and Jon looks up and sees his eagle on fire. The shadowcat runs away, and Varamyr's wolves are fighting each other. Val runs from the tent to see what has happened, and asks where Mance has gone. Dalla has gone into labor, she says. There are war trumpets all around, and Jon knows that the wildlings have only horns, not trumpets. An army is emerging from all sides, and Jon sends Val back into the tent to care for Dalla.

As more and more men appear, "not only knights now but freeriders and mounted bowmen and men-at-arms in jacks and kettle helms," Jon tries to make out the banners they are carrying. Many of them are "yellow banners with a red device," and he doesn't recognize the arms. He sees Mance's horse on her hind legs as a spear penetrates her chest, and Mance disappears from sight. Someone is waving Harma's head on a pole. Then Jon begins to be able to make out the banners, "a yellow one with long pointed tongues that showed a flaming heart, and another like a sheet of beaten gold, with a black stag prancing and rippling in the wind."

For a moment Jon thinks of Robert Baratheon, but then he hears the name the soldiers are crying: "Stannis! Stannis! STANNIS!"