17. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 473-503

Cersei

News of the capture of the Shield Islands has reached King's Landing, and Margaery Tyrell is upset, to say the least, waking the council and Cersei to demand that something be done about it. Cersei, naturally, is torn between annoyance at Margaery's demands and a secret delight at the Tyrells' plight, though she also recognizes that Euron Greyjoy's attack is a threat to the Iron Throne as well. She decides to put forth the idea that Stannis is somehow complicit in the attack, which only muddles things further.

When Cersei refers to the Shield Islands as "these rocks," Margaery gives a gasp: "Did Your Grace say rocks?" But Loras Tyrell calms his sister and explains their strategic importance in the defense of Highgarden. Cersei suggests that Highgarden "hire sellsails from beyond the narrow sea," which only puts Ser Loras's back up: "The scum of the Free Cities?" he says, contemptuously. "I beg Your Grace send word to Dragonstone and command Lord Redwyne to raise his sails at once."

Aurane Waters protests this plan, and the suggestion to end the siege of Storm's End, and Cersei agrees: "Storm's End is a hundred times more valuable than the Shields, and Dragonstone ... so long as Dragonstone remains in the hands of Stannis Baratheon, it is a knife at my son's throat." So Ser Loras strides forth and asks, "Your Grace, let me take Dragonstone." He vows to accomplish the task "within a fortnight."

No one had given Cersei such a lovely gift since Sansa Stark had run to her to divulge Lord Eddard's plans. She was pleased to see that Margaery had gone pale.... "Let Sweet Cersei carry our Knight of Flowers to Dragonstone at once. Ser Loras, the command is yours. Swear to me that you shall not return until Dragonstone is Tommen's."

Pycelle accompanies Cersei as she leaves the throne room, and expresses his misgivings about Loras's rash decision, but she is full of visions of the outcome: "If Loras took the castle, Stannis would suffer a grievous blow, and the Redwyne fleet could sail off to meet the ironmen. If he failed, she would see to it that he had the lion's share of the blame. Nothing tarnishes a hero as much as failure." And of course, there was always the possibility that he would be killed.

Lady Taena is in Cersei's bed when she returns, and Cersei tells her what has taken place. Cersei begins to have thoughts about what it might be like to have sex with Lady Merryweather, remembering the unpleasantness of sleeping with Robert Baratheon, but her reveries are interrupted by another knocking at the door. It is Lady Falyse Stokeworth, who needs to see her urgently. Cersei dresses and meets her in her solar, where she finds Lady Falyse with a bruised and swollen face, a split lip, and torn and soiled clothing.

Ser Balman has challenged Bronn to single combat, and has been killed. Cersei is furious: "I asked you to arrange a hunting mishap. An arrow gone astray, a fall from a horse, an angry boar ... there are so many ways a man can die in the woods. None of them involving lances." When Falyse went to her husband's aid, Bronn struck her in the face, and told her to leave Stokeworth. And when she appealed to the guard, they said she must do as "Lord Stokeworth" ordered. Moreover, Ser Balman confessed to the plot, including Cersei's role in it.

"You have to help me," Falyse begs. "Where am I to go? What will I do?" Cersei suggests that she join the silent sisters in prayer and contemplation, but then says she can stay in the castle. While Falyse is consoling herself with win, Cersei sends for Qyburn and says, "I cannot have Falyse spreading tales about the city. Her grief has made her witless." She is to be taken to the black cells.

She goes back to her room, where she tries to make love to Taena Merryweather. "But it was no good. She could not feel it, whatever Robert felt on the nights he took her." She brings Taena to a climax, but when Taena offers to return the favor, she refuses. "It would be morning soon, and all of this would be forgotten. It had never happened."

Jaime

His cousin, Ser Daven Lannister, the Warden of the West, arrives, and tells him that the siege of Riverrun is still dragging on. "The Blackfish sits inside the castle, we sit outside in our camps. Bloody boring, if you want to know the truth." Ryman Frey is trying to persuade the Blackfish to yield the castle by erecting a gibbet and taking Edmure Tully there at dawn, threatening to hang him. And Lord Emmon Frey, who is married to Daven and Jaime's aunt, wants Edmure hanged because Riverrun will be his when it's taken. On the other hand, Lord Gawen Westerling doesn't want Edmure hanged because his wife and three daughters, including Robb Stark's widow, are inside the castle.

Jaime asks if they can starve the castle into submission, but Daven tells him, "The Blackfish expelled all the useless mouths from Riverrun and picked this country clean. He has enough stores to keep man and horse alive for two full years." Meanwhile, the troops besieging the castle are living on the fish they can take from the rivers, but it's difficult finding fodder for the horses. Troops are beginning to desert, or to be found hanged by outlaws.

Jaime asks if attempts have been made to treaty with Brynden Tully, but is told that the Blackfish says "he would not waste fair words on foul men." Jaime intends to try, however: "If he could end this siege without bloodshed, then it could not be said that he had taken up arms against House Tully." After parting from Daven, Jaime goes to find Ser Ilyn for his ritual combat. "He liked to believe that he was getting better, but the improvement was slow and not without cost. Underneath his steel and wool and boiled leather Jaime Lannister was a tapestry of cuts and scabs and bruises."

When they reach Riverrun, Jaime sees the tall gallows that has been erected, with Edmure Tully on top of it with a rope around his neck. The castle itself flies the banners of House Tully, except for the highest tower, which flies "a long white standard emblazoned with the direwolf of Stark." He gives orders to send a message to the Blackfish that he wants a parley with him at first light tomorrow.

His aunt, Genna Lannister, and her husband, Emmon Frey, come to his tent. She asks if it is true that Tyrion killed Tywin, "Or is that some calumny your sister put about?" He admits that it's true. Then she asks about the death of of their son, Cleos. Jaime lies and says he died fighting the outlaws, and that he was buried by a stream, though in fact the Bloody Mummers had left him for the crows. He assures his aunt that he will return his bones to Casterly Rock when the war is over. "Bones were bones; these days, nothing was easier to come by."

Lord Emmon wants Jaime's assurance that Riverrun won't be destroyed, and pulls out the decree naming him lord of the castle, but his wife snaps, "So long as the Blackfish sits inside Riverrun you can wipe your arse with that paper for all the good it does us." And Jaime points out that although the paper gives him the lands and incomes of Riverrun, it "will be subject to the rule of Harrenhal" under Petyr Baelish. Finally, Genna sends her husband out so she can have a long talk with Jaime, and the first thing she asks is whatever Tywin Lannister was thinking when he made Emmon lord of Riverrun.

They discuss various matters of inheritance, and she asks, "why would Cersei permit the Faith to arm again?" Jaime hasn't given the matter much thought, but Genna has: "The Sword and Stars troubled even the Targaryens." She describes the ongoing conflict between the crown and the Faith, and Jaime admits that he has forgotten most of it. "You and your sister both," she says. She doesn't have kind words for his sister: "Cersei has put some bastard on the council too, and a kettle in the Kingsguard. She has the Faith arming and the Braavosi calling in loans all over Westeros. None of which would be happening if she'd had the simple sense to make your uncle the King's Hand." Jaime reminds her that Kevan refused, but she insists, "Kevan always did what was asked of him. It is not like him to turn away from any duty. Something is awry here, I can smell it."

Jaime thinks, "He knows about us," but he doesn't dare say that to his aunt.

Then they speak about Tywin, and she says, "Who will protect us now?" Jaime says, "He left a son." She replies, "Aye, he did. That is what I fear the most." For as handsome and brave as Jaime is, she says, "Tyrion is Tywin's son, not you. I said so once to your father's face, and he would not speak to me for half a year. Men are such thundering great fools. Even the sort who come along once in a thousand years."

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.