But the music is lost and the words are gone
Of the song I sang as I sat alone,
Ages and ages have fallen on me -
On the wood and the pool and the elder tree.
A Song of Enchantment - Walter de la Mare
In her dream, there had been music.
The golden peals of the bells had mingled with the wood-notes of pipe, the silver skirl of the lute with the clanging Dornish cymbals. Sweet had been the maidens' laughter as they had danced in the pavilion of white silk, but sweeter still had been the music of the high harp that the prince of the sorrowing eyes had made.
In her dream, the weight of years had fallen from her, leaving her as slender and light-footed as she had been when a maid of four-and-ten. There had been a gown of gossamer upon her, spun as fine as running water or evening dew. And on her dark hair there had been a crown of roses, a Queen's crown of winter roses, bluer than Rhaegar's blood or Robert's eyes, blue as long-brewed sorrows.
In her dream, as in life, the prince whose strong lance had won her crown, had not held her in his arms, as she had longed to be held. In her dream, as in life, it had been a whitecloak who had danced with her, Ser Arthur Dayne, as stalwart and fair a knight as ever a maiden dreamt of. In life, they had cast her darkening looks, lords and damsels alike. The pavilion of white silk had been dark with whispers as they wondered to one another what the Dragon Prince had seen in the northern maiden. But the Sword of the Morning had bidden her be of good cheer, bidden her seek out the godswood for answers to the riddles that plagued her.
In her dream, he said nothing. He had smiled at her, a smile whiter than his cloak which ran scarlet with blood. It had been so when she had last seen him in life, after her brother, the gentlest of her brothers, had given him a steel kiss. She had first seen when she was a maid of four-and-ten, beneath the walls of a castle whose bricks were held together by the mortar of human blood and dragonfire. When she last saw him, she had been six-and-ten, with a newborn son in her arms. They had laid him to rest with three of his white brothers under a cairn and all she could think of as Eddard had said the last words had been of the promise she had taken from him. The promise that had taken his life.
Please, she had tried to tell him in the dream. Please, I didn't mean to. Before the Iron Throne, he had sworn his life to the dragon's blood. And before a pitiful bride of five-and-ten, who'd carried a dead man's child, he had sworn never to draw the blood of her brothers. Please, please...
But he had only smiled at her and held his silence. There was kindness in his silence, mercy and compassion for the child who was made a mother too young, but no forgiveness.
And then she had woken up. She woke up to the stench of ale, stale on a man's breath, and the ache of the bruises that mottled her arms. The ale and the bruises went together - there were times when he had it in him to be gentle, but last night had not been one of them. He had returned from the royal hunt in the kingswood, flushed with triumph and his blood heated with summerwine. He had laid the prized white hart at her feet before taking his pleasure. It does not matter that the smallfolk call me another Alysanne the Good, she had thought as he pinned her down, in the bedchamber, no woman is a queen.
"Your Grace."
It is Jaime Lannister who touched his sword to his forehead, in salute, when she left the room which had stifled her moans the last night. If he noticed the trailing sleeves of her samite gown - indigo, she'd chosen on a whim, indigo for eyes that only visited her in her dreams - he made no mention of it.
"Kingslayer," she greeted him. Lesser men called him the Lion of Lannister to his face, and Kingslayer to his back. She was a queen and she called a man, any man, what she pleased. Even Robert - when he came to his senses she would call him a stinking boar and show him her bruises. He would cower and crave her pardon then and a gem, to make amends, would show up sooner or later. But she had called Lannister 'Kingslayer' for years, with no particular vim, to the point that it was almost an endearment.
He fell into stride behind her. "Where to, Your Grace?"
"Maester Colemon," she said. There was a little secret she had kept to herself for a month. She could not think of a better time to reveal it - to chasten and shame her royal husband with. Robert had been... difficult. But things would be better once the news came out that she was with child - his visits to her bedchamber stopped at those times, a small mercy she was grateful for.
"A harsh name, my queen, for one so faithful." The clasp that held his cloak was a lion, the sheen of white gold bright in the morning light.
"No less than you deserve," she said, turning her face away. They had laid Elia's babes as gifts before the Iron Throne in cloaks of Lannister crimson, gilded with lions. A clever choice - the red soaked up the blood so well you might have thought the little ones were only asleep. Please. Please, I didn't mean to.
"I used to stand guard outside Queen Rhaella's door, you know. When King Aerys was with her."
And did she scream as loud as me? "Oh."
"He had nails a foot long, Aerys did," Lannister said thoughtfully. "Compared to him, I would call Robert as gentle a lover as the Knight of Flowers."
"From what I remember," she said dryly. "Aerys wielded no warhammers. Robert might not have the nails but he does have the muscles. And Aerys never drank so."
"He didn't need to drink. His madness went to his head quicker than any drink could." He smiled at her. "Shall I tell you, my lady, when he would visit his queen? His visits were rare - for which, I am sure, she was only too grateful. But whenever he gave a man to the flames, then he would find his desire as quick as any lesser man. Only the sight of a man cooking in the flame, cooking in his armour-"
She held up her hand, bile rising in her throat. Lord Rickard Stark had cooked in his armour and his son had hung while he tried to reach for his sword. "I could have your head for that, Kingslayer," she whispered. "I should have your head."
"Kingslayer," he mused. "I killed a king for Rhaella. Robert killed a prince for you. The things we do for the love of women, won't you agree?" He was smiling at her, a smile as white as his cloak.
Arthur once smiled at me so, she thought. And yet he was never mine, he was Rhaegar's. Rhaegar who loved Elia more than he could ever love me. Jaime might coin japes to make her laugh, but he was ever his sister's pawn. She made sure that she never forgot that. "I wept tears of joy when I heard," she lied. "It... it was a fitting end for him, to die at Robert's hands."
"Just out of a ballad," he said, nodding. "Poetic justice. There's a new lay they're singing in the winesinks, did you know? 'The Dragon and the Rose' they call it, though I'd wager Robert wouldn't like the tune of it."
"Is it sad?" Robert did not like sad songs. Rhaegar... Rhaegar had once sung sad songs.
"Oh dreadfully," he said cheerfully. "A fair young maid who fled with the prince of her dreams, for love. They shared the sweetest month of bliss and then the prince rode away to face an usurper who would have the fair maid for himself and... well you know the rest."
"A new idea," she observed. "As I recall it, I never fled for love. I was raped." She had had fourteen years to perfect the lie. "Raped, Lannister, like a-a camp follower, a whore-" She thought of the last night and now the lie came sweeter than any truth. "Rhaegar, do you know what he did to me? He would hold me down and-and strike me until the blood ran, because he said the memory of my maiden's blood was sweet. And then he'd ask me if-if Robert had ever pleasured me, if I had ever-"
He looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Peace," he said. "My lady, you had best compose yourself."
With a jolt she realized that she had almost been close to tears. They were out of her private chambers now and there would be other people now. People who would notice the Queen's face and ask what was amiss, who would fret and fuss. "My apologies," she said stiffly, wiping her face. "Am I- am I quite presentable now?"
He looked like he pitied her. "A rose of loveliness," he said gallantly.
"A rose," she sniffed. "Kingslayer, don't tell me about roses. A man once gave me a pretty crown of roses." And I would have followed him to the ends of the world in a beggar's rags, if I could have but those roses. But it was not to be, was it? Robert robed me in a queen's samite and he gave me another crown to wear.
The morning sickness had come upon her, just before breakfast. A man cooking in his armour, she'd thought groggily as her maid had held back her hair and let her throw up the remains of her supper. Lannister once said there's no stench so sour as that of burning flesh. She'd never smelt it before, though - the closest she had come to that had been when she'd burnt Catelyn Tully's hair when she was seven.
Now she could only toy with her breakfast, artfully rearranging the blood oranges and beef-and-bacon pies on her trencher. Robert was still in his drunken stupor - from long experience, she knew that she need not expect his company till eventide. Her older boys, twelve-year-old Brandon and eleven-year-old Joffrey, who had accompanied their father on the hunt, were still asleep too. The younger children were breakfasting with their nurses. She had invited Jon Arryn and his lady wife to her solar for breakfast - the realm would not wait on the King's good grace.
Lysa's flinty eyes missed nothing. They were so like Catelyn's eyes. "Will you not try a lemon pie, Your Grace?" she asked sweetly. "You favour them so."
"Not today," she said politely. Before Lysa could feign surprise and press her for a reason - everyone knew how much she loved lemon pies - she hastily added, "I am with child. It is the morning sickness." The very thought of lemon pies, layered with sugar and icing, made her nauseous.
Lysa, who had borne only one living child, said nothing. But Jon said plenty. "That will make seven!" he said as heartily as though she had planned for it to happen. "Seven royal children, won't the High Septon be pleased? He'll have a lovely sermon to make when it is announced-"
She smiled. "You forget that I am forsworn to the Old Gods," she said lightly. Not seven, she thought dully. Eight, this will be my eighth child.
"Princess Elaena Targaryen bore seven children," Lysa observed. She was a great reader, she was - by the time she was three-and-ten she had finished King Daeren's Conquest of Dorne. At thirty, Lyanna had still not been able to finish more than twenty pages of the dreary tome. "And then she decided that if seven was good enough for the gods, it was good enough for her."
"Robert will not be put off as easily as the princess's husbands were," she only said.
"You had best put him off," Lysa said importantly. "Or try moon tea." And moon tea for the false heart's cup, a touch of tansy and and a spoon of honey, mint and pennyroyal and wormwood for the shamed maid's cup. "At your age, childbed can turn into a bloodier bed than you would have wished for."
Her stomach lurched uneasily. The bloody bed. It had come perilous close to that... the first time. "I thank you for your concern," she only said. "I am not so old yet and the maesters have always seen me through." There had been no maesters the first time, only Wylla the Midwife who had no knife to slice through her belly, no herbs, no poultices for her fever. As though he knew I might die. As though he wanted me to die.
Jon's voice broke through her musings, measured, calm and... slightly reproachful for some reason. "Renly has sealed a betrothal contract," he said. "To Margaery Tyrell."
She nearly spat out the blood orange she'd been nibbling at. "Not Loras Tyrell's sister!" she squealed, fascinated. "Gods - Loras' sister? Renly's little rose..." She chuckled. "A mummers' marriage, to be sure. I look forward to the bedding."
Jon frowned. "The Rose of Highgarden," he said. "Renly is not as great a fool as he looks. I had once suggested that we betroth Brandon to the Tyrell girl-" Oh. That accounted for the reproachfulness.
"Bran's twelve," she said airily. "And Loras' sister will be what, fifteen? Sixteen?"
"Only fourteen," he said. "Young enough. Young and comely and-"
"He's only twelve," she said dismissively. "Far too young for us to consider a betrothal. In time, we shall find us another Margaery, younger and comelier and with ten times as many blades to her name."
Lysa rose primly. "I shall be off," she announced. "Sweetrobin will be missing his mother."
She couldn't help it. She sniggered. Robert Arryn, heir to the Eyrie and the Wardenship of the East, was still on his mother's teat at the age of six. When her own boys had been that age, they'd been playing with daggers.
Lysa shot her a hard look. "Alcuin has been asking for you, my lady," she said with poisonous sweetness. "He wants to know why his mother is too busy for him, why he hasn't seen her for a week. What am I to tell him, poor, sweet babe, he's only three? That his royal mother can hardly make time for her firstborn, and how will she make time for a fourth son?"
It would be like Lysa to say a thing like that to a child. She bit her lip and controlled her temper. She had dealt with worse than Lysa Arryn. "I shall see the children today," she said. Though gods know how I shall make time. "After we have held court."
Yes, where is he, the champion and the child of all that's great or little, wise or wild?
Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones;
Whose table, earth - whose dice were human bones?
The Age of Bronze - Lord Byron
Hellishly uncomfortable, he had told her when she had asked him about the Iron Throne, the Conqueror's throne forged from kings' blades. He had made a face and tweaked her nose. And ugly. Monstrously ugly, the whole room, with those dragons' skulls lining the walls and those slits for windows, it's so dark we need candles even at noon...
I should like to see it, she'd whispered, snuggling closer to him. Father told me so much about it.
And so you shall, sweet one, he'd promised her. You and Elia will both sit by me and together we shall rule. There are changes that must be made, changes that I was too craven to make.
But Rhaegar had fallen and Elia had been murdered and she alone remained to make true the changes they had once dreamt of. No, not me, she reminded herself. Not me alone. I have always had good help, good counsel. I am no Rhaegar to rule as he might once have ruled - I can only do my best and pray that it is enough.
Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King, sat the Iron Throne. He sat it more often than Robert, if truth were told, but that was all to the good - justice was dispensed faster when her royal husband was abed. She'd perched on the throne once, for a jape, and cut herself. Ever since, she had been more than content with her seat on the council table, far below the Siege Perilous.
"Lannister brigands," Jon repeated slowly, the words souring the air. "And what proof have you?" One by one, the tattered smallfolk of Holdfast Sherrer knelt before him to offer their tales. They came by night and fired our fields, m'lord. They stole my milch cow, my Bessy, and took my girls for sport. They put the lance clean through my babe and an arrow through me mam's eye. And there was one that was like a Mountain, m'lord, like a Mountain that rides...
She did not dare turn her face to Lord Tywin Lannister, who sat beside her on the council table. You had best see to your dogs, my lord, she thought grimly. A mad dog can turn upon his master as quick as he can upon his master's enemies.
"The Mountain that rides," she said, in a clear voice that cut through the drowse of the peasants' mumbligs. They turned to their queen, to a queen in samite with steel in her eyes. "Can there be any doubt that it is brave Ser Gregor Clegane? Good Ser Gregor Clegane whose lands adjoin Holdfast Sherrer. And Wendish Town and Mummer's Ford, aye, whose walls were smoked not a moon's turn ago?"
Perhaps pregnancy had made her reckless, but it was an old grudge with her, a grudge that had chaffed and festered, as raw as an open wound. Her revenge had been long-brewed, fourteen years in the brewing and now she turned to Jon, Jon who had become as much a father to her over the years as he was to Robert and Ned.
"What have you to say, my lord?" Jon asked Lord Tywin coolly. "He is sworn to your house."
Lord Tywin's eyes said many things. He say a girl, younger than his own daughter, who dared shame him but for once she felt secure in her recklessness. Robert would trust his foster-father's council over a Lannister's, gods be thanked. Robert could be trusted in few matters but arms was not one of them. When she was with him, she knew no harm might come to her - save from him alone. Try me, she thought, looking at the lion lord and waiting for his answer. Try me and you try Robert. And there is nothing Robert likes better than flushing out rebel lords.
"He would seem to match Lord Clegane's description," he said. "If we were to pay heed to the words of a few churls. Fear can rewrite a man's lineaments. Should you, my queen, have ridden by night and by smoke there would still be plenty who would have vowed that they had seen a mountain who rode."
Fuck you too, she thought sulkily. Tywin: 1. Lyanna: 1.
"Be that as it may," Jon said silkily. "Our task is not to question and accuse, nor sow discord with ill-placed strife and the petty rivalries of a court. It is our task to restore the king's peace and to deliever his justice." That was like Jon - to stand head and shoulders above the mass and mess of court intrigues. She was ashamed to remember how much of a place she had in sowing the discord he spoke of - in supporting her own faction against that of the Lannisters. In the streets, they spoke of the Queen's wolves and the lions who were sworn to Lord Tywin and his good-son. The good-son was Lord Stannis, Prince of Dragonstone, who had wed Cersei Lannister after King Robert had taken Lyanna Stark to wife.
Gods be good, Rhaegar would never have failed in his duty so.
"This matter is no small one, nor mean," he continued. "This is not the first report we have received, nor will it be the last. As the Kingswood Brethren were once the bane of King Aerys' reign, so does this mystery of the Mountain's men seem to be the bane of King Robert's. A ponderous hand is needed to place judgment. It cannot be mine, I fear, for this matter is too weighty for me alone. I must needs consult with His Grace."
She could see the bewilderment on the faces of the good folk of Holdfast Sherrer as he thanked them for their troubles and promised them justice and recompense. There was more at stake than a few smoking holdfasts here and Jon was reluctant to pass judgment before those who headed the two mightiest factions in the Seven Kingdoms - the Queen and the Warden of the West.
This shall go to Robert, she thought, with a sideways glance at Lord Tywin. And at any other time, he might have been moved to caution by Jon's time but not this time, no. Robert was not so great a fool as she had once believed - he trusted her in many things, but this might not be one of them. The last king who had shamed Lord Tywin Lannister had not met a happy end. But this time would be different. I have a bargaining chip in my belly that you do not, my lord.
The petitioners of Sherrer were led away and more came to take their place. She drummed her fingers against her thigh as she thought. The Mountain who rides, they called him. Gregor Clegane who'd dashed Rhaegar's heir's head against the walls and raped the mother, with her babe's blood and brains still slick on his hands. It made her nauseous as she pictured her babies, her black-haired, blue-eyed little ones, and the oldest one too, the one who had looked so like Ned when she'd last seen him...
The second time she had traded her maiden's cloak for a husband's, she had been seventeen. Her first troth gift had been a crown of roses given to her when she was little more than a child, blue roses whose hidden thorns had pierced her breast. The second time she had been older, older by two years and wiser by a hundred she thought. For her troth gift, she had begged for justice, justice and a man's head that they might send as a gift to Dorne.
Robert was a man of his word and he'd given her a head - just not the one she had wanted - and justice too, he'd thought. After she had donned his cloak, onyx and gold and so heavy that she sagged under it, just as she had sagged under the weight of his crown, they had brought the tarred head to her, right in the sept. At first she had not recognized it, but then they had brought a mantle too, a queen's mantle of purple velvet lined with hair of silver-gold...
I thank you, my sweet lord, she had told him, before the two thousand who had gathered to see a king wed to the girl he had won a kingdom for. I thank you for delievering me justice.
She'd bled for him, that night. Maiden's blood would have been sweeter, he had said, grappling at her, making her cry out. That bastard, he cheated me, and do you know what I did to him that day? On the Trident? Ned never told you, did he? Well, let me tell you, sweetling. I took my warmhammer and I smashed into his damn chest, I smashed right through and I heard the ribs cracking and he screamed, Lyanna, it was the sweetest sound. He screamed out and I smashed again and all the time I was only thinking of you, what he'd done to you and I laughed, I laughed...
And the rubies had swirled like tears of blood in the rivers of the Trident and her blood had swirled about her legs as he took her again and again and again.
"Mother!"
Alcuin was her baby, only three years old. Robert's ravens, Renly would jest, for there was nothing in the children to suggest that she was their mother. They all had his black hair, his dark good looks, his ringing laughter and most of them had his guileless blue eyes too. Not Alcuin though - he had his mother's eyes.
He looks so like me that you would cry, Ned had written her, not a week before. He has the Stark colouring, and Cat grieves that none of her trueborn sons look so like me. He has Father's hard mouth and Brandon's skill with the sword, your eyes and Benjen's knack for making faces. But I would say that he looks most like your horsefaced brother.
She scooped him up and hugged him fiercely, kissing his forehead and his chubby cheeks and the smudge of dirt on the tip of his nose. She held him to her heart, relishing the feel of his plump, little body and the clean, sweet freshness of the way he smelt. And as she held him, she could not forget that Rhaegar's little girl had been three when the lions had found her hiding under her father's bed. As though she thought he might still save her...
And what would I do for you, my sweet? she thought, as he wriggled to be set down. She could not let him go, not now, she needed to hold him a bit longer, to feel that he was still hers, still warm and sweet and strong. Elia had a kingdom too, and Rhaegar a sword and an army, and their little girl still died from half-a-hundred thrusts. They had justice on his side, justice and courage and honour, and I have none and yet seven of my children live while Elia's are all dead.
"I want to learn to use a sword!" Alcuin announced. "Mother, mayn't I, please...?"
"He has begged for a week," his nurse admitted shyly. "A score of times have I told him no but that will not do for my little prince, he must ask his mother..."
So that has been why he has been begging for me. "No, Alcuin," she said, putting him down. "Not till you are older and bigger and stronger." No, Lyanna, not a crossbow. Not till you are older and bigger and stronger.
"But I want to!" Alcuin said, pouting. "I'm a prince!"
"Even princes must learn to wait," she told him. "More than anyone else, they must learn to wait. There, love, don't cry - you never see Robert Arryn troubling his mother for swords to play, do you? And he's twice your age, isn't he?"
"He's a baby," Al announced. "He stinks of milk and he's always crying, I don't want to play with him, Mother, he shivers all over and I don't like that-"
An old man's seed. Pity the day that his father dies. "Would you like to see your brothers?" she asked him. "They are in the fencing courts." He was too little to wear a sword now, but it would do no harm to let him watch his brothers. She had grown up listening to swords singing and she had brought up her sons in the same way - not as petted princes, but as boys to be thumped and whacked and bruised in the courts.
"Yes!" he squealed and danced with excitement as she led him to the Maiden's Court where the princes and the silvercloaks practiced.
They were there, her three boys - Bran, Joff and pensive eight-year-old Edric whom no one called Ned. Bran and Joff, as alike as two peas in a pod, were sparring. Edric, as round as a ball in his padded armour, was faced with what looked like Stannis and Cersei's younger boy. A few of the silvercloaks were practicing, and Mya Stone and Brienne of Tarth were stripping off their sweat-soaked practice clothes at the rim of the court. Mya seemed to have gotten the better of this bout, judging from the smug look on her face. Brienne was big but Mya was as nimble as a mountain goat.
The silvercloaks, named by jape the Queen's terriers because once they took hold they never let go, were her pride and joy. Robert had laughed when she had brought it up. Jon had smiled and shaken his head. Lord Tywin had given her a look and that look had been all she needed to know about what he thought about women in armour.
But I wouldn't back down, she thought with pleasure. I let Robert laugh and call me a pretty fool, but in the end I got what I wanted, didn't I? His goldcloaks drink and dice and whore, but not my silvercloaks, no. Never let it be said that a woman's arm is not as strong as a man's, that her justice is not as sweet. She knew from experience that a woman wronged would turn more willingly to a woman than a man. The goldcloaks reported to a chain of petty officials but the Queen's silvercloaks reported only to their queen or to their commander-in-chief - Obara Sand, who'd learnt the spear's justice at the Red Viper's knee.
Alcuin scrambled up a railing and perched on it. "Bran!" he yelled. "Joff! Look at me!"
Joff just had time to wave before he had to dodge from Bran's blade. Bran is hardier, but Joff's the better blade, Lyanna thought, admiring how quick he was, the clean grace in the way he moved. He is just like Brandon was, at his age, she thought and remembered, with a dull pain, how Ned had praised little Jon's swordplay in his last letter.
"Hullo little brother," Mya said cheerfully, tousling Al's hair. "Your Grace," she said, bowing to her.
She touched Mya's hair, so snagged and snarled that she was sure Mya cut it herself. With a dagger. "Don't tell me you've cut your hair," she said. "If I had hair as pretty as yours, I wouldn't."
Mya flicked her chin-length black hair. "Hair has a way of threading into chainmail," she said thoughtfully. "Danya found that out on patrol, the night we flushed out Fleabottom. It ripped right from her scalp and-"
"Please Mya," she begged. "Not in front of Alcuin."
Mya shrugged. "He'll have heard bloodier tales from his nurse," she said bluntly. "I did when I was a little girl."
She could still remember Mya as a little girl, she could still remember the first time she had heard of Mya too, when Mya had still been a babe suckling at her mother's breast. He has bastards! she'd screamed in Ned's face and sat stony-faced through the banquet that night, when her father had announced her betrothal to Robert. Cruel blood, craven's blood, she'd thought as she remembered all the fell tales Old Nan had whispered to her of bastards. They are born under a dark star. Two years later, she had sent her own child in a bastard's guise to Catelyn.
The gods are good to those who are good, she'd thought, repeating Old Nan's words. If I have care of Robert's child, Catelyn will see to my child and be kind to him.
And so believing, she had brought Robert's firstborn from the Vale to King's Landing. Mya had been five, half-mule, half-girl, a mirror to the two daughters she would later bear Robert. It had been Mya who had taught Joff and Bran and Edric to string a bow, Mya who'd taught Daeryssa and Dagna and Al to ride, Mya who had donned a silver cloak instead of a husband's when she came of age. Though there were certainly no lack of offers, she thought dryly. She is twice as beautiful as I was when I was her age. She is baseborn, but what of it? So was Shiera Seastar.
There had been other bastards, of course there had been - she had known there would be since her betrothal, when she was little older than Bran was now. It had been enough for her to resent the idea of marrying him at all - once. Later of course, his infidelities had meant nothing - she had suffered worse at his hands than a few baseborn children. She had other duties, higher duties, and for the sake of them one bastard or a thousand would mean nothing. She had even grown to love the ten black-haired children she'd raised under the same roof as her own, bull-headed Gendry and Ioana who would flirt with anything that had legs, Ted the dreamer who brought her a nosegay of wildflowers every morning... and there would be another one soon.
Varys had told her, the last week, about the child a freckled little whore at Chataya's carried. The poor child was five-and-ten, younger than Mya and Ioana, and Varys had intimated that she would be loath to part with the child, even for a queen. A foolish girl, he had said languidly. As though a child were a plaything.
Let her keep the babe if she will, she had told him. See her provided with coin - gold if she must purchase her freedom from Chataya. Enough to keep a king's daughter. She had been only a little older than the whore from Chataya's when she had parted with her own child. She knew the price of parting with a babe and so knowing, how could she make anyone else suffer through it?
What the godswood had been to her, when she was a girl growing up in the north, the parapets of the Red Keep were to her now that she reigned as the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Her brothers sought the godswood for penance and prayer, her father for pleasure. But by the still black waters of the heart and the brooding face of the weirwoods, she would sit and dream.
Did you dream here, Rhaegar? she thought, only half-listening to Brienne who was telling her about the orphanages. Did you dream and hope and plan for your kingdom, thinking of the long years of hard winter that lay ahead? While you played the game of the gods, my love, did you think yourself a god too? A god with years and years and naught to fear save the white gods of the north and the red gods of the south? You thought the game of thrones below you, but in the end, the fools tread where the gods feared to.
And so she looked over the parapets, over the maze of towers and roofs, gilded in the sunset light, and the wretched shanties of Flea Bottom from which the silvercloaks plucked homeless children to train them in the Queen's orphanages. The realm has enough whores and pickpockets, she'd thought as she'd driven through Flea Bottom, years ago, and watched the barefoot children who'd crept out of their hovels to see. And whores and pickpockets will what these will be. What we need is maesters and herbwives, smiths and seamstresses, strong arms to till the land and bear arms when winter comes. And so, the orphanages had begun, where the children were taught to read, write, cipher and to pick up the skills the Seven Kingdoms would need when the long winter, which Rhaegar had forseen, came.
She looked over the Blackwater and the ships that sailed on it, and the hills named for the Conqueror and his sisters. And so looking, she felt a part of it, piece and parcel of the Seven Kingdoms, bound to the land and the waters of all seven as she had once been bound to the north - and later, to a man.
Mine, she thought fiercely. It's mine, all mine. When winter comes, I'll be ready for it.
"Thank you, Brienne," she said, when the girl finished. "Have you had any letters from Maester Aemon?"
A Queen's correspondence was always checked - she knew that Grand Maester Pycelle was in Lord Tywin's payrolls - and it would have looked passing strange if she were seen to correspond with a Targaryen. But who would think to check on Brienne, homely, simple-minded Brienne with a face like an auroch's backside? And a heart like gold, Lyanna thought, loving the girl. And arms like steel.
"No, Your Grace."
"Well, send him one from me," she said. "Tell him we're expecting to add a seventh raven to Robert's flock. And... send a message to Obara from me, will you? Tell her that revenge is a dish best served cold and bid her ask the petitioners of Holdfast Sherrer how their complaints were received." That should please her father at any rate. "And you'd best be polishing your armour, Brienne. You'll ride for me in the tourney."
Brienne blinked. "A tourney, my lady? I had not had word."
"It's not announced," she said. "But it will be, soon enough. Robert's always thought a tourney's the best way to welcome a new baby... and no doubt he'll want to honour his brother Renly and his little Tyrell bride." If Littlefinger were not such a wizard with coin, we would have been sorely tried with debt, she thought, blessing the little man whom she trusted not a jot. As it is, we barely manage. Robert would insist on a tourney - he always did - but this time, she would make Mace Tyrell pay for it. Serves you right for marrying your daughter to a prince of the blood.
"A baby and a bride!" A ringing laugh greeted her and she turned to see Cersei Baratheon climbing up the spiralling steps to the parapets, in a swirl of scarlet robes. Her twin followed her, as close as a shadow. "How sweet."
"Good sister," she greeted her. This should be interesting. Cersei was... fascinating to say the least. She would seduce Robert with her body and me with her mind. I cannot say which is more beautiful. "Back from Dragonstone so soon?"
"Exiled," the woman said, reaching her. She held out her arms, with a smile as radiant as the sun. "Stannis will not have me - but good sister, will you not clasp me in your arms?"
She slipped into the older woman's embrace, meekly enough. A wave of perfume and two little kisses, as sweet as stolen apples. "Stannis' loss is but our gain," she said politely, stepping away. Cersei always made her feel light-headed, in a way Jaime and Lord Tywin never did. And so the games begin. The games that Rhaegar had shunned, but which she had come to enjoy. You can have your gods, my love, I have come to like playing with thrones. "No doubt Robert will be delighted. You have brought the children?"
"Tommem was crossing swords with Edric and Tygett bartering lances with Bran when last I left them," she said, referring to her younger and older son. Tommem was seven, Tygett twelve. "Daeryssa was kind enough to invite Myrcella to go hawking with her."
"Daeryssa is out hawking?" she asked. "Ah... I have not seen her these past two days, neither her nor Dagna. Where did they go?"
It spoke volumes for her relationship with her daughters that Cersei, who had only been in King's Landing a few hours, knew more about their whereabouts than she did. "By the Blackwater, I do believe," she said. "You need have no fears about their safety - Ser Barristan attends them."
"And Dagna? Is she out hawking too?" Dagna had five years to Daeryssa's nine, but she had never had Daeryssa's fondness for sport.
"She is playing at dolls with my Lyanna," Cersei said, smiling as sweetly as the Maiden herself.
My Lyanna. Cersei's younger daughter, four-year-old Lyanna, was the only one of her brood with black hair and blue eyes - the only one with the Baratheon colouring, for the others were all as golden as Lann the Clever. Cersei had lain with Robert, she well knew - though whether to spite her lord husband or her queen, for ambition or for pleasure, Lyanna had never been able to find out. She half-suspected that the girl they'd named after her was Robert's - but she had no proof.
"Robert shall be delighted to see Lyanna," she said evenly. "How well he loves the child, she is more a daughter to him than a niece."
Cersei smiled. "How could he not?" she asked easily. "She bears your name and His Grace's fondness for you is well known. Seven children - why that is proof enough for any woman of his constancy."
Robert's constancy. She had to laugh. "Robert has sixteen bastards to six trueborn children and one still in the belly," she said. "I would call him fecund, lascivious but constant? No."
"I wonder at your charity, your kindness," Cersei said. "To keep ten of them under your own roof, to bed them with your own children! How you bear it, I cannot imagine." There was an edge to her voice as she said, "If it were Stannis, I would have seen them all dead."
"Then you are lucky that Stannis is a man of honour," she said mildly and thought, No, I am not charitable. I am not kind. I am only just. If I nurture Robert's bastards with mine own children, Catelyn might find pity enough in her heart to love the child I sent her.
"Say rather a man of stone," she said, shaking her curly head. "We are as well suited as wildfire and ice. My good lord can no longer bear the sight of me and mine and so he must needs send me here." She smiled at her brother. "Not that I mind."
I wish Ben would've stayed, she thought as jealousy stabbed her heart. She hated the way Jaime and Cersei looked at eachother, the secrets of long years heavy in their shared glance. When she had wed Robert, Benjen had stayed with them a few years but in the end he had left her. My place is in the north with Ned, he had said. As your place is here, at the heart of the realm. We both have our duties. When winter comes...
She'd told him about Rhaegar. It was the least she could do, after he had suffered so for her. I vowed to take the black, he'd told her. If anything had happened to you...
It's not your fault, she'd said. I chose to run away. The blame was all my own - it had nothing to do with you.
He'd given her a rueful smile. And yet you still believe that Father and Brandon died because of your folly - not Aerys' madness. Let me cling to my belief that it was my fault, just as you cling to yours - guilt and remorse and the hope of redemption is all we have left to us now, all that is left to sustain us until winter comes.
It's summer now, she'd told him, trying to lighten his mood. Maybe it's the Long Summer the gods have blessed us with, now that the dragons and their sins are dead.
He'd looked at her and laughed. And do you really believe that?
No, not for a minute, no. Winter was coming - the winter that Rhaegar had seen. The winter that he had told her to be ready for, even if he should never come back. Promise me, he'd whispered to her, just before he'd ridden away for the last time. He'd left a heartsick girl of fifteen, heavy with child, but he'd sworn her to a vow. Promise me.
She listened to Cersei's chatter and smiled compliantly, but her heart was elsewhere. I've tried, she thought. My love, it hasn't been easy but I've tried. For the sake of her children, she'd have gladly died, but Rhaegar was different. For his sake, she'd lived and tried to live gladly. I've tried.
The maid stripped off her outer-robe and she stepped out from the screen in only her shift.
"Gods bless you, you're as beautiful as when I first saw you," he said, sipping from a bowl of broth.
She took her place by the fire, signalling to the maid to brush her hair. "That's hardly a compliment," she observed. "The first time you saw me I'd been romping in the mud with Ben and you thought me a stable-boy."
"Here - let me," he said, taking the brush out of the maid's hand. "Alyx - leave us."
She spread her arms over the cushions of her chair, the better so that he might see the welts that were green and purple all over them. She ought to have put a salve on them, they ached so, but she wanted him to see. Tywin: 1. Lyanna: 2. And she felt instant guilt for counting points.
"So..." she tipped her head back and let him brush her hair. Her hair had always held some incomprehensible fascination for Robert. "You're having another baby?"
Tywin: 2. Lyanna: 2. The element of surprise was gone. "Who told you?" she asked, keeping her voice steady.
"Lysa."
Now isn't it high time that Sweetrobin was fostered...
"I hope it's a girl this time," he continued. "Four boys is enough for anybody."
Five, she thought, with a tightening in her chest. Not four, five. "Daeron the Second had four," she said coolly. "And they died quick enough. I want a boy." A boy with Ned's face so that I can pretend it's my first little baby, come back to me. A boy with winter in his eyes. She hesitated before adding, "I was thinking that... if it was a boy, we might name him for Jon."
He grunted. "The old man's got enough namesakes - didn't Ned name his bastard for him?"
There. He'd said the very thing she dreaded he might - four times had she given him sons and four times had she thought of the first one, the one she'd given away because of the promise she'd made to his father.
"One can never do with enough namesakes," she said coolly. The Red Keep had taught her to play the game of thrones. "I was so pleased when Cersei named her little girl for me."
He turned his face away, ashamed. Black-haired, blue-eyed Lyanna - Cersei's badge of honour and Robert's shame. Tywin: 2. Lyanna: 3. A skilful general knew when to retreat so she added, "I was hoping that we might go to Winterfell for this one's birth. It's been so long..."
He heard the wistfulness in her voice and touched her face gently. He'd known her as a girl at Winterfell, the laughing girl who'd danced under the shade of the weirwoods, who he'd won a kingdom for. "Of course," he said. "Gods, it's been what - seven years? Of course you've missed it. It'll be good to see Ned and Catelyn and the children-"
"And the wolves and the boars," she reminded him, grinning. "You loved to hunt at Winterfell - there's no game as fresh as that the north offers."
"Unless it's in the west," he bantered. "They've lions there, in the forests, to the wolves of your woods."
Direwolves in the snow, she thought, remembering Ned's last letter. Jon convinced me to take them. She'd last seen the boy when he was seven - he'd be twice as old now. Will he recognize me? she thought. Will he kneel to me as he did then?
"Direwolves," she said, keeping her tone light, sealing off her face even as she smiled at him. "You wouldn't believe Ned's last letter, it starts like..."
A/N: Lyanna and Robert's children are:
Brandon (12), Joffrey (11), Daeryssa (9), Edric (8), Dagna (5), Alcuin (3)