BRIENNE

There was a strange comfort in returning to the White Sword Tower - though it would be more apt to call it the White Sword Stump as the rebuilding of it was still limited to its ground floor - and to sit at the head of the table and run her hand over the White Book. As fate would have it, the book that chronicled the deeds of the knights of the Kingsguard had survived the original tower's collapse intact and undamaged.

Brienne found herself in need of much solace as of late, though the life-threatening travails of her long journey had ended. The comfort in touching the book that Ser Jaime had once touched was tempered by the knowledge that she could perhaps never forgive him his final act of defiance. She had thought that the chronicling of his journey and its end, of dressing it up in the flowery language of the book, might have made those embers of mixed emotion within her cool, but still they continued to burn.

There was another problem with the book now, too. As a Kingsguard, as its Lord Commander - Brienne had swiftly put down the notion of changing that to Lady Commander for her sake - she needed to begin her own entry, but every time she tried she ended up staring at a blank page, quill in hand, for hours on end. What was she supposed to write? About Ser Brienne of Tarth, Brienne the Beauty, Brienne the Abandoned?

In search of inspiration, she would read the pages, recalling the tales of those who came before her. Of Ser Criston Cole, the Kingmaker, who had turned on the woman he had loved and whose champion he had been and set the crown on her half-brother's head, and so sparked the most brutal of the wars among the dragons of Westeros. Of Aemon the Dragonknight, who had loved a royal sister so much that the possibility of an affair opened the door for the rebellions of the Blackfyres.

The Targaryens and their knights certainly made it difficult to take one's mind off the Kingslayer.

And what of their new King, the one she had come south partially at Lady Sansa's behest to serve? Brandon Stark was an enigma that defied easy definition. A wizard of the forest, a so-called greenseer, he had come to live in a city of stone and brick, where the nearest weirwood was a mere stump. Efforts were already being made the change that, with the discussion of saplings and plantings being one of the few conversations the young King bestirred himself to take an active part in, but otherwise most of what he spoke of was cryptic and obscure when he spoke at all.

That was concerning enough without considering the Small Council, on which she now sat. Ser Davos was a kind and gentle man, of low birth but vast knowledge when it came to all things nautical, and she got on well enough with the Grand Maester, though Samwell Tarly still looked twenty years too young for the job. The Hand and the Master of Coin were a pair of known lechers, however, and nary did they make it through a meeting without bringing up something seemingly tailored to make her hackles rise and her skin crawl. That was no excuse in itself for her misgivings about them, but it was coupled with the fact that neither seemed particularly competent at their work, though Brienne could not fault Ser Jaime's brother for his earnestness, at least.

Brienne didn't feel much more competent as a Lord Commander herself. So far the prospects for elevation to the company of the Kingsguard were sparse and difficult to convince, and so her and Podrick were the only ones in white cloaks still. The Kingdoms had been ravaged and the ranks of its houses depleted, and many second and third sons and sons of cadet branches that would have provided a crop for recruitment were now first sons if not lords themselves now. There was scarcely a knight hiding under a hedge to be found, even. All of them had gone home, gone on to their families and lives, rushing to prepare for the first plantings of spring.

That was well and good for all of them, and Brienne was hardly one to find fault in the appreciation of a simpler life, but it made things awfully difficult for her. With only two Kingsguard, and at least one always needing to be in attendance on His Majesty, she and Podrick were stretched thin. Even as she sat at the White Table, Brienne was wasting precious time to handle her necessaries, to eat and sleep and all the rest of it, before Podrick sent a page so he could be relieved to handle those things himself.

The stirrings of guilt churned in Brienne as she thought about it. Although Pod was ever cheerful and eager to please, their young, broken king had requirements that challenged them, and many of those fell to him to take care of. What else could be done for a young man who couldn't even use a privy or take a bath unassisted? She wasn't the squeamish type, what with all the blood she had spilled, but nevertheless she was often elsewise occupied when the time came for such activities, leaving it all to her only fellow Kingsguard to be present.

It was laughable, these little contortions in the face of so many other problems, but there was little she could do for all of those. All she had now was her own duty, her way of keeping the faith with Lady Catelyn and her daughter. Brienne had considered remaining in the North, but Sansa had made it clear that the North was returning to the ways of the First Men, of weirwood and wolf, and that those ways had little room for the rainbow of the Seven or their anointed knights, and that the best way she could serve was by keeping the Stark in the south safe.

And so she would, come what may. Though it may make her a white-cloaked, golden armored nursemaid, she knew her duty. Strangely renewed by that knowledge, Brienne rose from the table, releasing the White Book from her grasp, possessed of a new, if maybe only temporary, determination. For this time, at least, Pod wouldn't need to call for her to be relieved.