…
III.
Wine Red as Blood
She was glad he was unconscious. If he had been awake, she would have had to conceal her reaction to his appearance, and she did not know if she would have been fully able to.
He was stunted, knobby, and his face bore a scar from one temple to the opposite cheek. Perhaps he could have been somewhat handsome at least in the face originally, but now with a scar diagonal across that face and wearing ill-fitting clothes, he was…hideous.
Alyce's upper lip rose in distaste. What a nasty little monkey… His legs and arms were slightly too short—disproportionally so. Something about the unnaturalness of it made her want to laugh and wince at the same time. His head was slightly too big for his small body and his brow rather heavy. His mouth was hanging open in sleep, giving him a ridiculously stupid expression.
Seven hells.
She stood above him in all his lordly glory with her hands on her hips, and suddenly a bark of a laugh burst from her—she couldn't help it. This is the rightful Lord Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the West, and by marriage law stands to be Lord of Winterfell and Lord Paramount of the North. Of course, now that he was accused of regicide it was unlikely he would be able to lay claim to anything, even the Rock. His sister the queen would inherit it. And the north would never allow a Lannister to rule them after what his house did to their Lord Stark and his son.
The dwarf had not even twitched at the noise—he was dead to the world. Alyce squatted in front of him. Varys thinks this disgusting little thing is so important he sent me all the way across the Narrow to serve him. I am now chained to this creature. This Imp. This demon monkey, as he was called in the streets.
Her lip was curled in contempt.
I could tuck this wretched thing up under an arm and carry him about like a pet dog. If he remains this drunk all the time, that's just what I'll end up having to do. I shall have a drooling pet monkey lord.
A metal wine cup lay spilled by his hand, the wine leaking out dark as blood. It sobered her thoughts. His stunted size may make him easier to protect…but it will also make him more in need of protecting. One can lose small things…
He repulsed her, but she grimaced and forced herself to reach a hand toward him. She lifted his chin with her fingers, her lip curling again.
"Tyrion?"
She received only a vague groan in response. His eyes did not open. Seeing no servants around she could ask to do the job for her, she realized she would have to be the one to carry her charge back into the manse. She growled with irritation and pulled the creature toward her, attempting to be gentle. He was heavier than he looked, but not so much that she could not handle his weight for the walk. As she lifted him to hold him on her hip against her shoulder like a child, he groaned again and opened bleary eyes. His eyes were mismatched colors. She hadn't expected that, and she blinked in surprise.
He lifted a hand to her cheek and touched her there. The touch was tender, his cloudy eyes soft.
She had heard many things about this half-man, but neither gentleness nor warmth had been mentioned in any of it. His soft, cloudy eyes traveled from her cheek to her eyes and he half-smiled before those eyes seemed to become too heavy to hold up. His arm dropped heavily as his head found home against her neck.
His smiles were not horrible, but his eyes were another matter. She did not know which one to look into and it unsettled her. It would take a deal of getting used to, though in the meantime she ought not to let the dwarf see how deeply she misliked his appearance.
She got a couple looks carrying the unconscious Lannister back to his chambers, but most of the household servants she passed merely looked unsurprised. It was likely the dwarf had had to be carried back to his chambers before.
When she returned to his room, the door was open and some women were changing the bedclothes.
Alyce dropped the dwarf rather unceremoniously onto his bed when they were done and asked the women in Pentoshi, "What is generally done with him now?"
One glanced at the other and the other replied, "He's bathed and put to bed."
"Bathe him, then. Or find the person who does."
The other woman—the one who hadn't spoken—nodded her head low and went to fetch someone. The first woman finished cleaning and left. Soon, the other woman returned with a male servant and a pitcher of hot water, and together Alyce and the servant stripped Lannister of his clothes and poured the water on him in the bath. The man scrubbed him down with a soapy cloth including his hair while another man came in with another pitcher of water and they poured it over him to rinse him.
He has to be bathed like an infant. Pathetic. She did not even try to hide her scorn.
When he had been dried, the serving men placed him naked on the bed next to some folded nightclothes and left, closing the door behind them.
Alyce was left alone to watch over her naked and hideous little charge. It was his disproportioned limbs she decided that were the worst thing about him. His arms and legs were thicker and shorter than a child's would be, as if the gods had fashioned a man's body out of mismatched motley. He was small as a boy but the proportions were all off. And the coarse blond hair on his chest and between his legs was certainly not a boy's. She cocked her head. His little prick might not be as little when erect as she would have imagined. Proportionally, it looked to be bigger than expected. But still not quite the common size?
Feeling as though she had spent too long inspecting his flaccid prick, Alyce unfolded the soft nightshirt and pants that had been set out for him and gently eased the dwarf into them. He groaned softly at points, but his eyelids remained closed. He twitched in his sleep like an ugly dog, and Alyce screwed up her features in a wince.
Afterwards, she shut his door and went into her own chambers. She checked on her pack, wary of it being pawed through despite her having burned the letters Varys had given her, and then set out to explore the manse.
She memorized the place as she walked so she could easily make her way through it or out of it if need be. It was an expansive and many-floored place, but once she comprehended the general layout, it was not difficult to navigate. She snagged some fresh bread from the kitchen and ate it as she walked around the grounds. Illyrio was no longer in his veranda seat.
As the sun set, she found a balcony of the manse from which she could watch it set over the water. She sat at a round, tiled table and was surprised and pleased when a servant brought out a platter of supper for her. She thanked him and ate as the sun set, thinking about how all the lands she had ever known were over the horizon of that sunset, about the dwarf, about everything she had read on the voyage, and about Illyrio and his plans.
The supper was excellent. The freshness of the food and the intricate and exotic ways in which it was prepared outmatched anything she had eaten in Westeros. Alyce ate rather more than she had intended and sat back in the balcony chair, contented and full to burst.
A servant came up to her and bowed her head. "Magister Illyrio has asked that you make sure the dwarf does not miss tomorrow's dinner. Magister Illyrio wishes to dine with him alone, although he suggests you listen in to what is said between them."
Odd message. Alyce nodded, pleased that Illyrio had been thoughtful enough to include her in affairs that concerned Tyrion. "Thank you."
She remained on the balcony until the last of the pink and orange sunset light had faded from the sky, enjoying the solitude and luxury of it. The port and the city proper could still be heard from the manse, but it was muffled, and the manse seemed pleasantly removed and sheltered from it. Used to the ever-present throbbing, cut-throat life of King's Landing, the quiet was unfamiliar, but pleasant.
When she went back to her chambers, she first checked in on the dwarf. The lamps had never been lit in his room and he had been left alone to sleep off his stupor. She sat beside him on the bed in the dimness to make sure he was in no danger of slipping out of this world completely. His head twitched and his stubby fingers grasped jerkily at the bedclothes. She wondered if he were dreaming of slaying his father, or that whore he had kept, or perhaps dozens of other evils. Alyce saw evils behind her own eyelids some nights as well.
Attempting gentleness, she brushed some hair from his face, trying to feel protective and tender. He was an ugly, fretful thing, and she felt no stirrings of tenderness toward him other than the drive of duty to Lord Varys that kept her his vigilant guard. She knew that if his temperament was as poor as his face, she would easily despise him.
It is our thoughts which make things beautiful and our thoughts which make them ugly.
Her mother had told her that. It had been a rather astute thing to come from the mouth of such a silly woman. Perhaps it had been one of those rare bouts of wisdom that had convinced a warrior king to persuade her with sweet, wine-soaked words to put aside her vows for a night.
Her touch seemed to soothe him slightly. She tried to remember what Varys had told her about the injustices he had seen and his hidden goodness and to use her thoughts to make him more beautiful according to her mother's words.
It did not help.
Sighing, she moved the dwarf onto his side on the bed. She knew drunkards could sometimes drown in their own vomit if left on their backs. He groaned rather pitifully, his fingers twitching again. She touched the fingers and they stilled.
She left the dwarf to sleep and slipped into her own chambers. She left out her soiled clothes on a chest, hoping they might be picked up and washed on the morrow, and snuggled into the softest bed she had ever laid in.
…
Tyrion emerged from his bedchamber early the next day, having slept since late afternoon of the previous one, but almost as soon as he had finished nibbling queasily at breakfast did he find his way down into Illyrio's extensive wine cellar and come back up goblet in hand.
Alyce could do little but surreptitiously watch him as he began to drink away coherency again. She knew he must be conscious for dinner that evening, however, and so when his eyes grew blurry and he called for more wine from a couch in a grand sitting room of the manse, she watered down what she gave him and slipped just a pinch of sleeping powder into his cup.
Almost immediately he was nodding off against the arm of the couch.
"Excuse me—you," she called to a passing manservant. "Carry this man to his chambers." He did as he was bid, and Alyce followed. The servant placed Lannister on his goose-down bed, bowed his head, and left them. Alyce covered the dwarf with some of the bedclothes and closed his curtains tightly. She knew he would sleep off the powder by late afternoon, but she hoped he would continue sleeping and not get up and go after more wine again if the room was dark.
She had lunch with Illyrio in a small, sunny sitting room where she found him. The room's walls were lined with shelves of books—a breathtaking luxury—and the chairs were even more thoroughly cushioned than they were on the veranda. Illyrio seemed to be in a pleasant mood. He had just returned from some sort of business in the city and apparently the news had been good.
"How fairs our little friend?" he asked her in the Common Tongue.
Alyce grimaced. "Determined to stay out of lucidity."
Illryio nodded, a frown crossing his expression like a cloud. "I will have a talk with him about that tonight. You received my message, yes?"
"I did." A servant placed two small platters in front of her and lifted their lids. One was an herbed fillet of fresh fish and the other what looked like succulent honeyed duck. Already on the table was crab pie, fine crumbled cheese, greens dressed with butter and salt, berry tarts, peaches with honey, and half a dozen other small dishes she did not recognize. "I shall wake him before evening, make sure he bathes, and have him brought to you. I'll also spy on the two of you." She smiled at him.
Illyrio nodded, his great chins bobbing. "Just so. Has everything been to your satisfaction?"
"And more," Alyce replied truthfully. Never had she felt so pampered.
As they lunched, Illyrio took delight in showing her morsels of food it seemed likely she had never tasted; Alyce found almost all of them mouth-wateringly delicious. He was in high spirits and told her laughingly about his city, making fun of himself a little in the process. He had a fine sense of humor. His jovial Pentoshi manners were endearing but also somewhat disguised a rather fearless, sharpened wit that Alyce could always feel at the edge of his conversation. He could be a formidable man if he so chose. But his relaxed humor put her enough at ease that her own devious wit came out to play, and she could tell he was pleased by her conversation by the way his eyes crinkled genuinely when he smiled.
Having finished all her books, after lunch Alyce picked an engrossing-looking title from among Illyrio's collection and read by the sunlight in the hours until supper. The book was written in High Valryian, not the Common Tongue of Westeros or one of the bastardized dialects the Free Cities spoke, so the reading was slow for her, but rewarding. It was about the Valyrian Freehold and the Lords Freeholder, powerful noble families who were very strong in magic. The writing focused on one particular family, and Alyce felt drawn to the children—two sisters and a brother who was to become a dragonlord like his father. Alyce knew she technically had brothers and sisters out in the world by her father, but had never known any of them. She would have liked to. The Targaryens were also a family of dragonlords, but this story was not about them, and by this account, they were nowhere near the most powerful of the lords.
As the sun began to approach its descent in the west, she shut her book and returned it to its place. She took up a large glass of water from the table where she and Illyrio had lunched and walked up to the third level of the manse. As she went, she instructed a servant to have hot water sent to her room.
She set the water glass on her bedside table, stripped her outer clothes, and took her hair down. Shortly, three female servants entered with two pitchers of hot water and fresh soap. They left and Alyce stripped naked and climbed into the bronze bathtub. She poured the hot water over her head and body, and while she sat in the tub, she scrubbed herself and washed her hair. When she was finished, she stood and rinsed with the last pitcher before stepping out to dry herself in one of the heavenly soft Myrish towels folded neatly beside the bath. Alyce belted her knives at her waist, but she left her shortsword on her bed, and let her thick, black hair air-dry down and loose from the breeze off the port that blew in as she sat in the window seat.
She rummaged through her medical case and found a small, very thin stick of eye makeup. By the chamber's mirror, she applied just enough to make her eyes more vibrant. She dabbed a touch of perfume at the side of her neck. She then fished out of her medical case a powder which would cure headaches. She set that packet aside by the water glass.
When her hair was dry and soft, spilling in luxurious locks across her shoulders, she took up the water and medicine and went next door to wake her charge for dinner. She found another servant down the hall and instructed water for a bath for the dwarf. Then she slipped inside his bedroom. She set the water and medicine down on his bedside table and opened his shades wide. By the deep evening sunlight, she could see that a new set of clothes and some ointment had been set out for him.
The sudden flood of slanting burnished gold light woke the dwarf. She could hear him rustling in the bed and feel his eyes on her as she opened the shades the rest of the way. She turned and appraised him with one hand on her hip.
He spoke first. "You're very different from the other one. If one whore doesn't please, find her opposite, eh?" His voice was hoarse but his sneer was not softened by lingering sleepiness. She had expected a childish, ugly voice to match his looks, but his voice was surprisingly smooth. It had an eloquence to it due to his high birth that a sneering comment could not entirely mask. He was unabashedly eyeing her hips and thighs, the curves of which were displayed by her pants in a way she was sure he did not often see. But his shrewd gaze also lingered on the unfeminine hardness of her arm muscles and the knives sheathed at her hip.
"You can find someone else to bury your cock in," she told him without heat in Pentoshi. "I'm here to make sure you're bathed and not late for dinner."
The door opened and three female servants trooped in with two heavy pitchers of hot water, another slim shaving of fresh soap, and fresh towels. They left again without a word.
Lannister sat up in bed, groaning. "I need to piss," he announced. He remained in the Common Tongue.
Alyce jerked her head to indicate the chamber pot and switched to the Common Tongue. "Afterword you'll drink that entire glass of water I brought for you. There's also a headache cure beside it."
He grunted noncommittally as he stood with his back toward her and relieved himself with a satisfied sigh. He tucked his cock back in his pants and watched her open a window to coax in some fresh air.
"And who are you to give me orders, sweetling?" he asked without tenderness. He made for the water glass, however, and began to drink it.
"Alyce. I'm to help make sure you and the magister make it safely where you're going."
"And where is that?"
"I'm sure Illyrio will tell you at dinner. Finish the water or you're sure to pass out over the second course."
The dwarf smirked and took a few gulps of water. He ripped open the paper packet of powder and tipped it into his mouth. He washed it down with the rest of the glass.
"I take it you're bathing me?"
"You're bathing yourself."
He sighed as he stripped off his clothes. "You can tell Illyrio I want the blonde one back."
"I'm not a raven."
He glanced at her shrewdly, fully naked. She watched him with a bored expression as he came toward her and climbed into the tub. She poured the first pitcher of warm water slowly over him and he lathered a cloth in soap and set to scrubbing himself. She sat back on her heels and watched him expressionlessly.
"You're not Pentoshi." It was not a question.
"Neither are you. I've only been here less than two years."
"In Illyrio's service?"
"As you see."
He was struggling to reach his back, and she gently took the cloth from him and scrubbed it for him. He looked surprised but pleased and allowed her to finish his back and his hair.
"Your accent is of Westeros."
"It is."
He closed his eyes as she worked the soap into his hair. Doing so, she massaged his scalp to take the impudence out of her words. It was odd for her to speak to a lord in such a familiar manner, but she rather enjoyed it.
"Tell me," the dwarf sighed, leaning his head back into her hands, "where do whores go?"
"Where the gold is, I imagine," she replied. What an odd question.
"And where is the gold?" he pressed.
"You should know that better than most, I should think."
He wiped water away from his eyes and turned slightly to look at her. Such a response might imply she knew him to be a Lannister of wealthy Casterly Rock and perhaps even the crown's old Master of Coin. She met his eyes with a knowing and contesting arch of her eyebrows.
She stood and picked up the other now-lukewarm pitcher. Lannister stood to have the soap rinsed off of him. His cock was somewhat hard, and she saw she had been correct in thinking that it was larger than what would be proportional. It pleased her that merely their conversation and her hands on his back and head had begun to arouse him. Desire was useful. It could manipulate.
She handed him a soft towel as he wiped water from his face.
"Your clothes are there atop the chest," she told him. He glanced at her, looking annoyed she would not be dressing him.
The clothes were boy's clothes, and they were too tight in the chest and too long in the arms and legs. Alyce rolled the pant legs for him. When he forced the shirt over his head, he pulled uncomfortably at the tight neckline.
"Hold still," Alyce told him, drawing one of her smaller knives from its sheath. The dwarf's eyes widened, especially when that dagger neared his neck. "Keep still or I'll nick you." She cut a short, even line up the top front of the shirt that freed his neck and did not look terribly amiss. She sheathed the knife again and stood.
"Thank you. Could you hand me that ointment there on the chest?" he asked her.
She nodded and did so. He messaged some onto his red ankles.
"Are they often sore?" she asked him.
He grunted in affirmation. She took the ointment back from him and resolved to later pack it away in her bag for him. Lannister rubbed his hands off on a towel.
Illyrio was reclining on a padded couch when they reached him, gobbling pearl onions from a wooden bowl. She and Illyrio nodded to each other, and she left them, but she doubled back another way and stood listening against a hall wall. Her wall was not on the way to and from the kitchens so the servants did not come upon her.
She was bored for some time while they ate their supper as there was very little talk, and only about trifles. The scents from their food made her hungry, though she had eaten very well earlier in the day. I can see how Illyrio has grown so fat here. I have never eaten such food.
Finally Lannister asked after the morning's summons as what smelled like pork was carved for them.
"There are troubles in the east," Illyrio told him. "Astapor has fallen, and Meeren. Ghiscari slave cities that were old when the world was young."
"Slaver's Bay is a long way from Pentos," came the dwarf's voice.
"This is so. But the world is one great web, and a man dare not touch a single strand lest all the others tremble. More wine? No, something better."
Alyce heard the sound of a serving man entering and a dish being placed on the table. Annoyed, she assumed they would start another course.
"Mushrooms," the magister announced. "Kissed with garlic and bathed in butter. I am told the taste is exquisite. Have one, my friend. Have two."
After a moment's pause, Lannister's voice answered him in an odd tone, "After you, my lord." The plate scraped across the table. Alyce cocked her head.
"No, no." The platter was pushed back across the table once more. "After you, I insist. Cook made them especially for you." Illyrio had a deviant edge to his voice.
What does he mean by this?
"Did she indeed? That was kind of her, but…no."
"You are too suspicious. Are you craven? I had not heard that of you."
"In the Seven Kingdoms it is considered a grave breach of hospitality to poison your guest at supper."
"Here as well. Yet when a guest plainly wishes to end his own life, why, his host must oblige him, no? Magister Ordello was poisoned by a mushroom not half a year ago. The pain is not so much, I am told. A cramping in the gut, a sudden aching behind the eyes, and it is done. Better a mushroom than a sword through your neck, is it not so? Why die with the taste of blood in your mouth when it could be butter and garlic?"
"You mistake me," the dwarf said to him after a brief pause.
"Is it so? I wonder. If you would sooner drown in wine, say the word and it shall be done, and quickly. Drowning cup by cup wastes time and wine both."
Alyce grinned slightly. Illyrio was terribly clever.
"You mistake me," she heard Lannister say again, more loudly. "I have no wish to die, I promise you. I have…"
"You have nothing," Illyrio finished for him, "but we can change that." There was a paused, then Illyrio murmured, "Hmm, delicious."
"The mushrooms are not poisoned." The dwarf sounded irritated.
"No. Why should I wish you ill? We must show a little trust, you and I. Come, eat. We have work to do. My little friend must keep his strength up."
Again, talk was little as they ate.
"You drink a deal of wine for such a little man," Illyrio observed. Ugh.
"Kinslaying is dry work. It gives a man a thirst."
"There are those in Westeros who would say that killing Lord Lannister was merely a good beginning."
"They best not say it in my sister's hearing or they will find themselves short a tongue."
"How odd that you should mention your fair sister. The queen has offered a lordship to the man who brings her your head, no matter how humble his birth."
"If you mean to take her up on it, make her spread her legs for you as well. The best part of me for the best part of her, that's a fair trade."
Alyce smirked. He is a witty thing when he's at least partly sober.
"I would sooner have mine own weight in gold." Illyrio laughed hard. "All the gold in Casterly Rock, why not?"
"The gold I grant you," Lannister said, "but Casterly Rock is mine."
"Just so." Illyrio belched mightily. "Do you think King Stannis will give it to you? I am told he is a great one for the law. Your brother wears the white cloak, so you are the heir by all the laws of Westeros."
"Stannis might well grant me Casterly Rock," the dwarf replied, "but for the small matter of regicide and kinslaying. For those he would shorten me by a head, and I am short enough as I stand. But why would you think I mean to join Lord Stannis?"
"Why else would you go to the Wall?"
"Stannis is at the Wall? What in seven bloody hells is Stannis doing at the Wall?"
"Shivering, I would think," Illyrio said. "It is warmer down in Dorne. Perhaps he should have sailed that way."
"My niece Myrcella is in Dorne, as it happens. And I have half a mind to make her a queen."
"What has this poor child done to you that you would wish her dead?"
"Even a kinslayer is not required to slay all his kin. Queen her, I said. Not kill her."
"In Volantis," replied Illyrio, "they use a coin with a crown on one face and a death's head on the other. Yet it is the same coin. To queen her is to kill her. Dorne might rise for Myrcella, but Dorne alone is not enough. If you are as clever as our friend insists, you know this."
The dwarf paused briefly before replying, "Futile gestures are all that remain to me. This one would make my sister weep bitter tears, at least."
"The road to Casterly Rock does not go through Dorne, my little friend. Nor does it run beneath the Wall. Yet there is such a road, I tell you."
Daenerys.
"I am an attainted traitor, a regicide, and a kinslayer." His voice was brittle and angry. Obviously he did not believe there was such a road.
"What one king does, another may undo. In Pentos, we have a prince, my friend. He presides at ball and feast and rides about the city in a palanquin of ivory and gold. On the first day of each new year he must deflower the main of the fields and the maid of the seas. Yet should a crop fail or a war be lost, we cut his throat to appease the gods and chose a new prince from amongst the forty families."
"Remind me never to become the Prince of Pentos."
"Are your Seven Kingdoms so different? There is no peace is Westeros, no justice, no faith…and soon enough, no food. When men are starving and sick of fear they look for a savior."
"They may look, but if all they find is Stannis—"
"Not Stannis. Nor Myrcella. Another. Stronger than Tommen, gentler than Stannis, with a better claim than Myrcella. A savior come from across the sea to bind up the wounds of bleeding Westeros."
"Fine words. Words are wind. Who is this bloody savior?"
"A dragon." Illyrio laughed. "A dragon with three heads."