SANSA

Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.

The sound was relentless. The air was damp as if the gods were sweating, yet also biting cold, and it stank like a cesspit. Beside Sansa, Ser Danwell Shermer of the Rainbow Guard walked with a visible grimace and with his right hand on the hilt of his sword. There was no light but the dancing glow of the torch she bore, and in such darkness even Ser Danwell's bright violet cloak could have passed for a plain brown thing.

The gaoler, a scraggly-cheeked young man, took them to one of the thick wooden doors. "This one," he said loudly, too loudly. His voice echoed. He looked out of place here. The old gaoler of the black cells had disappeared in the sack of the city four days ago, almost certainly slain, so he was almost as new to this as they were. The gaoler put a key into the lock and turned it.

The black cell was tiny, and it reeked so powerfully of the piss and shit that covered its floor that Sansa had to place a hand on her stomach and breathe in sharply in order not to retch. The woman inside was curled up on the floor. Lacking a chamberpot, she had shoved her shit into one corner, but there was nothing to be done about the piss, and from the wetness of her torn grey shift and of her tangled hair, it seemed she had been sleeping in it.

When the door opened the woman awoke, squinting, her red-rimmed eyes shying from the unaccustomed brightness of the torchlight. There was a snarl on her face. Sansa was unafraid. However angry she was, however smaller and slighter than her Sansa was, however vulnerable, Ser Danwell was not.

"Why are you here?" rasped the former queen of Westeros.

"I don't know," Sansa admitted. Perhaps she wanted to see what she had done when she had condemned this woman to execution. Perhaps not. "You aren't the queen any more."

"Well gathered," said Cersei Baratheon drily, "you are such a clever girl. Even now, too full of courtesy, too afraid to breach it, too afraid to state candidly your wish for vengeance, so you must state the obvious instead… even your gloating is pathetic."

"I'm not gloating!" Sansa protested.

"No? Perhaps I am fooled. You shouldn't be, though, for the downfall of House Lannister is no boon to House Stark."

"Yes it is," said Sansa. "You lied before and you're lying now. Your House is my House's enemy and the king has defeated you, so I'll go home."

"If only the world were that simple," responded Cersei, sounding anything but wistful. "Your brother has crowned himself a king, girl, and men who have worn crowns do not easily pass them away. As Lord of Winterfell he could choose his side freely, but as King in the North he has declared himself the enemy of every man who seeks to sit upon the Iron Throne and rule the Seven Kingdoms—all seven kingdoms. You think House Lannister's fall serves your purpose? I think not. Casterly Rock has not the strength to win the war for the Iron Throne and to subjugate the north, not since Jaime's host was broken by your brother, but Highgarden and Storm's End together do have more than sufficient strength. King Renly could be a friend of Lord Robb, but King Robb is his enemy. He will never release you while your brother claims part of his realm."

"Yes he will," Sansa retorted. "King Renly is an honourable man, not like you Lannisters."

"An honourable man? You poor stupid child. Even now you fail to understand. How many do you think were killed in the sack of King's Landing?"

"Lannister men," said Sansa, "and Florents, the traitors, and gold cloaks. I hate all of them." She tried to put steel in her voice, the same calm certainty that infused King Renly's, yet she thought, unwillingly, of the Lannister men-at-arms who had guarded her, of stubbly Josua, of strong Harrold, of Petyr, of Philip, and especially of Willem. Stupid girl, part of her mocked, sounding a great deal like Cersei, do you believe that if you tell a comforting lie often enough you will deceive yourself into thinking it true?

"Some," said Cersei, to Sansa's shock not challenging her on that final claim. "But most of the deaths in the sack were not men-at-arms. Untold thousands of men, women and children were murdered that night, and homes looted, rapine rampant—" When Sansa flinched at the last phrase, Cersei seized upon the display of weakness like a lion grabbing its prey by the neck. "Ah, you do understand. Your serving maids, I imagine. What do you think happened to them? You may have been safe from it, child, as highborn as you are, but many a man will turn raper for the night in the aftermath of a hard-fought victory, and many a maid will suffer it. Lord Renly's army is of men, not heavenly messengers, no less prone to it than other men. Lord Renly wars as other men war—" the queen twisted the knife— "and he holds hostages as other men hold hostages."

"Enough of this!" snapped Ser Danwell. The knight of the Rainbow Guard, raised high for his courage and his prowess in battle, put forward a great hand to grab at Cersei's ripped grey shift, tearing it more, and pulled her close, then shoved her fiercely backward. The queen cried out as she fell, hard, onto the wall of the black cell. "I will not have you denouncing His Grace the King to his guests." He turned to Sansa, whose eyes had grown wide. "Don't worry about this whore," he said kindly, "she lies as easily as you and I draw breath. Renly is the true king, and soon your brother will bend the knee and you will be reunited."

Your brother will bend the knee and you will be reunited. Sansa felt hollow. Ser Danwell had as good as confirmed it. Renly would return her to her family only if they served him; elsewise she was a bargaining chip. Cersei is right.

Sansa expected the queen to be infuriated with such handling, to shout and scream and rage in protest, but she seemed accustomed to it. She was silent. Her eyes spoke enough. They gazed at Sansa, bright with victory.

Sansa wanted to cry, though she did not allow herself that luxury here. "Why do you do this?" she asked the queen, pitiably. "You know what I said in the throne room. Do you hate me?"

"Hate you?" Cersei Baratheon laughed in a cracked barking voice. "You aren't responsible for my death, nor for any misfortune that has befallen my House. No usurper could slander me with infidelity to Robert to steal my son's crown and then let me live. Renly would never have spared me, no matter your words. No, I merely teach you of the nature of the world because someone must… and yes, because it amuses me. Hate you, girl? You don't matter enough to be worth hating."

Sansa's anger flared at the sheer arrogance of that dismissal. "You betrayed my trust when you had my lord father arrested. You did nothing when Joff chose to cut off his head. You're going to die anyway, the king wants your head, so you might as well tell the truth; you have nothing to lose from it. Tell me: was that the first time you acted against my family? Or were you and the Kingslayer behind Bran's fall?"

"Your brother fell of his own accord," Cersei said calmly. "Such things do happen, you know. There is danger in climbing."

Sansa thought she caught a tremor in Cersei's voice. "Liar."

The queen gave her a glance full of contempt. "What does it matter, then, girl? Why ask me questions if you'll presume the answers are lies?"

"I…" Sansa did not know quite how she should respond to that.

"Then I'll ask questions," Cersei said briskly, as if they were speaking about the breeding of horses. "When will Renly take my life?"

"His Grace," said Ser Danwell hotly.

"On the morrow," said Sansa. Cersei nodded, in perfect serenity, as if this did not at all disturb her, and Sansa felt a sudden and unexpected surge of wrath. Cersei had betrayed her and hurt her. She wanted Cersei to be disturbed, to be angry and screaming and shouting. This peaceful resignation left no satisfaction in her vengeance. "And when he finds your awful son," she added, "he'll kill him too."

True pain flashed on Cersei's dirty face; she flinched as if Sansa had struck her. She is a mother, Sansa thought, heartless as she is in all things else. "Yes, he will. I should have known it. I should have protected him. I should have known, I could have known."

"What do you mean?"

"Prophecies," Cersei hissed. "Maggy the Frog, she told me, she told me, only I didn't understand…"

"Maggy the Frog?"

"That old bitch from Lannisport, she was, and she knew everything. Everything that ever mattered. 'Twas when I was only a girl. I thought that I would wed Prince Rhaegar, half the realm thought it, thought they knew it, even, but ere Aerys shocked them all when he denied my lord father's request, Maggy told me he would. I still recall it now. 'You will not wed the prince,' she said, 'you will wed the king.' I thought she meant I would marry Rhaegar only after he came to the crown, but she did not… I said, 'I shall be queen, though?' and she said aye, I would be, till another, younger and more beautiful, comes to cast me down. Gods curse me for a fool, girl." She pointed at Sansa. "I thought it might be you—as if you could cast down a mouse—but of course it was Margaery Tyrell… I would have three children, Maggy the Frog foresaw that too, long before Robert ever thought that he might wed or bed me… 'They will all leave you before the end,' she said, 'and when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar will take your head.' In that she was right too."

"What's a valonqar?"

"You don't know? Don't septas teach any High Valyrian since the dragons died?" Cersei's nose turned up in disgust. "It means 'little brother', girl… I was so blind. For so long I thought it was my brother Tyrion, the Imp, who killed my lady mother on the birthing bed… I hated him thenceforth… but the gods played a cruel jape… Tyrion has gone away now, he's taken away my Joffrey, he's protecting him, my son, my boy, though I was never much of a sister to him, not as I was to Jaime… and it wasn't him, girl, it was Renly all along. Renly, Renly… Don't you see? 'Brother'. There's more than one way we use that word. Fate was taunting me… You were there. You saw it. You heard him. He even called me 'goodsister'…

"That old whore didn't mean my brother by blood, she meant my brother by marriage, my goodbrother… gods damn me a fool! I thought it was Tyrion, of course it was Tyrion, who else could it be?… but I was blind. Even when Renly was raising his army, when the knights of all the south were flocking to his banner, when he was raising a host unmatched by any in the Seven Kingdoms, I still feared my blood brother, and not the true valonqar… I shouldn't have dreaded a weak little girl like you, nor the mere twenty-thousand swords of House Stark and the north, I should have paid my heed and fear to Margaery Tyrell, to the vast armies of the Reach and the stormlands."

Ser Danwell seemed too stunned to intervene. As far as Sansa could recall, she had never seen a hint of self-doubt in the queen's Lannister green eyes, let alone such a display of naked self-hate.

"I tell you this, girl, and pay me heed if you have half the wits the Seven gave a goose. Ignore me at your peril. Never trust sorcery. Never trust any who practise it. It promises so much, it seems to offer hope, seems so enticing… I only wanted to know whether I'd really marry Rhaegar, I didn't want to be as disappointed as I was when Maester Hallis said mother would survive the birth… but it lies, it lies! I swear, my life would be a better one if I'd never listened to Maggy. Her words were true, but not as I could have known them, only now as I look back at them when it is far too late. I looked north for my doom when I should have looked south… the prophecy was fulfilled only because it misled me into fulfilling it. Don't trust them. Do you promise?"

Sansa, taken aback by the outburst, was silent.

"Promise me, girl." Cersei leant forward to shake Sansa with those filthy hands of hers; she only stopped when Ser Danwell unsheathed his sword. "'Tis for your own good. Promise me. Now tell me, do you promise?"

"Yes," Sansa said faintly, "I promise…"

"Good." Cersei leant back, satisfied, in whatever strange way she could be.

Sansa simply looked at her. Cersei was a poised, confident queen, the woman who had betrayed Sansa and arrested father, introducing Sansa to the harshness of the world because it amused her to kill dreams like a cat kills mice, and to breed hopelessness. She was the enemy, proud and defiant. Sansa did not know what to think of this strangely serene prisoner, resigned to death, twisted by prophecy, this bitter, half-mad woman who had hurt her so.

Mayhaps it did not matter. Sansa turned, taking the torchlight with her, and left Cersei Baratheon in the cold of the black cells.

The morning of the execution was raucous and loud. It seemed all the city were gathered together in King's Landing's central square, and beyond it, a crowd stretching along King's Way in both directions. Sansa, by right of birth, was granted a privileged seat, near to where the king would be. She was clad magnificently in grey and white, Stark colours, a gown so lovely that it could take breath away, and it would have been easy to feel at one with her surroundings, the valiant knights and noble lords and beauteous ladies King Renly had brought to the capital.

She did not. This was not her place, she knew that now.

Trumpets blew. A herald cried, "All hail the saviour of the city, His Grace Renly of the House Baratheon, the First of His Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm!"

Ear-splitting cheers filled the air. In the distance, the front gates of the Red Keep opened, and Renly Baratheon rode down King's Way on his startlingly white stallion, beside his queen whose left hand he held with his right. The royal couple were surrounded only by seven colourfully cloaked knights. The Lannisters, Sansa thought, would not have dared to come among the cityfolk with so little protection, not since the first great riot that had begun after the ceremony for Princess Myrcella's voyage to Dorne. Somehow the applause grew even louder when Renly and Margaery held up their hands and waved. The cityfolk rushed close to him, men and women gazing intently, boys mimicking his noble bearing, young children held up by parents so that they could see the king on this day.

The great white horse paused at one end of the square, and King Renly halted, but the cheers did not. "My people!" he cried, "my people!" Their cheers continued. The king lifted a hand, a stopping gesture. Nothing changed. King Renly nodded to the trumpeters, who blew a great note, and at last, slowly, over several minutes, there was silence.

"Thank you," said Renly, beaming at the cityfolk as every eye rested upon him. "My people, you cannot imagine the joy it brings me to be here among you today—"

Applause, once again. Renly had always been a favourite of the commons, Sansa knew, long before King Robert died, but this level of adulation must be new even to him. He nodded once more to the trumpeters.

"—today," Renly continued, "now that the reign of the usurping Lannisters is ended."

The roar that greeted that was even louder, though quite short.

"And today," the king declared, "it is time they must face justice!"

There was more applause. "Death!" someone cried, and another, and "Kill the bitch!" and "Kill the Imp!" and "Death to lions!" and "Death to Lannisters!" and "Death to traitors!" All these sayings and more were mixed in unison from the voices of the cityfolk. There was no love for Lord Tywin's House here today, if there ever had been.

"Some of that House already face the judgement of the holy Father," Renly said. "Ser Lancel Lannister, nephew to Lord Tywin, who died in the battle here. Quite likely Tyrek and Tyrion Lannister, whose fates remain unknown, since the first great people's uprising against the usurpers, and since the battle, respectively. If they are alive, I will be generous in my reward to whosoever discovers their hiding-place."

The king motioned to his guards, and they brought before him the proud form of Ser Kevan Lannister, who had once been master of this city. The crowd gave a bestial howl of hate. Manure, rotten meat and fish and fruit and even stones were thrown at him with vigour. The portly man flinched, though he did not cry out, as he was bombarded. Not a man lifted a finger in his defence.

"Ser Kevan Lannister fought for his lord brother," King Renly continued, "which is a treason more understandable than most. But he had no right to rule this city, nor to cruelly cut down its people merely for demanding the food that is theirs by right. He is headed to the Night's Watch." The king could not further raise his voice without descending to an undignified shout. Instead he slowed it and spoke very deliberately. "He will never unleash swords upon my people again."

More cheers erupted from the people of King's Landing. "King Renly!" they roared, and "Good King Renly!"

"There is one more infamous treason yet," Renly declared as soon as the crowd had fallen silent. "Our beloved late king's wife, Cersei, born of House Lannister, the Kingslayer's Broodmare, the Whore of the West."

More guards led the former queen to Renly's presence, clad in a fresh grey shift, smelling cleaner and showing no sign of obvious mistreatment. Sansa pitied them then, for the onslaught that fell upon them was almost as savage as that which had fallen on Ser Kevan. Shit and rot and stone rained down upon her, a great deal of it hitting her guards instead. The queen, though, was no less impressive than her uncle in the depth of her composure. Somehow she withstood all this without screaming or crying out, however hideous an experience it must have been for her.

"You are accused of grievous crimes," wheezed the High Septon. He had risen to the office after the previous High Septon, a man too fat to walk, had been torn apart by the starving cityfolk during the riot, but whatever allegiance he had owed to Kevan Lannister was ended; this old man must have come to an arrangement with King Renly. "'Tis said in the Seven-Pointed Star that of all a man's words the Seven Who Are One hear his last most clearly. By mortal judgement you are sentenced to die, but in the judgement of the Father you may yet raise your hopes by honesty. Will you now speak?"

Cersei did not even spare him a glance. Filthy with rot and shit and bleeding from a dozen stones as she was, she managed to retain a certain dignity, every inch a queen, as she looked straight at the true author of her demise. "Little brother. May the gods forgive you the darkness of the deeds you have committed out of lust for power, for your brother's trueborn sons will not."

"It is a grave sin to lie with your last words," the High Septon croaked reproachfully.

"So be it," said Renly. His eyes turned away. "Ser Petyr, bring me her head."

Louder than thunder, the mob screamed its approval. A man stepped forth from among Renly's soldiers, wearing a mask painted with the half-human, half-bestial face of the Stranger, the god of death.

Little brother.

Sansa looked from Cersei to Renly and back again. They looked nothing alike. Renly was the very image of a younger, slimmer King Robert Baratheon. And yet… and yet there was a likeness there, a likeness in the soul. And Sansa knew in that terrible instant that King Renly Baratheon, Renly who had been so kind to her, Renly who was fair and just and avenging, would have killed her lord father as surely as Queen Cersei had, with no more hesitation or remorse, had Eddard Stark stood in his way.

There was a time that would have disturbed Sansa. Now, she thought, It matters nothing. Renly and his followers were not the true knights that she once had dreamt of in her days as Joffrey's captive, they might be scarcely different from House Lannister and the men of the westerlands—the sack had shown her that—but Cersei and the Lannisters had meant harm to her, whereas King Renly had no cause to lay waste to the north and to House Stark so long as Robb was not fool enough to defy him. His wrath would fall on other folk in other places.

None of them are good men, she thought. They are all monsters. What matters is that the monsters who win be the ones on our side.

Sansa smiled to see the fall of the axe, the spurt of blood, Queen Cersei's severed head rolling gruesomely on the floor. It was a young girl's smile, sweet and demure and trusting, playing the part she ought to play. The crowd howled its bloody vengeful pleasure. They liked the look of the king's justice.