(King's Landing: 11/11/298 AC) Cersei VIII

"Ahhh!" she screeched, tossing the scrap of parchment across the table, where her stunted excuse of a little brother sat, alongside the little man from the Fingers, and the Grand Maester. "This is impossible! Pycelle, Baelish, you're both useless! Get out!"

"As you command, your Grace!" The two men bowed and scurried off, as if the very fires of the seven-hells were biting at their heels.

'Good!' Cersei stalked the room, chewing at the wick of her fingers and peeling off small bits of skin from their tips. Her mind swirled with thoughts on how to get at the King before the bitch arrived, but it was too soon, and the men she had sent with her piggish husband had yet to report back. Nor had the men she had sent to discern their whereabouts. 'Not even a damned rider!' Cersei felt her eye twitch at the thought. 'Kevan's boy best had not betrayed me…' she turned towards Tyrion and saw him sitting merrily, feet dangling over the edge of her cushioned chair, and drinking wine. She felt the sneer form on her face and the little half-man lowered his smile somewhat, though not completely.

"Apologies, your Grace! May I partake of your wine?" he asked in a mocking tone, his green and black eyes seemingly laughing at her distress.

"Bah!" she scoffed, wishing him beaten for overstepping his bounds. Fortunately for him, the only image of beatings Cersei could imagine now, involved Stannis Baratheon's whore wife. She felt an odd smile form on her lips at the thought. 'I will have you yet. You haven't bested me.'

"I prefer not to know what that smile of yours entails…" Tyrion muttered, seemingly off put by her sudden grin.

"Nothing involving you, yet…" Cersei let the words linger a moment before she pressed her lecherous brother for more information. "Do you not frequent that foreign rat-hole of a tea house?" she glared at the stunted lion sitting in his much too big chair, her blood practically boiling out of their veins at the thought of the bitch from Dragonstone being named acting Hand. 'How wide did you spread your legs for the mongrel to name you as such?' she wondered, gliding past Tyrion, and clutching at the flagon of wine on the table beside him, before filling up a spare goblet to the brim.

"My, I'm flattered you've had me followed," the creature feigned surprise.

"I wasn't having you followed, fool. I've had my eye on that accursed little place ever since the whore put it up. She may not visit it, as far as I know, but she certainly put forward quite a lot of gold to see it built."

"And you know of that how?" Tyrion questioned, before pausing in his words and presenting a thoughtful smirk. "Wait, let me guess. Baelish?"

She scowled, then nodded.

"I would imagine matters of coin, especially large amounts, do not pass him by. I'd wager it's the only reason he still draws breath, even after his failure at reining in the City Watch?"

"For the moment, at any rate," she replied. "Apparently word travels fast and they didn't care much for his gold after that," Cersei drank deeply from her goblet.

"Well, we certainly could have offered them more," Tyrion shrugged, before pouring himself another cupful of her Arbor red.

"Don't you think that was the first thing I tried? They did not care much for our gold either," she mumbled, nipping at her wine.

"Oh, I see. Two-hundred men abandoning their posts does not a good sign make," he continued on, his countenance having taken on a less than gregarious look. "Unless somehow it is?" he raised a brow.

"They did not get the chance to enjoy their desertion," she remembered their screams after they had all been rounded up and quietly executed away from prying eyes. "They may have feared that repellant woman in the beginning, but in the end they feared me."

"Hmm, I imagine the bowls of brown will be quite hardy for some time won't they?" a near disgusted look crossed the creature's malformed face.

"Whatever, they don't matter, we still have the numbers. By all rights I should have had that irksome little teahouse burned down, and had all its workers put to the sword, the moment it opened." She turned her thoughts back towards the teashop, and her anger flared higher as she gulped down a mouthful of wine, the smooth sweet flavor tingling all the way down her throat. "It's been nothing but ill news, since the moment that woman stepped foot in King's Landing! And somehow its been even worse since she left!" she took another swig of the Arbor red.

"Temper, temper, sister. Its unbecoming of you," the small grotesquery chimed in as he took a sip of wine and cocked his brow. "It almost seems like you're preparing for a siege…" the statement hung in the air like the smell of rotting flesh.

"Oh, shut up! What would you know about it?" she whirled her head to face the stunted monstrosity, and felt her hatred bubbling up into her eyes. "You have no idea how many things I must account for, especially now that Varys is in the damned wind, with nothing but that venomous letter left in his wake!" she pointed at the crumpled up parchment and remembered receiving word from one of the Spider's little birds the day after he had fled. 'Which might as well have been an eternity as far as I'm concerned,' she frowned.

"A parting gift from a good friend?" Tyrion remarked.

"Now is not the time for jokes," she narrowed her eyes, wanting nothing more than to slap him for the unnecessary banter, but finding her energies sapped the moment she thought it. "Just tell me," she sighed, "did you learn anything from that Yi-Tishman when you were there?"

"Nothing about the current state of things on Dragonstone, but I know that Xai-Bau, the proprietor of that 'rat-hole' which you so elegantly described, is not some lowborn moron. He rarely speaks to outsiders. Though he did speak twice to me, however briefly it may have been, and when he did, I noticed that his words possessed a certain degree of elegance. His vocabulary and sentences stemmed from a far cleverer, far more educated mind than most in his position would, or even should have, and he doesn't drink wine, or ale, or anything of the sort. At least, not while I was there." Tyrion continued with a slight frown upon his lips. "Which I must admit, made me immediately mistrust him. A strange man? Yes. A foreign man? Yes. A smart man? Most assuredly," he muttered, before they both sipped at their wine. "He is also a suspiciously well-guarded teaman."

"What do you mean?" she asked, before taking her goblet and raising it to her lips.

"You wouldn't notice it at first, but his workers had a look to them. A darkness in their eyes, like they could kill a man without batting an eye. It wasn't just the males either, the women, few that there were, had the exact same look. Proper and friendly enough, when they mean to be, but unnerving when you stare too long," a haunted look came upon her brother's face and he took a long drink from his cup. "And they all bore jewelry encrusted with rubies. Chokers, rings, necklaces, and the like. The Lady of Dragonstone must pay quite handsomely, if her servants all wear rubies as part of their standard wardrobe."

"Glamours…" Varys' words from days before rang in her ears, causing a familiar chill to run down her spine.

"Hmm?" Tyrion's mismatched eyes narrowed in response to the word she had unwittingly spoken aloud.

"Glamours," she said again, only pausing a moment to gather herself on the information the eunuch had given to her on the subject. "A form of Essosi magic, involving rubies, and used by Red Priests to change their appearance," Cersei recalled. She chose to ignore Varys' use of the word trickery instead of accepting it for the magic that it was.

"Magic?" the Lannister imp nearly spat out his drink. "There are many words I've grown to expect hearing from you, Cersei, but that certainly was not one of them. Where did you hear this from?"

"The Spider," she replied.

"I wasn't aware that you trusted the words of eunuchs," her brother countered in his usually irritating tone.

"Of course, I don't trust eunuchs!" she scoffed. "I don't trust anyone, and it still leaves a foul taste in my mouth, to think of it, but I only speak from experience," she lowered her voice as the rage began simmering in her throat. Tyrion grew silent, the anticipation evident behind his ugly eyes. "The glamour can mimic another's guise near perfectly."

"Another's guise?" the malformed little man scrunched his brow before a spark lit up in his eyes. "The Lady of Dragonstone?"

"Yes," she sighed. "The whore of the Seven-Hells can alter her appearance. Which does not seem as surprising to me, now that I speak it aloud." Cersei took another gulp of her Arbor, inwardly chastising herself for not having secured a following of Red Priests for her own personal use.

"If this is true, then my next question would be: can these glamours be used to change a woman to a man? Or the other way around? Because if so, then it certainly leaves us in quite the bind," Tyrion set his cup down and looked at her.

"How would I know?" she frowned, shaking her head as she did so. "I have no knowledge of the secrets of the Red Priests. I have no books or scrolls that explain how it works. As far as the Spider knew, before the cockless coward chose to flee, was that the bitch only took on the guise of women."

"Well, let's hope that stays as such. So how long have the Red Priests been here in the capital?" he continued, probing for information that she just simply could not recall, after having not taken them seriously in the first place.

"I don't know exactly when," she hissed. "The only thing I do know, is that they were here before Jon Arryn perished and before she returned to the capital."

"Father sent me here to investigate something," he said, reaching for the crumpled up letter. "But," he lingered on his words as he flattened out the parchment and read it contents. Cersei gazed towards Tyrion and saw his eyes scanning the page with furrowed brow. "It appears I've stumbled onto something far more sinister. Acting Hand of the King? Five-hundred more Dragonstone men?" he locked eyes with her, a sense of bewilderment swirling within them. "This is some sick joke," he laughed without mirth, tossing the message away in disgust. "Even if the former proves true," Tyrion stole a glance at her as he spoke. An unreadable expression lay splashed across his misshapen face. "The latter," he glanced towards the thrown letter, "seems to be developing into a dangerous bit of theatre."

"And what were you sent here to investigate?" she eyed him, tightening her lips.

"I will not lie. It involved you, and Azula, and perhaps Littlefinger, though now I wonder about the author of…" he looked to her then rose. "Nevermind. The point is, all these things have been happening right under your nose, and only now are the rest of us being informed as such? Magic, murders, mysterious letters? And here I thought it was simply two women with similar personalities having it out, but now? It's something else entirely. I don't even know if father will believe any of this, but I do know that he will be furious that it got to this point."

"Where are you going?" she watched him waddling towards the door.

"To write my own letter to father, and giving it to the fastest rider we have," he opened the door and stared at her, all humor having drained from his face. "I would suggest sending men to arrest everyone at the teashop for conspiring against the crown. Because once Azula gets here, your hands will be tied, unless you want to start a war against Robert, her, and Lord Stark? Loosening Xai's tongue will be no simple feat, but I trust you'll be able to do it," he slammed the door shut, leaving her stunned at his vitriol.