Lady of the West

Prologue

The air was thick with death, sweet and foul all at once.

Her husband gagged and wretched, and Genna had to bring up a square of silk scented with lavender to cover her nose, less she do the same.

She was hardly delicate but there was only so much she could be expected to bear, and the reason why the scene was here stabbed in her heart.

Lannisport often saw ships from faraway lands come to its docks, ships from across the Sunset Sea bringing treasures and marvels from across the seas and Genna had so many fond memories of walking through the streets of the walled port city with her mother and her brothers and even her father when he had not been such a disappointment in every aspect.

But one ship had come to dock and along its fabrics and spices, it had brought death in its hold, a plague that had ravaged through the docks so quickly that some had taken to calling it the wrath of the gods, those who had been affected by it died horribly, blood coming from their eyes and their mouths and their ears and their bowels turning to water. Those that recovered from it were few and far between.

And it did not stay within the walls of Lannisport for long, despite all the best efforts the plague had managed to make it within the walls of Casterly Rock. No one was spared from the ravages of it, from the lowest servant to the greatest lord that the Seven Kingdoms had ever seen.

When word had come to the Twins Genna had not believed it, she had thought that it was some sort of plot or a scheme, to sow dissent or to make her weaker or make her panic but as more and more news reached the Riverlands from the west it became clear that she could deny it no longer.

Tywin Lannister was dead, and her world had ended.

She could not leave the Twins, in part because her goodfather would not allow her to go lest she catch the plague that was in Lannisport and bring it back to his castle and so she could do naught but wait, wait until the disease had run its course.

It took half a year before word had reached the Twins that the horror had ended. Most of the letters she received from her home had either been from Tywin or Kevan so it had taken her a moment to recognise Tygett's hand, her second youngest brother and she had never been that close to tell the truth. Tywin had always been her big brother, her truest champion, there had only been a year between herself and Kevan, some had thought they were twins, and Gerion had learned to walk by holding on to her skirts.

But Tyg, for all that she loved him, had been born an angry little boy and while he learned how to use a sword and she had been taught how to become a lady, her weapons were to be her courtesy and her wars were to be in the birthing bed and thus there was little overlap in their worlds and Genna was certain that Tygett had always preferred it that way, she knew she had always been too close to Tywin for him to be comfortable.

And now her younger brother's words had brought her home, what was left of it at least.

Her eyes burned with tears, but she forced them back, the words that Tywin told her as a girl when she had been betrothed to Emmon for the first time and she didn't think she would ever be able to stop crying.

Dry your eyes, you are a lion of the Rock. Have you ever seen a lion weep?

And that was the truth of it, Genna was born a lion and it was as a lion she would die. She might have married a Frey but she was still a Lannister and it was a Lannister that was needed now. Their family had been devasted and the Lords of the West would be able to smell their weakness and they would try to take advantage of it, they had done so before after all.

To this day she could still remember the smirk on Ellyn Reyne's face, the way she had laughed when her betrothal to Emmon was announced. There had been a viper in their midst and her father had done nothing about her, nothing about all the ones who had thought that they could laugh about them, but Tywin had taught them the folly of laughing at House Lannister.

It would fall on her, and Tygett, to teach them that now.

The wheelhouse had come to a stop within the lion's mouth and the smell of death was still so thick that it was almost like there were corpses still piled up, but in his last letter to her Tygett had told her that all the bodies had been burned and the ashes had been buried. That was not what Tywin had deserved, he deserved to be laid to rest in golden armour with all the Lords of the west in attendance. Not thrown into a hole to be mixed with the ashes of a thousand other souls.

Tygett came over to greet them, her little brother had turned into a man in her absence. The last time she had seen him, he was a chubby and pimply faced boy with an almost permanent frown on his face and now he was taller than she was, and his shoulders were broader. His hair was cut close to his scalp and his eyes were dull as jade with a harsh nose and fearsome jaw.

"Sister, I am glad you are here." Her brother spoke, his voice a gravelly grumble compared to when she had last heard it and it had not even broken yet. "Casterly Rock is rife with tragedy, I hope you will bring some light to its halls."

"I've never brought much light to anything, ask my dear husband about that." Emmon spluttered behind her and spewed out what seemed like an endless rush of half-formed compliments, the sort he always spoke when he was trying to impress her. "Oh, do be quiet Emmon. It was only a jest, there's no need for you to lose control of yourself. Tygett, I need to see the child."

"Of course," Tygett nodded and lead them into the halls of the castle, Genna glanced back at her husband and sighed heavily, in truth she had found some degree of contentment in her marriage, he was hardly the sort of man to light a flame in a woman's heart, but she had mostly made peace with her life. But now, when her family had been devasted, the sight of him just seemed to irritate her.

"Emmon, might I beg a favour of you?" Genna asked her husband, the fact that surprised him irritated her. Everything seemed to irritate her lately. "I must tend to things here, ride down to Lannisport and find out how truly badly the city has been affected. I would like to hear it in your own words."

"Of course, my lady. Brother," It seemed to take Tygett a long moment to realise that Emmon was taking to him, he blinked slowly and nodded her husband who then scurried off and the tension around her shoulders seemed to ease off a little.

"Father must have been mad to marry you to a man such as him," Tygett spoke once Emmon had vanished from sight, Genna sighed and linked arms with her little brother and allowed him to lead her inside of the Rock.

"Not mad, just desperate to be loved." As a child she had only seen the good in that, her father had always held her and gave her gifts and a smile from him had always made her smile back. It was only when she became a woman grown, when she saw what that weakness could cause. Still, she could not hate him. He was her father, and he had loved her. He had loved all of them.

The Rock was massive, she had not forgotten that but being away for so long had made it seem bigger than she remembered and by the time they had reached the living quarters reserved for the closest members of the family she already felt an ache starting to form into her legs.

They walked into the nursery where the wetnurse was sitting in a rocking chair, a bundle held close to her chest. She rose from the chair and did half a curtsy towards them.

"Give the babe to me and leave," Genna ordered and the wetnurse hurried to obey, handing the bundle over to her, before leaving the room. Genna looked down at the babe, her eyes half shut and squirming in her swaddling.

Genna cleared her throat and told herself not to cry as she looked up at Tygett who was standing awkwardly near the door. "What exactly happened?"

"Gerion fell ill first, I think he was having a dalliance with one of the kitchen wenches. Kevan fell ill the next day, and Gerion was dead the day after that. Kevan held on for a while, spineless bastard was tougher than I thought. Then I caught it, but I recovered. Tywin was fine for the longest time, but after Kevan died he fell ill. Joanna was already in seclusion for the birth and so she was isolated from the spread, we thought she would be fine."

"She went into labour and gave birth to the twins, and she was fine. Tywin seemed to be on the mend as well, but then Joanna started to show the symptoms not long after the birth and Tywin took another turn. And then the boy fell ill as well, he died," Tygett had to clear his throat then. "And Joanna must have known, she just faded away and then Tywin died after them. The girl is all that's left."

Genna shuddered and sighed and had to sit down in the rocking chair, she would have collapsed to the ground if she did not. She knew it was bad, she knew that they were all gone but she hadn't known the details until now.

She tried to find some comfort in it, Tywin had loved Joanna more than anyone. He would have carried on for duty's sake, for the sake of House Lannister but he would never want to live in a world that didn't have Joanna in it. Genna hoped that he was in the finest of the Seven Heavens now, with Joanna at his side and his son, his perfect heir, in his arms.

But it did not matter what she wished and hoped, House Lannister had to survive. "We have to prepare her Tygett, she is the Lady of Casterly Rock now." It didn't seem real that such a little thing could have so much power heaped on to her, but so it was. "I am not going back to the Twins, I will stay here and help you raise her. We have to protect her; those vipers out there will take advantage of our weakness now."

"I won't let them," her younger brother spoke, and, in that moment, he sounded so much like Tywin that she could not help but be proud.

Genna nodded and looked down at the babe, her eyes had slipped shut and her little chest was rising and falling. "Did Joanna or Tywin give her a name?"

"Yes, her name is Cersei."

End of Prologue