Jaime II
Young Viserys Targaryen watched wide eyed as the traitors made their walk. It was Jaime's turn to escort the young prince, a time that happened to fall upon the day his royal father insisted his son (and soon, many in the court whispered, his announced heir) would witness the prerogative of the Iron Throne. Queen Rhaella had protested most violently, and thus was confined to her rooms for the afternoon, but Jaime knew she too would face the King's justice in the dark hours of the night.
"Ser Jaime," the boy tugged insistently upon his cloak, "why are these men traitors?"
Jaime had no helm to cover his distaste for the proceedings, thus he endeavoured to keep his face a dutiful mask of compliance.
"They plotted with Robert Baratheon to attack Gulltown, my prince. The city was taken treacherously with the connivance of rebels at court." Jaime answered indifferently, all bitterness shorn from his voice.
No such thing had happened of course, but Aerys was sorely wroth after the news had reached the capital, and with Robert and Jon Arryn out of reach, the King looked for fuel nearer at hand. The ever ready Spider had swiftly informed the King that Ser Lyle of Highmont was a cousin of Ser Horton Redfort, and was known to write letters to his kin in the Vale. And of course once Walter Grafton, the new Lord of Gulltown, had surrendered his city, his younger son Wylliam, a ward of Lord Dunstan Rosby, had been similarly doomed. The rest were retainers, servants, and of course the poor wretches who had arrived with Brandon, men of high birth who had been left to stew in the black cells. Only Brandon's squire had been omitted from the roster, apparently due to his youth. Jaime sensed the hand of Ser Barristan in that, though it was never wise to credit the King with excessive forbearance. Leaving Glover in those dungeons was certainly a far crueller fate; knight or king, Jaime doubted the boy was particularly thankful to his deliverer.
But Jaime did not deign inform his charge of this; already the prince had a reputation of possessing a free tongue – especially when it came to reporting the lax speech of others – however innocent the boy might think the rumours seemed.
Viserys fidgeted with his scratchy brocade as the waste of parchment that constituted charges was read out. Though Jaime hated to do it, he took the prince gently by the shoulder and placed him directly in front of his armoured legs. No doubt His Grace was watching from some high window – he loathed to step outside the castle, only moving from the Great Hall to Maegor's keep under heavy guard at the utmost necessity. But he would never miss a burning. However Aerys had been insistent his son should be a witness from the very front, and had tasked Jaime with ensuring the boy saw everything.
"He is a dragon, a true dragon, and must not be taught by mothers and maesters to flinch at the sight of our flame. I will not raise another coward Ser – you will see it done."
Her Grace had not taken kindly to those words, the Queen had, under protests vacillating between tearful and raging, been confined to her chambers for the nonce, and had practically fought Jaime the entire journey to her rooms.
Jaime suspected his place in this play was no accident. He must know how much I despise these tasks. Aerys was certainly mad, but the King retained a particular cunning when it came to torment.
"Father says Cousin Robert is sailing here as well. Is he going to be burned as well?" Viserys said, not taking his eyes from the men being sullenly tied to the great stakes erected in the yard.
"If that is His Grace's will, my prince. But fear not, he shall sail south to his own lands first. Robert is a traitor, and the King is certain the leal men of the Stormlands will deliver him up to us as such."
"I'm not afraid." The princeling's bony shoulder twisted in his grasp. "Father will beat him, him or Rhaegar. He'll come back and kill Robert, you'll see."
"As you say my prince."
Jaime quietly agreed with the boy's assessment. Gulltown was not the realm, but a city surrounded by enemies. If Robert were to land at Storm's End he would find many of his vassals' swords laid against him, with a host from Highgarden rushing up the Rose Road to bolster them. Once those forces were combined, the rebel lord would be caught in his castle like a rat in a trap. Certainly Prince Rhaegar would be bestirred from wherever he hid to lead them.
The fires had been lit; there would be no final pleas for mercy, no last words of defiance from the traitors. Men from houses which had been ancient when the First Men had stepped onto Westeros burned without a whisper, only once the gags had turned to dust in their mouths was sound allowed to emerge, and that but hoarse whistles scarcely heard over the flames that frolicked to the arrhythmic beat of emerald fire, cracking the air like hot glass in snow. Perhaps an illusion of the wind, but Jaime could have sworn one man managed to scream out a futile cry of "Cunt" before his tongue was lost to the flame.
Jaime did not bother to watch however; he was of the opinion that once one had witnessed a dozen burnings, paying them any further attention was simply superfluous. Lords and men melted alike; as did candles, ice, butter and the testicular fortitude of men who served at the Red Keep. Nor did his thoughts turn to Cersei and the feel of her skin under his fingertips as some furious section of his mind longed to do. Rather Jaime carefully examined the lad he had forced to watch a score of men die. The boy trembled slightly in his grip, and his pale lilac eyes fluttered, whether against tears or smoke Jaime would have paid dearly to know.
"Is it done Ser Jaime?"
"Yes, sire." He answered stiffly, attempting the impossible task of both staring hard at the boy whilst gazing at the smoking wood piles ahead with all credible interest. "I will escort you back to the castle."
"No, ser. Not yet at least," the prince answered with steel alien to his fluting voice "if my father would have me watch these traitors burn, then he must have had a cause."
Prince Viserys bolted forward before Jaime could grab him, stopping at the foot of the nearest pile of ash and cracked bone. He regarded it innocently for a moment, then forcefully spat onto the only graves those damned would ever know, eliciting cheers from the acolytes preparing to depart and a puff of steam from the still hot remains.
"I'm glad you're dead." Viserys pronounced loudly, to no one who had reason to care any longer. "My father is the best man in Westeros, and he was your king as well. You thought you could betray dragons, and now you're burned."
With that he turned back to Jaime and looked him square in the eye. "If Robert comes I'll kill him myself, ser. We can go back to the castle now."
"You did well, my prince." Jaime forced himself to say. "Your father would be proud."
"And Rhaegar?"
Jaime gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze, and walked Viserys back without a word.
Dawn broke its massed ranks upon the walls of the White Sword Tower, but failed to catch Ser Jaime unawares. Though he had dispensed with the white enamelled plate he wore in the course of his duties, still he bore the virgin chainmail where he lay on the hard bed in his quarters. He wore it though his shoulders protested, though his back ached. Jaime lay in a sleepless bed and welcomed each spike of pain as a penitent's lash.
He'd had sleepless nights in this bed before, when longing for home had overtaken him, when he had shamed himself in the dark reaches of moonlight with thoughts of Cersei. But more often than not he evaded his bed because he knew with sleep came the wretched duty of dreams. Yet the world would not be denied, and battered now through the walls of the tower to torment his waking mind.
"Please, let me go!" The Queen had shouted from behind a closed door.
"You cunt, come here now or be chastised." Came the royal croak. "You fucking whore. You defy your king? You would make my son another of your weakling spawn? I should tear your bitch tongue from your mouth, you don't need that to bear me dragons."
"You're hurting me, brother. Sers please come, stop him he's…"
Then came the crash of furniture and the sound of struggles. And then the screams. No brief scream of a swift shock or pain, but the wild screams that when on and on, of ever-building pressure, that could only end in a snap. The muffled tears had come then, half-heard through the gagging force of clawed fingers, caked in sweat and blood.
Behind them in vile accompaniment was the snuffles of a searching beast, rising in excitement to reach shuddering gasps of ecstasy, intermixed with curses and threats. Jaime heard his name among them, and his father's, and the long mental list of men the king slew with each stroke.
Ser Arthur Dayne had stood at beside him at his watch, with Dawn sheathed at his back. Jaime had wondered how the knight could remain so impossibly still. Jaime imagined the sword unsheathed, an armoured foot crashing through the oaken door, Aerys thrown bodily from the defenceless woman and a knight putting his sword through the heart of a monster. Yet Dayne stood as a marble statue, never ceasing his careful scan of the long hallway for intruders who might interrupt His Grace in the midst of his loving embraces.
Jaime waited for it to end. Not the act itself – he knew Aerys would draw it out for his benefit, and in his wroth with Queen Rhaella – but for Ser Arthur to move, to speak anything, damn him, yet he never did. When Aerys finally exhausted himself it had fallen to Ser Arthur to escort the king back to his chambers. Though not without one final taunt shot across the bows.
"Hear that Lannister? If the gods are good I'll have made a son tonight." The king leered up at him, the shorter man seeming so tall in Jaime's mind's eye. "I suppose you won't, still, it's good for a young man's moral education to know what it takes to make a woman scream."
Ser Arthur had made to move the king along, but Aerys stood resolute, his head reaching up at like a darting reptile. Jaime, who stood bound stock-still as spittle and odious fumes flew, was whipped into a surge of hatred, his rage chained well away from his face.
"Now, my good queen tries her best, tis true, but I've never known a woman like your mother. You should have heard the funny noises she made ser – apparently your lord father is as prodigiously wealthy as he is a pauper abed. You look just like her you'll want to know, maybe you have the same cunny too." The king gazed at him mischievously, it was only when mocking Jaime he could look in one place for any amount of time with those nervous eyes. Because he is always looking for me.
"Perhaps one day I'll do you the honour of inviting you into the bedchamber, little lion. It shames me to have deprived you of the pleasures of the flesh so young. Mayhap one night I shall rectify my sin by fucking you bloody, would you like that Ser Jaime? Your father would be ever so proud I'm sure, he's always wanted a Lannister in the royal bedchamber. Don't-look-at-Dayne-look-at me-your-king-is-speaking!" This last sentence came in an angry trill that left Aerys red in the face. "I shall ask again and this time you will answer. Would you like that Lannister?"
Jaime regarded the king as requested, while his right hand wandered toward the hilt of his sword. Then he remembered Cersei. He remembered Tyrion's whore where they had found her tattered and beaten on the road and what had come after. All through his fault. And in the reflection of those terrible amethyst orbs, he saw in himself not the Sword of the Morning, but the ilk of King Aerys Targaryen, second of his name. Perhaps that was why he had not killed the King then and there. Perhaps it was the look Ser Arthur had shot him over His Grace's shoulder. Perhaps the white cloak suddenly seemed so heavy on his shoulders it wore him in its grasp. So instead he nodded politely, to the obvious disappointment of that awful face grown old before its time, and answered as a knight of the Kingsguard must.
"As you say, Your Grace."
This was past, but Jaime gnawed at the memories like a starving cur with a splintered bone.
"You swore a vow to guard the king, not to judge him." Came Ser Gerold's gravelly voice unbidden. Maybe those were the very same words that rattled about Ser Arthur's skull when he did his duty, and nothing more. If true, Jaime was already a traitor for he had committed a thousand mental treasons every moment in waking and in dreaming.
Darry had been no better, when Jaime had raised his first and only half-hearted suggestion to defend Rhaella at that same bloody door. "Not from him." There was no man, no true knight who could shield the realm from its lord and master. Perhaps that was why Rhaegar had fled, more willing to face ignominy than the dishonour of hurling his father from the high seat of kings.
No, the only knight Jaime cared to hear from had never spoken a solitary word on the subject. Nor did Jaime bring it up, in truth because he was afraid to hear what Ser Arthur might say. So Jaime lay there with those unspoken words torturing him, as the sun rose and the time came to do his duty once more. It would be a burning day, some developed instinct told him, and he must be ready. Yet he could not move. Jaime strove to lift his arm but an inch, without the slightest concession.
It was the damndest thing. He felt as if he could move, if he truly wanted, but no matter how he struggled and howled his diligence, there he lay in the creeping arms of a dark despair. The demands of his thoughts retreated, and some layer of his mind overrode duty, to send him only half-reluctantly into the comfort of Cersei's arms. The White Sword Tower was a palled existence, when the smell of her hair and the way she clutched to him even in sleep – as she must have done in the womb – was his world.
That was where Ser Oswell Whent found him, dreaming a place far beyond King's Landing, where Jaime could be whole.
The older knight had not been unsympathetic, but neither of them spoke an honest word. As far as Jaime could tell, Whent had not slept either, though not from a guilty conscience. He seemed distracted, the normally cutting wit Jaime had learned to fear and enjoy in equal measure was lacking. As Ser Oswell led him down to the common room to break their fast, Jaime noted the knight's silence, but perceived no unspoken censure. Once arrived, Jaime discovered the strange sight of Ser Gerold and Ser Arthur at a shadowed table in the room's corner, their heads bent over a letter and speaking in hushed tones, food untouched.
Only the sound of Whent loudly clearing his throat moved them, and in that Jaime saw the most shocking sight of all in his time at King's Landing. Ser Arthur Dayne practically jumped, and attempted to crush the parchment into the pockets of his breeches. Only to be reminded that he was in full plate when his fist scraped uselessly off white metal. Jaime had not only seen the Sword of the Morning startled, but undoubtedly of a guilty countenance.
The White Bull was quick to recover however, and stood to greet his brothers at the door.
"Well sers, I am glad you have deigned to join us at our table. Prince Lewyn waits to be relieved, and I don't doubt that rested as Ser Jaime surely is, he is hale enough to guard Princess Elia on an empty stomach. As for you Oswell, perhaps you should remain here and account for your coming at an hour more appropriate for panders, whores and, gods help me, mummers." The look he shot Ser Oswell was so blatantly clandestine Jaime had to supress a laugh. Arthur noticed, and gave him a small wink in acknowledgment, before artfully rearranging his features into a simulacra of Hightower's stern act.
So Jaime nodded politely to the Lord Commander, and marched with mock officiousness to the armoury, somewhat gladdened to hear chuckling from behind. That letter though… That they had been acting strangely was certainly an understatement, though oddly enough, to know his sworn brothers had secrets of their own, even from him, was cheering.
Jaime walked into the armoury, and over the white mail he had worn the day before, he placed a golden breastplate, and thought nothing of it.