Lenna LXIV
She didn't know what Tyrion wanted from her, or why she was summoned back to King's Landing. That had never been a part of their discussions previously, and it meant that she felt nervous and off-kilter from the moment she broke open the scroll and read its contents, her heart making its all-too-familiar plunge at the sight of the waxen lion. However, she couldn't wholly disagree with his logic as he presented it. It made sense to bring them all back together to talk before the next step was determined, but she could not tamp down the wary, leery feeling she got when she thought of once again walking into the Red Keep.
She prayed fervently that Samwell Tarly would make good time on his journey North. He'd left just after Wendel had come, a full month earlier than she'd expected the babe to arrive, not that the young maester had been particularly helpful in that instance. It was Gilly who realized what was happening and how quickly her labor was progressing, sending Sam to fetch the midwife like a bumbling bear pursued by bees. The babe had already proven himself stubborn before her pains even began, the sickness that had faded with time while she was carrying Addy perniciously continuing until the very morning he decided to make his appearance. She was so used to her stomach being sore from retching that she almost didn't realize what the sharp pains in her abdomen were, and she certainly didn't make it back to her rooms before he came. He entered into the world on the floor of Sunspear's library, the Wildling girl's rough, gentle hands catching the child and cutting his cord with a pair of scissors Lenna kept at her table in the library to trim parchment before Gilly wrapped him in a length she tore from her own skirt.
"Look," she'd said gently, almost with a child's wonder, when the midwife had swaddled the tiny infant and passed him to Gilly to place in Lenna's arms. "A boy, my lady. You have a son."
The babe had looked up at her with bleary eyes, his little mouth working. She had been expecting gray like Addy's, like Sandor's, but her own eyes, her brother's eyes, looked back at her.
"Wendel," she'd said without thought, too exhausted and overwhelmed to even realize what she would say before it was said. He'd scrunched his face up as if he would cry, then yawned and fell asleep. And so, Wendel Manderly Clegane was named.
Lenna laughed when she realized it, and then she'd cried, burying her head against Gilly's shoulder and wishing so very hard that Sandor was there.
Wendel Manderly Clegane was born with a set of lusty lungs, and Lenna was quite sure he'd take after his father's grumbling given time. He wasn't exactly fussy, that wasn't the right word for it, but from his first breath, Wendel Clegane knew himself. He liked being held by his mother, but not for too long; he liked looking at his sister, but did not want to be cradled by her arms; he liked it when his mother sang, and he was always, always hungry.
But he grew rapidly, allaying the maester's fears that his early arrival boded ill. At almost a month, he was already the size Addy had been at the same time, despite his early arrival. If he was growing at such a tremendous rate, she wondered at the lad he would become, thinking sardonically at her concerns about the length of Addy's little legs. Her brother looked poised to surpass her apace even if he was younger and born early.
Definitely takes after his Da, she thought wryly, looking down at the basket by her feet. She was enjoying the roll and pitch of the ship as it cut toward King's Landing. Even this far south, she could feel the crisp taste of winter in the wind, and though she shouldn't have, she enjoyed it. The air tasted like snow, clean and cold, and despite the wariness with which she was sailing back to the capital, there was something of anticipation beginning to bloom in her. The gears were turning, the winches pulling tight, and she dared not think too much on it, but soon-
They had received the ravens from King's Landing informing them that the threat beyond the Wall was defeated. She had listened with deathly calm as Prince Oberyn read off the list of the high-born dead, her heart still in her chest until he passed where Sandor's should have been listed. It had stirred then, trembling like a fledgling born in winter, wings growing strong as her host's strong voice skimmed over places where her friends should have been. Sandor, it seemed, had survived, along with Jaime Lannister, Brienne Tarth, and Jon Snow himself.
Many, many others had not.
She was happy that Jon Snow lived, though some dark part of her thought things would have been much less complicated if he hadn't. She had chastised herself very soundly for even allowing the thought to flit across her mind, a traitorous thought, the thought of a conniver. It had kept her awake for several nights, the guilt, just as she'd lain awake after she and Gilly found that strange journal. She had wrestled with what to do with the discovery in that little book. Tommen Baratheon was her king, she had made that decision long ago and she was not the kind of woman to change her allegiances. It did not matter to her that he was not a Baratheon. He was a good young man, and he was acting in the best interest of his realm. She could want for nothing more than that. If anything, her years of reading and study had impressed on her the idiocy of dynasties. It was far too easy to accept the tyranny of a madman simply because he was his father's son, but Tommen Baratheon was all that had been good about his father. Both of them.
She wondered what she would have done if he wasn't, and the thought brought no comfort.
In the end, she and Samwell Tarly had made the decision that Jon Snow had a right to know that he was not a bastard, not by any stretch of the imagination. She tried to imagine the lad's reaction but fell into tears in the effort. Lenna had known Jon Snow the entirety of his life, and while Ned Stark had treated him as much like a son as he could, his status as a bastard was a painful one as the lad became a man, the differences in his lot and that of young Robb becoming agonizingly apparent. She had witnessed how Robb's death had grieved him after the siege of Winterfell, and Lenna was sorry, so sorry, that it was only now that he would learn that his ill-treatment had been for nothing. That he'd been lied to by the man he held as his father. That the woman who could have loved him as a nephew had instead reviled him as the bastard child of some unknown rival. That he had been prevented from taking his proper place in the world, acknowledged and loved.
Such heartbreak she could not bear to witness.
Lenna had seen the young maester and his books off at the quay herself, little Wendel swaddled in her arms. She had sent a message with him, though she had struggled long had with its composition. In the end, she had written little, trusting Sandor, should it be put into his hands, to know her from the few phrases she managed to cobble together. It was tucked now into the Dornish maester's diary, and it was strange for her to think of it pressed between those pages, her own message so mundane in contrast to the old scrawl that possessed a unknowable and terrible power. She felt it as the young maester took a few halting steps before he had turned to look back at them, a thrumming radiating from him that felt like fate. Sam had looked nervous until he saw Gilly, then his gaze had steadied and he'd lifted an arm, resolutely treading up the gangplank and out of sight.
Lenna did not know what she would have done without Gilly. Wendel had come too soon by a month, refusing to latch to her breast as Addy had. She had despaired in those first few days, the midwife looking grim and shaking her head. He wasn't putting on any weight, and he was too small to begin with. Lenna was exhausted, her breasts sore as she tried desperately to feed him well into the night. It had been Gilly that had taken one look at Wendel and known exactly what to do.
"His tongue," Gilly said, dark eyes narrowed as she looked at the babe. "I've seen that before. Shaped like a heart, it is."
Lenna and Sam had both looked, both saw what Gilly had. The girl was right. His tongue had a divot at the tip.
"He can't nurse like that," Gilly said, "at least, not easy. That's why he always seems hungry. He can't get enough before he tires."
"What do I do?" Lenna asked, her throat working. She was so tired and hopeless. It was unbearable to watch her boy becoming frail when he should be strengthening. She could not entertain the thought of telling Sandor that-
"You snip it," Gilly said quietly. "The little bit there. Just a little, just enough to free his tongue. He'll latch after."
Sam had looked at her with wonder in his bovine eyes, his face owlish and his small mouth pursed in a perfect o.
"Will you do it?" Lenna had asked. The girl gulped and nodded, holding a pair of embroidery scissors to a flame and then clipping Wendel so quickly and precisely he didn't even bleed. His little face scrunched up and for a moment Lenna thought he would set to wailing, but instead he yawned and went straight back to sleep.
The next time he awoke in hunger, he took to her breast without hesitation and Lenna wept with relief, her lips pressed against his head and the wispy tuft of his hair.
Now, she and Gilly were with the children as they charted course back to King's Landing. The news from beyond the wall made their errand that much more urgent. King TOmmen had called Lenna back to sit on his council again, to prepare for whatever negotiations were to be had with Daenerys Targaryen and her men in the wake of the Night King's defeat.
Every time she thought of it, her breath came shallow. She had spent so long preparing for one eventuality that she had hardly been able to ponder the next. Now that it was time to face the possibility of another war of succession, she found herself at a loss.
Lenna Clegane had no idea what to do.
It had been easy before, the right path laid out clearly. There was a right and there was a wrong, but now the two were all twisted up and gnarled together. Jon Snow was the rightful heir to the Targaryen throne, of that she had no doubt, but there was no more Targaryen throne. Daenerys Targaryen had no business sitting the Iron Throne, but the revelation of Jon's heritage threatened to inflame an already tense negotiation. After all, the promise of cooperation and alliance had only stretched as far as the end of the war beyond the Wall. Though it was a relief to know that there was no longer a threat from the Northern border, she now feared the threats within.
She did the only thing she could think of when Tyrion had written, entreating her to meet him in King's Landing to continue the negotiations with the Targaryen girl, Prince Oberyn and Prince Trystane accompanying her in secret to look after the amassed armies and weapons that had been quietly funneled into the Crownlands while the bulk of the armies were occupied in the North.
"We are well prepared," Oberyn assured her as they watched the Red Keep come into view. "We have our ships waiting in the Narrow Sea, our fighting men within a day's march, and the city itself is newly equipped with scorpions of your maester's design."
"I know," she replied distractedly, squinting her eyes against the salt-wind. "But something isn't right. This summoning-"
"I feel it, too," Gilly said quietly, her dark eyes large and her chin cast down. She'd grown rather bold in Oberyn's presence. It was certainly due to one of the many things Lenna found to admire in him; he never looked at Gilly as if she hadn't the right to speak. Instead, he listened to her just as he had listened to his brother, to Sam, and to Lenna herself. He was earthier than many of his counterparts, certainly among the Dornishmen. Though prone to lavishness and excess, Oberyn was shrewd and surprisingly approachable. Lenna thought it much had something to do with the amount of time he spent doting on his clutch of bastard children, their mothers ranging from noblewomen to whores to septas.
"Set your minds at ease," Oberyn said with a charming smirk. "Lenna knows better than most that they can smell fear. They mustn't smell yours."
His words did little to sooth the sizzle in her gut as she docked and rode from the quay to the Keep on a stout hired pony. Oberyn and Trystane slipped away into the crowds about their business and Gilly remained aboard the ship with the children. Lenna had been hesitant to send word ahead to her aunt of her arrival, thinking to arrange for Gilly and the children to stay in her household once she had made her appearance in the Red Keep. Olenna would be at the council meeting, she was sure. Her aunt had not returned to the Arbor since her granddaughter's coronation, much to Lenna's admitted relief. She felt easier knowing that Olenna had her fingers in the business of the realm.
Lenna went on alone, cloaked in her dark wool like some Northern bird bearing winter on her wings and roosting among the brightly colored parrots. The people of the capital bustled about in their bright colors and silk shawls, not paying her one bit of mind. It was just as well. Lenna shuddered involuntarily, gripping her cloak a little bit tighter. There was only the barest hint of chill in the air, so it was not the cold that made her shiver, just her memories. Lenna could not help but think of all the times she had made that same journey through the Fishmonger's Square and through the tight streets and alleys on the approach to the Red Keep.
Each of her recollections was colored by fear. The first was a pale, icy blue of a spring-sky, an innocent feeling that was more nervousness than fear. She'd been shaking and queasy and unprepared for her sudden entry into court, that little maid of fifteen with her red-leather book clutched in her hands like a touchstone. The second entrance she remembered through the lense of a deep, chaotic blue, that of the roiling ocean as she had returned from White Harbor with Sandor at her side, her eyes opened to her captors but her spirit still anchored in hope. This new fear, this new wariness, however, was sharp and almost green, the color of the shallows where the unseen sharks circled, black and shapeless as if borne on dark wings. She did not like the feeling of paranoia that had her glancing over her shoulder, her eyes scanning for she knew not what in the slender glimpses of sky visible between the closely packed buildings.
She gave her name at the gate and was ushered into the courtyard. It was quiet, almost abandoned, and she wondered vaguely why. A set of guards fell into step behind her as she made her way through the Keep and into the Holdfast, her feet remembering the way serviceably considering her mind was so preoccupied. It felt like not time at all before she was ushered into the small council room.
There was something delightfully routine about knowing the meetings were still happened at the same time without fail in her absence. She was almost cheerful when the door opened and she found herself confronted with so many familiar faces.
Familiar faces, yes, but all of them bewildered by her arrival.
"Lenna?" Tyrion asked, getting to his feet. He was sitting at the opposite end of the table, and when Lenna walked into the room he and his sister had been staring daggers at each other. It was best to keep them as far apart as possible. "Lenna, how did you come to be here, you should be-"
"My lord?" she replied with an ungraceful bubble of perplexed laughter, her breath turning to icy vapor in her lungs and beginning to hurt. Her head throbbed. "You yourself sent for me."
Tyrion cocked his head slowly, his mouth slack, and Lenna felt as if a shadow passed. She blinked, then realized that she was not imagining things, that the perception of darkness was not some perverse figment of her anxious imagination but an actual shadow. A rolling shadow, a waving shadow. A shadow like a beating of wings.
Tyrion swallowed, his mismatched eyes widening.
"I did not send for you, Lenna," he whispered.
She darted her eyes around the faces of those present at the table, and found them all looking back at her with the same expression of fearful anticipation.
All except one pair, set in a grinning face. Arched brows rose as the papers on the long table began to stir with the sudden, irregular wind that came streaming in from the open casements, and an ominous sound like rushing water or gushing heart's-blood seemed to flow through her very bones.
Lenna felt herself go cold, and then there was a great scraping sound, like a long rending of bone, or of metal against stone. The strange palpitations in the air ceased and a stillness settled in the chamber, thick and hot like the inside of an oven. The gulls had stopped their endless crying.
"Tyrion," she said lowly, taking a step back and looking only at her old friend. "Tyrion, what have you done? Why-"
"I did not call you, Lenna," he returned earnestly, his eyes wide and dilated. The silver hand on his shoulder was made crooked as it pulled on the fabric of his cloak. He swallowed hard, his gaze shifting to the only person in the chamber who seemed pleased to see her. Her own eyes darted again to the wiry man at the end of the table. Petyr Baelish was smiling openly now, a finger tracing the tip of his sharp, goateed chin.
"No," she replied sluggishly, forcing herself to look at Baelish and feeling keenly that everything she had ever thought, had ever heard about the odious man was true. The eyebrows darted upwards teasingly and she wanted to retch. "Of course you didn't. But I still wish to know why."
Baelish sat forward in his chair, his thin-lipped mouth poised to speak, but the door the room opened again and struck the stone wall with a clatter.
"That has a simple enough explanation, Lady Clegane. I commanded it." The cold voice that sounded from the doorway was uncomfortably familiar. Lenna had become used to that musical tone like a low flute. A shiver skittered along her spine.
Lenna turned slowly as the rest of the assembled party rose to their feet, even Cersei Lannister shocked into standing. Daenerys Targaryen was at the doorway, small and clad in black from shoulder to toes, long white hair gleaming like silver against the fur collar of her cloak and her hands clasped before her in an attitude that seemed to lend her stature.
"Under pretense, your grace?" Lenna asked with genuine suffering, remembering their last meeting. "I would have come had you bid it yourself."
"Would you?" Daenerys asked with an infuriating trace of a smirk around her mouth. "Forgive me, then, for resorting to such tactics."
Lenna shut her eyes in trepidation.
"Your grace-" Tyrion began, taking a step forward, his expression troubled and panic widening his nostrils.
"I will not take up too much of your time," Daenerys returned shortly, ignoring him. "I can see that you are very busy plotting my death. Or so Lord Baelish tells me." Lenna glanced at Cersei and then at Tyrion. Cersei's face was tight, her skull plainly visible beneath the taut skin of her cheeks and forehead as she clenched her jaw. Tyrion had gone ashen, mouth agape in protest. He was at a loss for words, and Lenna could not help but feel that was an ill omen.
You never did believe, she thought, that he would be able to turn on them, did you? For all that has happened, all that has come to pass, he is still a Lannister in the end.
Another voice whispered obstinately. Just as you are.
She was saved from this line of thinking, however, by the Dragon Queen's approach. For all that she was a small person, Daenerys radiated power. It wasn't charisma, it wasn't charm, it was unbridled and terrifying power. Cersei had been like that once, all golden and glowing and terrible, but where Cersei had been as a sun, this Targaryen was a dark star. She was still clad as she had been in the North, the black fur and leather out of place in honeyed-stone room, Cersei's gown a vibrant red, Tommen and Margaery's robes a vivid blue. Only Lenna and Tyrion were drab in their dark clothes, but Lenna had gone deathly white.
"The war beyond the Wall is over," Daenerys said perfunctorily with an air of great authority, "as I am sure you know. And so, our pact is fulfilled." She paused as if expecting some kind of protest. No one moved, though many dropped their eyes. Lenna was not among them, and she did not miss the disappointed smirk that graced the girl's full mouth. Woman. Queen, she thought wildly, noting perhaps for the first time that even though she was barely more than a girl, Daenerys Targaryen was now fully in command of her own decisions. If Tyrion was not aware of her arrival, and only Petyr Baelish-
Good gods, Lenna thought dully. How long?
Daenerys looked down at her hands with a cocked brow, an expression of forbearance and hardly concealed impatience about her pursed mouth. "I will give you three days to determine your course. I will keep it simple for you. Either surrender King's Landing to me at the appointed time, or…" she trailed off as an ominous scraping seemed to emanate from the very stones of the Keep. Her violet eyes lit up with incongruous affection. "There will be no further negotiations."
"Your grace-" Tyrion started, tight-lipped and dark eyed. He had stretched out a hand as if to placate her, to stop her, but she regarded him coldly.
"No," she replied imperiously. "I have listened too well to you, my lord." Then she turned her eye on Lenna. "You wish to know why you are here, Lady Helenna? I called you to do what you do best. You claim to have the good of your realm at heart, and as such, I can almost understand your treachery. This lot will try to find a way around my desires, but you know it is folly to resist. You know the strength of my armies, the power of my dragons. You know what happens when dragons attack a city. You know the histories. I am the daughter of Aerys Targaryen, am I not?"
"Yes, your grace," Lenna answered numbly.
"And he was deposed by treachery. Is this correct?"
"Yes, your grace," she said again, thinking of Jaime Lannister in his white armor with his white teeth and blackened name and thousands saved from the flame in recompense.
"And I am his sole surviving child. That makes me his heir. Is that not the way of it? Isn't your son your husband's heir, now?"
Lenna's heart fell into her gut and she wanted to demand how she knew of Wendel, but she heard a threat when it was uttered.
"Of course, your grace," she said instead. "That is the way of things. That is the law."
"Indeed," Daenerys repeated, "and so I stand here the rightful queen of Westeros in the company of usurpers and traitors. But I am just." Her eyebrow rose again, each sound vibrating through the room like a spearpoint striking its target. "I can be forgiving."
She looked at Lenna openly then, eyes like heather or asters bubbling like hot springs, cool enough, still enough on the surface, but boiling hot the deeper she looked.
Without another word, Daenerys Targaryen turned her back on the assembled company, Petyr Baelish making a hasty exit behind her without so much as a backwards glance.
The door closed with a finality that set Lenna's bones to buzzing.
Tommen sat down in his chair heavily, resting his forehead in his hand.
"What do we do?" he asked the room at large. Lenna scanned them individually, drawing no comfort from their stunned and slack faces. Even her aunt looked crestfallen, wrinkled face smooth and pale with horror.
"There is but one thing to do, your grace," Lenna ground out quietly. "Tell her you will surrender, that you will abdicate in her favor and retire to Casterly Rock."
"I will not abandon the crown or my people," Tommen said, and Lenna almost smiled at him. The best of both his fathers, she thought again.
"No," she replied, her mouth suddenly dry. "You will not."
"You are suggesting that the king lie," Cersei replied, but there was little bite in her voice. Her golden brows were furrowed, and for the first time, Cersei looked old.
"Aye," Lenna said with a tilt of her head. "I am suggesting that."
"And what else?" Cersei asked with a cock of her eyebrow. Lenna felt tired, washed out and gray.
"Hope that our fortifications are indeed, enough. Provide for the welfare of the smallfolk. Evacuate immediately. And," she hesitated with a quick hitch of her breath. "Pray."
A/N: OMG sorry for the confusion last night- I uploaded the wrong version of the chapter, one that I'd been using as a sketch and not polished, hence the confusion. Sorry again for not uploading the correct one more quickly! Thank you for your continued patience. Hope to have the next bit up this week. So close to the end.