Author's Note: Here's the next update. I've gotten a bit busier lately so it will be hard to update mostly every day like I have been, but I'll keep the chapters coming as soon as I can. This one's another chapter from Jaime's POV. Those take a bit longer to write since his brain is sometimes hard for me to get into. Anyway, hope ya'll like it!
Jaime Lannister closed his eyes in rapturous bliss as he felt the warm sun beat down on his face. After being imprisoned for months he was not taking the freedom he now had for granted. Of course, it was not precisely freedom with his wrists still shackled together and two very grumpy women prodding him along, but it was a significant improvement over his previous circumstances. When Lady Catelyn had burst into his cell the evening before, he had fully expected her to cut him clean through without a second's thought. What had followed though was the most bizarre chain of events that he never would have believed had he not been present to witness them. And now here he stood with the breeze blowing through his wild mane and the welcoming sun warming his skin.
A strident voice suddenly broke into his pleasant thoughts. "Are we going to keep moving or would you rather stand there all day sniffing the air?"
Amarah Baratheon had been in a fine fit of temper since orchestrating his escape from Riverrun. Jaime was still in a bit of disbelief that she had agreed to her aunt's plan of trading him to Tyrion for Sansa Stark. She must have felt a tremendous amount of guilt over young Sansa's imprisonment to defy Robb Stark's authority for a man she professed to hate. But Jaime was not one to question a fortuitous turn of events in his favor. If she was willing to help him escape, no matter how ill-tempered in the process, he would accept her assistance. That didn't mean he had to make the experience easy for her.
"Forgive me, Princess" he said in false contrition. "One simply learns to enjoy the simple pleasures in life after months of being chained up like an animal."
She did not seem too impressed by that sentiment. "Well then by all means stand here and enjoy the simple pleasures of life, Kingslayer. Just don't expect my help when Edmure's men catch up with us."
"It would take them some time to catch us on foot" he reasoned just to irritate her further. He decided that he preferred her like this. That mask of hers which hid so well her true emotions only seemed to slip when he was able to goad her into a fit of temper. Like this, she would be much easier to defeat in the many verbal skirmishes they were sure to engage in over the course of this journey.
At the moment, however, Amarah did not seem to be in the mood to trade quips. "Brienne!" she called out loudly enough for the wench to hear but not any soldiers who might be patrolling the land. The wench appeared a few moments later with a disgruntled look on her ugly face at the delay.
Amarah regarded him with a clever smile while addressing the wench. "Brienne, if Ser Jaime causes any further delays you have my permission to knock him unconscious before carting him the rest of the way to the river."
With these words she pivoted around and continued on without waiting to see his response. Jaime considered prolonging the wait for a moment longer, but at the wench's eager expression to bash him over the skull, he decided it would be in his best interest to keep moving along. They walked for some time longer before finally reaching the river. Amarah had mentioned it would be much quicker to travel by boat and Jaime agreed with that sentiment.
As they walked along, he took the opportunity to harass the wench with all manner of well placed jibes. She might be eager to knock him upside the head as Amarah suggested but as long as he kept moving with them, she had no reason to employ brute force. So he pushed and prodded, regaling her with all sorts of inquiries over how it felt to be such a hideous beast and if she had ever really known the truest advantage of being a woman. After all, what man would want to make love to such a beast if not simply for the sport of a challenge? Through all his snide remarks the wench remained stubbornly silent, but a ruddy shade of red began to color the back of her neck making her look even more ridiculous.
When they finally reached the river, Amarah bid him to stand still on the banks while Brienne went to fetch a small, abandoned fishing boat a small distance from where they stood. Amarah had been silent since issuing her earlier command to Brienne about knocking Jaime unconscious, but once the large wench was out of earshot, she turned on Jaime with the ferocious look of a she-wolf protecting her pups. For a stag, she seemed to have a great deal of the wolf in her.
"One more comment about her size or looks and I'll gag you myself" she practically growled at him with a fierce frown.
He responded to her threat with an unconcerned shrug of his shoulders. "I doubt that, Princess."
Amarah gave a harsh laugh at his words. "I've had to endure the death of my father to a pig, my Uncle Ned's beheading at the hands of your evil spawn, my other uncle's assassination by some bizarre shadow creature, and the brutal killings of my little Stark cousins. If you think I wouldn't gag you simply for a brief moment of peace and quiet, then you must be more stupid than you are vile, and that is simply not possible."
"Careful, Princess" he answered with a charming smile. "Any more lovely complements like that and I might never want to leave your side."
He was taken momentarily off guard but the look of genuine amusement that flashed through her eyes at his joking comment. Gods, she was a pretty little thing when she wasn't busy scowling at him. Shaking his head at the unwelcome thought, he suddenly found an intense interest in studying the multitude of ripples that floated across the surface of the muddy river. She must have taken his silence as accommodation to her request that he stop badgering her body guard, for she remained silent as well while Brienne returned with the boat.
Both women waited until he had climbed awkwardly into the boat before entering in after him. Brienne sat at the head of the boat, and Amarah situated herself in the middle facing him while the wench took the oars to move their little vessel along the river. He assumed she was not comfortable with the thought of her back to him, so she sat there eyeing him with a watchful gaze. The brief amusement which had lit her eyes moments before was gone now, leaving a wary distrust in its place. He felt a faint stirring of irritation in the way she looked at him, the deceitful Kingslayer. A man so undeserving of her precious trust.
Keeping his annoyance to himself, he looked away from the judgment in her eyes and stared at his reflection in the water. The man who looked back at him was practically a stranger. Amarah had spoken truthfully all those nights ago when she had told him he looked terrible. His once golden, shining locks had now grown long and were covered in dirt and filth. The long beard on his chin had the same grimy look and covered a good deal of his smudge-streaked face. He wondered what Cersei would think if she saw him as he was now. The image brought to mind was not a comforting one. She liked him at his best, his most glorious. The most perfect male version of herself in all her magnificent, mesmerizing beauty. Tearing his eyes away from the imperfect sight of himself, he looked back to the girl who sat in front of him. As he had gazed at the water, she must have felt safe enough to take her eyes away from him and look about to ensure sure they were alone on the river.
"Do you have a knife about you, Princess?" he questioned recapturing her wandering attention.
She gave him a wary gaze over that strange inquiry. "Why? Would you like me to put you out of your misery?"
"Unfortunately for you, no. I wish to cut off this undesirable mane I seem to have acquired while enjoying your boy king's hospitality."
"And how do you intend to do that with your hands bound together?" she questioned him with the same suspicious expression.
"I don't intend to do it myself" he answered with a chiding look over her ignorance of what he intended.
Catching onto his meaning, her dubious expression turned suddenly sour. "I'm not your squire, Kingslayer."
"And I would never regard you as so" he replied condescendingly. "However, it might help our, I beg your pardon, my cause if my appearance changed somewhat slightly from what it was before I escaped."
"He has a point, my lady" said Brienne from the front of the boat where she had been listening to their conversation.
Amarah shot Brienne an annoyed frown over her agreement with Jaime. She said nothing after the wench's remark but simply gave him a very thorough examination from head-to-toe. A look of disgust slowly crept over her features as she inspected his appearance in the unforgiving daylight. Jaime was hardly as vain about his appearance as some knights, but her obvious revulsion at the thought of touching him was a bit chaffing to his already sore pride. So he simply gave her a grating smile in return to keep her from knowing how much her reluctance to help insulted him.
"Very well" she finally surrendered. "But if you try anything to harm me, simply keep in mind the dagger I will be holding so closely to your throat. I doubt I would miss."
"Such a dishonorable thought never crossed my mind" he lied smoothly. He had contemplated trying to wrestle the weapon from her hands, but even if he succeeded, their location made his escape unlikely.
From the look on her face, she did not believe what he said but remained silent. Bending down, she pulled up the hem of her rough-spun dress to reveal a pair of shapely calves and ankles beneath. Being away from his sister so long had left him more vulnerable to the sight of female charms than usual, and he felt a small prick of guilt as he drank in the womanly sight. While the princess might be an exasperating female, she was built most agreeably. She had a leather strip secured around the top of her left calf just under the knee where he watched her unsheathed a small, shiny dagger. Dropping her skirt to once again hide the pleasant view, she slowly moved towards him in the small, cramped space.
The rocking of the boat made it difficult for her to get close enough to him without accidentally upsetting the delicate balance of their vessel. One wrong move and they would all three be in the water, and with his hands bound together as they were he appreciated her careful movements to avoid such an occurrence. Eventually she managed to crawl close enough to grab a hold of his hair by rising slightly up on her knees. However, a quick jolt of the boat caused by an unexpected wave sent her flying into his lap. Her hand without the dagger barely missed smashing into his manhood as he was quick enough to shield himself from her small fist.
"Careful, Princess" he warned her. "You might unman me."
She gave him a devilish smile before replying. "I thought Cersei had already taken care of that."
Jaime was good at deflecting comments that cast aspersions on his own character, but he did not like Amarah taking a jab at his relationship with his sister. "You don't know anything about what goes on between me and my sister, Princess." He kept his tone even but under laid it with just a hint of steel to warn her away from that subject. She apparently did not notice the warning or simply ignored it. As she proceeded to slash off handfuls of his long hair, she continued their conversation as if they were discussing any normal bit of gossip.
"I know enough to see she's been leading you around by that cock of yours for longer than I care to think about. Do you know the only 'motherly' advice Cersei ever attempted to convey to me all those years I resided in the capital? She told me that as a woman I had two weapons available to me. My tears and that hole between my legs, and I had best learn to use both if I ever expected to have any power over the men who wished to control me. I would say she practiced her weapons on you most effectively."
He was not certain what to think of what she had just told him, but decided to turn the conversation on her instead to avoid letting her drop her bits of poison into his mind about Cersei. "And I would gather you also took that advice to heart. Tell me, how many knights did you have to fuck to place your spies around court? Did you share your favors with the squires and servant boys too in order gain that control you craved to have over your own life? And what about my brother? How often did you have to fuck him to earn his loyalty?"
She continued sawing away at his mangy locks without meeting his cruel gaze, but an unconcerned smile graced her lips at his rude questions. "That's the trouble with you Kingslayer. You think that in order to gain loyalty we must seduce everyone with either money or the promise of a good fuck. Sometime people simply respond to kindness. Not that you would know anything about that."
He gave a harsh laugh at that. "You expect me to believe you showed kindness to those below your station, the lofty princess Baratheon? I find a good bout of fucking much more credible."
She stopped her work for a moment finally meeting his eyes. "I don't expect you to believe anything about me, Kingslayer. You don't understand me because you don't want to."
"I could say the same for you, Princess" he returned.
"Your actions speak to the truth of your character" she responded before turning her attention once again to the task at hand. She said nothing after that, but Jaime was not prepared to end their conversation so abruptly.
"You must be right, Princess. You know every facet of my despicable character from evidence of my broken vows, and you are a saint among us mortals."
"I never said I was better than anyone else" she defended herself before shooting him a quick, irritated glance. "And I don't determine my judgment of you based only on broken vows. Throwing an innocent child from a window is hardly the act of a good man."
"He was spying on me" Jaime reasoned in a bored voice. "He shouldn't have been there in the first place."
He had finally managed to elicit an angry response from her at explaining his reasons for throwing Bran Stark off that tower. To him it seemed a legitimate excuse for his actions, but she did not look as if she agreed. "It was his home, you heartless bastard. You were in the wrong fucking the whore queen in that tower where you could be discovered at any time. Don't blame an innocent boy for the consequences of your depravity."
"This conversation suddenly begins to bore me" he replied with a slight yawn. He was tired of hearing all her reasons for why she despised him so. They were no different from any one else's, and he did not need to hear her chiding him anymore for his lack of character. It had begun to grate on his nerves.
She shook her head before muttering something probably most uncomplimentary under her breath, but she did not address him again. After a few more minutes, she had finally managed to hack a good portion of hair off his head, and he felt much better with the weight of all the filthy growth now gone. She started towards his beard then, but he waved her off. It might be best to keep the beard to avoid anyone they encountered on the road discovering his identity. It appeared that she agreed with his plan as she then started to move back to the middle of the boat once again before stopping abruptly. Jaime looked to see what had halted her movements and noticed her staring over his shoulder with an apprehensive gaze. Just down the river about half a league behind them was a large vessel moving swiftly down the river. Looking closely he could see it flying the Tully colors. Most likely it was a vessel sent to recapture the Kingslayer. Jaime looked back at Amarah's face and wondered she had some sort of plan to get them out of this. If not, he would be back warming a cell in Riverrun's dungeons before nightfall.
Cliffhanger! Well if you've read the books this scene is in there so it's not so much of a cliffhanger, but I liked this part so much I wanted to work it into my story. Next chapter we find out what happens. Let me know what you think! Any reviews are much appreciated! Thanks for reading:)