JAIME
The meeting place was a grey rise about half a mile from the city walls, where the ground had frozen hard beneath the onslaught of snow and frost. Lord Stannis had arrived first, for it was he who had called this parley. But even if he had not done so, Jaime would have expected to see him arrive first, both in tribute to his famous punctuality and the unfortunate desperation of his current cause.
The Baratheon banners - some stags trapped in their fiery hearts, others the plain banner of Robert at Storm's End – had ringed themselves on one side of the rise, and beyond their wall sat the king and his commanders. As they drew close, Jaime recognised the knight Ser Godry Farring, whom he remembered from Pyke, and next to him Ser Davos Seaworth the Onion Knight, who had been at Casterly Rock not so long ago, though they had never spoken. They were to be expected, flanking their gaunt king on either side.
Others were more unlikely. Stannis had Tytos Blackwood with him: Lord Tytos of the hollow eyes and the bowed neck and the narrow-shouldered armour. But Blackwood himself was not so much a surprise: what was a surprise was seeing him beside Jonos Bracken. The lord of Stone Hedge had been sent out by Cersei to hunt down Blackwood and Stannis. Yet now he had returned, riding at this iron king's side. And stranger still, Ser Lyle Crakehall and Ser Addam Marbrand, who had been given the same command and had, apparently, failed as Bracken had. Bracken appeared to have lost an arm.
Stranger yet was that Stannis was accompanied by women – girls, even. The greyscaled one was his daughter, Princess Shireen, who could not be more than sixteen. The other had black hair cut short and shining blue eyes, and a bright red bruise all the way across one cheek. Jaime knew at once that she must be a daughter of Robert. She is what Myrcella might have looked like, if she had been trueborn.
Despite the haggardness of their enemy, the Lannister complement seemed diminished by comparison. Jaime was their great leader, as strong and effective as old bones. And the rest – Captains Vylarr and Forley, Ser Steffon Swyft, Ser Damion Lannister – were Cersei's sycophants and old men past their time. And no doubt half of them would ride back to Casterly Rock and report every word to his sister, as soon as this meeting was up.
It was Stannis who initiated the conversation. "Ser Jaime," he began. "I was pleasantly surprised that you answered my call for parley."
"Sieges are dull," Jaime told him, repeating what Brynden Tully had told him at Riverrun. "I wanted to come out and see you myself, and get the measure of you." It was not hard to sound more confident than he felt. He had been doing that his entire life.
"Well," said Stannis. "Now you have."
"Aye, now I have."
There was quiet for a long moment.
"I see you wear a golden Hand's pin on your breast," Stannis said at last. "Are you you compensating, perhaps?"
Jaime frowned. Was that a joke, from the lips of Stannis Baratheon? "I fear no number of hands can make up for the one I lost."
"Mmm." That reply meant something else to Stannis, something Jaime could not decipher. "As is often the case." There was another pause. "You may not have heard, so I am sorry to have to bring this blow. Your uncle Kevan is dead."
Well. He had expected that, somehow, indescribably. "How did he die?"
"Fighting," said Stannis. "Fighting alongside me and my men. Against the greater enemy, that is even now descending upon us. The army of the dead. Ser Kevan understood their threat, and the threat of the Long Night. But now he is dead, and his responsibility falls to you, Ser Jaime, as his nephew – and heir, I suppose."
"The white walkers—"
"Are no stories," said Stannis. "I understand you will not believe me. So I will leave it to comrades of yours who have recognised the truth of this threat."
Ser Lyle Crakehall rode forwards, his big frame tired and weary. "He speaks truly, Jaime. The dead are coming. Hundreds of them, thousands. The ironborn – I know not if they ever lived at all, but they are not men now, not anymore. They will come down on us soon, and when they have finished, they will turn their eyes to Lannisport and the Rock."
Jaime was about to reply, but Ser Steffon Swyft spoke for him. "You are just trying to scare us, Lord Stannis. It will not work. Westermen do not surrender so easily."
Addam Marbrand rode forwards: "Look around you, Steffon, you fool. You think Ser Lyle and Ser Kevan and I surrendered? No, we chose to band together with Lord Stannis, because it was the only way we were going to survive another night in that hell. And while we stand here waiting and preparing to kill one another, they stand out there, in the fog, waiting. And when we have killed one another, when the battlefield is strewn with corpses, then they will come down like vultures and then they will feast."
His words sent a chill through Jaime. He speaks the truth. Or, at the very least, he thinks he does. "And suppose," he said, wary that Vylarr was listening, probably recording his every word so he could tell Cersei later, "suppose that what you say is true. What would you have us do?"
"Open the gates of the city," said Stannis. "Let our armies in. Stand with us against the darkness, against the coming storm. Believe me, Kingslayer, I want this no more than you do. But if we do not join our forces, we will all surely die."
Ser Davos Seaworth added his words to his king's. "At Kayce," he said, "when Ser Kevan was dying, he told me to carry his words on, and remember his example. I now pass his words on to you, Ser Jaime, and beg that you follow his lead."
There was a long silence. "I want to believe you, my lord," Jaime said to Stannis. "But I remember how my father took King's Landing from Aerys. How Lord Tywin offered him a poisoned chalice, and how Aerys went willingly to it, and drank. And all that was between them was Rhaegar's refusal to marry Cersei. The differences that divide us are far greater. You still desire the Iron Throne, do you not?"
Stannis's breath misted in the air. Jaime could see that some of his advisors were looking at the king, interested to hear his response.
"Yes," said Stannis. "The Iron Throne has always been my goal, and nothing less than death will stop me from reaching it. But I am willing to put aside my conquest until the war against the dead is won. It may be that when the war ends, we will be enemies again. But until such a time, I am willing to set aside my distaste for you and your house for the sake of mankind."
The thing was, Jaime really believed him. Yet… "I am, as you correctly stated, Lord Stannis, only the Hand of the Queen. And so I must consult with my sweet sister before any action can be taken."
"Your sister is no queen. You know that."
Jaime wished he had not said that. Now Vylarr and Ser Steffon will report only that to Cersei, and she will be entirely justified in her refusal of Stannis. "My sister may not have the Iron Throne," he said flatly, "but she is Queen of the Westerlands, and has as much a claim to it as you do, Lord Stannis."
"She is not the Queen of the Westerlands either," said Stannis. "Not by any measure. Thrones pass to siblings before they return to the previous generation, do they not?"
He waved his hand, and two of the horses behind him parted, and through the gap rode Myrcella and, impossibly, Brienne of Tarth. Jaime could only stare at them agape. But Cersei said she was at Crakehall. And Brienne is supposed to be at Harrenhal, with Sansa Stark. And yet here they were: both looking worse for wear, yet somehow more permanent. Their eyes seemed frostier, their skins harder. And when Myrcella spoke her words were four knives. "Will you run again?"
"Myrcella." He could not manage anything more than a whisper. "I—"
"Save your breath," she said. "I do not want to hear anything from you. It would be lies anyhow."
But he could not hold back what he had held back for so long. "I am sorry about—"
"Don't speak his name. You don't deserve to speak his name. You did not deserve him as a son, and he certainly did not deserve you as a father." She put it out so bluntly that words failed him again. "Don't bother denying it. I have already told Lord Stannis about your admission of guilt. Not that he needed it. All of Westeros knows of your falsehood." She paused and said, "Kingslayer." When she said it, it worse than the thousand times that had come before combined.
He looked to Brienne, hoping for a supporting look, for something, anything. She stared back at him with bland eyes.
"They are my captives," said Stannis. "And they will be for the rest of their lives. Which will not be long, if you fail to open the city gates." He paused to let that settle a moment. "I will give you three days, starting tomorrow. No more. If you have not opened the gates by dawn on the third day, I will take your daughter and this Tarth woman out before the walls of Lannisport and execute them both myself."
"Ser Jaime." That was Brienne, speaking in the brief silence. She did not plead. Not with her words. But her eyes did. "Do the right thing," she said.
There was nothing more to be said after that. Stannis turned his horse about to go. The others did the same. All save for Princess Shireen, who instead, beyond her father's gaze, rode out, closer to Jaime's side, now in the ripe position to be captured in return. A daughter for a daughter, Jaime thought for an instant.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were wise beyond her years, and full of sorrow. "I was sorry to hear about Lord Tommen," she said, quite simply. "He would have been… no, he was, a good man." A long pause ensued. She looked round suspiciously at Vylarr and the others. "And if you are sorry too, then I think you know what "I am going to say."
She was right. He did. Princess Shireen turned her horse around and rode back to her father. None of them took a second glance back. Jaime was left alone on his lonely side of the field.
"Ser," said Captain Vylarr. "The Queen Regent—"
"Will want to harass me about this, yes. Thank you for reminding me, Vylarr. Do you think her spies have made it back to the Rock yet with the news?"
"Ser?"
Jaime wanted to hit him. Wanted to hit all of them, more for their pretense of righteousness than anything. Look at you all, eating out of her hand. She does not have you bound as she does me, and yet you allow yourselves to be ensnared by her, enslaved by her. "Nothing, captain," he said. "Back to the Rock, then?" He set off without waiting for a reply.
The road from Lannisport to Casterly Rock was about a mile along the coast. They had to ride back through the city first, entering by the eastern gate which faced Stannis's camp. The walls of the city were some thirty feet high and damaged in places by Stannis's assaults last year, but they and their measly garrison were enough to keep the Baratheon army out.
Not just Baratheon, Jaime told himself. Baratheon and Lannister, and make no mistake of it. Myrcella was a captive, but Crakehall and Marbrand had been there of their own free will, and the same had been true for Ser Kevan, apparently. In which case, Lannister army outside the castle walls was nearly as large as the one inside it.
Not that it meant much for either side. The city garrison numbered maybe five thousand, fewer than had defended King's Landing at the Blackwater. But Stannis's attacking army was even smaller than that. Both sides knew that if the battle was fought, the defender would inevitably be victorious. Not only did the numbers favour them, but they had Qyburn's engines, the result of the maester's machinations these past two years. They had tested them on the fields ahead of Lannisport, a few days before Stannis arrived. The engines consisted of great hollow iron barrels, from which white-hot stones could be launched into the air when powder was lit; when the stones reached earth, they shattered in explosions of mud and stone.
They had a dozen of these engines or thereabouts; the soldiers had been given them the usual names: Cersei's Vengeance or The Laughing Lion or, most disturbingly, Mother's Mercy. Jaime had no doubt that mercy would not be shown on the field anytime soon. The engines could do worse things against flesh and bone than any arrow or crossbow quarrel ever could. In a thousand years, Jaime thought, men will fight with swords no longer. Instead we will sit back and let these engines do our killing for us. Like Cersei and Qyburn, we will dissociate ourselves so far from the killing that we forget the meaning of it.
The city defenders watched him pass through. They had none of the smiles or cheers that might have greeted him once. Instead their eyes were cold and dull as rock. They were cold, tired, and entirely without passion. They cared no longer for the squabbles of kings and queens. The only inspired thing they could be relied upon to do was surrender if things went awry. But until then they would follow their orders, nothing more and nothing less, just as their queen wanted.
They left the city through the northern gate, and rode across the bridge that led up to the Lion's Mouth of Casterly Rock. The gate, two hundred feet high, opened with creaking of portcullis chains and they rode through the vast wide cavern until they reached the Entrance Hall, where Lannisters departed stared down from plinths of great marble. A new statue was being built, half a step below Lord Tywin. So far they had finished the legs only, but Jaime could see how it would look when it was finished: thirty feet tall, wearing flowing royal robes such that he had never worn in life. And Cersei had ordered that Tommen have his crown too, unlike all the other statues, made from pure-veined gold, and green gemstones in his eyes. Jaime imagined himself back here in a year or two, entering through the Mouth and every time encountering the gaze of father and son looking down, each saying you murdered me in cold, drafty voices.
They took the winch lift up to Cersei's chambers. In the main hall there she had ordered into being a massive tapestry, the artefact of artists she had somehow imported from across the Narrow Sea. On thick Myrish cloth they had produced Casterly Rock anew, shining in hues of gold and sunset red. And atop it stood the queen herself, crowned and radiant, eyes looking east towards greater Westeros. The queen as she saw herself; the queen as she wished to be seen.
He found her in the throne room, with Ser Robert Strong beside her. She was seated on the throne, in such a way that suggested she had been awaiting his arrival, and that she had full knowledge of what had happened outside the city walls.
"Lord Hand."
Lord Hand. Had there ever been anything colder? 'Lord Commander', at least, had been his. With 'Lord Hand' she was placing him alongside his father and Ned Stark, demoting him to the level of Wisdom Rossart. Did she want him to be her Rossart? "Whose blood? Whose?"
"Your Grace." He was addressing her as Dowager Queen, not as Queen Regnant. "I have parleyed with Stannis Baratheon."
"And?"
"He wishes for your surrender."
She scowled. You mean our surrender, Ser Jaime. We are in this together to the end."
He did not answer.
"Very well, then," she said. "Let me hear what he had to say for himself."
"He says that he will attack in three days."
"He has no choice. His men are no doubt woefully low on supplies. If anything, I am surprised he is not attacking earlier. Why the wait?"
Did she know already? Qyburn was not in the room, but there was nothing to say he had not been and gone – nothing to say that he was not hiding in an alcove. Still: "He has Myrcella."
She reacted to that: though not with horror, as you might expect from an ailing mother: not Cersei. She did not seem especially surprised either. "So," she said, "I presume she is part of some ultimatum of his?"
"He says, if we do not surrender, he will execute her three days hence, at dawn."
Cersei paused, though not for long. "And is that all?"
"That is all."
"You lie. He has the Tarth woman as well."
As he suspected. "You know already. Why are you asking me these questions?"
"I wanted to determine the extent of your loyalty. I wanted to see how successful my persuasions had been."
"Did Qyburn tell you?"
"Qyburn is doing important work for his queen, and he is doing it loyally. As you are not, ser."
She wanted him to defy her, he knew; to say, you are not my queen. She wanted him to break, so she could break him down further. He would not break. "What are you – we – going to do about this?"
"Are you really such a fool to think we can sacrifice our kingdom so easily?"
"She is our daughter, Cersei."
"Yes," Cersei said coldly. "She is. And which one of us do you think she has more of in her?"
He did not answer, because he did not know. Tommen was always me, and Joffrey was always her, but Myrcella is less simple. She is the best and the worst of both us, amplified a dozen times over.
"She would understand," said Cersei, "that we cannot sacrifice everything for her life."
"Then what is the point of it?" Jaime asked. "What is the point of any of this? If we have no children to pass this legacy on to, then why bother?"
"Do you remember what I told you once?" She rose from the throne, and slowly walked down towards him. "You and I are the only ones in the world. The only ones that matter."
"Let Myrcella die, and you lose me too. I'll find a tower and I'll jump. You can have my bones."
She smirked. "Killing yourself for love? You never could. You love yourself too much, Jaime. Yes, you need to be loved. More than that, you need me to love you, because you know no one else will."
"That's not true." But he could only say it hoarsely.
"Oh?" Cersei raised an eyebrow. "How old was the Stark boy?"
Ten. The things I do for love.
"That was different."
"Was it, really? What else but love for me could drive a great hero like yourself to push a ten-year-old to his death? You are nothing without me and you know it.
"Perhaps you are even hoping, somehow, that Brienne of Tarth may save you from this. So I will tell you this: if that woman does make it to our side alive by some miracle, I will have Ser Robert crush her skull. Is that understood?"
"If you do—" But he knew that was a threat he could not finish.
"If I do, then what, ser? Will you betray me too?"
Too, she said. As you betrayed Aerys. As you betrayed Father. As you will betray Myrcella, if you do nothing about this. She told him to go, then, and turned her back as she climbed to her throne once more. But hours later her words would stay with him. And in the privacy of his solar in the Lannisport barracks – his cell – such that it was, she kept appearing in the mirrors, and, oddly, turning into Catelyn Stark: Lady Catelyn both living and dead.
Kingslayer, oathbreaker. You are a man without honor. What had he said then? Something clever, no doubt. But as so often in the face of truth, words deserted him and were entirely inadequate. What sort of honour is it to let your daughter die, and accept it without even a protest?
And Brienne too. He expected he would hear her insistence prattle any moment now. Instead, though, he heard Joffrey. That's right, Kingslayer, his eldest son – his seed – said, you just sit here feeling sorry for yourself, while every one of your children dies around you. Keep telling yourself there's still time for you: for a forty-year-old knight with one hand.
That was not even the worst, though.
A few days earlier he had been out in the city, inspecting the bastions and the walls as was his habitual, endless task. On their way back to the barracks they rode past two Lannister soldiers, holding down a squirming boy. There he had dismounted. "What's this?"
"This one's been caught stealing, ser," the soldier said without looking up.
"And what are you doing to him?"
"Stealing costs you a hand. Queen's orders."
"Leave him alone," said Jaime, hardening his tone. "Taking his hand won't teach him anything. I should know."
At that they looked up, and saw him: the Kingslayer, and more importantly, the Queen's Hand. Jaime spoke to the boy then: "You come with us to the barracks," he said. "We'll feed you up." And they had.
He told himself – deluded himself, rather – that in sparing the boy he was, in some way, continuing Tommen's legacy of mercy towards the downtrodden. You will not be forgotten, Your Grace, he had thought. But now, here he was, looking at the sword Lawbringer, which Cersei had permitted him to take. Widow's Wail, as it was before. The name seemed oddly prescient now. Jaime Lannister had died on that night at the Rock, too, and giving him the sword was just his widow sister's way of mocking him.
Was this how Barristan the Bold felt after the Trident, knowing his true king – Rhaegar – was dead, and that he could never save him? Was this the way Selmy lived those seventeen years?
He looked over at Lawbringer – Widow's Wail, rather – and reached out for the hilt. His fingers only brushed the steel. He knew, in his heart, that he was not even fit to touch it.
