I'm sad to say that RoseSand couldn't help me because of personal problems. We're not having anger, it was a friendly farewell. I sent a plot to KidWinTinker and one conversation later we have the next chapter. Please read and review. And sorry if it doesn't have all the elements of Game of Thrones but I have trouble remembering the characters.
XxX
Iywel stood leaning against the side of the wall, watching Hartene walk around in circles. He was smoking a pipe, something no one in King's landing ever seemed to do. But every detective in every setting did need something to calm their nerves and Hartene's abstination from the same was causing him to behave like a chicken looking for something sinister in the ground around him. As if the assassin was hiding under the ground and would be revealed with enough stomping.
Iywel wondered to himself what evidence an assassin would leave behind. A clever assassin would not have even let the world know that an assassination had taken place. The murder would have been discovered by the world and simply presumed to have been an unfortunate accident. This assassin had either not thought of that possibility or had been arrogant enough to leave clues behind. Iywel tended to think it was more of the former than the latter. Clever people went into business and only reckless fools went into assassination as a line of work (of course, the really clever ones became maesters). There really wasn't anything suggesting of course, that this assassin was a paid one. He might have been one of those, the ones who did what they did for the pleasure of doing the act itself.
At any rate, they needed to find this one and stomping around on the muddy road till it was perfectly flat was not going to help much.
"Hart" said Iywel. He was the only person in the world who addressed Hartene in that manner. "Let's get some air."
"We're already fucking getting air" grumbled Harterne, but followed Iywel's lead as Iywel started wandering towards the main city. Depsite having been around for a short while, Iywel knew his way around the streets and confidently strode towards the direction in which he most expected trouble.
At the intersection of _ road, a spot just the right amount of distance from Littlefinger's most famous brothel, one could always expect to see at least one woman fornicating. Often, there was more than one man however, not every beggar in the city could afford Littlefinger's finest.
Today there was a somewhat different scene, though far from uncommon. An unclothed woman, who may or may not have been a whore, was being viciously attacked by a man.
Iywel knew that there were two types of people who attacked women. Those who were undiscriminating in selecting their victims and just had a penchant for violence and those who selectively chose women as their targets because they had suffered some grievance and were unable to face up to a man. Judging by the severity of the violence that was unfolding before his eyes, Iywel decided that he was witnessing the latter.
"Go stop him" he murmured to Hartene. Hartene took two steps forward, his steps bearing a clear intent, and grabbed the attacker by the shoulders. He followed this up by throwing him off, and as the man landed Iywel caught sight of the brooch pinned to the man's shirt. It was the most familiar sigil in King' Landing.
"What the fuck?" yelled the man, clearly taken aback by this turn of events. The man carried weapons on his person, all what Iywel knew constituted general issue.
'A soldier eh?' mused Iywel. He was wrong in his earlier judgment then. He briefly turned his attention to the woman, who had momentarily stopped sobbing. She looked up at Iywel and Hartene as if unsure of what to make of them and without warning took off running. She moved in the direction of Littlefinger's establishment, and Hartene took a step to follow her before Iywel said "Let her go. We need to deal with this son of a whore here."
"How dare you talk to me like that?" said the soldier. He might have said more, but it was hard to talk when the air was driven out of you. Hartene drew his hand back from the man's stomach as he doubled over in pain, and slumped to the ground.
"I've never understood why people feel better about themselves by attacking others. But in all fairness, I'm not most people" said Iywel, though it wasn't clear to whom he was speaking. He turned to look directly at the soldier as he continued "But you aren't most people either are you? Hell, you're barely more than a shell. Sounds like your mom didn't give two shits about you as she fucked one brother after another. And some of them must have taken a swing or two at you while she watched sipping her wine. That bothers you doesn't it, even after all these years?"
"Why you little piece of shit?" the man roared and reached for his sword. No sooner had he pulled it out, than Hartene drove the pointy end of his own blade through the back of his palm. Thus, once again the soldier was denied what he would have loved to do. It was nigh impossible to grip a weapon with a large piece of metal sticking out through your palm. It was however far easier to howl in agony and that was exactly what the man did.
Iywel looked thoughtful. This was not the reaction that he was looking for. It was just a common soldier having his way with a common whore. There was probably some kind of policy in place that disallowed violence within the confines of the four walls, but there was clearly no restriction on what the consorts were allowed to do on their own time. It was a long shot to begin with but clearly this man wasn't the assassin, especially since the odds of him being good enough to fake this level of reaction, and allowing a sword to be driven into his hand and attacking a woman was ridiculously small.
The real assassin would have shown defiance at any suggestion of his childhood trauma.
"Step away, Hart" said Iywel. The big man did as he was told and Iywel approached the wounded soldier and knelt down to make eye contact. Iywel knew the risk he was undertaking at this distance, but he had always found that in interrogations, a mixed strategy of being pleasant interspersed with being horrifying worked the fastest. The problem was that this required a minimum of two men. It also required the men to play their roles convincingly, if not to perfection. Hartene was more often than not, less than perfect. He could do the horror bits well enough (anyone capable of driving a knife through somebody's hand was fairly horrifying), but it meant that Iywel compulsorily had to play the part of the good guy, something that Iywel was not comfortable with as it went against everything he believed in. Actually, it was worse than that. It went against his habit and against his reflexes too. Not only was it a question of compromising his values (whatever little he had) it was also a question of controlling himself. But practice had made him better though far from perfect and he felt rather confident as he stared at the injured soldier.
"I believe we need to have a little talk" he started, "perhaps get to know each other a little bet-".
Iywel was not able to complete the sentence. In one jerky, unpracticed motion that was a result of desperation rather than training, the soldier had Iywel's face flat on the ground, with his knee pressing down on the back of his forehead, the lower half of his leg trapping any movement Iywel might make with one arm while his other hand caught Iywel's other arm in an armbar at a rather acute angle. If this was a wrestling match Iywel would have submitted in under five seconds. But this was far more dangerous, the soldier using the piercing through his other arm as a sword and pointing it directly at Iywel's jugular. Hartene took two steps forward, but Iywel managed to croak "stop".
Trapped beneath the soldier, Iywel could feel the heat dissipating off of him, his body was perceptibly shaking with adrenaline and any sudden movement might cause him to react in a mutually dangerous and definitely unpredictable way. It was best to wait this off for a bit.
Iywel began counting and waited until he reached thirty. He thanked the seven and the old gods that neither Hartene nor his captor had done anything to further tip the balance of power in those precious seconds.
"You can't kill me" he stated. Iywel controlled his tone of voice and waited to see if his words had the desired effect. Two seconds later, he received his validation.
"And why the fuck not? You one of those cunts that fantasizes about red priestesses?"
There was something odd about the expression that the soldier had decided to adopt, but at this moment Iywel decided was not the right time to pursue it.
"No. You can't have me killed, because if you do King Joffrey is going to have your head."
The soldier gave a laugh that was too sudden and too hearty to be anything but genuine amusement. "If I had a fucking copper, for every cunt that used King Joffrey's name to get out of a pickle, I'd be richer than Tywin fucking Lannister. And I'd probably have my way with Cersei too."
"You really shouldn't be talking about the Queen Regent in that manner" came a voice that belonged to neither of Iywel, the Soldier or Hartene. The owner of the voice was in fact a very well-known person in King's landing, and it was in fact his voice that was one of his more attractive aspects.
Out of the darkness stepped Tyrion Lannister, the often ridiculed, occasionally feared and in a few special cases even admired, member of the Lannister family. Iywel had heard rumors about how he was the only member of the Lannister family who had any trace of compassion left in him. Iywel felt the soldier relax somewhat at the approach of the Lannister who was flanked by a person who was likely to be none other than Bronn. Rumor had it that Bronn was a common sell-sword, much like Hartene, who had risked his life for the little Lannister. The sell-sword had agreed to be the champion for the dwarf lordling, when the latter was on trial in the Vale of Arryn. The young prince Robbyn wanted to see the little man fall through the moon-door, but Bronn had crushed that dream when he sent Lady Arryn's champion flying instead. The pair of them standing together reminded Iywel of himself and Hartene, though he knew Bronn to be a wickedly cunning man as opposed to Hartene whose creativity was mainly channelized into ways of inflicting pain on other people.
And by some co-incidence (is there really such a thing? he wondered), Bronn and Tyrion were here, just in time to save him from perhaps what might have been his death.
The soldier on top of him seemed unsure of what he was supposed to do next. "My l-lord" he began cautiously.
"There's no need for that" said Tyrion. " You were just talking about how you would like to have your way with my sister, I'm sure you're more used to referring to me by some other name."
"They call you the Imp, my lord" said the soldier. His grip on Iywel's outstretched hand tightened and Iywel had to focus all of his concentration on ensuring his arm was in the right shape or else he might tear a muscle in his shoulder or end up dislocating a bone.
"That's the name" said the Imp, his voice suddenly appearing tired. The soldier caught on to the weakness in his voice and made the mistake of thinking he could throw his weight around against a Lannister.
"So what the fuck's an Imp doing here? Can't you fucking afford the girls in the establishment?"
"You've got some resilience" said Bronn, speaking for the first time. "I used a full dose on you. And Stone Crows know how to make their stuff pretty strong."
"Patience, Bronn" said Tyrion.
The soldier looked at the two of them, then glanced at Hartene who was the only person present that didn't understand what was going on. A few seconds later he toppled over on the ground, and a minute later he was covered in his own vomit.
The Imp looked at his bodyguard sideways. "We need to conserve what little we have left. Shagga doesn't know what he's given us and its unlikely we could convince to make a trip to find us some more. Even if we did convince him, its even more unlikely that he would remember exactly what it was that he was supposed to bring back. A foolhardy ploy wouldn't you agree?"
"Couldn't think of another way to get rid of the man without risking Griphook here" said Bronn gesturing at Iywel. Even in his state of relief, Iywel picked up on the fact that Bronn really hadn't bothered thinking much as to how to disable the soldier. He was experimenting with a new poison, definitely dangerous though not as much as the Strangler or the Tears of Lys.
As Iywel made it to his feet, he noticed the Imp's gaze directed at him. His mismatched eyes and one stunted leg had completely escaped his attention when he had first emerged. That was only natural when most of your attention is on staying alive, Iywel thought to himself somewhat bitterly.