Tywin's eyes lingered on the solar door as the girl closed it behind her, doubtful that she truly had a headache. He knew her. She was like him. No matter how abominable the pain might be, she would die rather than admit she was feeling it. She didn't have a headache. She had wanted some pretext to leave the room.
'The girl's eye for strategy is…interesting,' Jaime observed, 'where did you pick her up?'
'I 'picked her up,' as you put it, in one of Ser Gregor's hellholes,' Tywin answered, sipping delicately at his wine, 'she was crammed into a pen with dozens of other prisoners, who were watching their fellows being tortured.'
'How old was she?' Jaime asked disinterestedly, his eyes on the floor.
Tywin paused, remembering.
'Eleven.'
'Seven hells,' Jaime murmured, his jaw hardening in horror.
He recovered quickly.
'And why did she stand out as opposed to the rest of the poor bastards that you left behind in Clegane's custody without a backward glance?'
'She would not kneel to me – '
Jaime abruptly dissolved into fits of laughter, and Tywin poured out more wine, feeling resentful.
Very well. If the story is so very funny, then I shall not tell him the rest of it.
'Who would have thought?' Jaime was purring mockingly, 'all the great Tywin Lannister wants is to be challenged now and then. I wish I'd known that when I was a boy.'
'When you were a boy, you knew little else,' Tywin retaliated calmly, 'but a challenge is of limited value when supported by a limited intellect.'
'You've kept a young girl like that for four years because of her intellect?' Jaime implied unblinkingly, his words laden with innuendo.
'I do not care for your tone, boy,' Tywin said, disgusted by what his son was implying.
'Of course,' Jaime scoffed, 'my tone. You have spoken to me about it before. Tell me, have you received any word from Cersei? Does she rejoice at this new addition to our family; this kinship between wolf and lion?'
'I need not account for myself to Cersei.'
'Of course not. My mistake. What I am curious about is why the Stark girl agreed so readily. Did you threaten her? Or did you win her over with the promise of gold and a title?'
Tywin found this poorly-shrouded curiosity most amusing, and adjusted his facial expression accordingly.
'I did not realise you were so interested in the Stark girl,' he remarked lightly.
'I'm not remotely interested in the Stark girl,' Jaime declared.
'Then why are you asking so many questions?'
Tywin noted with satisfaction that Jaime had nothing clever to say on that score. He remained silent and rooted to the spot, and appeared to be engaged in the most uncharacteristic activity of blushing furiously.
How remarkable.
'It seems that you are not alone in this strange curiosity, however,' Tywin continued, once his son had been sufficiently humiliated by the ensuing silence, 'yesterday; the girl also asked me about you.'
'Really?' Jaime scoffed bitterly, 'what did she want to know, I wonder?'
'Whether or not anything overly-unpleasant had happened to you during the reign of Mad King,' Tywin replied, 'I thought it a most intriguing concern to have moments before what she believed would be her death.'
Once again, Jaime's jaw hardened. This time, he did not recover quickly.
'Which one did you pick?' he growled bitterly, his face white, 'that charming experiment with Brandon and Rickard Stark, perhaps? Or the unforgettable occasion when Aerys decided to burn everyone who attended his morning levy?'
Tywin ignored the question, and examined his pale, affected son over the rim of his wine glass with a sudden concern that he had not felt since Jaime's childhood.
The boy had always been supremely adept at hiding his emotions. He had a knack for it. Once as a child, Cersei had dared him to pick up a pike that was too long and too heavy for him. He had fallen over and cut himself almost to the bone in the process, and when the maester had sewn him up, he had not cried once, laughing and joking with his sister as though he had done nothing more serious than cut his finger, though the pain must have been excruciating and the humiliation worse. And it hadn't been the last time that something like that had happened. Not by any means.
After joining the Kingsguard, of course, he must have spent most of each day in proud and glacial disguise, staring at unthinkable atrocities with a blank face and cold eyes; the only true way; the Lannister way. But he had never allowed anyone to forget his larger and more colourful masks; his smile, his laugh, his capacity for creating exasperation and annoyance each time he opened his mouth. Tywin had never approved of this technique. A mask was meant to be a silent thing.
But perhaps it did not matter at all. Perhaps silence and noise were of equal value, as long as they were able to mask the truth. Jaime talked four times as loud and fifty times as often as Tywin did – and yet most people knew no more about Jaime than they did about his father. Perhaps they knew him even less.
It was evident that Jaime's genius for detachment from and decoying of emotion remained with him still, the result of a lifetime of discipline and hardness. But tonight, Tywin had seen cracks beginning to appear; small, slight, but noticeable. More than once he had seen his son's face fall wide open, each instance motivated by nothing more serious than pity or anger and lasting no longer than two minutes. But two minutes of weakness, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, could mean the difference between life and death, between victory and defeat, between honour and shame. Any form of weakness, for any duration of time, was death. He had made sure that all his children understood that from the earliest age, though their behavior often suggested the contrary.
Tywin disliked this newfound fragility. Perhaps Jaime's time with the Starks had weakened him more than he had previously imagined. Or perhaps the cracks were appearing because Jaime wanted them to appear. The first would be shameful, but comprehensible. And as for the second…Tywin was not entirely sure what he thought about the second.
Being in a room with his son and the Stark girl was like conducting negotiations between two enemies plagued by a fervent desire for peace, and by a stubborn unwillingness to confront the unknown that peace might bring; war being a thing too comfortable, too easy and far too enjoyable to give up entirely. Because of this, the defenses of both parties had crumbled and rebuilt themselves countless times in the course of a single conversation, and the resulting confusion was overwhelmingly contagious. Tywin could not tell whether he was faced with two enemies fighting a war…or something else.
Their eyes had met multiple times and had lit up multiple times, before ripping away from each other like knives from a wound, each returning only when they could be sure of being unobserved by the other. And when they were unobserved, they detested being so, and the green would summon the grey or the grey the green like a siren call; irresistible and deadly.
And yet each time they had opened their mouths to speak to each other, nothing but strife had emerged from within them; strife built on anger and hatred and fear of what might happen, what could happen, if silence descended again.
Tywin had fought in many wars. He knew battle fury when he saw it. He had slaughtered countless men, women and children. He knew fear when he saw it. And he had once loved. So he knew desire when he saw it.
He would think on this, and do it soon. Every accident was an opportunity.
He sat up with Jaime for hours after the girl had gone, talking of Stannis Baratheon. Riding to the aid of the capital would mean leaving a depleted garrison at Harrenhal and Casterly Rock without most of its army should Robb Stark decide to take advantage of the situation. Jaime seemed to find this last notion extremely funny.
'Attacking Casterly Rock is the stupidest idea that could possibly enter the boy's head,' Jaime insisted, 'only a fool or a madman would get as far as contemplating it, leave alone trying it.'
'You have a singular lack of imagination, child,' Tywin retorted.
Jaime folded his arms in amusement.
'I turn forty soon, beloved Father. I am no child.'
'Then kindly desist from thinking like one,' Tywin declared, 'Robb Stark is a boy, and he's never lost a battle. If he gets it into his head to attack Casterly Rock, he will march immediately and without hesitation. He will risk anything at any time. Because he doesn't know enough to be afraid.'
'You'll have to leave the Riverlands at some point,' Jaime persisted, 'burning crops and villages, taking the occasional trip up to Ashemark and worrying about the impossible is tremendous fun, I grant you, but I'm sure you'll agree that defending the capital is more important.'
"The occasional trip up to Ashemark and worrying about the impossible," Tywin repeated icily, 'thank you for such a concise summary of the war effort.'
'Don't mention it,' Jaime replied breezily, 'but you must agree that we will have to ride to the capital at some point and risk allowing this imaginary attack on Casterly Rock to take place.'
'Stannis will almost certainly sail within a few weeks,' Tywin growled, Jaime's flippancy making him angrier and angrier, 'but in the meantime, we will remain here – '
'Why not march immediately?' Jaime interrupted.
'– and the war will continue as normal,' Tywin finished, ignoring him, 'I must therefore ask you to reconsider your reckless decision to travel immediately to King's Landing.'
Tywin expected Jaime to storm and rage and provide him with plenty of brooding and self-berating to do about his son's unmanly reliance on Cersei. Instead, Jaime was looking blankly at him as though he had no idea what he was talking about.
Tywin's patience was wearing thin.
'Did you not refuse to contribute to the war effort so that you could return to King's Landing immediately?' he prompted.
Jaime struck his forehead with the palm of his hand.
'Of course I did,' he said, 'but I've changed my mind. I'm staying. And I'll ride with you when the time comes. Didn't I tell you?'
'No, you did not,' Tywin declared, disliking the nonchalance in his son's voice, 'when, may I ask, did you come to this happy decision?'
'This morning,' Jaime shrugged, and poured out more wine.
