Chapter 26

The Stairway

Where Jaime doesn't go down, but up the rabbit hole.

xx

Aegon

Aegon, Sixth of his Name, sat on the Iron Throne, and no seat had ever felt less comfortable.

The city was under siege. Lord Connington counselled him to withdraw within its walls before his aunt would arrive, and the new member of his small council they picked up on the way agreed. His name was… Baelish… and Aegon found it hard to remember it, but he found it even harder to appreciate the man. Still, Jon was adamant that his own naivety in matters of what was fair in battle was one of the reasons for which Aegon's father lost the war and the Usurper won the rebellion. Jon would never make the same mistake again.

"We need people like Lord Baelish on our side," Jon insisted. "Well paid by us," Septa Lemore clarified. Jon explained. "They see things as they are and not as they should be in an honest world."

Aegon accepted it but he could still not appreciate the thin green-eyed man who reminded him of small grey lizards in the valley of Rhoyne, illusive and impossible to catch, always running around after their own errands and not after anybody else's.

The Golden Company manned the walls with the help of the gold cloaks of the city guard, and the remaining soldiers of the House Tyrell. But the alliance of the roses did not come freely. Aegon has barely started his reign, and he already had two marriage offers to consider. Lord Tyrell offered his daughter Margaery, twice wed and still a maid. Lord Baelish on the other hand suggested he should marry a Princess in the North, Lady Sansa Stark, the last living heir of the greatest House of Westeros after his own.

But Lady Margaery's hair had a wrong shade of black, and while he found Lady Stark lovely to behold, she had left him cold at heart.

Aegon noticed the auburn-haired beauty when he first declared his claim in the fields in front of the Dragon Gate. But all he could remember of her now, seated on the Iron Throne, was the severed head she held tight. The red colour of the blood of the earth covered her brows, enhancing the blue of her eyes and of the dead ones of her desecrated brother. The sight had frightened Aegon more than anything he had ever seen. It made him recall the nameless things in the tall lonely woods north of the capital from which he was saved by a whim of fate, and by a maid who would never show him her face. The old gods are cursing my reign, he thought. They have no love for the Targaryens, never had. Their King Torrhen knelt to a dragon, not to a king, and I have no dragons to tame their fury.

He didn't know what to make of the Seven either. The High Septon's striking exhibition of poverty and strictness, in support of the values of the Faith Aegon's great ancestors took for their own, seemed just and noble. But he postponed the blessing due to the rightful king until the times would settle down and the Seven would find it proper.

For the first time since he landed in Westeros, Aegon felt anger bubbling in his veins, and in return he did at least one thing he himself wanted to do, ever since he started his rule.

He refused all counsels from Lord Connington and Lord Baelish on the matter, and let all the people who gathered for the trial go free, not even asking who they were. Lord Connington told him not to do it, and Lord Baelish said he was signing the ruin of his reign. According to them, he should have thrown in the black cells, at least, a foreign singer who styled himself King-beyond-the-Wall as well as a former sworn shield of the dead Usurper, Joffrey, and confined the Lady Sansa to the Red Keep as a valuable hostage to win over the loyalty of the North, by marriage, or by sword if needs be.

Aegon remembered again the thing that hunted him in the dark. That was a creature of the north, Lord Arryn told him, and Aegon could not believe its loyalty could be won at all, and much less by imprisoning ladies.

So Aegon turned deaf ears to his councillors' demands, and gripped Dawn for reassurance. It felt like the only solid heritage from the days when his father was still alive, and it was as if a voice of a knight long dead spoke through his mouth when he managed to open it.

"I am no rightful king yet," he told them, "so I will dispense justice when I am anointed and crowned. It's not like anyone can leave the capital until the siege is over." Aegon gave Lady Sansa her leave to bury her brother, and he had the twitching headless body of a monster caged in a dragon pit, under heavy iron bars that had not been used since the last dragons of old died.

And the siege continued because Daenerys would not come forward. The messengers they sent out to propose talks did not return. Her fleet anchored peacefully on the Black Water Bay, and the black wings of the newly hatched black dragon flew protectively above it. Aegon regretted withdrawing within the walls. He knew in his heart that he should have stayed in the open and risked waiting for his aunt. Now he would never be able to talk to her in person. And the longer he thought about her, she was just another lady he didn't want to marry even if he was most curious to meet her. Would she want to kill her own nephew? The bloody history of his family told him anything was possible. Daenerys did not attack, but she may have been only bidding time to make her move.

"We have to send more messengers to my aunt," he said, to say something, for decision was expected from one who would be king.

"I took the liberty of sending out some of my own, to the Free Cities, when we were still on the way to the capital," Lord Baelish informed him, bowing to the ground. "They left a very generous gift in a very old place called The Temple of Black and White in Braavos when they were done delivering messages. I trust that the acolytes serving the god of that temple will provide us with the means to solve the situation with your aunt, Your Grace."

"What is your meaning, my lord?" Aegon asked, puzzled.

"A good one, Your Grace, the best one," Baelish reassured him with flowery words. "The rightful king should not trouble himself with all the little details of his rule. That's what your faithful councillors are for."

"Lord Baelish was a master of coin," Jon Connington said. "We agreed that he would continue in this function. It is only natural for him to continue the relations of the crown with Braavos where the Iron Bank has its seat."

"Was that what your message was about, my lord? Coin?" asked Septa Lemore, silent until that moment in the shadows of the throne room.

"Allow me to remind you that I am still a lord, Septa Lemore," the green-eyed man said in a friendly voice. "My business is my own and I have been nothing but loyal to His Grace since I had the chance to join his cause."

"Forgive me, my lord," septa said, "it would seem that the vows of my order have still not quenched the woman's curiosity in my mind. I trust that you will inform His Grace of any messages that might concern him, or his aunt, Princess Daenerys Stormborn."

"I will not fail to do so, in time," vowed Lord Baelish, sounding inexplicably sincere for the first time.

Aegon didn't know what to think of that conversation. It was innocent, and it was not. He suddenly had to stand up, for one of the blades the throne was made of was about to cut through his hastily made royal garments and draw out fresh blood.

"Let us make a recess," he said. "I should like to discuss matters with my personal guard now."

"A King should name his Kingsguard," Jon objected, as he did many times before, to Aegon's choice of companions, "not surround himself by children."

"When the Seven bless my rule, my lord and my friend, no sooner than that," Aegon said firmly. "Allow me to remind you: if it weren't for these children I would not be among you now."

Luckily enough there was nothing anyone could say to that. The door of the throne room went ajar, and then wide open, as if its heavy wooden wings and rusty creaking hinges could hear the thoughts of the latest king. Young Lord Dayne led them all in; Lord Arryn, Blackwood, Peckledon, Piper and Paege. Willow walked last, followed by her sister, always hidden. Jeyne exchanged her simple dark cloak for a luxurious velvety one, black with shades of purple. She must have found it somewhere in the palace. Long black tresses fell from out of the hollow where her face must have been, as always, the only visible part of her real body. Aegon felt better seeing them all. Besides Jon, and Lemore, they were the only people he trusted in Westeros, so far.

"Your Grace," Lord Dayne bowed before him. "We will go as messengers tomorrow, if needs be. We are all ready."

"I will consider your brave offer," Aegon said, "and I will give you my answer in the morning."

"We should leave His Grace alone to ponder his decisions," Septa Lemore suggested, and Aegon was deeply grateful to her when everyone turned to bowing again and taking their respective leave.

Trying to rule the Seven Kingdoms was not at all what he expected it to be.

Septa Lemore

Septa Lemore remained standing in one of the well-shaped porches of the Red Keep contemplating whether to go to the fisherfolk or not when she was startled by the company she didn't particularly cherish or desire.

"A noble septa would do well to guard her tongue," Lord Baelish approached her from behind.

"Perhaps," she replied with unfeigned humility. "His Grace is too kind to listen to my voice."

"Or maybe a noble septa is not who she seems to be," Petyr continued and she raised a brow, suddenly curious as to what he came to tell her, precisely, and why.

"Knowledge is power, Septa Lemore, or should I say, my lady," he drooled on and Septa Lemore wished she could leave but there was no easy way out. They were alone in the porch, and she had no weapon, not even a sewing needle. There was no other solution but to listen to Petyr.

"What would Aegon say if he knew that the septa who raised him is in reality the unfortunate Lady Ashara Dayne, former lover of his enemy Brandon Stark whom his grandfather the Mad King burned for treason… I wonder if he would have understanding for the sad story… She even had a bastard son with Brandon if I heard correctly, whom poor Ned Stark, the Seven have mercy on his soul, may or may not have raised like his own…"

Septa Lemore did not like where the story was going, not in the least, nor what she had to do next. But either courtesy or silence was no longer a viable choice.

"What an interesting story," she told him, flushing her eyes purple under long grey eyelashes and standing taller on her boots. "Let me tell you another, even more interesting one in my opinion. There was a thin boy of a lesser house from the Fingers who fought a duel for the love of his life, a daughter of one of the great houses of Westeros. And he lost. He licked his wounds, and out of spite he took her sister's maidenhead. It was freely offered, we have to say in his defence, and he left the maid deflowered, with child. The girl's Lord Father made her drink tea, made of tansy, mint, wormwood, honey, and a single drop of pennyroyal. Have you ever heard about it, my lord? The poor lady lost that child, as she lost many children after that. Many except for the one that His Grace seems very attached to these days…"

Septa Lemore had to stop talking because a tip of a short dagger was suddenly pointed at her throat. Lord Baelish pinned her to the inner wall of the porch by his sinewy little body. He was shorter than her in her boots, but the most likely Valyrian steel in his hands was not to be trifled with.

"Young Lord Arryn's health is very delicate," Lord Baelish suggested mildly, seemingly unconcerned about her tale, or the cruel position he put her in. "I do hope that his sickness will allow him to faithfully serve His Grace for many years. Perhaps he should not be bothered by such old stories. He knows how dearly I loved his mother and how cruelly I punished the singer who took her life."

"Now, there you have it, my lord, you've just staid yourself. You should do well to remember that Lord Robert Arryn is not only a sickly child," Septa Lemore said peacefully, in an effort not to move.

"I feel that you will tell me what else he may be in case that I did not remember, Lady Dayne," Petyr said cynically.

"Of course I will," Lemore's reply did not tardy, sharp and colder than ice. "He's a falcon."

"Of course he is, my lady, I would never forget such a thing. It is a noble sigil," Baelish dismissed her words and let her go, laughing incredulously, as one relieved and finally convinced she might be a stupid harmless woman after all, crying over the past. He did not understand her meaning, as few men would, and mostly not the dwellers of the capital. Which was only good.

Septa Lemore looked at the yard. It was a fine autumn's day and her feet itched on too high heels to go for a little walk. A ride would be even better but septas were not supposed to ride. If she did that, soon everyone would know about Lady Ashara Dayne.

The good thing about being a septa was that bastards like Baelish could not offer her a hand or any other form of lordly courtesy; it would not be proper.

"With your leave, my lord, if I may be excused," she told him with feigned sweetness, and walked away down the porch, keen on getting away.

It was the first time she entered the Red Keep in her life, and she was afraid she would hear Arthur's voice, and Rhaegar's, or the screams of the Mad King's victims, at every corner. But it was only a palace made of pink stones. It had no soul, lost or not.

She concluded that perhaps there was no harm in going to the fisherfolk after all. Aegon could hold out a little bit on his own.

His army of children would watch over him, better than the Golden Company, and much better than any septa.

Sandor

The fire burned out slowly in the hearth, turning into dust the last remnants of Lord Robb Stark.

Sansa knelt next to it, humble like a lantern in the crypt put out by a strong draught, and Mance stood next to her as if he were a family member. Sandor Clegane paced behind them, near the house door, trying to slow down and not to show his unease. He wanted to offer her words of comfort, but he found none. And he didn't think she should suffer more of his unmeasured sincerity on that day of all days. So he muttered under the voice something about going to look for Stranger and stepped out.

The Elder Brother was seated on the broad doorstep of the house, which was one step better than being on the wall, his honest face bare.

"No cowl?" Sandor said, to say something.

"Small point in that now," the monk answered. "I stepped out of boundaries the Faith is teaching. I was irascible, angry. That is not the way of the Seven. I have to find my place again."

"Well," Sandor observed, "you didn't break any vows. The faith forbids to kill a man. But first of all, Gregor was not a man. And then, you didn't even kill him, you defeated him. Some would say there is a difference."

"Brother," the Elder Brother smiled, "that was well said. And entirely untrue. I was so enraged that I was not myself."

"I did learn a thing or two about twisting the truth to serve one's purpose in all my years at court," the Hound said, sitting down next to the older man, forgetting his invented need to find his horse for a moment.

It was a good autumn day, they all walked free, and there was time for everything. It was only the four of them in the house, for Gendry, Blackwood and Daven went to look for the tall lady knight who had given them the miraculous shield. She went missing after the trial, and Gendry was worried about the aurochs of the woman. The Hound tried to correct his thoughts not to offend the lady. After all, she was still much better looking than he would ever be. And fierce, he had to give her that. Like the little bird's sister.

Seated, he could hear voices. Her voice, the softest of all voices, to make it worse, having a power over him than no voice ever did. Than the wildling's. He wanted to stand up, but the Elder Brother held him firmly in place, motioning him to stay silent.

"What do you want from him, Sansa?" Mance Rayder asked. "It's not my place to ask but I am asking anyway. We have come far together and it is only that I wish you both well. It would pain me if you would come to harm by reading roles in my show."

"You ask, yet you will never tell me about your errand on behalf of my brother," Sansa reproached him. "Not everything."

"Forgive me, Sansa, but words can be tortured out of people. I have seen it."

"And you only trust yourself if that should pass," Sansa said gently. "It makes sense. It is just that I would wish to know."

"You will," the wildling said, trying to sound kind. "In time."

"But to answer your question," Sansa said after a pause, "most of the time I don't know myself. At times, I dream… I dream of him, and of no one else, treating me just like a knight from the songs of old, only more noble than any of them, whispering sweet words. I wish him to ride over the seas only to bring me a flower, or an expensive gift. I dream of him being gallant, more gallant than any other knight I have ever known… I dream of him swearing eternal love to me, not asking for anything in return..."

Sansa paused, embarrassed. "It's silly, I know..."

"Not at all, Sansa," Mance was of a different opinion. "Women need to be flattered."

"What would you know about the silly hearts of girls?"

"Not enough in a lifetime," Mance said. "And more than most, perhaps. A bard knows of the desires of the heart. And they lay siege on men and women both. In different ways, maybe, but still."

The Hound stumbled on his feet at the house door but the Elder Brother stopped him from falling, by a swift motion of his left arm.

"Sansa, it is natural, a maid sometimes cannot know what she wants, or what a man wants from her- "

"But I am a woman wed and he knows it, Sandor Clegane does," Sansa said seriously. "Maybe I am even a widow! And I would have been wed for the second or even the third time if Lord Baelish was able to annul my first marriage or to find proof of my husband's death."

"Forgive me, Sansa, I thought you a maid. It makes no matter," the King-beyond-the-Wall said earnestly. "You seem so young. It is no wonder that you are looking for answers."

Outside, Sandor stood up like a dog turned restless from being tied in the kennels for far too long. He walked to the wall so that he could not hear the voices. "This isn't about me," he denied what both men had heard clearly. "It can't be."

His fearsome rasp was barely a whisper.

"Who else?" the Elder Brother asked, coming after him. "Ser Daven? Robert's boy? I think not."

The Hound turned his burns towards the Elder Brother so that the other man could see them in great detail, not saying a word. To his surprise, the older man grasped his tunic and tugged at his bandaged chest.

"Brother, don't," the Hound protested, confused, removing the sight of his burns which had such unusual effect to the man who had now saved his life more than just once.

But the monk continued, implacable, until Sandor Clegane looked, for the very first time at the naked chest of the Elder Brother.

His chest was also a ruin, not of burns, but of an old wound such that it had covered all the space between his relatively broad shoulders and crept all the way down to his stomach. It looked as if more horses than just one have walked over the hedge knight in the battle of the Trident. And while the twisted mass of ruined skin was not on his face, the ugliness of it was as undeniable as the rising and the setting of the sun.

"Is this any prettier?" he asked, voice trembling, "I was lucky to fall in the river after this. The water washed it out and kept it open, and the wound didn't fester until the former Elder Brother found me and patched me together."

"As you patched me," the Hound said, petting his thigh, turning into brooding silence while the monk fixed his own bandage back on the part of the wound which reopened with the practised hands of a healer. The tunic was soon on him, the ugliness swept away.

"Forgive me, brother," Sandor Clegane stuttered his clumsy courtesies after a time. "I have to take my leave from you. I intend to return soon, and on my two feet, not on the cart for pigs. Please."

"I believe you," the monk said, and sank back on the doorstep, watching him go.

Elder Brother

The Elder Brother soon felt guilty for allowing his brother to leave because the conversation on the inside continued. It was embarrassing to eavesdrop, but he still decided to hear it all. The impulse was stronger than him.

"And then, then…" Sansa had difficulty to find words. "There are other times…"

"Which other times, Sansa?"

"The other times, I want something else, and that frightens me more than anything else has ever frightened me before," Sansa said in guise of a discovery reached at the expense of great pain.

"What is it, Sansa?" Mance encouraged her to talk.

"I want him, rude and cruel, just as he is. No sweet words, and no sweet face. His fierceness, his scars, his overgrown body, his awful words, everything that he is. Even when drunk. It hurts me to want him that way, but I don't want it to stop. Ever."

"Well, to feel that, Sansa, for anyone, is a great thing," Mance said seriously. "Don't let it frighten you so, and maybe it will all come out for good."

"And there is even more to it," Sansa admitted. "I slowly stopped caring about where I am, or thinking about where I should be going since I recognised him in the Quiet Isle. I can be anywhere as long as he is by my side."

"I'm sorry for asking you about it, Sansa," Mance said. "I should have known. You are Jon's blood, in that at least. You do not play at affection."

"And I do not want him to die for me!" Sansa continued as if Mance did not say anything in between. "As he seems to desire!" the words ran out of her mouth unstoppable as the life blood leaving a battered body of a soldier through a mortal wound.

"I want him to live for me. Now and for all days," she said, her voice barely a whisper, just like the Hound's, moments ago.

The direwolf bayed in front of the hearth as though she were a dog in truth, and not only in Sansa's empty courtesies meant for others. Sansa looked through Mance, changing the conversation, immediately more distant and unreachable than the Elder Brother imagined the Wall. "Nymeria is restless. I have to go to her. There's something else brewing, more dangerous than my silly wishes."

"I have felt it as well," the wildling said. "The world is getting dark. What is more, I was going to ask you if you would go with me tonight."

"Where to?" Sansa asked.

"Since the new king's men are rather incapable to end this siege any time soon, and I don't have that much time to waste, I will scale the walls of the city to go down, as close as possible to the other camp. Then I will sneak into presence of Daenerys Targaryen under the banner of peace."

"What makes you believe that you will succeed where the king's heralds have failed?"

"My need is greater than theirs," Mance simply said. "Will you go?"

Sansa nodded mutely and went to Nymeria who was howling sadly at the ashes in the hearth. Robb's remains fit in a small bowl of clay. Sansa closed it off with a lid, and the Elder Brother wished that she would one day be able to lay them to rest properly, in the deep crypts of the Lords of Winterfell.

The monk coughed loudly and decided it was as good a time as any to make his presence known.

"Oh, Elder Brother," Sansa became flushed under her hair from surprise. "Have you come back alone?"

"Yes. I met Sandor in the street, he went to look for Stranger," the Elder Brother lied, hoping that his own face remained pale as the gods have made it, and that it was not turning into any other coloration. "He will be right back. Will you be reading on tonight?"

"That we will," Mance said. "We have to start early. I hope that Rhaegar won't be late."

"I don't think he will," the monk added.

The heap of devoted shoes of all shapes and sizes rose ten feet high, almost half way up the city wall. The Elder Brother remembered he should thank Blackwood when he would return for not attending the trial. Accidental of not, his absence also kept the ravens away. And the monk thought that he would have gone mad if amidst what was happening to him in combat, a black bird would have landed on his forehead.

Another autumn evening was drawing near, purple like old the blood of the innocents, drying on the steel of the strong.

Jaime

Jaime was hungry.

But a thousand times stronger than hunger was a gnawing doubt that Brienne betrayed their understanding, that she became jealous of Cersei and let the trial take its course without freeing him. Then with some luck, Cersei would be gone for good and... The voice of Lord Tywin let the events in Jaime's head unfold until he saw clearly the Lady Brienne of Casterly Rock, more treacherous than Cersei and undeserving of the title.

Stop it, he would tell Tywin, she's the most honourable wench in existence."

But then his thoughts would swirl further into madness. Jaime imagined the Red Keep burning above everyone who had ever betrayed him, stone and flesh swallowed by a terrible beauty of the flames…

And even worse than the repulsive doubts and yearnings that shamed him was the sensation of emptiness in both the hand he had and the one he did not, where a long feminine body had lied and given itself to the budding life of the senses.

He welcomed the real voices and the thrumming of heavy steps of soldier boots resounding in the dungeons. But his joy was immediately cut short.

They were bringing a boy.

It could not be, it should not be, he thought. The child resisted his captors in vain and was locked up somewhere, judging by the sound just below Jaime.

Below...

Jaime did not waste time. He took the White Book of the Kinsguard with him and walked to the black cell Qyburn used for his wicked maestery. His instincts were right. On the soft ground of a gloomy cell stood Tommen, dressed in a kingly fashion. but his face was that of a frightened child. The royal silks shone darkly, misplaced and unnecessary, in the eerie purple light of the cursed candle.

"Uncle," he said, and put two fingers over his mouth as if he were afraid to be reprimanded for calling Jaime the way he had called him all his life.

"Tommen," Jaime said with as much kindness and warmth he could muster in the black cells, ignoring the boy's obvious unease. He crouched to be at Tommen's height, and spread his arms wide open. Soon they were filled by a mass of sobs, a shaking little body and a flood of confessions in a tiny voice.

"The monk, he won... Mother's champion, he was a monster! I was so scared when he walked headless... But mother, mother was gone. And than Lord Mace said to the Targaryen pretender I was a bastard and offered to kill me... And Margaery wouldn't look at me. But the pretender, he... he is young, he spared me... They brought me here..."

"Everything will be all right, Tommen," Jaime tried to reassure his son, not believing a single one of his own words. More likely, they would both meet the sword of the new King's Justice, before long. "Here, Tommen, take heart and look at this book. It's about the Kingsguard and many brave things its Sworn Brothers have done in the past. They were victorious in the thick of many battles."

Tommen cried a little bit more, but than he obeyed. They sat together on a spot where the soil was not unbearably soft for Jaime's liking. His son was soon absorbed by the lives described in the White Book in great detail, while Jaime's mind raced about what he could possibly do to keep them alive.

After a while, Tommen pointed at the entry about the legendary Lord Commander of Kingsguard of King Aegon V the Unlikely, Ser Duncan the Tall.

"The description of his sigil, uncle! The monk wore it painted on his shield, a single tree, and a falling star on a sunset field! Then the trail of the falling star spat fire and burned the monster through his armour," Tommen said in astonishment. "Is the champion of the Faith the descendant of Ser Duncan the Tall?"

"I don't think so, Tommen," Jaime discarded the thought, but another one came, the thought that wouldn't leave his mind in the blackness, illuminated only by the sinister purple glow of the candle. Brienne... No wonder that the dragon blessed your shield! In your innocence you wore a sigil of a dragonfriend... Did you even know what it was? I have never seen a sigil like that... Nor read the entire White Book as I should have done with my own legacy, and that of my Sworn Brothers before me... Tyrion would have known...

"The monster," Jaime had to ask looking at the glass candle steadily burning in the dark, "did it die?"

"No, uncle," Tommen shook his head, "but it is helpless, it lies like a puddle of dirty water, barely moving."

So Tommen told him the rest, about Robb Stark's head and Lady Sansa's grief and the tall knight who defended her, and how she drew a dead man's sword to defend him in return, like Queen Naerys defended her Prince Aemon in the songs. Until the champion of the Faith outshone them all with a bravery unheard of, not even in tales, challenging a monster to fight him to death. Tommen's eyes let out the tears of admiration then, until his story came back to the beginning, or an end. To the moment when he was almost sentenced to die, and was spared by the kindness of a complete stranger. His young face looked old then, older than the world.

Manly voices echoed again between the ancient walls, and Jaime said: "Shhhh!"

The feet were too many. The soldiers stopped talking as they approached, but the clatter of swords and daggers could not be mistaken, rattling hastily down the winding stairs.

It seemed as if the roses decided to follow Lord Tywin's example of dealing with children of their new enemies rather than to heed their latest merciful king. Jaime thanked the gods he didn't believe in for being just enough the son of his father to conceive and anticipate life's simple cruelty, such as it was. So he said to Tommen, determined, taking in a worried look the boy gave to the door.

"Tommen," he said with the calm he didn't feel. "We will play a game. See."

He took a long metallic instrument from the table, the sturdiest one he could find, glad he could not know about the real use it had for Qyburn after Tommen's stories. Especially after the presence of a sewing needle among the tools was suddenly explained by an appearance of the head of Robb Stark on the body of Gregor Clegane.

Jaime attacked the masonry next to the door hinges of the locked door, through which Tommen was brought in, and which Cersei and Qyburn also used. His efforts were soon awarded by the cracking of the hollow stone. He gave pliers to Tommen and bid him continue, while he loosened the stones on the other side. Enough parts of masonry soon collapsed from both sides of the wall, behind the door, partially blocking the way for anyone who would want to unlock it from the outside.

There, he thought. They don't have the key to my cell. Brienne has it. And this should give us some time.

"Excellent, Tommen, you win!" he told his son who enthusiastically pushed the rubble all over the room even when it was no longer necessary.

Jaime violently pulled the tablecloth from under the instruments, immensely enjoying the fall and the breaking of some of the more delicate ones. With a long sharp knife, he cut out four long bandages out of the dark cloth, which he wrapped around his hand, his stump and his bare feet. He gave the edges of the cloth still remaining to Tommen. "Hold it," he said, and with his son's help he made a bag in which he put the White Book, and as a last thought, a glass candle, still burning purple on the soft ground hiding Qyburn victims' graves. He tightened the bag to his chest as he saw the lowborns carry their infants in the fields of Casterly Rock. Contrary to his expectations, he had found the bundle quite cool against his coarse tunic, although the cursed burning candle was in it.

"Come, Tommen," he said, "now it's time to play leave my castle."

The boy nodded and followed. Jaime could see that he understood that the knights where coming to murder him, but he kept quiet and pretended not to. Cersei has trained him well, he thought, proud of his son.

They went down the corridor, but not to Jaime's cell. To the hot high wall with a primitive stairway dug in its side. A long line of irregular holes in the masonry, leading up until the eye could see. Where, it could not be told. Jaime clenched his teeth and touched one of the holes on the wall.

They were lucky. Obviously his first impression was wrong, the wall was not scalding, only mildly hot, and with the bandages he should be able to stand the heat, even with the unknown distance of the climb.

Voices were now in Qyburn's room and past the barrier of rubble. "He has to be here!" a soldier cried. "A suckling pig!" another cursed. "Come here, child," they called Tommen. "Come here, little cub. Your mother has sent us! She is crying and wants to see you!"

"She isn't, is she... uncle?" Tommen said to him, and Jaime instantly reacted with the other word. "Son," he said, "you know your mother. Does that sound like something she would do?"

"No," said Tommen, "not at all."

"Hang on to my back, and don't touch the wall," Jaime said and started a climb, a bag made of table cloth on his chest, as another protective layer between him and the hot wall, his son on his back. The advance was lengthy and painful. He felt a smell of cloth burning. The bag was about to catch fire, and its edges were getting slowly singed. He looked up and he thought he could see the end. Not close, not far. He arched slightly backwards so that the bundle in front did not touch the wall any longer. It wouldn't do to turn the White Book of the Kingsguard into ashes even if the thought of the wildfire melting the glass candle into nothingness loomed in his mind as a most pleasant possibility.

One and two. A hole and then another.

And two more steps to go.

He climbed and all the muscles in his body hurt, the burden on them much heavier than they were used to, and more unequally divided than the knight's armour.

At the top, he thought he could see the light. He scrambled over the edge, bag first, Tommen next, over his father's head, Jaime last, panting. He realised that the bandages on his arms and feet were also scorched but his skin was mercifully fine, even if during a part of the climb it felt like his flesh had been burning and re-growing again as he laboured slowly to get them up. He dismissed the stupid thought. It was impossible.

The wall was just not as hot as he first thought.

Just like the light he thought he saw was not a light.

They ended up in a long rectangular room without windows, or doors. Neatly ordered jars with wildfire, pulsating with warmth, stood all along its high walls, emanating an unnatural green light, greener than Jaime's and Cersei's eyes. The only way to the hall of the accursed fire was seemingly the climb they just took.

Jaime started searching for a secret passage out. When Tyrion killed their father, he had spent several nights immersed in the bowels of the Red Keep, sometimes walking on all fours, looking for his brother, or Varys. By the end of that quest he understood there was a secret passage out of any room, as well as holes and shafts through which a spy could overhear the conversation of others. Ever since he had wondered how many more people knew about him and Cersei for years and would not tell. Varys first of all, probably Littlefinger and possibly many more. The golden twins could have been sentenced to die for treason and fornication years ago. And all that time they were arrogant enough to believe they were so smart and so accomplished at hiding.

Jaime explained to Tommen what to look for, and the boy seemed happy to help. His green eyes glimmered with life and eagerness for adventure as he explored the walls between the jars with utmost care. Until they heard furious voices at the bottom of the vertical stairway in the hot wall that brought them to relative safety.

Tommen froze in fear and covered his ears to block all sound, just at the moment when Jaime exclaimed. "Here, Tommen!"

The passage leading away was less than a shaft for air, smaller than the side branches of the sewers in the poor parts of the city. Even Tommen would have to squeeze and stoop to pass through, and Jaime would have to crawl on his stomach like a lizard to move forward inch by inch. The opening was behind three jars of wildfire stored on top of one another, but there was enough space for a child, or a thin man to move in behind them without touching them and risk breaking all seven hells loose. The opening was small and vaguely masked by two smaller stones. Any other courtier or soldier would see it as pointless hollow in the wall, a crevice leading nowhere.

Jaime helped Tommen shed his useless kingly garments, and encouraged him to get in on his own, between the loose stones, only in black and yellow tunic and light coloured boy breeches. The boy passed behind the jars smoothly as the breeze. Jaime gave him the White Book first, and than the burning candle, wrapped in the bag of cloth.

Father's case was more difficult than the son's. He wore only a coarse tunic of a prisoner, or perhaps of a penitent of the Faith, too large and shapeless. Even without it, he was by no means a small man. He didn't have any small clothes under it. And where that came handy when he was holding Brienne in his arms, being naked in front of his son filled Jaime with bigger shame than his suspicions and mad urges in the loneliness of the black cells. He removed the tunic, took what he could savage from the singed bandages he wore around his limbs and wrapped them tightly around his behind and his manhood in an irregular pattern. He looked at himself and laughed. If he wore a cloak of feathers above his shoulders, and if his skin had been darker, he would be dressed in the fashion of the Summer Isles, for all he knew.

Above all, he hoped he was thin enough to squeeze behind the jars.

There was one thing left to do in case that he was not.

"Tommen," he said, "start moving forward, slowly. Don't wait for me. Leave the book and the candle behind you, some five steps away from the entrance. I will take those."

"I will be right after you," he lied for he didn't know that, he only hoped that he would not be blown to pieces before he could save his son.

"I will do as you say," Tommen said.

When Jaime was satisfied that his son was far enough from immediate danger, he pressed his barren chest to the wall and squeezed himself carefully behind the jars, imagining he was thinner than a new leaf on an oak tree in spring.

The wildfire pulsated at his back, but he refused to think about it as he eased himself slowly off the ground and into the tunnel, some three feet above the floor.

The buggering jars did not move. They had more luck than Jaime deserved.

When he crawled several inches inside the passage, he heard a voice screaming in agony, calling for his mother, who must have been dead for many years, and a whore where Jaime was concerned. The whoresons came to kill his son, a young boy. They deserved whatever was happening to them.

Jaime looked at his stump in wonder, thinking that maybe, maybe, the wall of the stairway that saved them was too hot after all.

"Father," Tommen called him quietly and Jaime's chest bathed in simple delight. "Are you coming?"

"I'm right behind you, son," the father said cheerfully, tightening a strap of singed cloth around his loin. Amazed at his own achievement, glad they were unharmed, Jaime continued crawling.