Chapter 31
To Know Your Name
Where more characters suffer from identity problems than before
xx
Cersei
The Merryweathers lived in an opulent house on the good end of the Street of Silk.
Wealthy merchants from the Free Cities in Essos would rent or buy their dwellings in that part of King's Landing. While Orton Merryweather was neither rich nor foreign, he could not afford a house near the Red Keep like the old nobility. Only a few steps separated them from the whorehouses who owned the lower part of the street, descending to the harbour, an everlasting source of customers and easy coin.
Cersei hated it with all her heart.
She detested the house even more than she disliked sharing Taena Merryweather's bed. And that was a lot to say. She tried to console herself by thinking that the woman's attention wasn't half as intolerable as the forceful trysts with the various Kettleblacks who preceded her between Cersei's sheets.
I am the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, she thought, and they have all betrayed me.
She hated Jaime for not riding to her aid when she had a moment of weakness to write to him, and declare her love. Cersei had never loved anyone, or so she told herself. (To forget about Prince Rhaegar, his magical voice and his refusal of her, the most desirable bride in the Seven Kingdoms). Her twin, Jaime, was hers to dispose of, a second part of her, like another arm she had to do her bidding. Hers to live with her and to die with her when the time came. Of late she even hated Tommen for not having the balls to stop the trial. Even a mere Lannister boy should be able to do a simple thing like that, she steadily believed. She hoped that they were both left to rot in the dungeons of the Red Keep.
When the manly Lady of Tarth (Was it? Cersei never paid enough attention to the lesser nobility despite her father's wishes in the matter) snatched her from the dais before Tommen would have to sentence her to die, Cersei Lannister forgot her son. In panic, she only thought of running away from certain death by a sword. Safely back behind the bloodthirsty crowd, and dressed in a breathtakingly horrid peasant robe, she thanked her saviour in the most flattering tone she would use on the stupid nobles whom she would later on gift to Qyburn for his trials. It was not difficult to convince the dumb woman to find Taena for her. And it was even easier for Taena to approach the giant of the woman from the back and hit her ugly head with solid stone.
Cersei didn't think further than that. The fleeting thought that her too fast thinking was both her great advantage and her utter ruin crossed her mind, but she decided to ignore it. The salvation was what she deserved by rights, but warming Taena's bed tasted empty. It was too high a price. She willed away the thoughts of different embraces when her body responded with a fire of her own.
Fire was good.
The only thing that pleased her was to think of fire. To remember how the Tower of the Hand burned in red and golden blaze, finally bringing the much overvalued peace of the Seven to her cold heart.
She sat the ivory comb carefully down in front of the mirror, satisfied after passing it all the way through her long hair. The mirror gaped polished and richly cold, a shining surface caught in a wooden frame, carved like the leaves of the trees that never grew in Westeros. The flat glimmering glass showed the golden waves running down her semi-naked back, more full than before the cattle they called the High Septon those days had her shorn like a sheep. It was thicker than ever, she had to conclude. A small miracle. she thought, admiring her reflection. Her hair grew back in only a month between her naked walk of shame and her trial, before she even had to consider buying one of those false herbs from the market vendors and would-be magicians from distant lands. Or ask Qyburn to conjure her something if he could, without asking too many questions about how he did it. She brimmed with hatred at the thought of Qyburn.
Her ungodly maester was nowhere to be seen after her trial, which was for the better. She would claw his heart out with her bare hands for his lies about her champion. Indeed, Ser Robert Strong survived. But his pathetic defeat at the hands of the miserable monk was a different tale entirely.
It mattered not where Qyburn was. He taught her everything she needed to know. About the room far down in the dungeons, and the stairway dug by pyromancers in the high wall, which no living man could cross without being burned to his death. The pyromancers used gloves made of Myrish glass to approach the secret storage, devotedly populated with jars of wildfire for years. No one had seen fit to inform them of Aerys's death and the futility of their endeavours. Her stupid dwarf brother who believed himself to be so clever never used a quarter of it to defend the city from Stannis.
Know your friends and know your enemies even better, she remembered her father's advice. Cersei Lannister never once forgot that Taena was from Myr, her house full of tokens made of Myrish glass. The Ousted Queen dreamed of the day when she would collect enough glass fragments from her latest lover to see a skilled alchemist and order glass gauntlets and slippers for her royal hands and feet.
Then she would burn them all.
The mighty roar of the hurt lioness would be heard all over the capital, and her revenge would taste a thousand times better than ripe juicy raspberries served on a golden platter with too much cream.
"My queen," Taena called her from under the curtain of her foreign bed, even more luxurious than the rest of the house. "Let us retire for the night."
Cersei went to do her duty, eyeing the half-full flagon of wine on a rounded night table, and two empty goblets. The glasses were of ordinary Westerosi making, on the other hand, the bottle...may have been of Myrish design.
"A glass of wine, my love," she said, placidly, discovering to her great amazement how not only men but even some women could be as stupid as Robert Baratheon when they allowed their senses to take over.
Cersei would never make the same mistake.
Gendry
Robert Arryn seemed like a nice enough boy who grew quicker than weed in the scarce weeks it took him to travel from the Vale to King's Landing. He welcomed Tom Waters and told him without hesitation that the body of the Usurper Tommen was delivered to His Grace King Aegon VI that morning by the faithful guards of the House Tyrell. Tommen sneezed and bent his armoured head, before he gave the Arryn boy a grin through the tiny slit on the visor of his new helm.
Gendry expected them to enter the Red Keep and leave him be when they exchanged the necessary pleasantries, but a pair of dark eyes, sharp as a falcon's, studied him instead.
"You are Gendry," Robert Arryn said.
"You remember well, m'lord," Gendry replied carelessly.
"It is because of Jeyne," the young lord said. "She is grateful to you. She is a bit like Lady Stoneheart now… but not quite the same. She can still be kind to some. I know that she wishes to thank you for... For making it possible that she can still care for her sister... After her death... Willow is also here. King Aegon has been good to all of us. Just so that you know, if you want to join our guard as well, a place would always be found for you."
"I will think about it," Gendry said, his feet itching to leave the company of the high lords. The air around the keep smelled on direwolf, and he started to wonder what Nymeria was doing in the neighbourhood.
"If I do, I will not wield a sword," he told the young lords, raising gently the warhammer he brought from Harrenhal. He meant it, too. Gendry would not part with his new trusted weapon.
"You fight with that," Tom Waters said. "Like Father did. I mean like the Usurper Robert Baratheon used to do."
"I haven't been in a real fight yet," Gendry told the blond boy in an unfriendly voice, surprised by his own abrupt bitterness towards him. Tommen was not guilty for either of them having been born a bastard. Probably no one was. "Was he any good?" Gendry blurted back. "As a father, I meant, not with the hammer, m'lord."
"I wouldn't know," Tom Waters lied. "But I've heard it said that he had tried to. He wanted to be a good father, not only a good king. It's just that he was not victorious in most things."
"Why didn't it work with Joffrey?" Robert's bastard asked, his curiosity tearing apart the barriers of prudence.
"I don't know," Tom Waters said. "He was born different. As if the gods had thrown a coin at his birth and it fell on the wrong side. Like what can be read of the great Targaryens of old. Except that Joffrey was no dragon…"
"There is a dragon flying to the palace tonight," said Robert Arryn sniffing the air with awe. "I am of the mind to see it coming from the turrets of the keep, or higher. Will you join me, Tom?"
"Gladly," Tommen said, his green eyes flickering alive with lasting interest.
With that the high lord and a highborn bastard left, and a common bastard remained standing, eyes colour of shiny steel searching for Nymeria. Yet the offer to join the young guard of the new king tickled Gendry's proud heart and it would not leave him in peace for some time.
Would she admire me if I was a knight of a Kingsguard? He dreamed of a girl who must have grown up in the years that he had not seen her. Would she be pleased? Or think of me as a stupid boy unable to wield a sword…
The sky was clear and Gendry was not afraid of the black wings humming in the air. The beast stayed far above the clouds, not wishing to be seen, and the bastard was sorry for Lord Arryn who would not have gotten his heart's desire.
The rain stopped. And his search for Nymeria was going to take some time.
The sleeping girl
The wolves could not sit at the dinner table and as soon as she opened her other pair of eyes, not the grey, but the yellow ones, she knew that her dream was not going to last. The monk, who smelled of danger no one else could sniff out, would come to see her soon, but it was not him she needed. It was not her sister either, lost in her stupid songs. She could make her dreams last longer of late, what with the help of the great black beast that had her captured, but her time on earth would still be short.
I need to wake up, she thought as her sharp yellow eyes examined the room and all of her senses searched through the many evening trails and scents of people in the Red Keep. A faint one came in through the window her sister didn't close so well. It entered the chamber from the outside, from the courts where liberty reigned. From the outside the old pink walls marked with killing, treason and grief. Her paws took her forward swifter than the wind would.
My sister could wake me up too, she believed, but she was afraid, mortally afraid, that before that would come to pass her sister would see. Her sister would know. How she had hated her with all of her forces. How she nearly gave the gift of mercy to the hideous evil man who seemed to be the only one who cared about her sister, and not about their stupid titles and ruined halls of stone. The old blind dog had told her that when she wanted to kill the ugly mean man in the woods near Trident with tooth and claw. The animals did not lie to one another like people did. But she had finally understood the truth of the Hound's affections only in one of her previous dreams, grasping a bit more of the hearts of men than when she abandoned Westeros as a smaller girl. And in her deep sleep, in the sleep where she was lost to all, she wept, both for the times when she was right and for the times when she had been wrong.
The wolves are returning and I have to wake up, the sleeping girl thought, and the knowledge was her own. Not of the god she tried to serve, nor of his demands of justice and gifts from far across the sea.
With that thought she leapt even faster to that other scent she knew, and which she had not been able to smell in her previous shorter dreams. How did a Knight of the Hollow Hill end up back in King's Landing? The wolf sprang on the source of the sensation with all four paws, overthrowing the stupid boy and his pathetic hammer. He was no match for a creature from the ancient times, deemed not to exist south of the Wall.
"Nymeria," the boy said and she wished she could remember his real name, like she wished she could remember her own. "What's wrong with you?"
The direwolves could not talk. It was late, the dinner must have been over and the trouble-smelling honest-looking monk healer would not tardy in walking out, minding his own business, not seeing the stupid boy. That was good. It was best for them to follow in silence. She nudged the boy in his side and howled, once, only once.
"You want me to do something?" he inquired, and scratched the wolf behind her ears. Nymeria didn't bite him so she must have been used to him by now, and he to her. That was good as well, the sleeping girl rejoiced.
He may be not so stupid after all, the nameless girl concluded, dreaming still.
When the monk was out, the wolf ran after him and hid behind a high wall. The boy followed suit. Soon they settled in an easy rhythm of persecution, a hide and seek resembling a dance of sorts. The monk would walk, none the wiser, and they would tail him, hiding behind walls, behind wells, next to the city houses and in the empty space where the watch should have been. The wolf and the boy left behind them the gates, and their drunken keepers gambling in front of the door they were supposed to guard. The land stretched open, devoid of growth. The wolf and the boy crawled on all fours behind their smelly prey, towards the ship where the girl still slept.
And no matter how much she wanted to dream further, her dream had ended then.
The boy was left to figure out things on his own. She could only hope that her guidance had been enough.
Elder Brother
It was almost the hour of the wolf when the Elder Brother was done with tending to young Peckledon and Pia. They were lucky to be alive. His examination of a few drops of wine still clinging to the crystal on the inside, in the otherwise carefully emptied flagon of Arbor gold, confirmed the suspicion of the tears of Lys. The poison left no trace, but like with almost any other mystery of the lifeless matter, there were herbs which would reveal the presence of substances, give colour to what didn't have any, and those small helpers seldom lied. The flagon tinged red as soon as he applied them.
Yet it was strange.
Every ten minutes he would force several drops of water down the throats of the sleeping young couple. It was the only known cure. To let the water wash out the poison.
As he did it he pondered on the results of the trial. In the short time he spent in Oldtown, studying from the Citadel after the end of Robert Baratheon's Rebellion and at the beginning of his rule over the Seven Kingdoms, he discovered that the maesters had other uses for most poisons, which they would not share with those like himself, the workers of the Seven, who only yearned for knowledge to cure and heal. His conclusion was unmistakable. The wine must have contained a harmless quantity of the poison before another quantity was added, the one which would cause certain death but of natural causes in a few weeks, or months, depending on the bodily strength of the victim. The overall quantity produced the most likely unintended effect of instant deep sleep which the bodies would use to sweat out and release the poison through all pores.
Lord Connington who welcomed him briefly, before hurrying to the royal dinner, hinted that it was a failed attempt to assassinate the young king. But why would then his wishful killer make such a mistake about the quantity of poison? the Elder Brother could not tell. Or maybe there were two assassins of whom one was incompetent and used an insufficient amount.
Either way, Peckledon and Pia were lucky, and so was Aegon.
The hours of the evening seemed longer than in the endless solitude of the Quiet Isle when the season of rains had started. He was so focused to administer the life-giving water in regular intervals that his arms and legs went stiff from lifting the limp bodies in half-seated position every time. Dusk faded into night, dark as ever. The lack of light sharpened his sense of purpose and determination.
One more drop each time for the young victims, and then again.
The Elder Brother lost all consciousness about how much time had passed, a night, a week, or a lifetime, when finally the girl, Pia, made a shallow breath and coughed. He may have been sleeping for all he knew. But the almost empty large jar of water witnessed silently that he had done his duty. Peckledon was next, recklessly changing sides in his sleep. He made them drink some more water and raised the king's pillows under the somnolent couple as far as it could be done.
The night loomed high over King's Landing, with no stars in heaven visible under its dark wings. There was no one to see him off and nothing more he could do for them. He let himself out of the castle and stepped gingerly into the gloom of the streets twisting in all directions.
It was not his first time in the capital but it was the first time ever that he had been in the Red Keep.
The air of the palace had filled him with anguish and dread. It was not a place for a hedge knight from the Reach. Soldiers with the sigil of the rose on their chest he saw passing in the corridors appeared equally foreign. An absurd thought that winter roses would have been more beautiful on the Tyrell banners than the omnipresent golden ones spread out of nowhere.
He had seen winter roses, long ago, when the fields of the Reach coloured blue in his youth and he could never stop watching.
He could not imagine how he could ever have been one of those southern soldiers, under the proud banner of the then young Lord Randyll Tarly. Yet you defeated the monster, and you would have killed him if the gods allowed, just as well, he thought, still not able to accept the profound aggression he had discovered, watchful, untamed, in the bottom of his being.
He was tired, and his fingers worn out, flustered red in a peculiar way on the fingertips where small cuts were visible in the dry skin. Probably from the unworldly coldness of the jar with water. Yet he could not forget what Daenerys had told him in confidence; about a girl who also needed help. Sleep would come later to him when his heart would be at peace. The ravens, the shoes and the house of the fisherfolk would have to wait.
The Elder Brother had a ship to visit.
He left the city in decided steps, despite the lateness of the hour and the growing numbness in his limbs.
Daenerys
Daenerys sat with the girl.
In the queen's confused dreams of late, the girl didn't have a face and she wrestled fiercely with the bleak visions of monsters wrought of ice. But under the deck of the ship, the real girl was so fragile and so short of stature that the Mother of Dragons could not tell if she was a maid flowered, or a child still. Only her slightly wrinkled forehead for one so young betrayed the hard life she must have lived.
The girl herself lived in waking dreams.
She never talked and her dark-grey eyes would look ahead but they did not see. Her hair was brown, colour of ash, and her face long, narrowing to her chin. Even so, the girl was beautiful and she would become more so as the time passed, Dany had no doubt.
Just like she had none that the girl's thin sword would have pierced her heart the night when Dany abruptly opened her eyes in the hour of the owl, and found the girl gingerly seated on her pale silk clad chest like a herald of unknown doom. A pointy end of a sword aimed at Dany's heart.
The violet eyes must have startled the grey ones, or the gods that had created them all. The sword was dropped to the side. And the girl shook her head at Daenerys and judged: "They were wrong about you. You are not the one deserving of the gift."
Drogon was with them in that second but it would have been a second too late if Dany had not been spared.
It was the only thing the girl had ever said. Ever since that day, she only stared forward with dark eyes wide open, yet seemingly deprived of the normal vision of the world.
Daenerys tried talking to her and asked Drogon to do the same, but to no avail. The girl was like a parchment written in a dead language no one could read. Dany was of the mind that she didn't know who she was, or where she came from. Her faithful companion from before she crossed the sea, Missandei, had told her stories of slaves turning like that, like plants, after a particularly cruel treatment by their masters. But Grey Worm, the leader of the Unsullied who followed Daenerys to her lost homeland, feared an unknown curse that could rebound to the queen. While Dany learned to be afraid of magic, she could not fear the girl who had mercy on her when she had no reason to. Or no reason that Dany knew of, yet.
Since she arrived to Westeros, Dany had rarely been able to sleep. Sitting with the girl was one of her favourite ways to pass the time, lest the grief for her lost dragons consumes her and drags her into madness that overtook so many members of her house.
Drogon was excited all of a sudden, and the Unsullied speedy in escorting a new range of guests down as she commanded. It was a huge difference to the other evening when the night watch was kept by the Second Sons. The serious sad looking monk was brought in first. And then a young man, with that direwolf again. The direwolf pleased Drogon immensely but her dragon would never tell her more about his reasons. Or he could not; for some things the dragons could simply not explain to a human being. Daenerys may have been of their blood, but her body was fragile and her mind detailed in different ways.
"Princess," the monk said in his serious demeanour. "I have come as we agreed. I had no idea I was bringing company."
"Come," she smiled to him, believing his sincerity, for the time being.
The uninvited lad stood still in his steps when he saw the girl. A mace slid from his muscled arms, bare to the shoulders, despite the autumn chill. The wolf just sat at the girl's feet and howled with a newly-found satisfaction.
"There she is," Dany said. "I captured her in Dragonstone. She sailed with me ever since. She never said a word except on the very first night."
"May I ask, princess, why do you believe it must be some great suffering that put her in this condition?"
"To fully understand my reasons," Dany said, "you would have to have dragon blood running through your veins."
"My blood is not noble at all," the Elder Brother said, "but my mind has gathered knowledge over the years. Mostly, but not only, about the greatness of the Seven, and their mercy towards sinful men. Try my wisdom, if it pleases you."
"Fire cannot kill a dragon," Daenerys said seriously after a long pause. "Once I passed through fire, unscathed, and my dragons hatched. And I understood the old words to be true, in my case at least. They don't seem to hold true for every Targaryen. My own brother was killed by fire."
"As was King Aegon V and his son and heir in Summerhall," the Elder Brother said with sadness. "Dragon blood did not help them at all. But what does that have to do with this girl?"
"When I passed through fire," Daenerys said carefully, "I was unsettled. In the first few minutes I didn't know my name. For several hours I couldn't remember my life. And for several days my life felt distant as if it did not belong to me. So when I see her in this condition for weeks, I always ask myself what kind of fire could have burned her so?"
"An apt description, princess," the monk smiled, and the black dragon rejoiced again in the endless sky above. "I have seen men who lost consciousness due to a grievous wound on the battle field. I myself was one of them. When the body survives, most of them come back to their senses. Known circumstances, family members or friends, anyone who cares, can be of great help.
"I sat with the girl every night since we captured her," Daenerys said. "Despite that she raised a hand to strike at my life, she is dear to me. As a lost relative I never had a chance to meet. I was being too confident, I know. But if I don't trust my own reason, whose judgment can I trust? What else is there except the horror of fire and blood? There has to be more."
"There's always more to life," the monk agreed. "I know of herbs and preparations that could help healing her body. She has too little weight. And some of them assuage the mind as well. It could be difficult to find all the ingredients now that the long summer is gone..."
"Have you seen winter?"
"I've seen two, both of them very short and mild. Nothing like what seems to be coming now..."
"Arya..." the strong boy cried out to the sleeping girl. "It's me. I'm still as stupid as ever. Wake up! Hit me! Toss me in the mud..."
"You know her?" Dany asked. "Who are you?"
"I am called Gendry. I grew up as an orphan in Flea Bottom. My mother worked in an alehouse and at times as a whore and my father may have been King Robert, the Usurper, as you would call him. I will never know for certain but it is what everyone says when they see my dumb face."
"And she is..."
"Lady Arya of House Stark."
"House Stark was the ruin of the House Targaryen!" Daenerys said decisively. "If my brother didn't fall in love where he should not, and if he kept faith with Princess Elia, there would have been no Usurper's rebellion."
"And your father brutally murdered Lady Lyanna's father and elder brother Brandon who answered his call to come to King's Landing if they wanted her back. Some would say that makes the two houses equal in crime against the will of the gods and against each other. And it is no use crying over the snows that have melted..." the Elder Brother dared saying, surprising himself for defending Prince Rhaegar where his sister merely stated the truth.
"Who says so?" Dany asked, not pleased.
"Mance, the singer. It's just a saying, in the North."
"The North... Viserys never taught me much about it, except that it was cold, and far away."
"Princess Daenerys," Gendry begged. "May I visit her again?"
The direwolf growled. And Drogon told Dany in images of teeth and torn flesh that she would feast on anybody who would try and part her from her mistress, even on Drogon himself if she could. A great beast, Daenerys thought, fearless and wild. Almost as wild as a dragon. Rhaegar, was that what you had found? Was it so impossible to resist it?"
"I do not see why not," Dany said aloud, turning into a queen. "We should tell the Lady Sansa, should we not? And to the corpse who would then be her mother. Let it not be said of Daenerys Stormborn, of the House Targaryen, that she was as cruel as her father, the Mad King. We are now in an uneasy truce. I will not move until the mummery is done; if Mance Rayder keeps his end of the bargain. Get your herbs together, monk. If she wakes, she will be able to tell who sent her to kill me. And than I will be able to decide what needs to be done with her."
"M'lady, m'queen, m'princess, Your Grace" Gendry rattled all the titles he could think of, making Daenerys smile one more time like a girl she was when she was not a queen. "Please, do not tell Lady Sansa just yet. Arya would not want for her family to see her like this. She was always strong and independent. Could we not wait a little bit? Maybe the Elder Brother can help her get better… If not, we can always tell them. You do me this kindness, and I will offer you one of my own. I will take up a place they offered to me in King Aegon's Kingsguard. I will be your eyes and your ears in his court. I will not betray the king's trust in any other matter, or raise my hammer against him that I will be sworn to serve. But you will know of any rumours or plans that could harm you even if they come from the king's mouth."
"That is very generous, Gendry, Usurper's bastard," Dany said gently. "I accept your offer and in exchange I will keep Lady Arya safe, and a secret, from all."
"Did you know, princess," the Elder Brother said as a curiosity, "that there is a drop of Targaryen blood in Baratheons as well?"
"I do. My brother Viserys thought me well the genealogy of the great houses of Westeros," Daenerys answered. "But their living descendants are nothing like I imagined they would be by their family trees."
It was Gendry's turn to laugh without fear. "I will come and see Lady Arya whenever I can, Dragon Princess. With news."
Jaime
Jaime took Brienne to an ordinary house he discovered only after Tyrion's escape, in an outer part of the city not even Jaime was very familiar with. He suspected that the only other man who knew about it was Ser Bronn of the Blackwater who didn't reside in the capital any longer. They were getting incorrigibly soaked as he guided her through the streets turned into streams. The size and the noise of the city, from which the secular dirt was being washed off by the onslaught of water, visibly intimidated Brienne, unused to so many buildings in one place and the multitudes of the idle and the busy alike, chattering under their own roofs to let the deluge pass. His arm never left Brienne's waist, leading her with his usual assurance he had almost forgotten ever having possessed.
Tyrion's house, at least, was far away from the walls of the Red Keep. It looked cold and empty, and its large windows were closed. Jaime forced the door open without a second thought. It rendered without a fight and they found themselves in a place of their own.
Brienne stared at him with one of her old looks admonishing his well-proven lack of honour.
"Tyrion used to keep one of his whores over here," he hurried to justify his burglary. "The one that witnessed to him killing Joffrey and lay with my father later on. Before my brother killed them both…"
"What are we doing here?" she asked.
"The rent is probably still paid from the Lannister gold since no one bothered to cancel it. Unless you want us to share bedding with Mance Rayder or the Hound, we needed a place to go. And believe me, they both smell like shit," he ventured further, disliking his own honest words. I should be able to find better words for her. "Casterly Rock or Evenfall Hall are pretty far away and I regret to inform you that for the first time since I joined the Kingsguard I do not have any personal quarters in the Red Keep."
"How does that feel?" she asked.
"Calm," was his only reply. "Forgetful of plenty of favours I own Blackwood, starting from this wet tunic with the bloody tree on it, to the confirmation that Tommen passed safely to the Red Keep under the protection of young Robert Arryn."
"Whose father you have..."
"Killed? That wasn't me. That was only a piece of Lady Catelyn's imagination, one of many. Like she imagined that Tyrion pushed her son through the window, and that, that was me. None of the Lannisters poisoned Jon Arryn as far as I know, not even my sweet sister. I wonder where she ended up after the trial..."
Brienne's trusting face folded up a like sealed letter Jaime could not read when he mentioned Cersei. She will never be able to accept that part of my life, and I cannot blame her, he thought. No one would be able.
"You know," he said to change the topic, dusting off the top of the empty fireplace with a wet sleeve, considering that the stone candle would fit nicely on top. I'll get it tomorrow, he thought, if it ever gets dry again. "The Hound has seen your shield on the tapestry in his keep far away from your home, in westerlands, even farther than Casterly Rock. How do you reckon that the sigil of Ser Duncan the Tall ended depicted in such a distant corner of Westeros?"
Brienne's expression was less guarded again and it lit a small flame somewhere in Jaime's chest when she spoke her mind again."When I was a little girl, my father went to visit Summerhall. It must have been in the first years of King Robert's reign. The only thing he brought back was an old shield which later lay forgotten in the armoury. He never told me to whom it belonged. For years, I used to dream of a brave and noble knight who fought under the banner of the falling star, and a single tree on a sunset field, the most perfect knight of all."
"So you painted your own to be as noble as your dreams?"
"I painted it to cover an evil bat of someone else. And it has served me well. At the time when I did it, I cared no longer about becoming a knight."
"What did you care about?"
"Finding Sansa Stark and fulfilling my oaths. To you."
"To me?"
"To you."
"Wench..."
Brienne seemed uncertain of what to say next but then she gathered her not insignificant stubborn courage and spat it out. "You obviously brought me to this house for a reason. Shouldn't I live up to my other designation?"
"And that is?"
"Your whore."
Her proposal struck him blind. "Brienne," he said. "I didn't mean that, in the dungeons."
"What was your meaning then?"
There was still a bed on the upper floor and Jaime rediscovered they were not getting any less soaked. "I..." he stammered, keenly observing a patch of wet blond hair sticking to the scar on her broad cheek. "I don't want a whore. We did not... I did not…"
"Naturally," she cut him short. "I'm sorry for the asking. I can sleep down here and you can take the bed."
"Wench," he pleaded. "Come, you are a woman, aren't you?"
She stood embarrassed and alone, not understanding that he had no expectations of her, only wishes, and desires. And a burning pit of uncertainties if he was going to survive for much longer. Jaime's eloquence was failing him all over again.
"Help this old cripple then, to find some bed linen and tunics in the dead girl's chests, won't you?" he managed.
She surprised him by her sudden practicality which frequently followed her shyness like a change of wind at sea. Divesting herself of most of her wet garments without a moment of hesitation, she was the first one to walk up the stairs and soon he could hear the banging of the chest lids. It took him a painful ten minutes to undress himself sufficiently to be able to follow.
Upstairs, she was already in bed, amongst clean sheets, in a dark tunic. Bronn's he reckoned with bemusement. Her hair was wiped almost dry, scattered around her flat face in a perfectly endearing pattern. He would kiss it off her face if it had not been his turn to be withdrawn. The room breathed of a home he never had, clean and simple, without deceit. And he feared that taking any action would make it go away with the rain, disappear in the realm of fantasy.
The light of the late afternoon illuminated the interior, the window hung slightly ajar, letting in some fresh air, chasing out the dust.
Soft dark cotton found the middle of his face.
"The cripple had best dress," she said in an purposefully offensive tone. "Aye," he agreed, "not to catch a cold, Seven save us from it!"
Contrary to his expectations, climbing into bed did not sever the magic, the perfume of cleanliness even stronger than before. He lay on his back and looked up. She was next to him and there was a good foot of space between them. Tyrion always liked big beds despite being a rather small man.
"Ser Arthur Dayne," she dared saying. "How was he in life?"
"Extremely handsome. Brave. A man of few words, and a master with the sword. I never figured how Ned Stark could have bested him in the Rebellion. Once he pursued a company of nearly fifteen outlaws from the Kingswood and defeated them all alone. He didn't earn a single cut to show afterwards," Jaime forced himself to remember the man as he had met him in his youth, untainted by the new image of him he had gained if Mance's mummery was not an ugly lie. Troubled, passionate, Dornish to the core.
"A perfect knight of the Kingsguard," she dreamed her girlish dreams aloud in return.
"He would have been if he had a perfect king to serve," Jaime added. "He knighted me."
"I know," she said, rolling towards him clumsily, a wave of warmth washing over Jaime where her muscles lazily pressed into his. "And Lady Ashara?"
"Tall. Not as much as you, but still. Attractive. An excellent dancer. One of those women from Dorne who gave origin to their fame in the songs. Any man would have fallen for her if she so wanted," his memories flew free through the dam constructed long ago upon his wish to forget everything after he stabbed Aerys in his back, justified or not.
"You are wonderful," he told her then. "Wonderful." He touched her neck where it joined with a shoulder as broad as his own. "Softer than silk."
She was more ashamed than in the dungeons, sweet words frightening her more than bold deeds.
"Won't you go home now, to protect your father from the dragonbreath and the white walkers as a good daughter should." His unspoken fear that she would leave him lurked behind his partially mocking words.
"I thought of that," she admitted. "But it may be that there is still something of valour to be done for the good of the realm. Perhaps the new Targaryen king or queen will be worthy of serving under their banners. Everything that we know seems to be changing now. It's a bit like the arrival of the summer tide in Tarth. Only the waters will rise higher, more people will die, and the feats in fighting the threat will be greater."
Jaime thought that the only place where the Targaryens would allow him to show his valour would be at the executioner's block when the mummery would be over. With those charming thoughts kindling in his mind he was not all that aware when she nested her head on his shoulder, curling her body to better fit around his. This is better than home, he thought, all his fears and desires washed out by the autumn rain. He drifted into sleep like a loose barge on a plentiful river about to flood from the cold showers. And in his nightmares, the dead face of Aerys II melting into Jaime's own, held no power over him.
For the very first time.
xxxxxx
Knocking was gentle but insistent, on the entry door. Jaime woke up disoriented. Dawn was not there yet, but not far away either. The city was quiet, still sleeping in the mists of grey. He almost stumbled down the stairs, in a too speedy descent.
"Who-" he exclaimed, opening the door.
A gloomy-eyed septa stormed in, leading a huge monster and a shaking man, by means of pushing and pulling of a pair of long chains.
"Others take me," Brienne cursed softly, two steps behind Jaime's back, and he almost laughed. She must have sneaked after him, more silent than a cat. He would have giggled like a boy if he did not see the dead body of Ser Gregor Clegane in his new home, joined clumsily with the severed head of one of his last victims, Ser Bonifer Hasty. The monster seemed docile and tame enough on his chain.
No place can stay a secret for long in King's Landing, Jaime sighed deeply, rubbing his eyes.
"I cannot keep this in the sept," Septa Tyene said, gesturing at the chained corpse. "You will need it to do the bidding of Princess Daenerys. Only a dead man can survive a feat as she demanded be done tonight."
"What is it?" Brienne asked.
Brienne's visions of deeds of valour was coming truth in front of Jaime's incredulous green gaze, with an expectedly horrid dimension that accompanied the real battles in the world of men, the one that didn't have its place in the dreams of glory of the knights of summer.
"Mance Rayder will tell you on the morrow, I have no doubt," the septa spoke ruthlessly. "And you will tell him that Tyene Sand has left him a gift to help him on his new errand."
"Tyene... Sand? Prey, why leaving your gift with a Lannister?" Jaime said, recognising a sand snake, a natural daughter of Prince Oberyn Martell.
"This monster raped and killed my father's sister at the orders of your late father," the young woman hissed. "He squashed my father's head when father was not careful. Yet he survived because of this other monster!" She yanked the chain tightened around Qyburn's neck, making the false maester choke miserably. "It is only just that Ser Gregor Clegane, knighted by Prince Rhaegar, be he dead or alive, does his part to see Elia's and Rheaegar's son restored to rule. And I came to you, Kingslayer, because your ungodly reputation makes you a perfect choice. If there is anyone who will not choose the means to achieve what has to be done, outside my own blood of poison and sand, it is you. You have to convince Mance Rayder, because he will not believe me, that this thing can steal the horn Daenerys wants for her, and then die in peace, or in seven hells, for all I care. And if I earned a place in one of the hells for the ungodly deed that I have done, by forcing Gregor to live again, so be it. This craven here," she yanked Qyburn again, "I caught him like a wild beast after your sister's trial with the intention to kill him slowly. But now I made him sew another head to the Mountain to claim my revenge. He says that whoever holds this chain can command Ser Gregor, and that the obedient Ser Bonifer should take it over from the Mountain as long as the head and the body remain attached..."
And when they don't? Jaime thought, remembering Tommen's story of a headless corpse in a killing rage. Oberyn's daughter was shaking with sobs she wouldn't let go free. She may have been as old or as young as Brienne. Yes, Tyene, Jaime mocked her silently, the ungodly deed, it is easier said than done. You will have learned by now.
"All right," he said. "But you are staying with us for that pleasant conversation. You can start writing verses about it if you so wish. Mance is fond of those."