A/N: This is the official version of Tywin's Black Gold Saw snippet.
Gold Saw Dyed in Lannister Red: Tywin (283 AC) - Version 2
Tywin read the message, his face as impassive as the messenger's was paled and sweaty. Considering that, the paper's contents, and the shoddy attempt to cover up the seal's original breaking, Tywin wondered how the man would look trussed up like a chicken in a butcher's shop, a few feathers poking out to allow his viewers to discern his nature. Unfortunately, the message required his immediate and full attention, so Tywin would not be able to see to the man's rope himself.
Thankfully, there were several men he trusted to do it for him.
"Send word to all generals to see me in my tent in one half hour, and whichever of them you see last, tell him that I've prepared a roast pheasant for him. Got it?"
"Yes, milord," the man replied, and he hurried off to deliver Tywin's orders.
Tywin immediately strode toward his tent after that, his eyes fixed forward, but his ears open to the conversations of the men around him. He overheard bets being made on whether they were going to fight for or against Aerys, orders by sergeants for their subordinates to get off their lazy butts, even crude humor.
But none dared voice that pernicious rumor where he was keeping a whore in his tent within earshot. That was good, as it meant that they had learned well from his whipped and beaten slanderers. It certainly helped that those men who were too curious for their own good were simply never heard from again, thankfully without him needing to exert such effort on his own.
Upon entrance to the main space of his tent, Tywin called out for the source of both the rumors and the disappearances: "Black Gold Saw."
A pair of comically-large, gauntleted hands with shears for fingers slithered through the pair of curtains that sectioned off the portion of the tent that was reserved for their owner. They then pulled apart to clear the entrance for a figure whose bared midriff and exposed thighs and cleavage spoke at first of an expensive whore, but the sight of the hands, horns and glowing blood-red eyes would have marked her as some demon of lust a mere three years ago.
She was a Doll, who upon Awakening, had named herself by the sign that Tywin Lannister now summoned her with.
She strutted forward until she stood directly in front of Tywin, her face split with a dangerous grin that could seduce or cower lesser men, her confident, smiling eyes directly meeting his that any observer would have interpreted as a challenge.
"I am at your service," Black Gold Saw intoned on bending knee. Upon it kissing the earth, she said, "My Lord."
He held out to her the message he had received. "Read this to me."
Rising to her feet, and with greater gentleness and dexterity than her monstrous digits should have been capable of, Black Gold Saw grasped the small parchment and spread bare its contents while Tywin strode to his chair at the head of the table that dominated the room they occupied.
"Is this a test or a jest, my Lord?" she looked to him. "Because I know well enough that your eyes have yet to fail you."
"It is an order," Tywin rebutted, relaxing himself in his seat.
She nodded at that, and turned back to the matter at hand. "'Lord Jon Arryn has won the service of a Doll. The Doll is named Strength, and she has defeated Prince Rhaegar's army, and delivered them to Lord Robert Baratheon. Robert has dueled and killed Prince Rhaegar. His armies march on King's Landing.'"
She let the paper curl back up on itself, and placed it before Tywin. "It seems I am no longer the only one in the world."
"Do you know her?" Tywin asked.
"Perhaps before we came here," she answered. "But I can't tell you anything more about her than that message did."
"Then I can only pray for your sake that the memory of this Strength is similarly afflicted," Tywin said.
A smirk curled the Doll's lips. "I thought you didn't pray to them for anything," she prodded, "because of how they mocked and wounded you."
"Nothing more than a turn of phrase, Black Gold Saw," Tywin said. "One so pervasive that even the unfaithful may speak it out of habit."
"To compel words and actions from those who wouldn't otherwise," Black Gold Saw mused. "Truly, the power of gods, and great men."
"No, that's just power" Tywin corrected. "Any thug with a knife can force a man without one to empty his purse. That is power at its meanest and most direct."
"So if the lowest form of power is to directly force a man to change his words and actions," Black Gold Saw reasoned. "Then the highest would be to indirectly cause a man to change how he thinks, allowing you to dictate his words and actions without having to use force."
"Much like what you have been attempting to do just now," Tywin revealed.
The smile disappeared from the Doll's face, caught in her own words at her clumsy attempt at manipulation.
"I apologize, my Lord," she bowed her head and placed her hand over where her heart would have been if she were human. "I have been a very eager and attentive student to your lessons, and this isolation has left me with sparse choices of persons to put them to practice with."
"You have learned much, I will give you that," Tywin rose from his seat, and stood before her. "But now it is time for your first true test."
Black Gold Saw straightened up and looked her Lord in the eye. "Are you crowning the Stag, or the Dragon?"
"Robert Baratheon," Tywin declared. "Aerys has no dragons, no Valyrian steel, and no Prince Rhaegar. Robert has Rhaegar's head, and more importantly, the first Doll in the world to swear fealty. Aerys's days are over, and if House Lannister is to have any say on what will become of Westeros after he's dead, it must be at the hands of House Lannister that he is killed, along with the rest of the Royal Family."
Black Gold Saw understood Tywin's orders perfectly. "Is there anything else you want me to do in King's Landing while I'm making the case to wed Cersei to Robert?"
"Don't kill the Grand Maester Pycelle, he's been of great use to me," Tywin elaborated.
"And what of your son, Jaime, if he tries to stop me?" she asked.
"You will not provoke me again with a rhetorical question," Tywin declared.
She nodded. "Then I shall make for King's Landing with all speed."
Tywin gestured to the tent entrance. "Immediately."
Black Gold Saw did a slight double-take at that, as she had clearly been expecting to have to sneak out again, in order to keep the secret for as long as until she reached King's Landing. But Tywin had decided that there was no more point in such secrecy at this point. So she bared her teeth in a grin that the lions that once roamed the Westerlands, and marched to the tent's portal, and threw it open as she strode out.
Immediately, Tywin heard his guards get into a panic and the camp around him erupt into a commotion. He reached for the pitcher of wine that was sitting on the table and poured some into a goblet that he'd left at his seat, and then into the other cups he'd placed at the seats of his commanders.
He knew for a fact they would be needing it.