Gold Saw Dyed in Lannister Red: Lancel (298 AC)
"Lancel, so good to see you," Black Gold Saw said, as the nephew of Tywin Lannister entered her private chambers while Bone Sprout, a Doll who served in the castle as Black Gold Saw's aide, closed the door behind him.
Lancel had been in very high spirits when word had come from King's Landing that his cousin, the Queen, had succeeded in persuading the King to take Lancel under his wing as his squire. He had actually just left his room to find more things to pack for his journey to King's Landing when Bone Sprout had diverted him from his intended path with her monstrously tripartite right arm. And so it was that he found himself standing before Lord Tywin's personal Doll.
"Please, sit," Black Gold Saw politely offered to Lancel one of the mangled metallic monstrosities in her room that she passed off as chairs.
"I would like to know what business you have with me." Lancel demanded arrogantly.
"And you will know, just as soon as you sit down," Black Gold Saw reiterated, tapping her finger against the desk's edge in the direction of the proffered seat.
Lancel huffed, swishing the cape he decided he would wear as squire as he sat down in the chair.
Black Gold Saw languidly smiled at Lancel as she leaned to the side and rested her head on her hand. "What's the matter, Lancel? I just heard you are going to be squire to the King himself! You should be excited, happy even!"
Lancel swallowed, and contorted his lips into a rictus grin. "I-I am, milady Saw. My father had been wanting to see me squire with a great warrior, and now I will get to squire with the King!"
Black Gold Saw dropped her smile as she sighed, rose up from her own seat, and walked around the laid-out copy of her sword serving as her desk. "Oh, Lancel, Lancel, Lancel, you are a simple-minded summer child. Do you understand what I mean when I call you that?"
Lancel's eyes dropped and his ears burned in embarrassment as he wracked his mind in search of an answer to her insult and question without offending her in turn. "Perhaps, but what insult is there in enjoying life in a long summer, and seeking great renown in the service of the King?"
Black Gold Saw snorted with a smirk. "As true as that statement is, it is an answer that only a simpleton such as yourself could have given, and thus shows that you fail to fathom the full depths of what I mean."
Lancel looked up at her again. "Then, could my Lady show the courtesy of showing me what depths of meaning I have missed?"
Black Gold Saw scoffed. "And why should I explain my meaning to someone like you? What profits you to understand an expression you did not comprehend the first time?"
Lancel shuffled again in his steel seat. "Because it would help me rise from being a mere squire to a titled Knight of the Realm?"
"HA!" Lancel was startled at Black Gold Saw's bark of laughter. Her smile returned, Black Gold Saw slid herself off her desk to stand before Lancel. "That was a funny answer, so I'll tell you what I mean: That you are someone who never considers the deeper meaning of things. Someone who doesn't listen for what goes unspoken. On top of that, you've been born in a great House outside of the main family's lineage, meaning that you are just important enough to matter to powerful people."
Lancel's breath shortened at the verbose abuse that Black Gold Saw heaped on him. "You are-"
Black Gold Saw reached a finger to his lips, not quite touching, but enough to get the point across. "You are someone who knows just enough not to be an idiot, but is never intelligent or important enough to be anything more than a pawn in the Game of Thrones."
"How dare you!" Lancel exclaimed in impotent rage. "How dare you insult me like I'm some common farm boy? Need I remind you that I am a Lannister?! Son of Ser Kevan Lannister, nephew of your Bonded, Lord Tywin Lannister! My cousin is the Queen, and the King is related to me by marriage!"
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Black Gold Saw's finger dropped so that she could hold herself and her head upright as she roared out with leonine laughter, while Lancel could only sit in befuddled and embarrassed offense at her finding great humor at his expense.
After gathering her senses back around herself, she leaned forward so that her face was but a mere foot in length in front of his. "Remind me, Lancel. When Lord Tywin told you that you were to serve as the king's squire, what else did he tell you to do?"
Lancel remembered, with its recall pushing his head below her gaze, and causing his heart to sink to his boots. "To do whatever Queen Cersei told me to."
"And so, Lancel," Black Gold Saw tilted his head back up to her eyes. "What does that make you?"
Tears formed in his eyes. "A pawn."
"Tee-hee-hee-hee-hee."
Lancel froze in fear, and looked backward. From behind, came first the mischievous tittering of a young girl just past the cusp of maidenhood. Then, from the same direction, came the same three skeletal arms from before to wrap around his shoulders and right side. And from his left, he felt the form of the Doll that had brought him here – Bone Sprout was what she had been called by Black Gold Saw – pressing into his side, an eerily cheery smile on her face.
"I like him Saw," Bone Sprout said, pressing her face into his tear-soaked cheek. "Can I keep him?"
"Of course, Bone Sprout," Black Gold Saw approved. "But only so long as he does what he is told."
"What?" Lancel was scared and confused.
"You're not going to do what Cersei tells you to do," Black Gold Saw loomed over him like a judge pronouncing sentence. "You're going to do what I tell you to do."
Lancel's confusion waned as his fear waxed.
Black Gold Saw walked up, shooed Bone Sprout back a bit, and then turned and lowered herself onto Lancel's lap, bringing her form right up against him.
"Hehe. Feels like when I used Aerys for a cushion," Black Gold Saw gushed.
An action that would have been merely erotic when performed by any other woman instead elicited a feeling of being utterly violated in Lancel, especially as she clasped his head in the palms of her hands, fixating his focus on her eyes and words.
"You will go to King's Landing, you will be the King's squire, and you will listen to what Cersei tells you to do. But she is a shortsighted woman concerned with her own desires and position above all else, even that of House Lannister, and we have not spent more than a decade and a half buying up and replacing every clerk and bookkeeper and guard and Doll in King's Landing we could get our hands on so that she could throw all of our careful planning into chaos on a whim that she's mistaken for a brilliant scheme."
She tilted his head to look at Bone Sprout. "She will be going with you to King's Landing. Though she is a Severed, she has proven to be most faithful in her duties to me, and understands my will very well, even during times when I don't give her direct orders or correspondence. No matter what Cersei, or anyone else for that matter, tells you to do, you will either filter that order through her, or tell her what it is that others had you do, so that she might tell you what you ought to have done and what you will do."
Black Gold Saw's words flowed into Lancel's ears like wine flavored with nightshade. And there was nothing he could do to stop the flow, or her hands from bringing his face within kissing distance of hers.
"What I want you to understand, Lancel, is that you are my bitch. What that means is, like any good dog eager to please her master, she comes running the moment he calls, ready to do anything at all for the simple sake of his satisfaction and happiness, whether it's fetching a stick or mauling a helpless child. And like a bitch, when I say it's time to get fucked, you will raise your ass up for the plow, and receive the seeds of my plans for you to carry until you birth them in their full fruition."
Lancel understood. All too well.
"So then, my good little bitch," Black Gold Saw cooed. "What do you say?"
Lancel had only one answer to his Master.
"Woof."