Author's Note: Hello hello. Shorter chapter this time, checking in on our favorite Dornishwoman.
I hope you enjoy this update.
Chapter 17
*word count comparisons will have to take a hiatus until we're back even with the original (looks like chapter 20)*
Elia Martell watched the sun rise behind the gallows of the Gate of the Gods, silhouetting the kicking and writhing form dangling in its arch.
The captain in the Goldcloaks, thin and reedy, danced on the end of a hemp rope, his feet less than a foot from the cobbled street. He'd been thrown from the crenellations of the gatehouse above, high enough that the sudden stop should have killed him. But either due to his light build or luck—bad luck—his neck did not snap, leaving him to jerk and jig as he strangled.
She wanted to look away for, unlike so many of the so-called 'nobility' of Westeros, Elia did not revel in the suffering of others. But the princess of Dorne did not allow herself to, watching the morbid ballet until the captain hung limp and piss ran down his leg to the cobbles below. My children could have died due to you, ser. Many thousands of others did.
She turned away as other men in gold, some of the few Goldcloaks the crown felt it could trust, cut their former compatriot down. Aging Lord Donnel Buckwell grunted as he did the same. "That is the last of them, Your Grace."
Elia nodded. "And thank the Seven for it, Lord Donnel. And you, for your handling of this matter."
The Lord of the Antlers smiled wryly. "I was just the face of the investigation, Your Grace. We have Lord Varys and Ser Manfred to truly thank."
True enough. It had gone as the old man had said, Lord Donnel visibly probing into how the Lannister army was permitted entry to four of the gates of King's Landing while Lord Varys investigated from the shadows. Ser Kevan Lannister had known bribes had been paid but he knew not how far the corruption in the City Watch spread. While Elia hadn't let Ser Manfred interrogate Tywin Lannister himself—she wasn't sure how to handle that, even now several weeks later—but she had given the Kingsguard leave to get information from other prisoners and anyone Lord Donnel and Varys turned up. Her squat, ugly knight had done so with great success.
Five of the seven gate captains had been guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, paid off by men Tywin sent ahead. Their commander, Ser Callador Staunton, might well have taken Lannister gold too, but he had died during the Sack—no one knew who had cut him down, be it a man of Aelor's or a Lannister to reclaim the money or a citizen frightened out of their mind. The other two captains were not so evidently guilty, and one—Kermit of the Riverlands—had rallied his men and actively fought the invasion. Lord Donnel and Ser Manfred had been willing and ready to kill the other and all the surviving serjants to ensure a clean sweep.
Elia, regent, had intervened. The remaining captain and a score of serjants had gone to trial, evidence presented to the court with herself presiding. It had been arduous, long weeks of testimonies before she had condemned seven of the serjants and the final captain to be hanged for their treason from the very gates they had once defended. The rulings did not sit easily upon her shoulders, and she had wept more than one tear in the privacy of her chambers. But when handing down the punishments, as well as during the executions themselves which she had attended without fail, she had been a Viper of Dorne. She had kept her face stone and her tone unyielding. This captain was the last of them to die, the remaining men of the City Watch temporarily under the command of Captain Kermit and overseen by Lord Donnel himself.
A breeze from the sea brought a morbid scent to the morbid scene from the direction of what had once been Flea Bottom, though that storied slum was now nothing more than charred buildings and blackened streets. The smell of smoke and, more disturbingly, burned flesh still clung to it like a blanket, the winds sharing the sickening stench with the rest of the capitol. I never thought I would miss the scent of King's Landing of old, but even that reek is better than this. Though she had to her own dismay grown quite used to the new scent by now, it still ambushed her at random times and emptied her stomach of her latest meal. She had already lost half a stone.
She'd placed Symon Santagar, Ser of the Spottswood and head of the guard her brother had insisted on leaving behind, in command of the cleanup. It was a nasty business, and one that likely would not be completed for many moons to come. Hundreds of blackened bones were methodically disposed of by teams of grim men, while the remains of burnt buildings were placed in wagons and hauled out to be dumped into the sea. She'd ordered the remaining Westermen prisoners, men that hadn't been taken by Ser Kevan for this reason or that one, from the Black Cells and onto the labor teams, watched over by angry Dornish spears. Many of the smallfolk who'd once lived there, desperate, had joined the teams as well, helping to remove the ashes of their former lives for the promise from their Queen of daily meals. Elia, heartbroken for them, made sure those meals were filling and often.
Ser Manfred, at her insistence, rode the carriage with her and Lord Donnel back to the Red Keep, in a block of spearmen in Dornish suns and Targaryen dragons. Ashara Dayne rode along with them, both as support for the turmoil Ashara knew Elia would be in and to satisfy propriety. Elia looked at the squat knight in white, smiling at how grumpy he looked, and resumed a conversation they'd been having for three days. "I am going again this morning, Ser Manfred. Now that this business is behind us, I'd like to move on to the next with earnest."
If his scowl wasn't naturally severe, it likely would have grown deeper. "You are my Queen, Your Grace."
She waited, but he said nothing more, prompting her smile to blossom in full. "Have I finally won you over, my good ser?"
Ser Manfred grunted dismissively. "I still think it's the dumbest fucking idea I've ever heard, begging Your Grace's pardon."
Lord Donnel glowered. "Ser Manfred…"
Elia, still smiling, waved her hand dismissively as Ashara giggled. "Peace, Lord Donnel. Manfred is always welcome to speak his mind to me." Returning her attention to the knight, she reached across and patted his knee. It was thrice the width of her hand. "But you know, poor idea or not, that I will do it."
Manfred shrugged. "You are my queen, Your Grace." His face soured even further as he admitted, "And he hasn't tried anything yet. But if he makes one fucking move that I don't like, I will split him from throat to balls, whatever his buggering name."
Elia knew beyond doubt that the knight meant it. Still smiling, she nodded her agreement. "It hasn't been a problem yet, dear Manfred, no do I think it will be."
And so it wasn't.
Jaime Lannister, whatever his prowess with a blade, was still a young man, only fifteen years old. As far as most of Westeros knew he was recovering from wounds taken while defending the king, but Elia knew the truth of the matter. Jaime had killed the king, running him through from behind, dishonoring the white cloak he wore. Transversely, he'd kept his honor as a knight, protecting the smallfolk of the city from a horrific death from fire and green flame. Elia had no doubt that Jaime told the truth; she'd seen Aerys' obsession with wildfire and the way he used it to kill, and the stories of his cruelty were not exaggerated.
It made the situation a difficult one. Jaime had broken one set of vows to keep another, yet in the grand scheme of things he had—in Elia's mind and likely everyone else's—the right thing. Yet he did murder a man. A man he was sworn to protect, and the grandfather of my children.
His prison was a gentle one, a far cry from the Black Cells that held his father. A small chamber in the lowest portion of the Tower of the Hand, three heavy bars had been added to the door form the outside, and three guards were posted at all times. The servant in charge of Jaime was an older man named Will who had been in Aelor's service and earned the prince's trust, and who kept the knight in a level of comfort while the two Targaryen men decided what to do with him. From what Elia had gathered, that might take a while, because neither Rhaegar nor Aelor seemed to have any idea how to best handle it and had larger concerns on their minds anyway.
And so it fell to Elia. Though the truth is that I have taken it upon myself.
As they always did, two guards lowered spears towards the door while a third removed the bars. As he always did, Ser Manfred bulled into the room first, short savage steps with blade drawn, almost wanting the young golden-haired man inside to try something. And, as Jaime always did, the young man was standing in the middle of the room, hands open at his sides and far from anything he could try and turn into a weapon.
Elia patted Ser Manfred on the shoulder as she glided past him and into the room, feeling the muscle beneath slump a bit in disappointment.
"Your Grace," handsome Jaime Lannister said, bowing formally as she moved towards him. "I am once again honored."
The Queen of the Iron Throne slipped into her usual chair, which Jaime had in its usual position across the table from his own. She'd noticed that the young man looked forward to her visits, and that made a great deal of sense. She was the only one outside of Will and guardsmen that the young knight ever saw, and the old servant was not one for conversation. "Oh sit down, Jaime." She felt Ser Manfred take his customary position behind her chair, then took the decorated box the knight wordlessly handed her. "Standing will not save you from defeat."
The Lannister youth—and he was a youth, however skilled and handsome—grinned at her, the same cocky one he had used to charm many a young woman around court. "As you command."
Stones was a game older than sin and twice as entertaining, and Jaime was a good opponent despite her jibe. It had become a ritual of hers, coming to play with the knight who'd killed the king. She asked questions while they played, some pertaining to the killing and many not, getting a feeling for the boy and his motives. Jaime knew what she was doing; she'd not tried to hide it and he was not a fool even if she had, but he endured and answered anyway. He'd even commented on that once, smiling and saying to her "It isn't like I have much else to do, Your Grace."
She'd known him from before, even before Harrenhal and his appointment to the Kingsguard; she and her brother had toured Casterly Rock when she was seventeen, and the possibility of a betrothal was discussed between the two of them despite her being ten years his elder—such was not uncommon in noble marriages, but that reason had made her thankful nothing came of it. But it hadn't been a friendship, merely an acquaintance. She'd not known him well before. Now she felt she did, and what she found was a young man who had made a decision to save thousands at the expense of his own honor. And to please his father, the propensity of which is the only thing keeping her from telling Rhaegar to pardon the boy.
They played. She asked. He answered. They played more.
Jaime spoke of Tyrion, his infamous little brother who'd just been born when Elia had been at Casterly Rock. Of his mother, who'd died when Tyrion was born, and how he missed her. Of Cersei, his twin—he spoke of her a great deal.
And he spoke of Tywin Lannister. The man who, all signs said, tried to have her and her children killed.
Elia liked Jaime, whatever the sins of his father. He would be a good man one day if he wasn't already, though he would always cover it beneath a layer of sarcasm and wit. She'd written Aelor—Gods, even thinking his name makes me blush now—a letter stating as much. She didn't believe he had killed the king on orders from his father.
But she didn't know it. At least not yet.
It was the better part of two hours later when she left Jaime, her latest round of conversation finally solidifying the idea she'd been considering for days. As she left the Tower of the Hand, she spoke to the form that had become her constant shadow. "You do not like me seeing him, do you Manfred."
"I think I've made that pretty buggering clear, Your Grace," Manfred responded dryly.
Elia nodded. "Then you're going to hate this, though I am asking you to personally set it up."
She heard his stomping gait halt, and his rough voice grew both weary and wary. "What?"
The queen stopped and turned to him, giving an apologetic smile. "On the morrow, I am going to see his father."
A/N: The original Chapter 18 (which is the equivalent to Chapter 17 here), which actually was pretty well reviewed in the first go around, was an unfortunate casulty of removing the worst parts of earlier chapters. While I liked a lot about it, I hated the things I changed even more, and doing so made most of it unusable sad to say.
But I like this pretty well to and it helps set some...things...up for later, so not all is lost.
Oh, and next chapter? Next chapter there will be blood.