The Kraken and the Lion

Chapter 19

by Technomad

Asha

Tyrion started by claiming a large room for his headquarters. He and Asha moved in, and Asha stationed her crewmen as guards outside, to make sure they weren't disturbed. "They're the only people I know we can trust in this place," Asha commented grimly, checking the edge of her axe with her thumb. "Matter of fact, I'm not that keen on staying in the Red Keep. The walls have ears here, and I'm sure there are secret passages. I don't like the idea of someone being able to come upon us in our sleep."

"I know what you mean, my love," Tyrion answered. "However, this is where the crime occurred, and we're better-placed to go over things and talk with people here. Your crew will protect us."

"Or so we hope," Asha muttered. She did not like the feel of the Red Keep. Or, for that matter, of Kings Landing. She hoped she wouldn't have nightmares. At seventh and last, she was a creature of the open sea, and not too fond of cities. And knowing that there was an unknown assassin about did not make her any less uneasy.

Soon, Tyrion had a large desk set up, as well as cork boards on the walls. "I'm going to be drawing up charts and pinning them up there, so that I can refer to them without shuffling through piles of paper," he explained.

"Oh! That's a good idea!" Asha was secretly well pleased to let Tyrion take the lead in this investigation. He knew the people involved better. If it had been Pyke, she would have preferred to take the lead, but she knew she was a long way from home.

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts. "Enter," she called, and she found herself swarmed by a little blond boy. "Tommen? I…I mean, Your Majesty? What are you doing here?"

The little boy who was now the King of the Seven Kingdoms buried his face in her bosom as his arms went tightly around her. "Aunt Asha! You came back! I thought you'd never come back!" he sniffled. Instinctively, Asha put her arms around her nephew…and wasn't that a strange thought? She'd never had a nephew before, and she found that she liked the idea. She wondered how her new niece Myrcella was doing, off in Dorne. She and Tyrion had had some very nice visits with Myrcella while they were at Sunspear, but after that, they hadn't heard much about her.

"Of course I came back! Your Aunt Asha doesn't break her promises! When I heard about your brother, your Uncle Tyrion and I came back as fast as I could make my ship go!" And that was, by the Drowned God, nothing but the truth! She had cracked on sail in a way that would have had the most experienced captains in the Islands turning pale, and had taken risks she normally would have avoided, to shave time off her voyage. She smiled at the memory. She had really pushed her skill to the limits, and proven once and for all, if proof was ever needed, that she was as good a captain as the Ironborn had ever had, even if she was a woman!

Tommen looked up at her, his big blue eyes swimming with tears. "Joffrey…Joffrey was at his wedding, and he was drinking a lot of wine." Tyrion looked up, his eyes sharp. "He was acting awfully funny, but then he went to cut the pie and let the birds out. Then…then he started coughing." Tommen closed his eyes, as if to shield himself from the horror of the memory he was recalling.

"Coughing?"

"Yes, Uncle Tyrion. He coughed and coughed, and his face first turned red, then blue. He grabbed at his throat, but he couldn't get whatever it was out. Then he fell over, and he was wriggling around on the floor, holding his throat. He wasn't coughing any more, but his face…" Tommen gulped. "I have nightmares about his face!" He looked up at the adults in appeal, as though they could somehow make the memories feel better. "Mommy was holding him, screaming for someone to help him, but nobody could. He looked at her…and then he died! Mommy was screaming and screaming, until Grandfather had her taken away and given a potion to make her sleep. Ever since then, she's been acting very strangely, and now everybody says I'm to be King!" He wiped tears from his eyes. "Do I have to be King?"

Tyrion's eyes were shiny, and Asha could feel tears prickling at the corners of her own eyes. Neither of them was under any illusions about Joffrey. They both knew that whoever had poisoned him…if it was poison…had likely spared the Seven Kingdoms a dreadful tyrant. But the trauma that the assassin had inflicted on this sweet little boy was unforgivable.

Tyrion patted his nephew's shoulder. "Yes, I'm afraid you must. But you won't have to rule for many years yet. Your grandfather will rule; the Hand does that when the King cannot." Or will not…Asha and Tyrion exchanged a significant look. Tyrion had told her a lot about how things had gone to rack and ruin under King Robert's misrule. "And when you're old enough, you will be a wonderful King!"

Tommen looked from his uncle to his aunt, and whatever he saw, it seemed to reassure him. He wiped the tear tracks off his face. In a low voice, he said "Mommy doesn't like to see me crying. She says that I'm King now and Kings don't cry."

"You'd probably better do as your mother says, at least for now," Tyrion said. "And isn't it time for your lessons? Kings have to know a great many things, so you'd better study hard if you want to be a good King." Tyrion nodded, and one of Tommen's nurses came in to take charge of him. Tommen sniffled a little more, but suffered himself to be led out. When he was gone, Tyrion gave a little sigh.

"At least you can get him to do things without a scene, unlike certain people I won't name," he muttered. "If it had been Joff, there'd have been an epic tantrum at the thought of doing something he didn't want to do."

Asha nodded ruefully, agreeing. "Let's get started on this investigation!

Tyrion

Tyrion started by questioning his father about the events at the wedding. "Tommen told me about what he saw. I'm interested in what you saw, Father." While he detested his father, and had not forgiven him for Tysha, he had never once made the mistake of underestimating the older man's intelligence.

Tywin sat back behind his desk. "Well, it was toward the end of the wedding feast. We'd had various kinds of entertainment. Seven singers had tried for the prize of a golden harp, and they'd had a jousting competition."

"A jousting competition?" Tyrion was having a hard time believing that. "Where did they have that? Out in the courtyard?"

"No, in the Great Hall. Someone had found two dwarfs, one of them mounted on a large dog and the other on a pig, and they jousted with cardboard lances. Joffrey was wishing you were there, so he could command you to participate."

"I can imagine." Tyrion mentally blessed Asha for having married him. Being far away in Lannisport, with a pregnant wife, was a perfect excuse not to travel across Westeros to his pestilential nephew's wedding. Joffrey had always hated him, and would have loved to humiliate him in front of the whole court, both for its own sake and as payback for the Whip Incident and other times when he'd been put in his place by his uncle.

Tywin was going on: "Joff was cutting the pie when he started to cough. At first nobody thought anything of it, but it got worse and worse, until his throat closed up and he suffocated. The maesters say that it's a poison called the Strangler."

"I see." Tyrion noted that down. "I'll want to talk to the maesters myself. Dare I hope that someone with sense had the castle locked down immediately it was known the King had been poisoned?"

Tywin nodded approvingly. "Of course. I gave orders that the castle was to be sealed off tightly, with nobody leaving who hadn't been questioned."

"Are there lists of everybody present in the castle?" At Tywin's nod, Tyrion made another note. "I'll want to see those. Was anybody arrested?"

"We arrested Oberyn Martell and Sansa Stark. Martell had been grumbling about how he was there for 'justice' for Elia Martell, and Sansa Stark, having been repudiated publicly by Joffrey, had considerable motive to avenge herself." Tywin stretched. "They're both in the cells. Not the black cells, but not far above them. We aren't about to take chances with either of them."

"Oh, really?" Privately, Tyrion thought that the chances of sweet, shy Sansa Stark daring to poison the King at his own wedding feast were about as good as his own chances against Gregor Clegane in a tourney, but he kept that thought to himself. He needed to keep his father on his side. "May I speak to them?"

"Of course."

Asha

Asha shivered slightly as they were led into the bowels of the dungeons. And these aren't as bad as the black cells! she reminded herself, with a shudder. She thought of spending years down there, shut away from the sun and the wind, and decided that death would be an infinitely preferable fate. Tyrion looked perfectly at ease, but he'd had people thrown down there before, and was probably more at ease with the idea of dungeons.

Ahead of them and behind them, soldiers paced along carrying lit lanterns. The light was sufficient to see with, but not enough to banish the darkness; shadows flickered and danced around them. Asha was in no mood to talk, and she could see that Tyrion wasn't, either. The soldiers knew their place and kept their peace. From the way their eyes flickered around, though, Asha could tell that they were uneasy, too.

They stopped in front of a cell door, and one of the soldiers produced a big ring of keys. After trying two or three keys, he found the right one, and the door opened with a groan of metal on metal. If anything on Black Wind had been as ill-kept up as these dungeons seemed to be, Asha thought, I'd have the crewman responsible drinking the bilgewater out of the bilges, if I didn't just have him chucked overboard!

Tyrion

Tyrion was mentally making a list of changes he was going to make in the investigation, and keeping their two prime suspects in these dungeons was now at the very top of the list. He could smell the stink of the castle sewers, and it was damp and very dark. Ever since his experiences at the Eyrie, he had disliked the concept of dungeons in general, although as Hand, he had had to use them.

In the cell, Sansa Stark got up from the straw pallet she had been lying on. She was wearing the filthy remnants of what had clearly been a lovely new gown. She shielded her eyes and whimpered; she had clearly not been allowed any lights. As her eyes adjusted, she saw who had come, and gasped aloud.

"Lord Tyrion! Lady Asha! You've got to help me! They say I poisoned the King, but I didn't! I didn't! You've got to believe me! Please, help me!" She stumbled forward, sobbing. Someone had shackled her feet, and the chains hampered her movement.

Tyrion narrowed his eyes as he felt fury claiming him. He didn't know Sansa Stark well at all, but he knew people, and he didn't think that Sansa Stark had it in her to poison anybody, even the boy who had ordered her father killed in front of her eyes and then proceeded to make her life a living Hell. Tyrion was loyal to his family, even the ones who didn't deserve it, and had been shocked at Sansa's betrayal of her father's plans, but he thought that she had already been punished beyond anything she could have been said to deserve. And this…this was adding insult to injury!

Turning to the nearest soldier, Tyrion snapped: "You! Get someone to get these shackles off the Lady Sansa's legs!" With a twisted grin, he added: "I don't think she can run far even without them!"

"But, my lord, the Queen Regent was most particular…"

Ah ha! Tyrion had suspected his sister's fine hand in this, and having it confirmed so easily was sweet. "The Hand of the King gave me full authority in this case. I'll take responsibility." The soldier knew when he was outranked; he bowed and left.

By the light of the remaining lantern, Tyrion turned to Sansa. "My lady…please, sit down and tell us what happened. Start at the beginning, go on till you come to the end, and then stop. If we don't understand something, we'll ask you about it. Don't be shy and don't be afraid."

At his words, probably the first gentle words addressed to her since her arrest, Sansa broke down in a torrent of tears, sinking down on her pallet. The remains of a hair net were tangled in her red hair, with purple gemstones glinting in the lantern light.

END