The Kraken and the Lion

Chapter 28

by Technomad

Tyrion Lannister

Tyrion had expected his dear older sister to not react well to the idea of remarrying, and he was not disappointed. When the raven bearing the news that Euron Greyjoy had offered for her hand reached Lannisport, her answer was on the way within the hour, and was just as Tyrion had anticipated. The writing was shaky, and the parchment was crumpled, as though she had wadded it up and thrown it against a wall before reconsidering.

No! I repeat, no! I will not marry again, and certainly not to the pirate calling himself 'King of the Iron Isles!' I have no interest in marrying anybody! And that's my final word!

Tyrion grinned as he read what his sister had written. Knowing what he knew, he could easily read between the lines. To be sure, Cersei had been miserable as Queen to King Robert, but a lot of that misery had been self-inflicted, due to her unwillingness to accept her lot in life and her unwholesome attachment to their brother, Jaime. I know what you'd like to say, sweet, sweet sister, he thought. You'd be willing enough to marry again…as long as it was to Jaime! But since that wasn't possible, Cersei could only utter a blanket refusal to remarry.

Tyrion shook his head. He knew their father, and what Tywin Lannister was capable of if defied…no one better. He had the distinct feeling that Cersei was about to get a very hard lesson in what happened to Lannisters who defied the patriarch of their House. He remembered his own lesson, and shook his head, almost pitying Cersei. Then he remembered a thousand spiteful remarks, a thousand-and-one snipes at him, and the times when she had actually dared to try to injure him before Jaime had managed to rein her in. If Father comes down on her like an avalanche, it couldn't happen to a more deserving bitch! He whistled a happy tune as he went off to pass his sister's reply along to their father.

Tyrion did not hand the missive over to his father directly, instead instructing a servant to do so. However, he did make sure to be in the room when Tywin read his daughter's letter. He anticipated a reaction, and he was not disappointed.

"She says 'no,' does she? She dares to defy me, the Lord of Casterly Rock and the head of her natal House?" Tywin's voice was deadly cold and even, the way it got when he was seriously angry. "Perhaps marrying her to Robert was a mistake. She seems to have forgotten her place in life, and her duties as a daughter of House Lannister."

"As a Queen Dowager, she does have some rank," Tyrion pointed out. "She may well feel that such a match is beneath her." Tywin gave his dwarf son a look that should have left him dead on the floor.

"I am the one who decides what is and is not beneath a member of my House," Tywin said, his voice even colder. "Not this up-jumped daughter of mine! Robert was always far too soft with her!"

Tyrion's eyes went wide. He had not ever thought that Robert was too soft with Cersei, although, to be fair, Cersei was a disagreeable, malicious person who Tyrion privately thought would have driven a saint to drink. He had heard about times when Robert had belted Cersei a good one across the chops, and he couldn't honestly blame Robert, even though Cersei was his sister. Cersei had poisoned any chance of gaining his love before he was five years old, and Tyrion thought that any fate that befell her was just and condign punishment.

And he knew more than enough about Euron Greyjoy to know that fate might likely come at the hands of the King of the Iron Isles.

Asha Greyjoy Lannister

Asha was talking with her nuncle while they awaited news of the offer for her good-sister's hand that had been sent to Lannisport. While she knew better than to trust this man an inch, and never went near him without a retinue of guards, she had to admit that he could be good company. She did not know if his tales of his travels were true or not, but they were interesting to listen to.

Euron, of course, was completely at ease, treating her guards as though they were part of the furniture. He knew…he had to know…just why Asha never allowed herself to come near him without them, but he apparently didn't care. Either he didn't have any untoward designs on her, which Asha, for one, did not believe for a second, or he felt himself equal to dealing with the guards when and if he chose to make a move.

Leaning back, Euron was completing his tale: "And then, sweet niece, we came into sight of Old Valyria! Around us, the sea steamed, and we could feel the heat through the timbers of the Silence. Ahead of us, I could see the ruins of a city, and I knew there had to be treasure there! 'Pull, my hearties,' I called to my crew. 'Pull, and let us see what the Drowned God has seen fit to give us!'"

"Wow!" Asha's awe was by no means all feigned. She had never dared go near the wreckage of Old Valyria, and she had to admit, if her nuncle had done any such thing, he had a good claim to leadership of her birth folk. While she still thought that she would have made a good candidate for queenship, she knew that in the Iron Isles, her sex was very much against her on that front.

All her life, she had had to be twice as good as any man, just to get the same level of respect. Luckily for her, she thought, she was twice as good as most men, so that had never been an insurmountable obstacle. Even so, she believed that if she had been male, or Ironborn culture had been less hidebound on that subject, she could have easily made a successful bid for queenship. Of course, that would involve a complication, in the form of her husband.

Try as she would, she could not picture Tyrion lasting any length of time in the Iron Islands. She had come to respect his intelligence, and she knew that he was as brave as any member of his House, which did not breed cowards. However, she knew that to too many of her birth folk, he'd never be anything but a weird little dwarf that they could knock aside when the mood struck them. Too many Ironborn respected nothing but raw strength. It had taken her hours of gruelling practice with weapons before she was ready to take command of the Black Wind. If she had been less diligent, someone or other in her crew would have certainly challenged her, and if she had lost, she'd have had a rough, thin time of it on her first voyage, and every voyage after that.

If it came to a choice between her husband (and her babies! Never forget her babies!) and the Driftwood Crown, Asha felt that she could easily live without the queenship. Tyrion and her twins were worth a million times what she felt rulership of the Isles was worth. In any case, the Iron Isles were the smallest, poorest and most primitive of the Seven Kingdoms. While they were home, and in one part of her mind, she would always love them, she had come to appreciate the higher culture of the Westerosi mainland since she had come to Kings Landing.

She looked at her nuncle, consideringly. He was handsome enough, in a raffish way, what with that patch over his eye and his dark, even-featured face. She had to admit that he was attractive, and had she not been married, and his niece, she might have considered an affair with him. However, she knew far too much about Euron Greyjoy to ever be comfortable lowering her guard around him to that extent, even had it not been forbidden by the laws of consanguinity.

Euron Greyjoy loved one person and one only in the world, and that was himself. His crew were treated as extensions of his person, and any of them that failed were ruthlessly discarded. He would never have seen to it that his crewmen were set up with the money to become captains in their own right, had he been in line for the rewards that Asha had earned at the Battle of the Blackwater. No, Euron would have gone for whatever best benefited himself, and his crew could shift for themselves.

That augured ill for Cersei, should the marriage between her and Euron actually happen. Euron was a very traditional Ironborn, and would not tolerate a wife who got "above herself." He would not be likely to kill Cersei…a pity, that…but Asha figured that Euron was quite well able to do things to her that would make her long bitterly for the days of freedom and happiness she had enjoyed as Robert's Queen. The Ironborn were not a kindly folk, and her nuncle was probably one of the least kind of them.

Just then, Tyrion entered, with a few royal guardsmen behind him. Like Asha, he took no chances around their dangerous guest. "Your Grace," he greeted Euron, and then, "My lady," with a warm smile for Asha. "We have received an answer from my sister."

"And what does my good-sister have to say to the news that we are mulling her marriage to my nuncle?" asked Asha. She had a pretty good idea of what Cersei would say, but she wanted to confirm her guess.

"She's utterly outraged at the idea. She has said that she has no interest in remarrying." Tyrion gave Asha a covert wink, and she knew that there was a lot more to be said on that subject, but not in front of her nuncle. While she was aware of her good-sister's relationship with her good-brother, she was also aware that for anybody not named Targaryen, such relationships were considered strongly taboo. And given the Targaryens' history of inherited insanity and other problems, she could see why it was so.

"Outraged? Why? How could any woman resist me?" Euron's voice was all innocence, and if Asha had been alone, she'd have wanted to get her back against the nearest strong wall and get out some weapons. Tyrion, she could see, was no more fooled than she was by Euron's pose. The guards narrowed their eyes, and some of them let their hands stray to their swords' hilts.

"My sweet sister has only recently lost her son, and lost her husband some little while before," Tyrion said, his voice as neutral as though he were discussing the weather. "She is still getting over those losses, and that might be influencing her behavior."

"Ah, yes. I heard about that. Do please extend to her my apologies for my precipitate behavior, but I am quite serious. I believe that this match would strengthen the ties between Pyke and the court at Kings Landing enormously, as well as being mutually advantageous in other ways," Euron said. His one eye narrowed slightly, and his voice took on a very slight edge. "I should hate to think that I was not considered worthy of a match with a daughter of the Lannisters."

"Nuncle! How could you even think such a thing?" Asha's voice was all startled shock. "Am I not a Greyjoy of Pyke? And am I not married to a son of the Lannisters?" She had caught the undertone in her nuncle's voice. If he thought he were being snubbed, he was quite capable of tearing up the alliance with Kings Landing, and turning the Ironborn loose to ravage lands that were loyal to King Tommen, as well as raiding areas that were still held by their enemies. To such as Euron, all non-Ironborn were prey, if they could be caught unawares or at a disadvantage. He would ally with them, if it were to his advantage, but even his allies were well-advised to never trust him or his followers too far.

"If you are set on this match, your Grace, then my father will speak with my sister. My father is very persuasive, and I'm sure that if this match is meant to be, he will make it happen. One way or another," Tyrion assured Euron. Tyrion and Asha exchanged significant glances. Asha knew exactly what Tywin Lannister was capable of, to bring one of his children to heel. One way or another, whether she said "yea" or "nay," Cersei would be married off, if Tywin willed it so. Had Cersei been less of a poisonous toad, Asha would have privately warned Tywin off the match. As it was, she was perfectly willing to let it happen, and see who ended up outliving whom.

Tyrion Lannister

Over the next few days, Tyrion watched with interest as the situation developed. Ravens flew back and forth between Kings Landing and Lannisport, and Tywin grew angrier and angrier at his daughter's defiance of his will. "How dare she? How dare she say me nay?" he raged. Out of his line of sight, Tyrion and Asha exchanged amused glances. This was incredibly diverting! Tyrion also relished the idea of his sister being brought to heel.

Finally, Tywin had had enough. Under his seal as Hand of the King, he sent out orders to Lannisport, that "the late Queen, Cersei Baratheon, nee Lannister, be brought to Our Court at Kings Landing, at the earliest possible time!" Reading this over, Tyrion's eyes went wide. That sounded very serious. Refusing an order from the King's Hand was treason, and even someone as high-ranking as a Dowager Queen was still under the authority of the Crown. And Tyrion knew that Queens, or at least claimants to that title, had been put to death before, during the Dance of the Dragons.

Tyrion didn't know that his father would order his only daughter's execution…but he didn't know that he wouldn't, either. While he hugged himself with glee at the thought of watching Cersei kneeling on the scaffold, with Ser Ilyn standing by to sever her lovely neck, he couldn't help but shudder at the distress such an event would cause his nephew. King Tommen, while he was still too young to wield real power, was at least nominally King of the Seven Kingdoms, and would not be happy at the news that his mother was to be executed. Neither would Myrcella, when the news reached her. And Jaime…Tyrion thought that Cersei's execution would kill Jaime.

Since he had been told of Euron's suit for Cersei's hand, Jaime had been throwing himself into his duties with the Kingsguard with incredible zeal. When he wasn't working with the Kingsguard, he was sparring, trying to get the skill with his left hand that he'd always owned with his right. Tyrion knew that all squires were trained in off-hand combat, but he also knew that very few of them kept that up once they had completed their training and been knighted.

Jaime had been no different from other knights, in that regard. When he had been whole, he had been one of the most formidable fighters in Westeros, a tourney champion without peer and a terror to whoever faced him across a battlefield. Losing his right hand had all but unmanned him, and he had sunk into a state where depression was more the norm than the exception. For days, he had sat around, staring into space, before something galvanized him and he was suddenly working himself into exhaustion, whipping the Kingsguard into shape every minute he wasn't in the private room he used for weapons practice, sparring with the woman who had brought him home.

Thinking about her had Tyrion shaking his head in wonder. Brienne of Tarth was at least as much an anomaly as his own wife, but carried it off less well in some ways. When they had reached Kings Landing, she'd been thrown into the dungeon, since she had been associated with some of the rebel factions, but Jaime had made it clear that she was to be let out. She had kept him alive after losing his hand, and got him back to Kings Landing. "'A Lannister pays his debts,' and I am a Lannister!" he had roared, and the Kingsguard had quailed before their commander's rage before running to obey his orders.

In Tyrion's private opinion, for all that most of his countrymen would have derided him for it, Brienne of Tarth was far worthier of knighthood than nine-tenths of the "Sers" that swarmed around Westeros. Most of them could mouth the chivalric code; she lived it, and believed it down to her bones. Tyrion wondered how she and Jaime had avoided killing each other. She would have held him in utter contempt, both as the "Kingslayer" who had betrayed and murdered the King he had been sworn to guard with his life, and for his louche, unchivalric view of life in general.

Then, they had fallen into the clutches of the Bloody Mummers. At the thought of what they had done to his brother, Tyrion's teeth ground with anger. He and Asha had discussed what to do should the Mummers be unwise or unlucky enough to end up in their power, and they both were on the same page on that subject. Any of the "Brave Companions" whom they could catch would likely end up in the oubilettes at Casterly Rock. The ones Tyrion had in mind were barely big enough for a person. "One does not occupy one of those cells, Asha," he had explained to his wife, who was enchanted by this idea, "so much as wear them!" In one of those cells, there wasn't even room enough to turn around, and a prisoner could shriek his lungs out in the dark, unheard and unheeded. Tyrion knew that men had gone mad after a short stay in those cells, and while he'd have loved to throw Caitlyn Stark or Lysa Arryn into one as payment for what he had suffered at their hands, the Mummers were also fully worthy of the experience.

Tyrion looked across the room at his wife. Asha was leaning over the babies' cribs, cooing softly at them. Tyrion felt enormously fortunate and pitied Jaime for never having been able to have that experience, thanks to the Kingsguard's absurd rules. "Asha?" At his voice, Asha looked up, a question in her eyes. "I think we need to go talk to Jaime. Can you let the nursemaids take charge in here till we get back?"

"Of course, my love." At Asha's gesture, the nursemaids came forward from the sides of the room where they had been awaiting orders. "Please see to our babies' needs." Asha took Tyrion's arm, and they left the chamber, with several guards falling in step behind them as they headed down into the bowels of the Red Keep.

Asha Greyjoy Lannister

Asha knew where they were likely to find her good-brother, and she was not disappointed. There was a large salle d'armes at the foot of one of the towers, and in there, Jaime was busily working out against Brienne of Tarth. Both of them were in armor, and Jaime had a shield on his right arm and a sword in his left hand. Brienne had a glaive, and she was fairly easily parrying Jaime's attacks. To Asha's eye, though, Jaime was visibly already improved over where he had been when he had started his program of retraining.

For the next few minutes, Asha and Tyrion watched quietly. They both knew that neither combatant would relish being interrupted. Finally, they seemed to call a halt by unspoken mutual agreement. Brienne pulled off her helmet and wiped sweat off her forehead, and then saw Tyrion and Asha standing by the wall. Her face lit up in a smile. "Hey, Jaime, look who's come down to see us!"

Jaime had a little more trouble, what with missing one hand, but he finally got his shield and helmet off. "Tyrion! Asha! What brings you down here?" He grinned, looking for a moment almost like the roguishly handsome knight Asha had seen in family portraits from before his capture and injury. "Are you cleared to resume training, Asha? If so, I'd gladly spar with you!" He took up a cup of wine that had been left nearby for just such an emergency, drinking thirstily. It was hot down in the salle, and Asha could smell years of old sweat down there.

Asha shook her head regretfully. "No, the maesters say it'll be a little while yet. Once I'm back in action, though, prepare to be challenged!" She meant every word. She really missed weapons practice, and she wanted to get back into tip-top shape as soon as she could. She wanted to be able to protect her babies, and she also wanted to help her good-brother become, once again, the best knight in Westeros, if that was possible.

"Then what can I do for you?" Jaime was clearly curious.

"We need to talk to you in private. Family business." Tyrion gave Brienne a significant look, and the Maid of Tarth nodded, picking up her helmet and glaive and leaving the room. Once they were private, Tyrion said: "You know that Euron Greyjoy has offered for our sister's hand, don't you?" Jaime nodded, suspicion written all over his face. "Well, Father has just issued a command, in his capacity as Hand of the King, summoning her back here to Kings Landing! She's been refusing to even consider the match, but Father seems to be in favor of it!"

Jaime's green eyes opened wide. "That doesn't sound good, not at all!" Unlike Tyrion, he loved their sister, and Asha knew that he would not want her to come to harm. And he knew more than enough of Euron Greyjoy to know that he was bad news.

"We figured we'd best let you know what was going on, so that you wouldn't be caught unaware." Asha leaned forward. "We don't know whether this is a good idea or not, but we knew that you'd want to know." Asha felt terrible at what she saw in Jaime's eyes, but she didn't know what else they could have done. At least this way, the news had been broken by people who cared about Jaime. While she didn't have any carnal designs on her good-brother, and wouldn't have acted on them if she had, she thought well of Jaime, and did not want to see him further hurt.

Asha wondered if it would be possible to marry Jaime off. Of course, the Kingsguard did not wed, but that was not a rule that could not be abolished. The more she thought about it, the more she liked it. She had never seen the sense in having the Kingsguard only recruited from men who were willing to foreswear matrimony. In the Iron Islands, married men frequently went on voyages, and she felt that they made better crewmen than single men, if only because they were less likely to go wild when on shore. Unlike their unmarried counterparts, married men had incentives to survive and return to Pyke in triumph.

Once she had had the idea, Asha couldn't let go of it. Changing the rule for the Kingsguard would be a matter of getting the King's Hand to promulgate a new rule; Tommen would sign it readily enough, as he did anything else that was put before him to sign. But who, Asha wondered, would be a good match for Jaime?

When the notion of marrying Jaime off to Brienne first swam to the surface of her mind, Asha dismissed it, but the more she mulled the idea, the better she liked it. Jaime may have been only ever involved with his sister, but that did not mean that he could not please another woman. And since his return, Asha had noted that Jaime and Cersei did not seem to have renewed their former relationship. If anything, they seemed to be at odds. Jaime might well welcome a new relationship, and if he were involved with someone else, he would have less reason to object to Cersei remarrying. He'd had to share her before, with King Robert, and losing her would be easier on her if he had a wife of his own to focus on.

Down deep, Asha admitted that part of her interest in this scenario was because she really, really wanted Cersei to marry Euron. Not that she longed for an "Aunt Cersei," but because she thought that the blonde bitch deserved whatever devilry Euron might come up with for her, and a great deal worse!

END Chapter 28