Chapter 30
by Technomad
Tyrion LannisterTyrion was going over some papers when Asha came dashing into their quarters. She shut the door behind her, and sat down beside Tyrion's desk, her eyes dancing with what Tyrion recognized as glee. He put the papers aside, eager to find out what had his beloved wife in such a state.
"Tyrion, darling, you'll never believe what just happened! 'King' Euron was talking to me, asking when he could see Cersei, when who should come in but Cersei herself?"
"And what happened?" Tyrion was intrigued. Knowing his sister, and knowing Euron, even at second-hand, made him brace himself. He honestly didn't know how they would react to meeting each other for the first time, face-to-face.
"Do you know the phrase 'hit with the Thunderbolt,' my love?" Tyrion thought for a second. He knew it from somewhere…and then he realized just what it meant.
"Are you telling me one of them got hit with the Thunderbolt?" His eyes went wide. "That's the last thing I'd have expected!" Tyrion's impression of Euron Greyjoy was that the Crow's Eye was about as likely to fall in love as he, Tyrion, was to beat Gregor Clegane in a tournament. And he didn't think that his sweet sister was capable of loving anybody unless it might be their brother, Jaime…whom Tyrion thought she loved mainly as a reflection of her perfect, all-important self.
"Better still!" Asha smiled broadly. "From what I could tell, they both were!"
Tyrion rolled his eyes to heaven, as if addressing the gods. "Oh, to have been there to see it myself!"
Asha all but hugged herself. "I'd have bet the Black Wind that the only person Cersei could love was Cersei!"
Tyrion got up. "We'd better tell Father about this. That is, if Varys' little birds haven't already spread the news. Knowing them, and knowing Varys, they've been watching every move 'King' Euron makes ever since he arrived here."
Sure enough, their father knew what had happened. When Tyrion and Asha came in, he was staring out the window of his study. When he turned, his expression was puzzled, and he moved over to a chair and sat down, gesturing to a carafe and glasses to invite his son and daughter-in-law to help themselves to wine.
"I have learned that 'King' Euron and my daughter the Dowager Queen have met. I had not anticipated them meeting quite so suddenly and unexpectedly." Tywin drank off his glass, and then visibly considered refilling it, before shaking his head slightly. "Nor did I anticipate them taking so well to each other."
"I was there when it happened, good-father," Asha said. She sipped delicately at her wine. Tyrion knew that she thought Arbor Gold and Arbor Red were both ambrosial, but she did not overindulge the way Cersei often did. That was yet another contrast between his wife and his sister, in which, as always, his wife showed her superiority. "I know my nuncle. I'd never seen him act that way, or react to a woman that way." She grinned rather sardonically. "To be blunt, good-father, my dear nuncle tends to see women as servants put into the world to serve him, or as toys he can pick up, throw aside or break at his whim."
"That does not bode well for a marriage, however infatuated the 'King of the Iron Islands' is at the moment," Tywin mused. "Cersei suffered in her marriage to Robert, for all that she could have been said to have brought it down on her own foolish head by making it clear that she detested him." He scowled. "Did she think she was some peasant wench, who can marry for love?" Tywin shook his head, reminding Tyrion of a lion he had seen in a menagerie, bedevilled by flies and trying to rid himself of the little pests. "We of the nobility have many privileges, but marrying for love, or at our own whim, is not one of them."
Tyrion and Asha exchanged glances. Tyrion felt Asha's warm hand in his. Tywin was sharp, and did not miss the byplay. "You two were both extraordinarily fortunate. So was I. The norm for our class is to marry, then find love. The luckier ones, among whom I number Eddard and Caitlyn Stark, learn to love the person they have married. Others, such as Robert and Cersei, never do."
"So what do we do?" asked Tyrion. He honestly wanted to know what his father thought of the whole thing. While he despised his father from the bottom of his heart, he did not underrate Tywin Lannister's brain, nor his political acumen.
Tywin looked very pensive. "Right now, we let things proceed. Cersei shall be chaperoned at all times when she is near 'King' Euron." He scowled. "There's been more than enough scandal attached to her name, what with this filthy talk of incest. Having her fall pregnant, even by a subordinate king, would ruin what's left of her reputation."
Tyrion privately thought that nothing could ruin Cersei's reputation, but he kept that thought firmly to himself, not even allowing himself a moment's change of expression. While he and his father were currently dealing very well, he was always aware that that could change in an instant. His father had some very firm ideas about the Lannister name and the prestige attached to it, ideas that Tyrion, himself, did not share. But then, he reflected, he had not yet been born when his father had taken up the reins of a House Lannister that had been let fall into decline by the previous Lord.
"And if something does go wrong, there is always Moon Tea," Asha pointed out. "Many a woman's reputation has been preserved by that stuff."
Tywin nodded, reluctantly. "True enough. However, over-reliance on Moon Tea is not a good thing, or so the maesters tell me. It can do damage if used too much, or for too long a time. Women who use it too much often have trouble with fertility issues when they want to have babies again."
"That's true," Asha said, her voice thoughtful. "For a short time, though, it can be a real lifesaver. We should make sure that the stuff is available in the castle infirmary, and quietly let Cersei know about it if she doesn't already." She quirked a grin. "I know my nuncle. He'd likely find chaperones to be a challenge, and he loves nothing more than a good challenge.
"And if you forbid Cersei from canoodling with 'King' Euron, she's likely to do it, just to spite you for having brought her back, even though she's apparently willing to do it for its own sake." Asha looked pensive. "She's the sort of person that, if you ordered her not, under any circumstances, to jump off the highest battlements, would do so just to show you that you can't order her about."
"You know my daughter very well, Asha," Tywin said. He gave her a piercing look. "I would love to know why my daughter turned out to be such an evil, contrary creature. She's had every advantage I could give her…"
Privately, Tyrion doubted that statement. No doubt Tywin believed it, but Tyrion himself could have pointed out several ways in which Tywin had failed, and failed very badly, as a father. The biggest single one was not remarrying after his wife, Tyrion's mother, died. He wondered why his father hadn't done so. No matter how much he'd loved Joanna, there were cogent reasons for him to remarry. Providing his orphaned children with a mother, or at least a reasonable mother-substitute, was only one of them, albeit an important one. Tyrion thought that a wise, firm stepmother would have been able to rein in his hateful sister, and make her at least treat her dwarf brother kindly, even if she could not love him.
And remarriage would have offered opportunities for an alliance with another noble House. Tyrion couldn't recall, at the moment, which houses would have had eligible female members, but he knew that if a Lannister, much less the head of the House, came a-courting, there were few if any mothers in the Seven Kingdoms who would have turned him away.
So remarriage for Tywin would have had advantages both in his personal life, and his political life. That left the question: Why hadn't he? Tywin was always one to preach the virtues of doing one's duty, particularly to House Lannister, and remarrying would have been a great advantage for the Lannisters. Even if he failed to father more children, which would have been a great thing in itself, the possibilities of an alliance with another of the great Houses of Westeros were too great to pass up.
Tywin was saying something, and Tyrion snapped out of his reverie. "Excuse me, father. I was wondering what will happen if Cersei and 'King' Euron anticipate us, and run off to marry." Tywin raised one blond eyebrow, as Tyrion continued, improvising furiously: "There are plenty of septons, after all…"
"Yes. You would know if any of us would, wouldn't you?" At the reminder of his disastrous first marriage, Tyrion felt a wave of rage. Tamping it down and keeping any sign of it off his face with the ease of years of practice, he nodded. Tywin continued: "If they anticipate us, and marry without my permission, there is not much I can do. We need the Iron Islands on our side, or at worst, neutral. If we offend 'King' Euron, he's quite capable of tearing up his predecessors' treaties with us, and raiding our lands. The Islands are uncomfortably close to Lannisport, to boot."
"That, we do not need," Asha said. "Nobody needs that now. Winter is coming!" Tyrion gave her a grateful look. For all that she was, and always would remain, a proud ironwoman herself, she had transferred her loyalties to her husband when she took her vows, and he knew that she could be trusted implicitly, even against her birth people. That was a problem with inter-House marriages sometimes; the wife never forgot whose loins she had sprung from, and often worked for the benefit of her birth House, not the House she had married into. This was much less of a problem between traditionally allied Houses, like Stark and Tully, but marriages between long-estranged Houses could be fraught for both partners. Particularly if war erupted between their Houses, despite all efforts for peace.
Of course, Asha might have felt differently if her father still ruled in Pyke. But she feared and distrusted her nuncle. She had told Tyrion many tales of his exploits, making it very clear that Euron Greyjoy was one ironborn that nobody, even other ironborn, could trust. He had never abandoned the Old Ways of the islands, not for one day, and saw all non-ironborn, save those who could successfully fight him off, as prey.
Asha Greyjoy LannisterWhile her husband and her good-father speculated about what would be the best thing to do, Asha allowed her mind to wander. She wondered what Cersei would do, when she found out just what she had married, if the marriage was allowed.
Asha was under no illusions whatsoever about her nuncle. He was the embodiment of the Old Ways of the islands, and utterly indifferent to the suffering he caused, whether to his victims or his kinsfolk. While he'd claimed the Driftwood Crown, and had sworn allegiance to the Iron Throne as a subordinate king, she knew that that was a ploy, to keep the might of the Seven (or Six, without the Iron Islands) Kingdoms from coming down on him.
With the knowledge that his base in the Iron Islands was secure from royal retribution, at least from Kings Landing, Euron was free to do as he pleased elsewhere. And what pleased him the most was victimizing anybody not able to fight or frighten him off. For all his bravado, even Euron knew better than to try anything against the Free Cities. They were well able to defend themselves, and they had ways to retaliate that didn't necessarily involve fleets. Having the Iron Bank of Braavos declare him an "Enemy of the Bank" would mean that every ambitious soul in their world would be trying for him, drawn by the promise of rich rewards. And neither the Faceless Men nor the Sorrowful Men were to be discounted. She suspected either of the assassins' guilds of having had a hand in her father's death; at least it was very suspiciously well-timed, and she had not thought that the bridge he fell off was in that sort of bad shape.
However, that did not mean that he could do nothing. There were other countries, with vulnerable coastlines, that he could easily reach with the Silence, and many of them offered tempting targets for a ruthless reaver. She wasn't sure whether he had actually sailed as far as Old Valyria. How could she check, after all, short of sailing there herself in the Black Wind?
Another factor to be considered was whether Cersei knew just how poor the Iron Islands were. She had grown up as the daughter of one of the richest ruling Houses in Westeros, and had been denied very little. On Pyke, she would have to get used to the bleak climate, the stern, solemn ways of the ironmen, and a reduced quality of life in general. It occurred to Asha that part of her nuncle's urge to wed Cersei might well be as a way to tap the Lannisters' coffers, whether for himself (which Asha thought was by far the likeliest thing) or to improve things in the Iron Islands in general. Euron "Crow's-Eye" being altruistic or caring about others was a strange notion to Asha, but she had to admit that stranger things had happened. And as a king, even a subordinate king, he could easily see the Islands as extensions of himself, just as he did his ship and its crew. Euron would spend money like water to improve the Silence, and he might have the same policy about his new kingdom.
Her breasts began to hurt, reminding her that her babies needed feeding. "Good-father, my lord husband, will you forgive me for leaving?" she asked. "It's time to feed my babies, and in the Iron Islands, we believe that their own mother's milk is best for infants. Wet nurses are only used when necessary." She stood, and her husband and good-father stood as well, politely.
"You may leave us, good-daughter," said Tywin. "The health of your children comes first with you, as with any good mother." As Asha left, she thought she heard Tywin mutter something about what a contrast she was to Cersei, whom Asha had heard was an indifferent mother, at best.
Once she was comfortably settled, with Joanna nursing happily at her breast, and Balon waiting as patiently as a baby could for his turn, Asha wondered how Cersei could have brought herself to miss out on this experience. No matter who her children's father was, they had come from her body, and Asha could not understand how that could not make an unbreakable bond with them.
Oh, Cersei had been heartbroken at Joffrey's death, but she had not lifted a finger to prevent him from being an evil, hateful creature, had she? And she seemed pretty indifferent to Tommen and Myrcella; at least the new King loved his Aunt Asha and Uncle Tyrion more visibly than he did his mother, who was very severe with him.
Thinking of Tommen made Asha smile. She remembered how she had had to ruthlessly step on the vision of a little boy of her own when he'd hugged her…and now she had two children, the most beautiful, talented, accomplished babies in the world, in her own unbiassed, objective opinion!
With a little sigh, Joanna released her mother's breast, staring up at her mother sleepily. Asha put her daughter over her shoulder and patted her back, producing a resounding burp. Once that ritual was done, she put Joanna back down, her eyes misting for a moment to see her beautiful daughter drifting peacefully off to safe sleep, and picked up Balon, attaching him to her other breast. He attached himself enthusiastically, her milk filling his hungry tummy.
A slight sound startled Asha out of her reverie, and she looked up to see a beautiful blonde woman in a gown of pure Lannister red, smiling down at her. "I see that you are taking wonderful care of my grand-babies," said the woman, in a soft voice that seemed to be coming from a distance. "I am gratified to see this!"
Asha was brave, but being startled this way was something she did not like. With her free hand, she instinctively reached for one of her hand axes, which were never far from her side. "Who are you? And how did you get in here?" Looking closely at the stranger, she began to have some suspicions about the stranger's true identity. She bore a distinct resemblance to Cersei and Jaime, but was not much older than they were. Could it be…?
The strange woman smiled. "You named your daughter for me, so of course I want to see her!"
That confirmed Asha's suspicions. "So what do you think of her and her brother?" Asha had no problem believing in ghosts. The gods existed, did they not? And if they did, what was so difficult about believing in ghosts? She was not as superstitious as many Ironborn sailors were, but she was by no means a complete rationalist, like some of the maesters she had met.
The ghostly Joanna smiled. "They're wonderful! And you get to have the joy of raising them!" She looked very sad. "I would have given anything to be there for my children, but the Seven Gods did not see fit to grant me that. I blame that for a lot of the things wrong with them." She sighed. "I watched as my beautiful twins turned into people I was no longer proud to claim. Cersei, in particular."
"What of Tyrion?" asked Asha. "I love him, and he's the most wonderful, loving husband in the world!"
"Tyrion…if I had lived, Tyrion's life would have been far better. Tywin would not have blamed him for my death, and would have been able to see the brilliant mind behind the stunted exterior. And Cersei would not have been allowed to torment him in every way she could think of." Joanna raised herself up to her full height, looking every inch the Lady of Casterly Rock she had been once. "If all else failed, I'd have had her fostered out with noble parents who were willing to stop her misbehavior! Instead, she became a murderer before she was out of her teens."
"A…murderer?"
"Yes. She pushed one of her little companions, a girl named Melara Heatherspoon, down a well. Everybody thought it was an accident, or if they suspected the truth, did not dare accuse the daughter of Tywin Lannister. Her parents accepted the accident theory, and did not make trouble."
"Really." Asha had no real trouble believing that Cersei would have done such a thing. She had never met a person more evil and hateful than her good-sister. She renewed her vow to never let Cersei near her niece and nephew without trustworthy, preferably Ironborn, guards watching her every move. "I'm not surprised. And I am glad to meet you."
"As I am to meet you. Farewell, Asha Greyjoy Lannister. One day we will meet again." Taking one last longing look at Asha's babies, Joanna leaned down and kissed Asha on the forehead, her touch light and cold. Then she turned and walked away. Asha watched as she left, but although she did not seem to reach the door, she grew smaller and smaller, as though disappearing into the distance.
Asha was awoken from her reverie by Balon, who gave a satisfied belch and released her breast. As she burped him and laid him down by his sister for a nap, she decided that she would check what Joanna, or a spirit claiming to be Joanna, had told her.
And she would not tell Tyrion what she had seen. It would grieve him greatly, and Asha would have cheerfully leaped naked into a dragon's mouth before hurting her husband.
END Chapter 30