It hurt to talk too much. Then again, it hurt to blink too much. Jaime made do with trying to keep warm, though needing turning every quarter hour as if he were a bloody loaf in the oven made his cheeks burn, even through the pain. "At least you're not going to pour milk of the poppy down my craw by the bucketful." he said to the sleeping form in the chair nearby. Brienne of Tarth looked nothing less than ghastly, mud and blood doing little to help her complexion, but her countenance was an untroubled one. Perhaps all the bad dreams have been knocked out of the both of us at last. "You oughtn't sleep like that, my lady." he told her. "You'll wake with your back terribly sore." That would have irked her, he did not doubt, and might have provided quite the welcome distraction to the endless tedium of staring at the ceiling. At least the fire's hot and merry. He heard the dull rumbling in the hall below fall silent suddenly. Now what? The answer came with Freglyn, the lad teetering from the weight of the firewood in his arms.
"Dragons, ser! The hatchlings!" he said. "I saw them with my own eyes!" Then he saw Brienne and turned white as the full moon, clapping his head shut.
"If it's not you to wake her, some other fool will. Stick a log on, that's a good lad." Jaime replied, letting his head tip back onto the table. He heard the wood pop at once, Brienne murmuring as she stirred. His eyes popped open, brow furrowing. "Dragons?" Now how was that managed with but one egg?
"Aye, ser. Three of them." Freglyn said, coming over. It sounded like he was working hard to keep his voice low, even as Brienne muttered.
"What were they like?" he asked, for want of a better query to press.
"Orange, iron and deep blue. One each for the king's children." Jaime's head spun.
"I must have missed something."
"So you did, but it can wait until you're in better shape." Omer said from the doorway, Brienne starting awake.
"My lady." The maester bowed.
"If you won't tell me, perhaps I must get the tale from the lad. Or the good lady, if she's feeling-"
"The good lady is feeling that you ought stop making noise, especially if the maester recommends it." Brienne said.
"You can't leave off with mention of hatchlings and royal babes." Jaime reasoned. "Good evening, by the way." A rush of pink flooded the unscarred half of Brienne's face.
He would not be put off. In the end, as Omer poked and prodded, Brienne told him as much as she knew. That twins had been born of the union of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, that another purported son besides had appeared with an army of his own…
"There doesn't seem to be as strong an accord as to whether he's truly Rhaegar's son or merely a man of the right age and coloring." she told him.
"The swords he brung were real enough, that's all as much concerns most these days." Freglyn intoned. Jaime vaguely remembered meeting Ned Stark's sullen bastard in the yard the night Robert made Stark his Hand. I doubt I'll see much of that boy should we cross paths again, any more than he'll see the legendary Kingslayer.
"We can have gold teeth cast, perhaps, to fill the gaps in your mouth." Omer said. "Setting the rest of you should put you to rights provided you don't move much at all…there's little I can do for your innards but pray they sort themselves, though."
"And if they don't?" Jaime asked, though he felt rather nonplussed at the aspect of death.
"I'll wager you'll start shitting blood and shards of bone in equal measure."
"Bugger that, I'll have some dragon or other put an end to it long before then. I'm rather spoiled for choice, after all-" he winced and Brienne gasped, but it was his head that had gone wrong then, not his body. Jaime lay back, eyes closed, waiting for the spell to pass.
"The dizziness ought have gone by now…mayhaps your bell's been rung a mite harder than I judged." Omer said, circling around to force one of Jaime's eyes open. While he groaned, Omer slid a candle about overhead. "You can follow the light at least." Someone yelling in the corridor for a maester had Omer's mouth hardening.
"Go. You're needed elsewhere." Jaime told him. When the maester left, Jaime waited a few moments and then spoke again. "Freglyn, go eat something. And see if you can't turn up Stilwood or Clegane in the meantime."
"Aye, ser." he said, off at once. Then was nothing to do but listen to the fire crackle.
"I lost Oathkeeper." Brienne's voice sounded past tears. Jaime turned to her. "In the battle, or soon after. There were dead all about me…"
"I'd sooner lose a Golden Gallery's worth of Oathkeepers than you, my lady." he said bluntly. And Oathkeeper was forged of Stark steel anyway. "That it took you this far is more than enough for me." Brienne swallowed, eyes big and blue.
"You must be out of sorts, ser. I don't think you've ever gone so long without insulting me."
"Well, that comes of being dashed to pieces from the inside. Say that I've rather had it beaten out of me." And I thought losing my sword hand a trial.
The next meal that came had Jaime realizing he could eat a mammoth. At least my appetite's not gone off. Freglyn had returned with neither Stilwood nor Clegane, but a pot full of hot stew.
"I suppose we'll see one way or another how things have fallen." Omer said uneasily as he watched Jaime eat.
"I still say this isn't a good idea-"
"An empty stomach poked full of holes is still an empty stomach. I'd sooner die full than famished." Jaime replied, in between mouthfuls, chewing on chunks of what Freglyn told him was reindeer. Bronn had the right of it, he reasoned. If I die, I die. He looked to the lad.
"I couldn't find Stilwood. Nobody's seen the Hound, either…or his horse." That made Jaime set his spoon down.
"Stranger all but pulled me out of the muck."
"Aye, and we were rather more concerned with seeing to you than a horse." Omer muttered curtly.
"No one's seen him lately, and I've thought up most every place a horse that size might wander." Freglyn said. Well, that shuts the door on Sandor Clegane miraculously turning up, I suppose. I hope it was an Other that did for him, or at least a dead man, and not the fire.
"And Ser Bronn and Ser Dewys?" "Both in the hall oft as not, where the ale is hot and plentiful. Ser Bronn's got his arm done up in a sling and Ser Dewys has a rag about his head."
"What about Varys?"
"He just sort of sits there in a daze."
"He's not the only one." Omer added.
"Plenty of seasoned knights and battle-hardened sellswords are jumping at every shadow. Mutterings about spectral wolves, talking fire…the Others were the least of it."
"It's no business of ours. That sort of thing sounds spectacularly like what lords and knights and septons would well do to steer clear of. Maesters as well." Jaime said.
"Bah, don't have to tell me twice! Show me a wound I can staunch, a bone I can set, now there's a lad. Corpses start walking, that's more than what the Citadel's taught me. And if I'm honest, I taught myself rather more than I learned there anyhow." The next time they were alone (Brienne never leaving him by himself for her part) he asked after her father.
"He's well enough. Uninjured, though the cold does no favors for bones and back as old as his."
"If I may be completely honest, I don't remember meeting him when I saw the two of you in the hall." Her lips spasmed, as if to hide a smile.
"You were unconscious before we reached you. I thought better of introducing my father to a lump."
"For which this lump will be forever grateful." Jaime said, feeling relieved. If evermore a lump.
"If I'm going to meet your father as more than a lump, you're going to introduce me while more than an abject mess." Jaime declared. "No doubt there's at least one washbasin to spare in Winterfell, and I heard something about hot springs the last time I was here." Brienne was the last person to make such a concession to vanity though, and so it fell to Jaime to request such of a passing serving girl. He could hear the water bubbling in the corner of the room the basin sat, caught Brienne looking at it more than once longingly. "Don't worry, I won't look. Knightly virtue and all that." Jaime said.
"There's nothing to see you haven't seen before, ser, and at least this time you're not going to go blathering your innermost secrets due to the heat." Brienne replied, moving to look into the basin's depths. That's as much as you know dear lady. Aerys' wildfire plot had been a secret, the wound more scar than scab when the heat had him teetering and hazy in Harrenhal. Cersei's was no secret at all, and one way or another word of her end would reach Brienne of Tarth.
"Has word come north regarding King's Landing? How it fell to Daenerys, I mean?" Jaime asked.
"No one's much interested in anything but keeping upright and full-bellied." Brienne replied. "And I've been busy nannying you besides." People must know, he reasoned. Others who were in the capital that day had beat him to Winterfell, and by no little margin. Telling Theon Greyjoy had been hard enough. They might have all died that night if the man-fishes decided they'd had enough of men, and Greyjoy had almost been a stranger. But for whatever was wrong within him, he was not in danger now, and Brienne of Tarth was no passerby.
"I killed Cersei, Brienne." It was not half so hard to say as he supposed. Whatever was supposed to follow was where Jaime got stuck in the mud. Brienne didn't look away, didn't bite her lip, didn't do any of the things he knew well she might, the way she had when he'd told her of the manner of Aerys' death. "I've already told you of the wildfire caches. How I never found the half of them. Cersei's destruction of the Great Sept of Baelor might have had all the rest going off in turn, it was blind luck they happened to lie clear. She was not ignorant of the risk, either. She'd have just as happily sent the entire city up in flames. When word came that the city had fallen, that the Queen Across the Water and the King in the North both were already within the walls…" the bile rose in the back of his throat as he remembered Cersei as last he'd seen her. "I put an end to it before it began." Something of the girl she'd been had left Brienne in the time between Harrenhal and now, replaced by a good bit of northern stiffening. There was no judgement, but Jaime could not have counted that to be a good thing. "My aunt Genna wanted me to sort out our house, but those Lannisters as remain can do better than me." He forced himself to keep his voice can breaking. "As can you."
"Why?" she asked. "Because you think a decent man, a proper man could not have made the choice you did? A decent man would know the lot of it for what it is. That is to say, no choice at all." She looked into her lap. "I thought a vow a holy thing. Then I saw dead men and cold monsters smash aside more than bricks and bodies. Vows mean only as much as those who take them think they do, and are no shield to hide behind when the world asks still more of a man. It was never a choice, ser. Not with Aerys, and not with your sister."
"Seven save me…" Jaime muttered, eyes widening beneath the dirt and sweat.
"The Starks have made a realist of you." He looked around distastefully. "We've got to get out of here and in no little hurry. Before you start brooding." Her lip quivered then and the lovely rose color returned to her face.
"There's nowhere to go, Ser Jaime."
"Nowhere yet." he corrected.
"Either or. You're not going anywhere for a good while." He grimaced.
"Held hostage by mine own injuries, surrounded by northmen…"
"I see no northmen now. Just a westerman with more than his share of the north on him." she replied, moving to the door and calling for more hot water. When it arrived she dabbed a rag in it, wrung it out, and began to daub away the dirt caked onto Jaime's face. She opened his shirt, reaching where she could around Omer's extensive bindings. "Your breeches are hopeless." she said, tearing them away and tossing them over a broad shoulder without a second thought. "Besides, cloth isn't going to keep a northern winter's cold at bay. We'll have some fur blankets brought for you." Quite apart from being able to stop Brienne of Tarth in the first place, Jaime found the prospect of the woman with a warm cloth in hand one he disagreed with not in the least.
"Is this quite the behavior of a noble lady?" he asked, brow furrowing.
"How should I know?" Brienne replied, Jaime snorting so loud he winced as his ribs poked at him.
"I've missed you, my lady. However, I was oft able to sleep soundly on the long road here knowing you were safe as could be kept in Winterfell." It was her turn to snort, regaling him of being captured by a number of the raveners only to be ransomed for one among the Others that had been captured earlier on. "A sadder string of follies I've yet to hear and no mistake, my lady of Tarth. However, I fear mine own overtop even yours."
"Is Omer being overcautious, do you think? You'll not be walking on that knee for a good long while, but the arm that sports a broken shoulder ends in but a stump-"
"I'll have you know it isn't the most inconvenient thing. Certainly, I've needed to slap the sourleaf out of more than one man's mouth these last years and a steel hand does wonders for that-"
"-and as long as you're moved with care, there's little call to remain cooped up in here." she bulled on as if he hadn't spoken. Ah, there's the Maid of Tarth I know.
"Before you drag me before the others, might I at least be granted the pleasure of meeting Lord Selwyn? I don't…ah, fancy introductions being made with all the realm and beyond watching." Jaime said. "We've ended up in more than our share of compromising situations, after all."
"Of course. Which do you think was more so, when we shared a bath or a bear?" Jaime spluttered at her words.
"Perhaps we ought keep Harrenhal between us." Particularly in front of Lord Selwyn!
"Who would have ever thought Harrenhal the site of something better remembered than forgotten?" Brienne quipped.
"Ah, yes, who can forget that lovely pink gown you wore when we dined with Roose Bolton? Pink, on you? When the time comes, it will be blue for you, my lady. Blue always." She looked up from her hands, torn between confusion and surprise.
"When what time comes, Ser Jaime?" It was his turn to feel his cheeks burn. What am I doing?
"Ah. Do pardon me, my lady. I am rather getting ahead of myself." Let's see if I live to get off this table before I go wondering any further about the future. As ever, she did not leave him alone, making sure to leave only when Freglyn happened to return, Bronn and Dewys in his company. "I hear you two have made yourselves right at home."
"Aye. Will be a pity when we head back out into the white, that'll suck-"
"Just what, I can well imagine, thank you, Ser Dewys." The knight coughed.
"Oh. Er, right."
"Too bad about Stilwood. At least you could drink around him without him glaring you to pieces." Bronn remarked, drinking from a skin.
"A death all lads dream of. At least he isn't cold."
"No less dead, though. Ah well, might be you're right." He looked Jaime over and grimaced.
"Don't know if I'd have taken this if it was how I came out of that charge alive."
"Apparently, it's not all that bad. My knee is well wrenched, and my shoulder is shattered, but I've only a few broken ribs to show else."
"Praise be to the Warrior or however it goes." Ser Dewys said gravely. His bout of piety had Jaime smirking but a poke within turned it into a wince.
"Don't go dying yourself. You're not the only Lannister people are calling Kingslayer now. If you die, you'll only be remembered as the Imp's brother." Bronn warned him.
"Tyrion, a kingslayer? How did that happen, I wonder?"
"Well, there's more to it than just the downing of the bone dragon. Apparently he caught the Other-king while he stumbled about beneath the white tree…I heard a half dozen different versions but all purport him to be the one to kill the king. There's dying in the presence of the gods with a cold king's blood on your hands and there's dying on the privy." Jaime wondered where his own death might fall on such a wide scale. "Well, never mind the dwarf, our troubles aren't his no longer. You're not about to match Tyrion either, let alone top him, so best put it out of your mind." Bronn advised, as if Jaime's thoughts were written on his forehead in bold black letters.
"Have we missed anything else important?" Jaime asked, wishing to move off of Tyrion. It hurt enough to think of him, much less talk of him.
"Well, a good few babes come along." Ser Dewys said, holding up a hand. Freglyn did mention something about that, but Omer wouldn't let me hear the rest. I'm going to polish his head to a shine when next I see him. "T'were the dragon prince, the wolf prince, the sun princess and that flower girl. Same day as the eggs hatched, now isn't that a lark." He counted off on his fingers. The Bastard of Winterfell. Aemon the First of His Name. Little enough difference there. That he had paired off with Daenerys Targaryen was as surprising to Jaime as getting wet in a summer rain. News of Brandon Stark he was keener on, as well as any word of this Meera Reed. Naerys, Princess of Dragonstone. I must get a glimpse of her if I can.
"Have you seen the lot?"
"Oh, aye. Looks like the king...or whatever we're to call him, he's not much the sort to care." No, he wouldn't be. "She whelps like it's going to win her a tourney prize. There'll be more Starks than there were before, soon."
"And the others?" Jaime asked.
"Prince Rhaegar's son from across the sea, called Prince Aegon by some and Young Griff by his sellsword friends. He married a Martell girl in Volantis and sailed soon after…" Freglyn trailed off.
"Only to get caught up in our madness." Jaime surmised.
"Just so. They had a girl, as did some Tarly lordling who managed to talk his way into the Reachmen pushing him to be Lord of Highgarden. He died in the battle though, and so it's his son who does the lording. A boy all of five, maybe six." Who might recall his father while his baby sister never will. Jaime found himself remembering a boy pointing at him in the hall, his mother holding fast to his other hand while she tried to keep the babe within her from doing too much kicking. Well, my little lord, maybe when you're grown you can sleep on a table after all. Until then, I rather think it's warm beds for you.
"Freglyn, you spoke of three eggs, one each for the king's children…" Jaime prompted.
"Oh. Right, he's got the one daughter from a spearwife and t'other from a woman named Val. Some call her the wildling princess but so far as I've gathered, she don't take kindly to that."
"You ought to see the older one, a little fireball of frizzy red hair who bounces about behind the high table in between swipes at the trays and dishes." Ser Dewys opined. Father no children indeed, Jaime thought, though I'm hardly one to judge, in terms of vows or fitness as a father.
A knock without had Brienne poking her head in.
"I think that's the old 'fuck off' cue, lads." Bronn said, stretching.
"Who are you fooling? You're going right back to the ale and the wild women." Dewys sounded most unamused.
"Aye, and what's the use in doing it with a stiff back?" Bronn replied, slinking out without another word. Dewys followed, muttering darkly under his breath.
"…nannying knights…supposed t'be a better sort, ain't we?..."
"Shall I go too, ser?" Freglyn asked. "I think that's best." Jaime snapped his fingers, "While you're out, see if you can't learn what became of that Rowan girl."
"Oh, I'll do that, ser!" he said, darting out.
"A Rowan girl?" Brienne asked.
"Like I said, I'm glad and more you weren't stuck in most every mire I managed to sink my feet into. And they call the Neck a marsh. We came upon some refugees fleeing mists rolling over the Reach, I never heard if the girl regained consciousness or not. Had a few too many eggs in the air already, and when I came upon one big as a man's head and orange as a summer dawn, well…" Jaime's flippant mood dissipated as the man he'd spotted in Winterfell's Great Hall followed Brienne into their little room. "You are the lord of sapphires and no mistake, my lord." Jaime said, sitting up. I will not meet this man of all men lying out like a boned fish.
"How is that, Ser Jaime?"
"You gave your daughter your eyes, blue enough to shame most any lifeless gem." Selwyn Tarth seemed astonished that his daughter might go so red at Jaime's words. Does that mean I'm doing it right?
"Well, you can make Brienne smile, and that's more than can be said for most."
"That's hardly praise, my lord. Better than bad doesn't mean good." Very gingerly, Jaime eased his legs off the table's edge to hang down. His right leg came down as tenderly as a hammer on an anvil so heavily had Omer bound and reinforced it, but his left felt sound enough. If bruised to the bone, and in more than one place. "In truth, I'm glad to see you've come through more or less unharmed. About time some good fortune rolled Brienne's way." Selwyn's eyes filled with sadness.
"Better men than I and younger besides have lost more than the comforts of home."
"And there's nothing we can do about it in the least. Best look ahead, there's plenty to be done without dragging the dead behind us like a block of marble." If only I were able to take my own advice.
"I'll need a stick, I suppose. Something to lean on." Jaime said.
"Aye. Put a thimble's weight on that leg and you'll fold like paper." Lord Selwyn observed.
"Never mind a stick." Brienne said, taking Jaime's right side.
"You don't think moving me is unwise?" he asked, a bit surprised at her boldness.
"Of course it is. But I know better than to try talking you out of a stupid idea." she replied. Jaime couldn't help but chortle.
"Stupid doesn't mean bad."
"They walk hand in hand oft enough. Are we moving or not?" she asked. Jaime tried to lift his stump to brandish it, not getting halfway before his shoulder screamed murder up his arm and back down it besides.
"Charge." he said. What patches of ice lingered on the floor of the corridor outside had already been chipped up by the servants, but it did make walking hobbled as Jaime was a bit of a tricky proposition. Though I doubt the Starks will put much thought into their floors before their walls. Then he remembered just how well stone walls had held up against the wroth of giants. What's the point? Stacked stones aren't going to keep out what really needs keeping out. Why go to the trouble? He found his mood bubbling unexpectedly. At least we don't have to waste time rebuilding any castles the Others and their allies destroyed. As they neared the hall, Jaime found his ears keying on the giggles and shrieks of the youngest present. He had no notion whatever of how the world might finish falling into place, nor what a person's place in that world might be. Depends on whether they're the sort to run toward a dragon or direwolf or away, I suppose. What might his own children have made of it all? The dragons returned…and the Others as well. If nothing else, Cersei was there for Joffrey at the end and I, Myrcella. There was no one for Tommen but an open window. He shook himself. What did you just tell Lord Selwyn, ser? The others fell in as they got closer, Jaime daring to hope his presence would go unremarked on. There are badly injured aplenty for the whole men to avert their eyes from, I ought stand a chance at least.
He earned not even a pitying glance. Whenever someone was afforded a glimpse of the high table, they eagerly took it. Man or woman, young or old, civilized or wild. What, no love for a crippled lion? Though the hall was too full by far to see or hear whatever might be drawing such attention, Jaime had a feeling he knew what it was. Aside from an expanding royal family. He took his time both to keep his anonymity and because the extent of his injuries prevented him from moving much quicker. Packed as the hall was, no one was much interested in presenting an obstacle for Brienne of Tarth and the knights in her company. By the time he limped to the fore the people at the high table had already been seated for the meal…mostly. A squealing little fireball of frizzy red hair peeked over the edge of the table at him, eyes Stark grey as they could be. An orange head followed suit, peering at Jaime appraisingly before burbling in disinterest. Jaime gingerly let out a long breath.
"I'm told we have you to thank for Jaehaerion being here, Ser Jaime." Daenerys Targaryen's voice was low, but it reached him all the same. Though Brandon Stark could not have failed to hear his name, he seemed to prefer doting on his princess and their sons. Even so, the gaze of the direwolf behind them was cold enough to freeze fire.
"Nothing more than my duty, if it please Your Grace. How fares Ser Bonifer?" Jaime asked, as an iron hatchling eyed him from her shoulder.
"Well, as does House Hasty."
"And yourself? The babe came without trouble?"
"As little trouble as I suppose a babe might cause. Speaking of babes…" she went about introducing Val, a very pretty blonde wildling girl and her own daughter Dalla, a burbling toddler caught between one and two. The redheaded girl was Rose informally, Lyanna if one was being proper. "And this is Ned." the queen said, pulling down the nape of her exquisite white coat for a moment to reveal a tiny head, shrinking out of sight when the air chilled him. The iron hatchling burbled, head slinking down to softly graze the newborn's head. From out of a drinking horn on the table uncoiled a third hatchling of deepest blue, as keen it seemed to ignore the rest of the hall as it was to keep Dalla in sight. Wearily, Jaime looked to the king, finding no trace of the brooding boy who had once spent a feast out in the night, slashing at a straw man.
"You are not the boy whose ambitions I once mocked in the yard." Jaime said. "But neither do you much seem a Targaryen to me." Jon Snow's eyes were Ned Stark's own, as if it were the man who'd found him sitting on the Iron Throne sitting behind the table now.
"As long as I could remember, I could scarcely bear being a Snow. Your own brother advised me the very night you speak of to do more than endure the name, to drag it behind me like a corpse I was shackled to. I took it," the king said, "and made it mine." On his left side, past his eldest child, a woman who shared his reflection blushed as Brandon Stark fixed a pillow behind the small of her back. But for the nose, he saw. She has the prince's nose. A humorless half-laugh popped in his throat. And people say Ned Stark lost. He won before the game began. Jaime wondered if, in a hall full of wildlings, northmen and crannogmen, he quite had the stones to utter the words 'Aemon, the First of His Name', or 'Naerys, Princess of Dragonstone'. What part of him still clinging to sense after the knocking it had received strangled his glib remark while it was still running down his tongue. Part of me and more must want to live after all.
"I hope you'll forgive me," Jaime said, omitting even 'Your Grace', "but I think that just as much your sire's get, you are, too, your father' son." And Cersei tried to destroy it all, Jaime thought as the queen slid her bandaged hand into the king's, giving it a loving squeeze. Just like Old Mad before. He tried to keep his face from falling, tried to keep his sniffle silent, and knew that when Brienne of Tarth's hand came up with a murmur about a bloody cheek that he had failed on both counts. But by then the royal pair's interest had left him in favor of each other. Had we lost them that day, it would have been the end. Jaime more than knew it, he felt it. "A seat, if you please, my lady." he asked of Brienne, feeling unfit to stand before them any longer. Perhaps the gods will take me now, he thought as she took him on, gentle as a silent sister. Now that my part is surely over. His heart did not burst, though, nor did his body give out on the way to his seat. Surely now, he thought, content to simply watch the royal family eat as the westermen around him offered their congratulations on his survival. Now, he thought, when he heard the names Aemyxes, Dhaegelle and Jaehaerion out of a thousand different mouths. It was a moment before he was forced to face the fact a sudden painless death was like to find him then.
"You should not look so grim, Ser Jaime. Might I remind you you're Lord of Casterly Rock? Your prospects are quite enviable." Ser Addam Marbrand said beside him, though half in jest.
"Aye, you'd do well to stay alive. I'm not half so well set up as I'd like to be and if you go dying, I'll kill you myself." Bronn said through a bite of venison. Jaime looked to where the stormlanders sat, nine of every ten flocking around Robert's bastard and the Stark girl. Then he remembered who he was looking for had sat down beside him, a realization he did not even recall forgetting.
"They are not wrong, my lord." Selwyn Tarth said, easing himself down on the next bench over. "You have things still to do." Brienne contented herself with pouring Jaime a cup of mulled wine, pretending she had not heard.