Cersei struggled against her bonds, but to no avail. On a pile of furs inside the ship's hold, she only heard muffled sounds from the outside, and fought an urge to throw up. Finally it ended, but it was only a brief reprieve, as she heard thudding steps and felt herself hauled up in a huge hand. The blindfold was removed and she blinked. Most of the dusky light was blocked by the hulking shape of the Wolf, but she recognized Qyburn next to him, looking queasy himself.
"Inspect her, fleshcrafter. The Warp is rarely kind to southerlings, even blinded and deafened against its peculiar charms. You need her stripped?"
Cersei blushed despite herself.
"Oh, come off it. It's nothing you haven't already shown your husbands, lovers, brother, and the entire city."
The Wolf spread his hands, clearly ready to make good on his threat.
"Er- that will not be necessary, lord. The child is not yet sufficiently developed to require-"
The Wolf's head snapped towards Qyburn.
"Child? What chil-"
"Oh, damn, that's right. The rust-born did mention it. Out of curiosity, think it'll be fair or dark of hair? It's for a bet."
"I... I could not say, lord."
The Wolf said nothing while Qyburn ensured Cersei had not been wounded.
"Right. You're going into town tomorrow, fleshcrafter, so get yourself a hood or hat if you think it'll prevent you from being lynched on the spot. Sven has a potion that'll give you a face like a leper for a few days. Hop to it."
Qyburn left with barely an apologetic glance at Cersei. She looked up, trembling as the Wolf removed her gag and squatted on his hams. He was still far taller than her, but now she could make out his face in the gloom.
"What will you do to me?"
The Wolf's gaze slowly swept up and down her body like a slaver appraising a joygirl's potential before finally locking eyes with her, his expression of disdain and amusement clear.
"Not what you think... or rather hope will happen."
Cersei felt her cheeks burning.
"Where are you taking me?"
"Somewhere safe from the Dragonqueen."
Cersei looked the Wolf in the eye.
"And then you'll kill me."
The Wolf smirked.
"If I wanted you dead you'd have two horses splitting you open from arse to mouth, with the Dragonqueen watching and the armies of the Northmen cheering and lining up for their turn."
"No, I still need you alive for the moment, and alive you will remain, but the conditions of your imprisonment depend on your behavior."
The Wolf looked down at her.
"To start with, tell me. What were you going to do with the rust-born once you'd won?"
Cersei started. Of all the questions he could have asked, this one had never occurred to her.
"Was your cunt his to take and seed as he claimed, or was he given to boasting about that which did not belong to him?"
"You- you mean Euron?"
"Iron Islander, so full of himself it's coming out his ears, face that's begging for a slap... You've shared a bed with him, though I know that won't narrow it down much for you."
"You don't seem the type to share a throne. Would you have had him poisoned, killed by the big lummox or sent off to die in some unwinnable war?"
Cersei said nothing. While she had not given any thought to it, Euron's death would have been inevitable once Danaerys had been defeated. The Wolf continued, as though the question no longer interested him, if he had even cared about the answer in the first place.
"So, I understand you have reason to dislike me... though I can't say I recall ever meeting you. Why is that?"
Cersei stared with wide eyes. The Wolf seemed entirely serious.
"You killed the Mountain!"
"Twice now, in fact."
The barbarian seemed to ponder her answer.
"Was he too one of your lovers? Even after his transformation?"
The Wolf sighed.
"Would it go faster if I were to make a list of men you haven't slept with, so I'll know which ones you won't even pretend to care about?"
Despite the humiliation, Cersei felt bile and indignation rise in her throat as the Wolf went on. She would not be so easily cowed.
"He was my champion! And because you murdered him, Tyrion went free!"
"Ah yes, I remember he told me something of the sort. You held him responsible for the death of your son, I think? Although it seems it wasn't him, if not for lack of wishing on his part."
The Wolf paused.
"I wonder, its seems he's the only one of your male relatives who doesn't know you inside and out. Does he resent you for that, do you think?"
"What do you care?"
"I like him."
Cersei blinked, stunned into silence by the cheerful admission.
"He shows promise, near alone among all these weakling Southerners and their dead or impotent gods."
She rallied. The Imp and this barbarian would certainly have much in common.
"He always did favor the company of low-born scum like himself."
"Low-born? What does that make you, then, kin-rutter?"
The Wolf's tone was of mock ignorance.
"Is this one of those "pure bloodline" obsessions you southerlings have? Were your parents brother and sister as well? It would explain the state of the brood, the brother's body as deformed as the sister's mind."
"Better than to have been spawned from a bear and a village whore like you! You enjoy this, don't you? I couldn't fight you if I tried, so you insult me? Just because I'm a woman, you think me weak."
"I hardly think you weak."
Once again Cersei was dumbfounded. The Wolf's voice had been searingly sarcastic, but there was no trace of it now.
"The fact that you survived for so long despite your... proclivities... is an achievement in and of itself, if not the same kind I would be capable of. That you were born in these softer climes and not the harsh lands of the North only makes you more exceptional. And of course, that your offspring did not end up as drooling imbeciles, pissing themselves and smashing small animals with rocks is of some merit, despite your best efforts to ensure they were born idiots."
The Wolf grinned.
"No, I do not think you weak, even if there are a few women in these lands who can fight... I simply see that you are unskilled in anything that doesn't involve the whore's arts, and too stupid to understand that."
Cersei could only emit an indignant squeak at so bald-faced a insult.
"You try to pin a crime on your enemies rather than the criminal, you make alliances without considering how to be rid of them, you take on debts without worrying about how to pay them off, you execute prisoners who could have been of use to you..."
The Wolf sucked his breath between his teeth.
"You're not much of a ruler, are you?"
Cersei sat up as best as she could, the sheer condescension in the Wolf's voice making her fight back against anything he said.
"I am a queen, you uncivilized clod! By birth, by right, by marriage!"
"Some queen you are. From what I've been told, you ruled in your son's stead, but you couldn't even keep him alive long enough to keep up the pretense. What would you have done once he was old enough to want a woman of his own, sent your daughter into his bed, or slip in yourself?"
Cersei spat at him. The Wolf grabbed the back of Cersei's hair, bringing her face up to his. She shivered and shrank back.
"Cold? And you being famous for walking around with no clothes on. I'll have to ask you to avoid doing that, it gets chilly where we're going. And the randy bastards don't row half as well when it's not a big wooden pole they want to hold in their hands and thrust somewhere wet."
The Wolf pushed Cersei up against the wall and released his grip.
"Now, answer me this: Not a day ago you were Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, feared throughout most of the continent, and the only hope against the invaders from the east. Now you have less power than a kitchen thrall, surrounded by strangers to whom you are only marginally more useful alive than dead."
"Whose fault is that? Who started all this?"
Cersei's eyes goggled.
"What? That Targaryen whore! If she even ever was a Targaryen and not a bastard fathered by a stable boy!"
"And before that? Why did she come to oust you in the first place?"
"Because of Tyrion!"
Cersei launched into a full diatribe, forgetting her predicament as decades of hate and resentment boiled over.
"He convinced her to return, sold out his own people, his own blood, just to curry favor with the bitch! That vicious little demon, he should have been strangled at birth! Everything is his fault, everything!"
The Wolf said nothing until Cersei had regained her breath.
"I understand your father was a a cruel tyrant whose death was cause for celebration."
"Is that what he says? Of course it's what he says, you being such good friends."
She spat the word as though it was the worst insult she could think of.
"He murdered our father just like he murdered our mother, just to get at me, just so that our House would be broken and ruined. He hates us because he can never be a true man, as if I was responsible for his deformities! He hated my son and plotted his death, he escaped his trial to join that silver-haired whore, he started a war we would have won if he hadn't been pouring his words into her ears, revealing our every weakness to her! Our family's downfall is entirely due to him, the lying, conniving, whoring little shitstain!"
"And not to your ineptitude? When your scribes look back to your reign, will they write, 'Here was a slut who was crowned queen, who drank like a fish and drove the realm to ruin, all because she was too thick to realize you're not supposed to fuck your siblings?' "
Her eyes wild, Cersei looked the Wolf in the face.
"You know why I fucked my brother? You know why I did what I did?"
There was no hesitation on her part, entirely consumed by the need to cast her actions in the judgmental barbarian's face, to crush him beneath the weight of her joy and make him realize how weak and insignificant he was.
"Because it felt good. I've tasted pleasures you will never know, had the entire continent at my feet, had hundreds murdered, and I felt more joy in imagining their screams as they burned than you will ever experience!"
That had certainly shut him up, and he stared at her for a long time, his expression unreadable. Cersei's face radiated triumph, basking in the pleasure of having defeated the barbarian in a battle of wits, even as she panted, somewhat out of breath.
Finally he smiled.
"You are everything I could have hoped for and more."
The Wolf stood up.
"Akkarulf!"
The hulking marauder entered. Cersei's eyes went to him and the helmet she had last seen Euron carry as a trophy.
"See to it that our... honored guest enjoys Helga's company, and lacks for nothing. Don't untie or ungag her while we're in port, don't unchain her ever, even at sea. If she asks for wine, only the best, save that which belongs to the Shield-slayer. If she asks for men, make sure they're at least good-looking and free of pox, preferably fair of hair, and remind them of which holes they may and may not enter."
Though his face was hidden by his helmet, Akkarulf paused, evidently confused. The Wolf sighed, incongruously reminding Cersei of her father dealing with the failures of his subordinates.
"She's carrying, as you yourself noted and ensured. Since she'd already be hard-pressed to identify the father, let's not confuse matters any further by adding other candidates. Her cunt's off-limits until I say otherwise, and I'll trust you to make sure it remains that way."
At the door, the Wolf paused.
"In the meantime, she's got other holes, they'll just have to share."
The Wolf left, leaving Cersei to look with apprehension at her new jailer, wearing Euron's stolen helmet. What did the Wolf mean by "ensured"?
That her once-bedmate was dead was less cause for mourning than the fact that she knew she was now one ally short. Before she could scream, the marauder had tied a length of eelskin around her mouth and picked her up over his shoulder again, taking her to another dark and cramped area in the longship's hold. She fell on a bed of crinkling straw, rolling to feel wooden planks behind her. The marauder clapped an iron shackle around her neck and left. She heard his footsteps fade away, leaving her in utter darkness.
Something snuffled and snorted next to her.
The Wolf stood at the prow of his longship, looking at the seas far below. In the setting sun, the coast of Blackwater Bay glowed red as a furnace. The ship was so high in the air the fires of Danaery's war camp were only visible as a collection of pinpoints of light, while the great inferno of King's Landing had subdued into a sullen glow. Akkarulf joined him, carrying two tankards and offering one to his captain.
"It went well, yarrl?"
"Better than I expected, Akkarulf. And yet..."
Akkarulf remained silent, but looked curious. The Wolf drained his tankard.
"I have at last taken all the trophies the gods requested of me, and yet there is still something missing."
He made a sweeping motion with the tankard, encompassing the blazing city.
"A walled city on fire, its gates opened wide as a dockside whore's legs, its citizens terrified and fleeing, grand slaughter without and within... A portal to the realm of the gods opening at the decapitated peak of its highest tower and vomiting forth daemons without number should have been a grand conclusion to this saga. And yet nothing of the sort happened, as you saw."
The Wolf shrugged.
"I must await another sign, another vision."
"Wasn't taking control of her mind enough?"
The Wolf looked surprised and turned to face his henchman.
"Taking control of her mind? Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Well, she didn't attack before she was hit by the spell, didn't she intend to spare the city before Sven forced her to burn it?"
"He didn't force her to do anything. You think I'd even let him near the ship if he could do that, much less trust him with anything more important than gathering firewood?"
The Wolf shook his head.
"No, this was no domination of wills. She locked herself up without food after the last parley resulted in the murder of her soldiers, she doesn't seem to have been getting any attention from her lover, her friends tried to poison her... that's not a state of mind leading to compassion."
"She would have been in one mind to raze the city in retaliation for the losses she suffered, and in another, to spare them and be accepted as ruler rather than force her way in. I'm sure that's why we saw the dragon going down instead of going straight for the keep. No need to shackle her mind to get her to torch the city, Sven just gave her a little... push in the right direction. Making sure the coin landed the right way up."
The Wolf took the other tankard from Akkarulf and emptied it in a single gulp.
"This was her choice. Although I do wonder if she might have been so eager to burn it if the slut-queen had kept her hostages alive."
"Sven said his spell made her hear the bells as a sound so horrible she'd stop attacking, so that she'd leave more to loot and reduce the chances of killing our men."
"Yes, that he made her hear the bells overloud wasn't something I'd thought of, or told him to do, but having duly considered it, he was right."
Akkarulf looked behind him, where the sorcerer was getting to his feet. In the flickering light of the ship's torches he could see a huge bruise around Sven's eye. Akkarulf turned back, but the Wolf had seen his movement.
"He was right, but he still disobeyed me. It worked, but it could have gone very wrong. Imagine if she'd stopped attacking and fled as soon as she heard the bells. That's why you need to deal strongly with sorcerers and their kind, they always think they know better than you."
"And if Sven hadn't pushed her?"
"If his spell failed, or he decided not to cast it?"
"There's a difference?"
"Had it failed, and the tower not been sent to the depths of the border-realm as can happen when the gods decide to punish the arrogance of a wizard, I would have asked the Dragonqueen for the heads of the fleshcrafter and his creature. I think she would have been in a mood to give them to me, and even to take my advice on how to deal with the kin-rutter."
"Had it failed deliberately..."
The Wolf shrugged.
"Sven is on very thin ice ever since the battle against the dead. He read the runes, and told me hiring the Crow Brothers would be well rewarded, and I spent two years' worth of plunder to hire them, not to mention the rest they demanded as payment. All that, only for most of them to die, and me without the skull I'd come to find."
The barbarian shook his head, the skulls on his chest rattling in response.
"No, the only reason he didn't die slow on that day is because he brought you to me. I would have killed him for his little additions to the spell today, but he was right about it leaving more to plunder, and it would take too long to get another sorcerer of his skill. Until my task is done, he knows he'd be better off asking the daemons of the Warp for mercy rather than failing me."
Akkarulf shivered and changed the subject.
"Maybe those we took are required as further sacrifices?"
"No, I have seen or heard nothing as to their fate. I am keeping them just in case, if this world continues to escape the grasp of Chaos they will be more useful to us alive."
"How so, yarrl? They are among the most hated people in all the Seven Kingdoms. The North alone would gladly see Cersei drawn and quartered, and would not lift a finger to save the others."
"Precisely. You will understand, in time."
Akkarulf deemed it wiser not to press the matter, knowing it was a mark of his usefulness to the barbarian to be told this much.
"Yes yarrl. Are we to return to Danaerys' camp in the meantime?"
"Yes, but we'll not stay long. Once we make landfall, send word to our men- all of them, that we leave within the week. Tell them to exchange their plunder for lighter and smaller valuables, we won't have room for slaves."
Akkarulf nodded, and was about to turn around when the Wolf tapped him on the shoulder.
"Oh, and find a different helmet. You've been... "recognized" once already, and it worked in our favor, but it is a fool who trusts the Raven to replace caution. I think Geirr Half-Eye has a spare one, tell him to stash yours away until it's needed again."
Akkarulf left to carry out his orders. The Wolf barked at the crew, who took to their oars. The longship began its slow descent into the waters below before making an unnoticed entry into the harbor of King's Landing alongside the other ships of the victorious fleet.