SCREAM AGAINST THE STORM

Prologue

Each time the turnkey brought him water, he told himself another day had passed. At first he would beg the man for some word of his daughters and the world beyond his cell. Grunts and kicks were his only replies. Later, when the stomach cramps began, he begged for food instead. It made no matter; he was not fed. Perhaps the Lannisters meant for him to starve to death. "No," he told himself. If Cersei had wanted him dead, he would have been cut down in the throne room with his men. She wanted him alive. Weak, desperate, yet alive. Catelyn held her brother; she dare not kill him or the Imp's life would be forfeit as well.

From outside his cell came the rattle of iron chains. As the door creaked open, Ned put a hand to the damp wall and pushed himself toward the light. The glare of a torch made him squint. "Food," he croaked.

"Wine," a voice answered. It was not the rat-faced man; this gaoler was stouter, shorter, though he wore the same leather half-cape and spiked steel cap. "Drink, Lord Eddard." He thrust a wineskin into Ned's hands.

The voice was strangely familiar, yet it took Ned Stark a moment to place it. "Varys?" he said groggily when it came. He touched the man's face. "I'm not… not dreaming this. You're here." The eunuch's plump cheeks were covered with a dark stubble of a beard. Ned felt the coarse hair with his fingers. Varys had transformed himself into a grizzled turnkey, reeking of sweat and sour wine. "How did you… what sort of magician are you?"

"A thirsty one," Varys said. "Drink, my lord."

Ned's hands fumbled at the skin. "Is this the same poison they gave Robert?"

"You wrong me," Varys said sadly. "Truly, no-one loves a eunuch. Give me the skin." He drank, a trickle of red leaking from the corner of his plump mouth. "Not the equal of the vintage you offered me the night of the tourney, but no more poisonous than most," he concluded, wiping his lips. "Here."

Ned tried a swallow. "Dregs." He felt as though he were about to bring the wine back up.

"All men must swallow the sour with the sweet. High lords and eunuchs alike. Your hour has come, my lord."

"My daughters…"

"The younger girl escaped Ser Meryn and fled," Varys told him. "I have not been able to find her. Nor have the Lannisters. A kindness, there. Our new king loves her not. Your older girl is still betrothed to Joffrey. Cersei keeps her close. She came to court a few days ago to plead that you be spared. A pity you couldn't have been there, you would have been touched." He leant forward intently. "I trust you realise that you are a dead man, Lord Eddard?"

"The queen will not kill me," Ned said. His head swam; the wine was strong, and it had been too long since he'd eaten. "Cat… Cat holds her brother…"

"The wrong brother," Varys sighed. "And lost to her, in any case. She let the Imp slip through her fingers. I expect he is dead by now, somewhere in the Mountains of the Moon."

"If that is true, slit my throat and have done with it." He was dizzy from the wine, tired and heartsick.

"Your blood is the last thing I desire."

Ned frowned. "When they slaughtered my guard, you stood beside the queen and watched, and said not a word."

"And would again. I seem to recall that I was unarmed, unarmoured, and surrounded by Lannister swords." The eunuch looked at him curiously, tilting his head. "When I was a young boy, before I was cut, I travelled with a troupe of mummers through the Free Cities. They taught me that each man has a role to play, in life as well as mummery. So it is at court. The King's Justice must be fearsome, the master of coin must be frugal, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard must be valiant… and the master of whisperers must be sly and obsequious and without scruple. A courageous informer would be as useless as a cowardly knight." He took the wineskin back and drank.

Ned studied the eunuch's face, searching for truth beneath the mummer's scars and false stubble. He tried for some more wine. This time it went down easier. "Can you free me from this pit?"

"I could… but will I? No. Questions would be asked, and the answers would lead back to me."

Ned had expected no more. "You are blunt."

"A eunuch has no honour, and a spider does not enjoy the luxury of scruples, my lord."

"Would you at least consent to carry a message out for me?"

"That would depend on the message. I will gladly provide you with paper and ink, if you like. And when you have written what you will, I will take the letter and read it, and deliver it or not, as best serves my own ends."

"Your own ends. What ends are those, Lord Varys?"

"Peace," Varys replied without hesitation. "If there was one soul in King's Landing who was truly desperate to keep Robert Baratheon alive, it was me." He sighed. "For fifteen years, I protected him from his enemies, but I could not protect him from his friends. What strange fit of madness led you to tell the queen that you had learnt the truth of Joffrey's birth?"

"The madness of mercy," Ned admitted.

"Ah," said Varys. "To be sure. You are an honest and honourable man, Lord Eddard. Ofttimes, I forget that. I have met so few of them in my life." He glanced around the cell. "When I see what honesty and honour have won you, I understand why."

Ned Stark laid his head back against the damp stone wall and closed his eyes. His leg was throbbing. "The king's wine… did you question Lancel?"

"Oh, indeed. Cersei gave him the wineskins, and told him it was Robert's favourite vintage." The eunuch shrugged. "A hunter lives a perilous life. If the boar had not done for Robert, it would have been a fall from a horse, the bite of a wood adder, an arrow gone astray… the forest is the abattoir of the gods. It was not wine that killed the king. It was your mercy."

Ned had feared as much. "Gods forgive me."

"If there are gods," Varys said, "I expect they will. The queen would not have waited long in any case. Robert was becoming unruly, and she needed to be rid of him to free her hands to deal with his brother. A dangerous man." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "You have been foolish, my lord. You ought to have heeded Littlefinger when he urged you to support Joffrey's succession."

"How… how could you know of that?"

Varys smiled. "I know, that's all that need concern you. I also know that on the morrow the queen will pay you a visit."

Slowly, Ned raised his eyes. "Why?"

"Cersei is frightened of you, my lord… but she has other enemies she fears even more. Her father is fighting the Riverlords even now. Lysa Arryn sits in the Eyrie, ringed in stone and steel, and there is no love lost between her and the queen. In Dorne, the Martells still brood on the murder of Princess Elia and her babes. And now your son marches down the Neck with a Northern host at his back."

"Robb is only a boy," Ned said, aghast.

"A boy with an army," Varys said. "Yet only a boy, as you say. The king's brother is the one giving Cersei sleepless nights. His claim is the true one, he is known for his prowess as a battle commander, and if half the tales from the east are true, she is quite right to be afraid."

"Stannis Baratheon is far away."

"Not so far as you may think. You may recall from our last meeting of the small council that the Swords of the Storm were in the Shadow Lands beyond the Straits of Qarth. No longer. He is much too far for tidings of the king's death to have reached him, he should not even know of the taking of the Imp and the outbreak of war in the Riverlands… and yet somehow the black banners have been sighted in Volantis. I invite you to suppose where he will be espied next."

"Lys," said Ned, his heart hammering with unforeseen hope, "and then Storm's End afterward."

"Oh yes. That is Cersei's nightmare: while her father and uncle spend their power battling Starks and Tullys, Stannis will land with a thousand battle-hardened sellswords at his back, proclaim himself king, rally the Stormlords to his banner, and lop off her son's curly blond head… and her own in the bargain, though I truly believe she cares more about the boy."

"Good."

Varys's eyes widened. "Your imprisonment must have done you more harm than I thought. Are you mad?"

"Stannis Baratheon is Robert's true heir," Ned said. "The throne is his by rights. I would welcome his ascent."

"And that is enough? No matter what he has done? I do not seem to recall you fighting for Viserys."

"That is no comparison." Fury rumbled in Ned's voice. "It was right to overthrow the Targaryens. They deserved to lose their throne. Aerys was the worst of them, the cruellest and wickedest of all, but he was far from the first mad king of that line. Maegor, Viserys the Young, Aegon the Elder, Aegon the Unworthy, the first Aerys… so many. So many. Other dynasties have done ill, but none so frequently as the Targaryens. Stannis is the true king. Joffrey is a bastard, and I would sooner die than let the Mad King's line reclaim the crown after what he did to my brother and father."

"There is every comparison! Stannis is as wicked as Mad Aerys ever was. Doubtless you've heard the tales from across the Narrow Sea of what is done beneath the black banners, of how the Swords of the Storm win battles in ways that are unnatural. And his deeds on this side of the Narrow Sea are worse. Don't you know why he has not set foot in Westeros these past fifteen years?"

"That was never proven," Ned said stoutly.

"To all our sorrow." The eunuch was as agitated as Ned had ever seen him. "Heed these words, my lord, and heed them well. I was an orphan boy once, apprenticed to a travelling folly. Our master owned a fat little cog and we sailed up and down the Narrow Sea performing in all the Free Cities and from time to time in Oldtown and King's Landing.

"One day at Myr, a certain man came to our folly. After the performance, he made an offer for me that my master found too tempting to refuse. I was in terror. I feared the man meant to use me as I had heard men used small boys, but in truth the only part of me he had need of was my manhood. He gave me a potion that made me powerless to move or speak, yet did nothing to dull my senses. With a long hooked blade, he sliced me root and stem, chanting all the while. I watched him burn my manly parts on a brazier. The flames turned blue, and I heard a voice answer his call, though I did not understand the words they spoke.

"The mummers had sailed by the time he was done with me. Once I had served his purpose, the man had no further interest in me, so he put me out. When I asked him what I should do now, he answered that he supposed I should die. To spite him, I resolved to live. I begged, I stole, and I sold what parts of my body still remained to me. Soon I was as good a thief as any in Myr, and when I was older I learnt that often the contents of a man's letters are more valuable than the contents of his purse.

"Yet I still dream of that night, my lord. Not of the sorcerer, nor his blade, nor even the way my manhood shrivelled as it burnt. I dream of the voice. The voice from the flames. Was it a god, a demon, some conjurer's trick? I could not tell you, and I know all the tricks. All I can say for a certainty is that he called it, and it answered, and since that day I have hated magic and all those who practise it, because, that day, I learnt that that is what they are. No man ever heard of a sorcerer who conjured fire by giving a heart. Tearing it out, rather. Magic is blood, my lord. Magic is pain. Magic is suffering.

"Let us not dwell on trivialities. You know what Stannis Baratheon is. I know it. We all know it. Dark rumours have been crossing the sea east to west since the day he crossed west to east. Do you want to entrust the lives of millions of children into the hands of one such as he? I took you for a man of honour."

"I might not be," Ned said, unmoved. He did not know whether a word of that was true, and he was not inclined to trust him. "I've made more than my share of my mistakes, I do not doubt. Forsaking the rightful heir because of rumours would be one of them."

"Very well," said Varys coldly. "You force me to use a card that I wished not to play. Tell the queen that you will confess your vile treason, command your son to lay down his sword, and proclaim Joffrey the true heir. Offer to denounce Stannis as a faithless usurper. Our green-eyed lioness believes you are a man of honour. If you will give her the peace she needs and the time to deal with Stannis, and pledge to carry her secret to your grave, I believe she will allow you to take the black and live out the rest of your days on the Wall, with your brother and that baseborn son of yours."

The thought of Jon filled Ned with a sense of shame, and a sorrow too deep for words. If only he could see the boy again, sit and talk with him… pain shot through his broken leg, beneath the filthy grey plaster of his cast. He winced, his fingers opening and closing helplessly. He gasped at Varys, "And why would I do that?"

"Your daughter."

A chill pierced Ned's heart. "My daughter…"

"Surely, you did not think I'd forgotten about your sweet innocent, my lord? The queen most certainly has not."

"No," Ned pleaded, his voice cracking. "Varys, gods have mercy, do as you like with me, but leave my daughter out of your schemes. Sansa's no more than a child."

"Rhaenys was a child too. Prince Rhaegar's daughter. A precious little thing, younger than your girls. She had a small black kitten she called Balerion, did you know? I always wondered what happened to him. Rhaenys liked to pretend he was the true Balerion, the Black Dread of old, but I imagine the Lannisters taught her the difference between a kitten and a dragon quick enough, the day they broke down her door." Varys gave a long weary sigh, the sigh of a man who carried all the sadness of the world in a sack upon his shoulders. "The High Septon once told me that as we sin, so do we suffer. If that's true, Lord Eddard, tell me… why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones? Ponder it, if you would, while you wait upon the queen. And spare a thought for this as well: The next visitor who calls on you could bring you bread and cheese and the milk of the poppy for your pain… or he could bring you Sansa's head.

"The choice, my dear lord Hand, is entirely yours."