A Clash of Kings Read online

  been rebuffed. “I see.”

  “She insists that the man be removed from his office and placed under arrest for treason. I warn you—”

  He set aside his wine cup. “I’ll hear no warnings from you, boy.”

  “Ser,” Lancel said stiffly. He touched his sword, perhaps to remind Tyrion that he wore one. “Have a care how you speak to me, Imp.” Doubtless he meant to sound threatening, but that absurd wisp of a mustache ruined the effect.

  “Oh, unhand your sword. One cry from me and Shagga will burst in and kill you. With an axe, not a wineskin.”

  Lancel reddened; was he such a fool as to believe his part in Robert’s death had gone unnoted? “I am a knight—”

  “So I’ve noted. Tell me — did Cersei have you knighted before or after she took you into her bed?”

  The flicker in Lancel’s green eyes was all the admission Tyrion needed. So Varys told it true. Well, no one can ever claim that my sister does not love her family. “What, nothing to say? No more warnings for me, ser?”

  “You will withdraw these filthy accusations or—”

  “Please. Have you given any thought to what Joffrey will do when I tell him you murdered his father to bed his mother?”

  “It was not like that!” Lancel protested, horrified.

  “No? What was it like, pray?”

  “The queen gave me the strongwine! Your own father Lord Tywin, when I was named the king’s squire, he told me to obey her in everything.”

  “Did he tell you to fuck her too?” Look at him. Not quite so tall, his features not so fine, and his hair is sand instead of spun gold, yet still… even a poor copy of Jaime is sweeter than an empty bed, I suppose. “No, I thought not.”

  “I never meant… I only did as I was bid, I…”

  “… hated every instant of it, is that what you would have me believe? A high place at court, knighthood, my sister’s legs opening for you at night, oh, yes, it must have been terrible for you.” Tyrion pushed himself to his feet. “Wait here. His Grace will want to hear this.”

  The defiance went from Lancel all at once. The young knight fell to his knees a frightened boy. “Mercy, my lord, I beg you.”

  “Save it for Joffrey. He likes a good beg.”

  “My lord, it was your sister’s bidding, the queen, as you said, but His Grace… he’d never understand…”

  “Would you have me keep the truth from the king?”

  “For my father’s sake! I’ll leave the city, it will be as if it never happened! I swear, I will end it…”

  It was hard not to laugh. “I think not.”

  Now the lad looked lost. “My lord?”

  “You heard me. My father told you to obey my sister? Very well, obey her. Stay close to her side, keep her trust, pleasure her as often as she requires it. No one need ever know… so long as you keep faith with me. I want to know what Cersei is doing. Where she goes, who she sees, what they talk of, what plans she is hatching. All. And you will be the one to tell me, won’t you?”

  “Yes, my lord.” Lancel spoke without a moment’s hesitation. Tyrion liked that. “I will. I swear it. As you command.”

  “Rise.” Tyrion filled the second cup and pressed it on him. “Drink to our understanding. I promise, there are no boars in the castle that I know of.” Lancel lifted the cup and drank, albeit stiffly. “Smile, cousin. My sister is a beautiful woman, and it’s all for the good of the realm. You could do well out of this. Knighthood is nothing. If you’re clever, you’ll have a lordship from me before you’re done.” Tyrion swirled the wine in his cup. “We want Cersei to have every faith in you. Go back and tell her I beg her forgiveness. Tell her that you frightened me, that I want no conflict between us, that henceforth I shall do nothing without her consent.”

  “But… her demands…”

  “Oh, I’ll give her Pycelle.”

  “You will?” Lancel seemed astonished.

  Tyrion smiled. “I’ll release him on the morrow. I could swear that I hadn’t harmed a hair on his head, but it wouldn’t be strictly true. In any case, he’s well enough, though I won’t vouch for his vigor. The black cells are not a healthy place for a man his age. Cersei can keep him as a pet or send him to the Wall, I don’t care which, but I won’t have him on the council.”

  “And Ser Jacelyn?”

  “Tell my sister you believe you can win him away from me, given time. That ought to content her for a while.”

  “As you say.” Lancel finished his wine.

  “One last thing. With King Robert dead, it would be most embarrassing should his grieving widow suddenly grow great with child.”

  “My lord, I… we… the queen has commanded me not to…” His ears had turned Lannister crimson. “I spill my seed on her belly, my lord.”

  “A lovely belly, I have no doubt. Moisten it as often as you wish… but see that your dew falls nowhere else. I want no more nephews, is that clear?”

  Ser Lancel made a stiff bow and took his leave.

  Tyrion allowed himself a moment to feel sorry for the boy. Another fool, and a weakling as well, but he does not deserve what Cersei and I are doing to him. It was a kindness that his uncle Kevan had two other sons; this one was unlikely to live out the year. Cersei would have him killed out of hand if she learned he was betraying her, and if by some grace of the gods she did not, Lancel would never survive the day Jaime Lannister returned to King’s Landing. The only question would be whether Jaime cut him down in a jealous rage, or Cersei murdered him first to keep Jaime from finding out. Tyrion’s silver was on Cersei.

  A restlessness was on him, and Tyrion knew full well he would not get back to sleep tonight. Not here, in any case. He found Podrick Payne asleep in a chair outside the door of the solar, and shook him by the shoulder. “Summon Bronn, and then run down to the stables and have two horses saddled.”

  The squire’s eyes were cloudy with sleep. “Horses.”

  “Those big brown animals that love apples, I’m sure you’ve seen them. Four legs and a tail. But Bronn first.”

  The sellsword was not long in appearing. “Who pissed in your soup?” he demanded.

  “Cersei, as ever. You’d think I’d be used to the taste by now, but never mind. My gentle sister seems to have mistaken me for Ned Stark.”

  “I hear he was taller.”

  “Not after Joff took off his head. You ought to have dressed more warmly, the night is chill.”

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  “Are all sellswords as clever as you?”

  The city streets were dangerous, but with Bronn beside him Tyrion felt safe enough. The guards let him out a postern gate in the north wall, and they rode down Shadowblack Lane to the foot of Aegon’s High Hill, and thence onto Pigrun Alley, past rows of shuttered windows and tall timber-and-stone buildings whose upper stories leaned out so far over the street they almost kissed. The moon seemed to follow them as they went, playing peek-and-sneak among the chimneys. They encountered no one but a lone old crone, carrying a dead cat by the tail. She gave them a fearful look, as if she were afraid they might try to steal her dinner, and slunk off into the shadows without a word.

  Tyrion reflected on the men who had been Hand before him, who had proved no match for his sister’s wiles. How could they be? Men like that… too honest to live, too noble to shit, Cersei devours such fools every morning when she breaks her fast. The only way to defeat my sister is to play her own game, and that was something the Lords Stark and Arryn would never do. Small wonder that both of them were dead, while Tyrion Lannister had never felt more alive. His stunted legs might make him a comic grotesque at a harvest ball, but this dance he knew.

  Despite the hour, the brothel was crowded. Chataya greeted them pleasantly and escorted them to the common room. Bronn went upstairs with a dark-eyed girl from Dorne, but Alayaya was busy entertaining. “She will be so pleased to know you’ve come,” said Chataya. “I will see that the turret room is made ready for you. Will my lord take a cu
p of wine while he waits?”

  “I will,” he said.

  The wine was poor stuff compared to the vintages from the Arbor the house normally served. “You must forgive us, my lord,” Chataya said. “I cannot find good wine at any price of late.”

  “You are not alone in that, I fear.”

  Chataya commiserated with him a moment, then excused herself and glided off. A handsome woman, Tyrion reflected as he watched her go. He had seldom seen such elegance and dignity in a whore. Though to be sure, she saw herself more as a kind of priestess. Perhaps that is the secret. It is not what we do, so much as why we do it. Somehow that thought comforted him.

  A few of the other patrons were giving him sideways looks. The last time he ventured out, a man had spit on him… well, had tried to. Instead he’d spit on Bronn, and in future would do his spitting without teeth.

  “Is milord feeling unloved?” Dancy slid into his lap and nibbled at his ear. “I have a cure for that.”

  Smiling, Tyrion shook his head. “You are too beautiful for words, sweetling, but I’ve grown fond of Alayaya’s remedy.”

  “You’ve never tried mine. Milord never chooses anyone but ’Yaya. She’s good but I’m better, don’t you want to see?”

  “Next time, perhaps.” Tyrion had no doubt that Dancy would be a lively handful. She was pug-nosed and bouncy, with freckles and a mane of thick red hair that tumbled down past her waist. But he had Shae waiting for him at the manse.

  Giggling, she put her hand between his thighs and squeezed him through his breeches. “I don’t think he wants to wait till next time,” she announced. “He wants to come out and count all my freckles, I think.”

  “Dancy.” Alayaya stood in the doorway, dark and cool in gauzy green silk. “His lordship is come to visit me.”

  Tyrion gently disentangled himself from the other girl and stood. Dancy did not seem to mind. “Next time,” she reminded him. She put a finger in her mouth and sucked it.

  As the black-skinned girl led him up the stairs, she said, “Poor Dancy. She has a fortnight to get my lord to choose her. Elsewise she loses her black pearls to Marei.”

  Marei was a cool, pale, delicate girl Tyrion had noticed once or twice. Green eyes and porcelain skin, long straight silvery hair, very lovely, but too solemn by half. “I’d hate to have the poor child lose her pearls on account of me.”

  “Then take her upstairs next time.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  She smiled. “I think not, my lord.”

  She’s right, Tyrion thought, I won’t. Shae may be only a whore, but I am faithful to her after my fashion.

  In the turret room, as he opened the door of the wardrobe, he looked at Alayaya curiously. “What do you do while I’m gone?”

  She raised her arms and stretched like some sleek black cat. “Sleep. I am much better rested since you began to visit us, my lord. And Marei is teaching us to read, perhaps soon I will be able to pass the time with a book.”

  “Sleep is good,” he said. “And books are better.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. Then it was down the shaft and through the tunnel.

  As he left the stable on his piebald gelding, Tyrion heard the sound of music drifting over the rooftops. It was pleasant to think that men still sang, even in the midst of butchery and famine. Remembered notes filled his head, and for a moment he could almost hear Tysha as she’d sung to him half a lifetime ago. He reined up to listen. The tune was wrong, the words too faint to hear. A different song then, and why not? His sweet innocent Tysha had been a lie start to finish, only a whore his brother Jaime had hired to make him a man.

  I’m free of Tysha now, he thought. She’s haunted me half my life, but I don’t need her anymore, no more than I need Alayaya or Dancy or Marei, or the hundreds like them I’ve bedded with over the years. I have Shae now. Shae.

  The gates of the manse were closed and barred. Tyrion pounded until the ornate bronze eye clacked open. “It’s me.” The man who admitted him was one of Varys’s prettier finds, a Braavosi daggerman with a harelip and a lazy eye. Tyrion had wanted no handsome young guardsmen loitering about Shae day after day. “Find me old, ugly, scarred men, preferably impotent,” he had told the eunuch. “Men who prefer boys. Or men who prefer sheep, for that matter.” Varys had not managed to come up with any sheeplovers, but he did find a eunuch strangler and a pair of foul-smelling Ibbenese who were as fond of axes as they were of each other. The others were as choice a lot of mercenaries as ever graced a dungeon, each uglier than the last. When Varys had paraded them before him, Tyrion had been afraid he’d gone too far, but Shae had never uttered a word of complaint. And why would she? She has never complained of me, and I’m more hideous than all her guards together. Perhaps she does not even see ugliness.

  Even so, Tyrion would sooner have used some of his mountain clansmen to guard the manse; Chella’s Black Ears perhaps, or the Moon Brothers. He had more faith in their iron loyalties and sense of honor than in the greed of sellswords. The risk was too great, however. All King’s Landing knew the wildlings were his. If he sent the Black Ears here, it would only be a matter of time until the whole city knew the King’s Hand was keeping a concubine.

  One of the Ibbenese took his horse. “Have you woken her?” Tyrion asked him.

  “No, m’lord.”

  “Good.”

  The fire in the bedchamber had burned down to embers, but the room was still warm. Shae had kicked off her blankets and sheets as she slept. She lay nude atop the featherbed, the soft curves of her young body limned in the faint glow from the hearth. Tyrion stood in the door and drank in the sight of her. Younger than Marei, sweeter than Dancy, more beautiful than Alayaya, she’s all I need and more. How could a whore look so clean and sweet and innocent, he wondered?

  He had not intended to disturb her, but the sight of her was enough to make him hard. He let his garments fall to the floor, then crawled onto the bed and gently pushed her legs apart and kissed her between the thighs. Shae murmured in her sleep. He kissed her again, and licked at her secret sweetness, on and on until his beard and her cunt were both soaked. When she gave a soft moan and shuddered, he climbed up and thrust himself inside her and exploded almost at once.

  Her eyes were open. She smiled and stroked his head and whispered, “I just had the sweetest dream, m’lord.”

  Tyrion nipped at her small hard nipple and nestled his head on her shoulder. He did not pull out of her; would that he never had to pull out of her. “This is no dream,” he promised her. It is real, all of it, he thought, the wars, the intrigues, the great bloody game, and me in the center of it… me, the dwarf, the monster, the one they scorned and laughed at, but now I hold it all, the power, the city, the girl. This was what I was made for, and gods forgive me, but I do love it…

  And her. And her.

  ARYA

  Whatever names Harren the Black had meant to give his towers were long forgotten. They were called the Tower of Dread, the Widow’s Tower, the Wailing Tower, the Tower of Ghosts, and Kingspyre Tower. Arya slept in a shallow niche in the cavernous vaults beneath the Wailing Tower, on a bed of straw. She had water to wash in whenever she liked, a chunk of soap. The work was hard, but no harder than walking miles every day. Weasel did not need to find worms and bugs to eat, as Arry had; there was bread every day, and barley stews with bits of carrot and turnip, and once a fortnight even a bite of meat.

  Hot Pie ate even better; he was where he belonged, in the kitchens, a round stone building with a domed roof that was a world unto itself. Arya took her meals at a trestle table in the undercroft with Weese and his other charges, but sometimes she would be chosen to help fetch their food, and she and Hot Pie could steal a moment to talk. He could never remember that she was now Weasel and kept calling her Arry, even though he knew she was a girl. Once he tried to slip her a hot apple tart, but he made such a clumsy job of it that two of the cooks saw. They took the tart away and beat him with a big wooden spoon.

  Gendry ha
d been sent to the forge; Arya seldom saw him. As for those she served with, she did not even want to know their names. That only made it hurt worse when they died. Most of them were older than she was and content to let her alone.

  Harrenhal was vast, much of it far gone in decay. Lady Whent had held the castle as bannerman to House Tully, but she’d used only the lower thirds of two of the five towers, and let the rest go to ruin. Now she was fled, and the small household she’d left could not begin to tend the needs of all the knights, lords, and highborn prisoners Lord Tywin had brought, so the Lannisters must forage for servants as well as for plunder and provender. The talk was that Lord Tywin planned to restore Harrenhal to glory, and make it his new seat once the war was done.

  Weese used Arya to run messages, draw water, and fetch food, and sometimes to serve at table in the Barracks Hall above the armory, where the men-at-arms took their meals. But most of her work was cleaning. The ground floor of the Wailing Tower was given over to storerooms and granaries, and two floors above housed part of the garrison, but the upper stories had not been occupied for eighty years. Now Lord Tywin had commanded that they be made fit for habitation again. There were floors to be scrubbed, grime to be washed off windows, broken chairs and rotted beds to be carried off. The topmost story was infested with nests of the huge black bats that House Whent had used for its sigil, and there were rats in the cellars as well… and ghosts, some said, the spirits of Harren the Black and his sons.

  Arya thought that was stupid. Harren and his sons had died in Kingspyre Tower, that was why it had that name, so why should they cross the yard to haunt her? The Wailing Tower only wailed when the wind blew from the north, and that was just the sound the air made blowing through the cracks in the stones where they had fissured from the heat. If there were ghosts in Harrenhal, they never troubled her. It was the living men she feared, Weese and Ser Gregor Clegane and Lord Tywin Lannister himself, who kept his apartments in Kingspyre Tower, still the tallest and mightiest of all, though lopsided beneath the weight of the slagged stone that made it look like some giant half-melted black candle.

  She wondered what Lord Tywin would do if she marched up to him and confessed to being Arya Stark, but she knew she’d never get near enough to talk to him, and anyhow he’d never believe her if she did, and afterward Weese would beat her bloody.

  In his own small strutting way, Weese was nearly as scary as Ser Gregor. The Mountain swatted men like flies, but most of the time he did not even seem to know the fly was there. Weese always knew you were there, and what you were doing, and sometimes what you were thinking. He would hit at the slightest provocation, and he had a dog who was near as bad as he was, an ugly spotted bitch that smelled worse than any dog Arya had ever known. Once she saw him set the dog on a latrine boy who’d annoyed him. She tore a big chunk out of the boy’s calf while Weese laughed.

  It took him only three days to earn the place of honor in her nightly prayers. “Weese,” she would whisper, first of all. “Dunsen, Chiswyck, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Gregor, Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei.” If she let herself forget even one of them, how would she ever find him again to kill him?

  On the road Arya had felt like a sheep, but Harrenhal turned her into a mouse. She was grey as a mouse in her scratchy wool shift, and like a mouse she kept to the crannies and crevices and dark holes of the castle, scurrying out of the way of the mighty.

  Sometimes she thought they were all mice within those thick walls, even the knights and the great lords. The size of the castle made even Gregor Clegane seem small. Harrenhal covered thrice as much ground as Winterfell, and its buildings were so much larger they could scarcely be compared. Its stables housed a thousand horses, its godswood covered twenty acres, its kitchens were as large as Winterfell’s Great Hall, and its own great hall, grandly named the Hall of a Hundred Hearths even though it only had thirty and some (Arya had tried to count them, twice, but she came up with thirty-three once and thirty-five the other time) was so cavernous that Lord Tywin could have feasted his entire host, though he never did. Walls, doors, halls, steps, everything was built to an inhuman scale that made Arya remember the stories Old Nan used to tell of the giants who lived beyond the Wall.

  And as lords and ladies never notice the little grey mice under their feet, Arya heard all sorts of secrets just by keeping her ears open as she went about her duties. Pretty Pia from the buttery was a slut who was working her way through every knight in the castle. The wife of the gaoler was with child, but the real father was either Ser Alyn Stackspear or a singer called Whitesmile Wat. Lord Lefford made mock of ghosts at table, but always kept a candle burning by his bed. Ser Dunaver’s squire Jodge could not hold his water when he slept. The cooks despised Ser Harys Swyft and spit in all his food. Once she even overheard Maester Tothmure’s serving girl confiding to her brother about some message that said Joffrey was a bastard and not the rightful king at all. “Lord Tywin told him to burn the letter and never speak such filth again,” the girl whispered.

  King Robert’s brothers Stannis and Renly had joined the fighting, she heard. “And both of them kings now,” Weese said. “Realm’s got more kings than a castle’s got rats.” Even Lannister men questioned how long Joffrey would hold the Iron Throne. “The lad’s got no army but them gold cloaks, and he’s ruled by a eunuch, a dwarf, and a woman,” she heard a lordling mutter in his cups. “What good will the likes of them be if it comes to battle?” There was always talk of Beric Dondarrion. A fat archer once said the Bloody Mummers had slain him, but the others only laughed. “Lorch killed the man at Rushing Falls, and the Mountain’s slain him twice. Got me a silver stag says he don’t stay dead this time neither.”

  Arya did not know who Bloody Mummers were until a fortnight later, when the queerest company of men she’d ever seen arrived at Harrenhal. Beneath the standard of a black goat with bloody horns rode copper men with bells in their braids; lancers astride striped black-and-white horses; bowmen with powdered cheeks; squat hairy men with shaggy shields; brown-skinned men in feathered cloaks; a wispy fool in green-and-pink motley; swordsmen with fantastic forked beards dyed green and purple and silver; spearmen with colored scars that covered their cheeks; a slender man in septon’s robes, a fatherly one in maester’s grey, and a sickly one whose leather cloak was fringed with long blond hair.

  At their head was a man stick-thin and very tall, with a drawn emaciated face made even longer by the ropy black beard that grew from his pointed chin nearly to his waist. The helm that hung from his saddle horn was black steel, fashioned in the shape of a goat’s head. About his neck he wore a chain made of linked coins of many different sizes, shapes, and metals, and his horse was one of the strange black-and-white ones.

  “You don’t want to know that lot, Weasel,” Weese said when he saw her looking at the goat-helmed man. Two of his drinking friends were with him, men-at-arms in service to Lord Lefford.

  “Who are they?” she asked.