“Ser Meryn.” Jaime smiled at the sour knight with the rust-red hair and the pouches under his eyes. “I have heard it said that Joffrey made use of you to chastise Sansa Stark.” He turned the White Book around one-handed. “Here, show me where it is in our vows that we swear to beat women and children.”
“I did as His Grace commanded me. We are sworn to obey.”
“Henceforth you will temper that obedience. My sister is Queen Regent. My father is the King’s Hand. I am Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Obey us. None other.”
Ser Meryn got a stubborn look on his face. “Are you telling us not to obey the king?”
“The king is eight. Our first duty is to protect him, which includes protecting him from himself. Use that ugly thing you keep inside your helm. If Tommen wants you to saddle his horse, obey him. If he tells you to kill his horse, come to me.”
“Aye. As you command, my lord.”
“Dismissed.” As he left, Jaime turned to Ser Balon Swann. “Ser Balon, I have watched you tilt many a time, and fought with and against you in mêlées. I’m told you proved your valor a hundred times over during the Battle of the Blackwater. The Kingsguard is honored by your presence.”
“The honor’s mine, my lord.” Ser Balon sounded wary.
“There is only one question I would put to you. You served us loyally, it’s true… but Varys tells me that your brother rode with Renly and then Stannis, whilst your lord father chose not to call his banners at all and remained behind the walls of Stonehelm all through the fighting.”
“My father is an old man, my lord. Well past forty. His fighting days are done.”
“And your brother?”
“Donnel was wounded in the battle and yielded to Ser Elwood Harte. He was ransomed afterward and pledged his fealty to King Joffrey, as did many other captives.”
“So he did,” said Jaime. “Even so… Renly, Stannis, Joffrey, Tommen… how did he come to omit Balon Greyjoy and Robb Stark? He might have been the first knight in the realm to swear fealty to all six kings.”
Ser Balon’s unease was plain. “Donnel erred, but he is Tommen’s man now. You have my word.”
“It’s not Ser Donnel the Constant who concerns me. It’s you.” Jaime leaned forward. “What will you do if brave Ser Donnel gives his sword to yet another usurper, and one day comes storming into the throne room? And there you stand all in white, between your king and your blood. What will you do?”
“I… my lord, that will never happen.”
“It happened to me,” Jaime said.
Swann wiped his brow with the sleeve of his white tunic.
“You have no answer?”
“My lord.” Ser Balon drew himself up. “On my sword, on my honor, on my father’s name, I swear… I shall not do as you did.”
Jaime laughed. “Good. Return to your duties… and tell Ser Donnel to add a weathervane to his shield.”
And then he was alone with the Knight of Flowers.
Slim as a sword, lithe and fit, Ser Loras Tyrell wore a snowy linen tunic and white wool breeches, with a gold belt around his waist and a gold rose clasping his fine silk cloak. His hair was a soft brown tumble, and his eyes were brown as well, and bright with insolence. He thinks this is a tourney, and his tilt has just been called. “Seventeen and a knight of the Kingsguard,” said Jaime. “You must be proud. Prince Aemon the Dragonknight was seventeen when he was named. Did you know that?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And did you know that I was fifteen?”
“That as well, my lord.” He smiled.
Jaime hated that smile. “I was better than you, Ser Loras. I was bigger, I was stronger, and I was quicker.”
“And now you’re older,” the boy said. “My lord.”
He had to laugh. This is too absurd. Tyrion would mock me unmercifully if he could hear me now, comparing cocks with this green boy. “Older and wiser, ser. You should learn from me.”
“As you learned from Ser Boros and Ser Meryn?”
That arrow hit too close to the mark. “I learned from the White Bull and Barristan the Bold,” Jaime snapped. “I learned from Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, who could have slain all five of you with his left hand while he was taking a piss with the right. I learned from Prince Lewyn of Dorne and Ser Oswell Whent and Ser Jonothor Darry, good men every one.”
“Dead men, every one.”
He’s me, Jaime realized suddenly. I am speaking to myself, as I was, all cocksure arrogance and empty chivalry. This is what it does to you, to be too good too young.
As in a swordfight, sometimes it is best to try a different stroke. “It’s said you fought magnificently in the battle… almost as well as Lord Renly’s ghost beside you. A Sworn Brother has no secrets from his Lord Commander. Tell me, ser. Who was wearing Renly’s armor?”
For a moment Loras Tyrell looked as though he might refuse, but in the end he remembered his vows. “My brother,” he said sullenly. “Renly was taller than me, and broader in the chest. His armor was too loose on me, but it suited Garlan well.”
“Was the masquerade your notion, or his?”
“Lord Littlefinger suggested it. He said it would frighten Stannis’s ignorant men-at-arms.”
“And so it did.” And some knights and lordlings too. “Well, you gave the singers something to make rhymes about, I suppose that’s not to be despised. What did you do with Renly?”
“I buried him with mine own hands, in a place he showed me once when I was a squire at Storm’s End. No one shall ever find him there to disturb his rest.” He looked at Jaime defiantly. “I will defend King Tommen with all my strength, I swear it. I will give my life for his if need be. But I will never betray Renly, by word or deed. He was the king that should have been. He was the best of them.”
The best dressed perhaps, Jaime thought, but for once he did not say it. The arrogance had gone out of Ser Loras the moment he began to speak of Renly. He answered truly. He is proud and reckless and full of piss, but he is not false. Not yet. “As you say. One more thing, and you may return to your duties.”
“Yes, my lord?”
“I still have Brienne of Tarth in a tower cell.”
The boy’s mouth hardened. “A black cell would be better.”
“You are certain that’s what she deserves?”
“She deserves death. I told Renly that a woman had no place in the Rainbow Guard. She won the mêlée with a trick.”
“I seem to recall another knight who was fond of tricks. He once rode a mare in heat against a foe mounted on a bad-tempered stallion. What sort of trickery did Brienne use?”
Ser Loras flushed. “She leapt… it makes no matter. She won, I grant her that. His Grace put a rainbow cloak around her shoulders. And she killed him. Or let him die.”
“A large difference there.” The difference between my crime and the shame of Boros Blount.
“She had sworn to protect him. Ser Emmon Cuy, Ser Robar Royce, Ser Parmen Crane, they’d sworn as well. How could anyone have hurt him, with her inside his tent and the others just outside? Unless they were part of it.”
“There were five of you at the wedding feast,” Jaime pointed out. “How could Joffrey die? Unless you were part of it?”
Ser Loras drew himself up stiffly. “There was nothing we could have done.”
“The wench says the same. She grieves for Renly as you do. I promise you, I never grieve for Aerys. Brienne’s ugly, and pighead stubborn. But she lacks the wits to be a liar, and she is loyal past the point of sense. She swore an oath to bring me to King’s Landing, and here I sit. This hand I lost… well, that was my doing as much as hers. Considering all she did to protect me, I have no doubt that she would have fought for Renly, had there been a foe to fight. But a shadow?” Jaime shook his head. “Draw your sword, Ser Loras. Show me how you’d fight a shadow. I should like to see that.”
Ser Loras made no move to rise. “She fled,” he said. “She and Catelyn Stark, they left him in his blood and ran. Why would they, if it was not their work?” He stared at the table. “Renly gave me the van. Otherwise it would have been me helping him don his armor. He often entrusted that task to me. We had… we had prayed together that night. I left him with her. Ser Parmen and Ser Emmon were guarding the tent, and Ser Robar Royce was there as well. Ser Emmon swore Brienne had… although…”
“Yes?” Jaime prompted, sensing a doubt.
“The gorget was cut through. One clean stroke, through a steel gorget. Renly’s armor was the best, the finest steel. How could she do that? I tried myself, and it was not possible. She’s freakish strong for a woman, but even the Mountain would have needed a heavy axe. And why armor him and then cut his throat?” He gave Jaime a confused look. “If not her, though… how could it be a shadow?”
“Ask her.” Jaime came to a decision. “Go to her cell. Ask your questions and hear her answers. If you are still convinced that she murdered Lord Renly, I will see that she answers for it. The choice will be yours. Accuse her, or release her. All I ask is that you judge her fairly, on your honor as a knight.”
Ser Loras stood. “I shall. On my honor.”
“We are done, then.”
The younger man started for the door. But there he turned back. “Renly thought she was absurd. A woman dressed in man’s mail, pretending to be a knight.”
“If he’d ever seen her in pink satin and Myrish lace, he would not have complained.”
“I asked him why he kept her close, if he thought her so grotesque. He said that all his other knights wanted things of him, castles or honors or riches, but all that Brienne wanted was to die for him. When I saw him all bloody, with her fled and the three of them unharmed… if she’s innocent, then Robar and Emmon…” He could not seem to say the words.
Jaime had not stopped to consider that aspect of it. “I would have done the same, ser.” The lie came easy, but Ser Loras seemed grateful for it.
When he was gone, the Lord Commander sat alone in the white room, wondering. The Knight of Flowers had been so mad with grief for Renly that he had cut down two of his own Sworn Brothers, but it had never occurred to Jaime to do the same with the five who had failed Joffrey. He was my son, my secret son… What am I, if I do not lift the hand I have left to avenge mine own blood and seed? He ought to kill Ser Boros at least, just to be rid of him.
He looked at his stump and grimaced. I must do something about that. If the late Ser Jacelyn Bywater could wear an iron hand, he should have a gold one. Cersei might like that. A golden hand to stroke her golden hair, and hold her hard against me.
His hand could wait, though. There were other things to tend to first. There were other debts to pay.
SANSA
The ladder to the forecastle was steep and splintery, so Sansa accepted a hand up from Lothor Brune. Ser Lothor, she had to remind herself; the man had been knighted for his valor in the Battle of the Blackwater. Though no proper knight would wear those patched brown breeches and scuffed boots, nor that cracked and water-stained leather jerkin. A square-faced stocky man with a squashed nose and a mat of nappy grey hair, Brune spoke seldom. He is stronger than he looks, though. She could tell by the ease with which he lifted her, as if she weighed nothing at all.
Off the bow of the Merling King stretched a bare and stony strand, windswept, treeless, and uninviting. Even so, it made a welcome sight. They had been a long while clawing their way back on course. The last storm had swept them out of sight of land, and sent such waves crashing over the sides of the galley that Sansa had been certain they were all going to drown. Two men had been swept overboard, she had heard old Oswell saying, and another had fallen from the mast and broken his neck.
She had seldom ventured out on deck herself. Her little cabin was dank and cold, but Sansa had been sick for most of the voyage… sick with terror, sick with fever, or seasick… she could keep nothing down, and even sleep came hard. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw Joffrey tearing at his collar, clawing at the soft skin of his throat, dying with flakes of pie crust on his lips and wine stains on his doublet. And the wind keening in the lines reminded her of the terrible thin sucking sound he’d made as he fought to draw in air. Sometimes she dreamed of Tyrion as well. “He did nothing,” she told Littlefinger once, when he paid a visit to her cabin to see if she were feeling any better.
“He did not kill Joffrey, true, but the dwarf’s hands are far from clean. He had a wife before you, did you know that?”
“He told me.”
“And did he tell you that when he grew bored with her, he made a gift of her to his father’s guardsmen? He might have done the same to you, in time. Shed no tears for the Imp, my lady.”
The wind ran salty fingers through her hair, and Sansa shivered. Even this close to shore, the rolling of the ship made her tummy queasy. She desperately needed a bath and a change of clothes. I must look as haggard as a corpse, and smell of vomit.
Lord Petyr came up beside her, cheerful as ever. “Good morrow. The salt air is bracing, don’t you think? It always sharpens my appetite.” He put a sympathetic arm about her shoulders. “Are you quite well? You look so pale.”
“It’s only my tummy. The seasickness.”
“A little wine will be good for that. We’ll get you a cup, as soon as we’re ashore.” Petyr pointed to where an old flint tower stood outlined against a bleak grey sky, the breakers crashing on the rocks beneath it. “Cheerful, is it not? I fear there’s no safe anchorage here. We’ll put ashore in a boat.”
“Here?” She did not want to go ashore here. The Fingers were a dismal place, she’d heard, and there was something forlorn and desolate about the little tower. “Couldn’t I stay on the ship until we make sail for White Harbor?”
“From here the King turns east for Braavos. Without us.”
“But… my lord, you said… you said we were sailing home.”
“And there it stands, miserable as it is. My ancestral home. It has no name, I fear. A great lord’s seat ought to have a name, wouldn’t you agree? Winterfell, the Eyrie, Riverrun, those are castles. Lord of Harrenhal now, that has a sweet ring to it, but what was I before? Lord of Sheepshit and Master of the Drearfort? It lacks a certain something.” His grey-green eyes regarded her innocently. “You look distraught. Did you think we were making for Winterfell, sweetling? Winterfell has been taken, burned, and sacked. All those you knew and loved are dead. What northmen who have not fallen to the ironmen are warring amongst themselves. Even the Wall is under attack. Winterfell was the home of your childhood, Sansa, but you are no longer a child. You’re a woman grown, and you need to make your own home.”
“But not here,” she said, dismayed. “It looks so…”
“… small and bleak and mean? It’s all that, and less. The Fingers are a lovely place, if you happen to be a stone. But have no fear, we shan’t stay more than a fortnight. I expect your aunt is already riding to meet us.” He smiled. “The Lady Lysa and I are to be wed.”
“Wed?” Sansa was stunned. “You and my aunt?”
“The Lord of Harrenhal and the Lady of the Eyrie.”
You said it was my mother you loved. But of course Lady Catelyn was dead, so even if she had loved Petyr secretly and given him her maidenhood, it made no matter now.
“So silent, my lady?” said Petyr. “I was certain you would wish to give me your blessing. It is a rare thing for a boy born heir to stones and sheep pellets to wed the daughter of Hoster Tully and the widow of Jon Arryn.”
“I… I pray you will have long years together, and many children, and be very happy in one another.” It had been years since Sansa last saw her mother’s sister. She will be kind to me for my mother’s sake, surely. She’s my own blood. And the Vale of Arryn was beautiful, all the songs said so. Perhaps it would not be so terrible to stay here for a time.
Lothor and old Oswell rowed them ashore. Sansa huddled in the bow under her cloak with the hood drawn up against the wind, wondering what awaited her. Servants emerged from the tower to meet them; a thin old woman and a fat middle-aged one, two ancient white-haired men, and a girl of two or three with a sty on one eye. When they recognized Lord Petyr they knelt on the rocks. “My household,” he said. “I don’t know the child. Another of Kella’s bastards, I suppose. She pops one out every few years.”
The two old men waded out up to their thighs to lift Sansa from the boat so she would not get her skirts wet. Oswell and Lothor splashed their way ashore, as did Littlefinger himself. He gave the old woman a kiss on the cheek and grinned at the younger one. “Who fathered this one, Kella?”
The fat woman laughed. “I can’t rightly say, m’lord. I’m not one for telling them no.”
“And all the local lads are grateful, I am quite sure.”
“It is good to have you home, my lord,” said one old man. He looked to be at least eighty, but he wore a studded brigantine and a longsword at his side. “How long will you be in residence?”
“As short a time as possible, Bryen, have no fear. Is the place habitable just now, would you say?”
“If we knew you was coming we would have laid down fresh rushes, m’lord,” said the crone. “There’s a dung fire burning.”
“Nothing says home like the smell of burning dung.” Petyr turned to Sansa. “Grisel was my wet nurse, but she keeps my castle now. Umfred’s my steward, and Bryen — didn’t I name you captain of the guard the last time I was here?”
“You did, my lord. You said you’d be getting some more men too, but you never did. Me and the dogs stand all the watches.”
“And very well, I’m sure. No one has made off with any of my rocks or sheep pellets, I see that plainly.” Petyr gestured toward the fat woman. “Kella minds my vast herds. How many sheep do I have at present, Kella?”
She had to think a moment. “Three and twenty, m’lord. There was nine and twenty, but Bryen’s dogs killed one and we butchered some others and salted down the meat.”
“Ah, cold salt mutton. I must be home. When I break my fast on gulls’ eggs and seaweed soup, I’ll be certain of it.”
“If you like, m’lord,” said the old woman Grisel.
Lord Petyr made a face. “Come, let’s see if my hall is as dreary as I recall.” He led them up the strand over rocks slick with rotting seaweed. A handful of sheep were wandering about the base of the flint tower, grazing on the thin grass that grew between the sheepfold and thatched stable. Sansa had to step carefully; there were pellets everywhere.
Within, the tower seemed even smaller. An open stone stair wound round the inside wall, from undercroft to roof. Each floor was but a single room. The servants lived and slept in the kitchen at ground level, sharing the space with a huge brindled mastiff and a half-dozen sheep-dogs. Above that was a modest hall, and higher still the bedchamber. There were no windows, but arrowslits were embedded in the outer wall at intervals along the curve of the stair. Above the hearth hung a broken longsword and a battered oaken shield, its paint cracked and flaking.
The device painted on the shield was one Sansa did not know; a grey stone head with fiery eyes, upon a light green field. “My grandfather’s shield,” Petyr explained when he saw her gazing at it. “His own father was born in Braavos and came to the Vale as a sellsword in the hire of Lord Corbray, so my grandfather took the head of the Titan as his sigil when he was knighted.”
“It’s very fierce,” said Sansa.
“Rather too fierce, for an amiable fellow like me,” said Petyr. “I much prefer my mockingbird.”
Oswell made two more trips out to the Merling King to offload provisions. Among the loads he brought ashore were several casks of wine. Petyr poured Sansa a cup, as promised. “Here, my lady, that should help your tummy, I would hope.”
Having solid ground beneath her feet had helped already, but Sansa dutifully lifted the goblet with both hands and took a sip. The wine was very fine; an Arbor vintage, she thought. It tasted of oak and fruit and hot summer nights, the flavors blossoming in her mouth like flowers opening to the sun. She only prayed that she could keep it down. Lord Petyr was being so kind, she did not want to spoil it all by retching on him.
He was studying her over his own goblet, his bright grey-green eyes full of… was it amusement? Or something else? Sansa was not certain. “Grisel,” he called to the old woman, “bring some food up. Nothing too heavy, my lady has a tender tummy. Some fruit might serve, perhaps. Oswell’s brought some oranges and pomegranates from the King.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
“Might I have a hot bath as well?” asked Sansa.
“I’ll have Kella draw some water, m’lady.”
Sansa took another sip of wine and tried to think of some polite conversation, but Lord Petyr saved her the effort. When Grisel and the other servants had gone, he said, “Lysa will not come alone. Before she arrives, we must be clear on who you are.”
“Who I… I don’t understand.”
“Varys has informers everywhere. If Sansa Stark should be seen in the Vale, the eunuch will know within a moon’s turn, and that would create unfortunate… complications. It is not safe to be a Stark just now. So we shall tell Lysa’s people that you are my natural daughter.”
“Natural?” Sansa was aghast. “You mean, a bastard?”
“Well, you can scarcely be my trueborn daughter. I’ve never taken a wife,