A Dance With Dragons

Kingsguard were permitted swords in Tommen’s presence.
    Ser Boros Blount was in attendance on the boy king and his mother when Ser Kevan entered the royal chambers. Blount wore enameled scale, white cloak, and halfhelm. He did not look well. Of late Boros had grown notably heavier about the face and belly, and his color was not good. And he was leaning against the wall behind him, as if standing had become too great an effort for him.
    The meal was served by three novices, well-scrubbed girls of good birth between the ages of twelve and sixteen. In their soft white woolens, each seemed more innocent and unworldly than the last, yet the High Septon had insisted that no girl spend more than seven days in the queen’s service, lest Cersei corrupt her. They tended the queen’s wardrobe, drew her bath, poured her wine, changed her bedclothes of a morning. One shared the queen’s bed every night, to ascertain she had no other company; the other two slept in an adjoining chamber with the septa who looked over them.
    A tall stork of a girl with a pockmarked face escorted him into the royal presence. Cersei rose when he entered and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Dear uncle. It is so good of you to sup with us.” The queen was dressed as modestly as any matron, in a dark brown gown that buttoned up to her throat and a hooded green mantle that covered her shaved head. Before her walk she would have flaunted her baldness beneath a golden crown. “Come, sit,” she said. “Will you have wine?”
    “A cup.” He sat, still wary.
    A freckled novice filled their cups with hot spiced wine. “Tommen tells me that Lord Tyrell intends to rebuild the Tower of the Hand,” Cersei said.
    Ser Kevan nodded. “The new tower will be twice as tall as the one you burned, he says.”
    Cersei gave a throaty laugh. “Long lances, tall towers … is Lord Tyrell hinting at something?”
    That made him smile. It is good that she still remembers how to laugh. When he asked if she had all that she required, the queen said, “I am well served. The girls are sweet, and the good septas make certain that I say my prayers. But once my innocence is proved, it would please me if Taena Merryweather might attend me once again. She could bring her son to court. Tommen needs other boys about him, friends of noble birth.”
    It was a modest request. Ser Kevan saw no reason why it should not be granted. He could foster the Merryweather boy himself, whilst Lady Taena accompanied Cersei back to Casterly Rock. “I will send for her after the trial,” he promised.
    Supper began with beef-and-barley soup, followed by a brace of quail and a roast pike near three feet long, with turnips, mushrooms, and plenty of hot bread and butter. Ser Boros tasted every dish that was set before the king. A humiliating duty for a knight of the Kingsguard, but perhaps all Blount was capable of these days … and wise, after the way Tommen’s brother had died.
    The king seemed happier than Kevan Lannister had seen him in a long time. From soup to sweet Tommen burbled about the exploits of his kittens, whilst feeding them morsels of pike off his own royal plate. “The bad cat was outside my window last night,” he informed Kevan at one point, “but Ser Pounce hissed at him and he ran off across the roofs.”
    “The bad cat?” Ser Kevan said, amused. He is a sweet boy. “An old black tomcat with a torn ear,” Cersei told him. “A filthy thing, and foul-tempered. He clawed Joff’s hand once.” She made a face. “The cats keep the rats down, I know, but that one … he’s been known to attack ravens in the rookery.”
    “I will ask the ratters to set a trap for him.” Ser Kevan could not remember ever seeing his niece so quiet, so subdued, so demure. All for the good, he supposed. But it made him sad as well. Her fire is quenched, she who used to burn so bright. “You have not asked about your brother,” he said, as they were waiting for the cream cakes. Cream cakes were the king’s favorite.
    Cersei lifted her chin, her green eyes shining in the candlelight. “Jaime? Have you had word?”
    “None. Cersei, you may need to prepare yourself for—”
    “If he were dead, I would know it. We came into this world together, Uncle. He would not go without me.” She took a drink of wine. “Tyrion can leave whenever he wishes. You have had no word of him either, I suppose.”
    “No one has tried to sell us a dwarf’s head of late, no.”
    She nodded.