A Feast for Dragons

Shadows loomed
around her bed, tall shapes with chainmail glimmering beneath their cloaks.
Armed men had no business here. Where are my guards? Her bedchamber was
dark, but for the lantern one of the intruders held on high. I must show no
fear. Cersei pushed back sleep-tousled hair, and said, “What do you want of
me?” A man stepped into the lantern light, and she saw his cloak was white.
“Jaime?” I dreamt of one brother, but the other has come to wake me.
    “Your Grace.” The voice was not her brother’s. “The Lord
Commander said come get you.” His hair curled, as Jaime’s did, but her
brother’s hair was beaten gold, like hers, where this man’s was black and oily.
She stared at him, confused, as he muttered about a privy and a crossbow, and
said her father’s name. I am dreaming still, Cersei thought. I have
not woken, nor has my nightmare ended. Tyrion will creep out from under the bed
soon and begin to laugh at me.
    But that was folly. Her dwarf brother was down in the black
cells, condemned to die this very day. She looked down at her hands, turning
them over to make certain all her fingers were still there. When she ran a hand
down her arm the skin was covered with gooseprickles, but unbroken. There were
no cuts on her legs, no gashes on the soles of her feet. A dream, that’s all
it was, a dream. I drank too much last night, these fears are only humors born
of wine. I will be the one laughing, come dusk. My children will be safe,
Tommen’s throne will be secure, and my twisted little valonqar will be
short a head and rotting.
    Jocelyn Swyft was at her elbow, pressing a cup on her.
Cersei took a sip: water, mixed with lemon squeezings, so tart she spit it out.
She could hear the night wind rattling the shutters, and she saw with a strange
sharp clarity. Jocelyn was trembling like a leaf, as frightened as Senelle. Ser
Osmund Kettleblack loomed over her. Behind him stood Ser Boros Blount, with a
lantern. At the door were Lannister guardsmen with gilded lions shining on the
crests of their helmets. They looked afraid as well. Can it be? the
queen wondered. Can it be true?
    She rose, and let Senelle slip a bedrobe over her shoulders
to hide her nakedness. Cersei belted it herself, her fingers stiff and clumsy.
“My lord father keeps guards about him, night and day,” she said. Her tongue
felt thick. She took another swallow of lemon water and sloshed it round her
mouth to freshen her breath. A moth had gotten into the lantern Ser Boros was
holding; she could hear it buzzing and see the shadow of its wings as it beat
against the glass.
    “The guards were at their posts, Your Grace,” said Osmund
Kettleblack. “We found a hidden door behind the hearth. A secret passage. The
Lord Commander’s gone down to see where it goes.”
    “Jaime?” Terror seized her, sudden as a storm. “Jaime should
be with the king . . .”
    “The lad’s not been harmed. Ser Jaime sent a dozen men to
look in on him. His Grace is sleeping peaceful.”
    Let him have a sweeter dream than mine, and a kinder waking.
“Who is with the king?”
    “Ser Loras has that honor, if it please you.”
    It did not please her. The Tyrells were only stewards that
the dragon-kings had upjumped far above their station. Their vanity was
exceeded only by their ambition. Ser Loras might be as pretty as a maiden’s
dream, but underneath his white cloak he was Tyrell to the bone. For all she
knew, this night’s foul fruit had been planted and nurtured in Highgarden.
    But that was a suspicion she dare not speak aloud. “Allow me
a moment to dress. Ser Osmund, you shall accompany me to the Tower of the Hand.
Ser Boros, roust the gaolers and make certain the dwarf is still in his cell.”
She would not say his name. He would never have found the courage to lift a hand
against Father, she told herself, but she had to be certain.
    “As Your Grace commands.” Blount surrendered the lantern to
Ser Osmund. Cersei was not displeased to see the back of him. Father should
never have restored him to the white. The man had proved himself a craven.
    By the time they left Maegor’s Holdfast, the sky had turned
a deep cobalt blue, though the stars still shone. All but one, Cersei
thought. The bright star of the west has fallen, and the nights will be
darker now. She paused upon the drawbridge that spanned the dry moat,
gazing down at the spikes below. They would not dare lie to me about such a
thing. “Who found him?”
    “One of his