A Feast for Dragons

guards,” said Ser Osmund. “Lum. He felt a call
of nature, and found his lordship in the privy.”
    No, that cannot be. That is not the way a lion dies. The queen felt strangely calm. She remembered the first time she had lost a
tooth, when she was just a little girl. It hadn’t hurt, but the hole in her
mouth felt so odd she could not stop touching it with her tongue. Now there
is a hole in the world where Father stood, and holes want filling.
    If Tywin Lannister was truly dead, no one was safe . . .
least of all her son upon his throne. When the lion falls the lesser beasts
move in: the jackals and the vultures and the feral dogs. They would try to
push her aside, as they always had. She would need to move quickly, as she had
when Robert died. This might be the work of Stannis Baratheon, through some
catspaw. It could well be the prelude to another attack upon the city. She
hoped it was. Let him come. I will smash him, just as Father did, and this
time he will die. Stannis did not frighten her, no more than Mace Tyrell
did. No one frightened her. She was a daughter of the Rock, a lion. There
will be no more talk of forcing me to wed again. Casterly Rock was hers
now, and all the power of House Lannister. No one would ever disregard her
again. Even when Tommen had no further need of a regent, the Lady of Casterly
Rock would remain a power in the land.
    The rising sun had painted the tower tops a vivid red, but
beneath the walls the night still huddled. The outer castle was so hushed that
she could have believed all its people dead. They should be. It is not
fitting for Tywin Lannister to die alone. Such a man deserves a retinue to
attend his needs in hell.
    Four spearmen in red cloaks and lion-crested helms were
posted at the door of the Tower of the Hand. “No one is to enter or leave
without my permission,” she told them. The command came easily to her. My father
had steel in his voice as well.
    Within the tower, the smoke from the torches irritated her
eyes, but Cersei did not weep, no more than her father would have. I am the
only true son he ever had. Her heels scraped against the stone as she
climbed, and she could still hear the moth fluttering wildly inside Ser
Osmund’s lantern. Die, the queen thought at it, in irritation, fly
into the flame and be done with it.
    Two more red-cloaked guardsmen stood atop the steps. Red
Lester muttered a condolence as she passed. The queen’s breath was coming fast
and short, and she could feel her heart fluttering in her chest. The steps, she told herself, this cursed tower has too many steps. She had half a
mind to tear it down.
    The hall was full of fools speaking in whispers, as if Lord
Tywin were asleep and they were afraid to wake him. Guards and servants alike
shrank back before her, mouths flapping. She saw their pink gums and waggling
tongues, but their words made no more sense than the buzzing of the moth. What
are they doing here? How did they know? By rights they should have called
her first. She was the Queen Regent, had they forgotten that?
    Before the Hand’s bedchamber stood Ser Meryn Trant in his
white armor and cloak. The visor of his helm was open, and the bags beneath his
eyes made him look still half-asleep. “Clear these people away,” Cersei told
him. “Is my father in the privy?”
    “They carried him back to his bed, m’lady.” Ser Meryn pushed
the door open for her to enter.
    Morning light slashed through the shutters to paint golden
bars upon the rushes strewn across the floor of the bedchamber. Her uncle Kevan
was on his knees beside the bed, trying to pray, but he could scarcely get the
words out. Guardsmen clustered near the hearth. The secret door that Ser Osmund
had spoken of gaped open behind the ashes, no bigger than an oven. A man would
need to crawl. But Tyrion is only half a man. The thought made her
angry. No, the dwarf is locked in a black cell. This could not be his
work. Stannis, she told herself, Stannis was behind it. He still has
adherents in the city. Him, or the Tyrells . . .
    There had always been talk of secret passages within the Red
Keep. Maegor the Cruel was supposed to have killed the men who built the castle
to keep the knowledge of them secret. How many other bedchambers have hidden
doors? Cersei had a sudden vision of the dwarf crawling out from behind a
tapestry in Tommen’s bedchamber with blade in hand. Tommen is well guarded, she told herself. But Lord Tywin had been well guarded too.
    For a moment