A Feast for Dragons

the sky above the city on the
day her father’s bones went west. Between coughs, Lord Gyles told her that he
had hired a master stonecarver to make a statue of Lord Tywin, to stand eternal
vigil beside the Lion Gate. Ser Lambert Turnberry appeared with a patch over
his right eye, swearing that he would wear it until he could bring her the head
of her dwarf brother.
    No sooner had the queen escaped the clutches of that fool
than she found herself cornered by Lady Falyse of Stokeworth and her husband,
Ser Balman Byrch. “My lady mother sends her regrets, Your Grace,” Falyse
burbled at her. “Lollys has been taken to bed with the child and she felt the
need to stay with her. She begs that you forgive her, and said I should ask you
. . . my mother admired your late father above all other men. Should my sister
have a little boy, it is her wish that we might name him Tywin, if . . . if it
please you.”
    Cersei stared at her, aghast. “Your lackwit sister gets
herself raped by half of King’s Landing, and Tanda thinks to honor the bastard
with my lord father’s name? I think not.”
    Falyse flinched back as if she’d been slapped, but her
husband only stroked his thick blond mustache with a thumb. “I told Lady Tanda
as much. We shall find a more, ah . . . a more fitting name for Lollys’s
bastard, you have my word.”
    “See that you do.” Cersei showed them a shoulder and moved
away. Tommen had fallen into the clutches of Margaery Tyrell and her
grandmother, she saw. The Queen of Thorns was so short that for an instant
Cersei took her for another child. Before she could rescue her son from the
roses, the press brought her face-to-face with her uncle. When the queen
reminded him of their meeting later, Ser Kevan gave a weary nod and begged
leave to withdraw. But Lancel lingered, the very picture of a man with one foot
in the grave. But is he climbing in or climbing out?
    Cersei forced herself to smile. “Lancel, I am happy to see
you looking so much stronger. Maester Ballabar brought us such dire reports, we
feared for your life. But I would have thought you on your way to Darry by now,
to take up your lordship.” Her father had made Lancel a lord after the Battle
of the Blackwater, as a sop to his brother Kevan.
    “Not as yet. There are outlaws in my castle.” Her cousin’s
voice was as wispy as the mustache on his upper lip. Though his hair had gone
white, his mustache fuzz remained a sandy color. Cersei had often gazed up at
it while the boy was inside her, pumping dutifully away. It looks like a
smudge of dirt on his lip. She used to threaten to scrub it off with a
little spit. “The riverlands have need of a strong hand, my father says.”
    A pity that they’re getting yours, she wanted to say.
Instead she smiled. “And you are to be wed as well.”
    A gloomy look passed across the young knight’s ravaged face.
“A Frey girl, and not of my choosing. She is not even maiden. A widow, of Darry
blood. My father says that will help me with the peasants, but the peasants are
all dead.” He reached for her hand. “It is cruel, Cersei. Your Grace knows that
I love—”
    “—House Lannister,” she finished for him. “No one can doubt
that, Lancel. May your wife give you strong sons.” Best not let her lord
grandfather host the wedding, though. “I know you will do many noble deeds
in Darry.”
    Lancel nodded, plainly miserable. “When it seemed that I
might die, my father brought the High Septon to pray for me. He is a good man.”
Her cousin’s eyes were wet and shiny, a child’s eyes in an old man’s face. “He
says the Mother spared me for some holy purpose, so I might atone for my sins.”
    Cersei wondered how he intended to atone for her. Knighting
him was a mistake, and bedding him a bigger one. Lancel was a weak reed, and
she liked his newfound piety not at all; he had been much more amusing when he
was trying to be Jaime. What has this mewling fool told the High Septon? And
what will he tell his little Frey when they lie together in the dark? If he
confessed to bedding Cersei, well, she could weather that. Men were always
lying about women; she would put it down as the braggadocio of a callow boy
smitten by her beauty. If he sings of Robert and the strongwine, though . .
. “ Atonement is best achieved through prayer,” Cersei told him. “ Silent prayer.” She left him to think about that and girded herself to face the Tyrell
host.
    Margaery embraced her like a sister, which