A Feast for Dragons

fingers. “I have always
abhorred the sight of my own blood.”
    “You’ll have more to abhor shortly, unless you help me.”
    Varys struggled to a sitting position. “Your brother . . .
if the Imp should vanish unaccountably from his cell, q-questions would be
asked. I would f-fear for my life . . .”
    “Your life is mine. I do not care what secrets you know. If
Tyrion dies, you will not long outlive him, I promise you.”
    “Ah.” The eunuch sucked the blood off his fingers. “You ask
a dreadful thing . . . to loose the Imp who slew our lovely king. Or is it that
you believe him innocent?”
    “Innocent or guilty,” Jaime had said, like the fool he was,
“a Lannister pays his debts.” The words had come so easy.
    He had not slept since. He could see his brother now, the
way the dwarf had grinned beneath the stub of his nose as the torchlight licked
his face. “You poor stupid blind crippled fool,” he’d snarled, in a voice thick
with malice. “Cersei is a lying whore, she’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund
Kettleblack and probably Moon Boy for all I know. And I am the monster they all
say I am. Yes, I killed your vile son.”
    He never said he meant to kill our father. If he had, I
would have stopped him. Then I would be the kinslayer, not him.
    Jaime wondered where Varys was hiding. Wisely, the master of
whisperers had not returned to his own chambers, nor had a search of the Red
Keep turned him up. It might be that the eunuch had taken ship with Tyrion,
rather than remain to answer awkward questions. If so, the two of them were
well out to sea by now, sharing a flagon of Arbor gold in the cabin of a
galley.
    Unless my brother murdered Varys too, and left his corpse
to rot beneath the castle. Down there, it might be years before his bones
were found. Jaime had led a dozen guards below, with torches and ropes and
lanterns. For hours they had groped through twisting passages, narrow crawl
spaces, hidden doors, secret steps, and shafts that plunged down into utter
blackness. Seldom had he felt so utterly a cripple. A man takes much for
granted when he has two hands. Ladders, for an instance. Even crawling did not
come easy; not for nought do they speak of hands and knees. Nor could he
hold a torch and climb, as others could.
    And all for naught. They found only darkness, dust, and
rats. And dragons, lurking down below. He remembered the sullen orange
glow of the coals in the iron dragon’s mouth. The brazier warmed a chamber at
the bottom of a shaft where half a dozen tunnels met. On the floor he’d found a
scuffed mosaic of the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen done in tiles of
black and red. I know you, Kingslayer, the beast seemed to be saying. I
have been here all the time, waiting for you to come to me. And it seemed
to Jaime that he knew that voice, the iron tones that had once belonged to
Rhaegar, Prince of Dragonstone.
    The day had been windy when he said farewell to Rhaegar, in
the yard of the Red Keep. The prince had donned his night-black armor, with the
three-headed dragon picked out in rubies on his breastplate. “Your Grace,”
Jaime had pleaded, “let Darry stay to guard the king this once, or Ser
Barristan. Their cloaks are as white as mine.”
    Prince Rhaegar shook his head. “My royal sire fears your
father more than he does our cousin Robert. He wants you close, so Lord Tywin
cannot harm him. I dare not take that crutch away from him at such an hour.”
    Jaime’s anger had risen up in his throat. “I am not a
crutch. I am a knight of the Kingsguard.”
    “Then guard the king,” Ser Jon Darry snapped at him. “When
you donned that cloak, you promised to obey.”
    Rhaegar had put his hand on Jaime’s shoulder. “When this battle’s
done I mean to call a council. Changes will be made. I meant to do it long ago,
but . . . well, it does no good to speak of roads not taken. We shall talk when
I return.”
    Those were the last words Rhaegar Targaryen ever spoke to
him. Outside the gates an army had assembled, whilst another descended on the
Trident. So the Prince of Dragonstone mounted up and donned his tall black
helm, and rode forth to his doom.
    He was more right than he knew. When the battle was done,
there were changes made. “Aerys thought no harm could come to him if he
kept me near,” he told his father’s corpse. “Isn’t that amusing?” Lord Tywin
seemed to think so; his smile was wider than before. He seems to enjoy being
dead.
    It was queer, but he