A Feast for Dragons

sense of how long she had been
imprisoned in this cell, high up in one of the seven towers of the Great Sept
of Baelor.
I will grow old and die here
, she thought,
despairing.
    Cersei could not allow that to happen. Her son had need of
her. The realm had need of her. She had to free herself, no matter what the
risk. Her world had shrunk to a cell six feet square, a chamber pot, a lumpy
pallet, and a brown wool blanket thin as hope that made her skin itch, but she
was still Lord Tywin’s heir, a daughter of the Rock.
    Exhausted by her lack of sleep, shivering from the cold that
stole into the tower cell each night, feverish and famished by turns, Cersei
came at last to know she must confess.
    That night, when Septa Unella came to wrench her out of
sleep, she found the queen waiting on her knees. “I have sinned,” said Cersei.
Her tongue was thick in her mouth, her lips raw and chapped. “I have sinned
most grievously. I see that now. How could I have been so blind for so long?
The Crone came to me with her lamp raised high, and by its holy light I saw the
road that I must walk. I want to be clean again. I want only absolution.
Please, good septa, I beg of you, take me to the High Septon so that I might
confess my crimes and fornications.”
    “I will tell him, Your Grace,” said Septa Unella. “His High
Holiness will be most pleased. Only through confession and true repentance may
our immortal souls be saved.”
    And for the rest of that long night they let her sleep.
Hours and hours of blessed sleep. The owl and the wolf and the nightingale
slipped by for once with their passage unseen and unremarked, whilst Cersei
dreamed a long sweet dream where Jaime was her husband and their son was still
alive.
    Come morning, the queen felt almost like herself again. When
her captors came for her, she made pious noises at them again and told them how
determined she was to confess her sins and be forgiven for all that she had
done.
    “We rejoice to hear it,” said Septa Moelle.
    “It will be a great weight off your soul,” said Septa
Scolera. “You will feel much better afterward, Your Grace.”
    Your Grace
. Those two simple words thrilled
her. During her long captivity, her gaolers had not oft bothered with even that
simple courtesy.
    “His High Holiness awaits,” said Septa Unella.
    Cersei lowered her head, humble and obedient. “Might I be
allowed to bathe first? I am in no fit state to attend him.”
    “You may wash later if His High Holiness allows,” said Septa
Unella. “It is the cleanliness of your immortal soul that should concern you
now, not such vanities of the flesh.”
    The three septas led her down the tower stairs, with Septa
Unella going before her and Septa Moelle and Septa Scolera at her heels, as if
they were afraid that she might try to flee. “It has been so long since I have
had a visitor,” Cersei murmured in a quiet voice as they made their descent.
“Is the king well? I ask only as a mother, fearful for her child.”
    “His Grace is in good health,” said Septa Scolera, “and well
protected, day and night. The queen is with him, always.”
    I am the queen!
She swallowed, smiled, and
said, “That is good to know. Tommen loves her so. I never believed those
terrible things that were being said of her.” Had Margaery Tyrell somehow
wriggled free of the accusations of fornication, adultery, and high treason?
“Was there a trial?”
    “Soon,” said Septa Scolera, “but her brother—”
    “Hush.”
Septa Unella turned to glare back
over her shoulder at Scolera. “You chatter too much, you foolish old woman. It
is not for us to speak of such things.”
    Scolera lowered her head. “Pray forgive me.”
    They made the rest of the descent in silence.
    The High Sparrow received her in his sanctum, an austere
seven-sided chamber where crudely carved faces of the Seven stared out from the
stone walls with expressions almost as sour and disapproving as His High
Holiness himself. When she entered, he was seated behind a rough-hewn table,
writing. The High Septon had not changed since the last time she had been in
his presence, the day he had her seized and imprisoned. He was still a scrawny
grey-haired man with a lean, hard, half-starved look, his face sharp-featured,
lined, his eyes suspicious. In place of the rich robes of his predecessors, he
wore a shapeless tunic of undyed wool that fell down to his ankles. “Your
Grace,” he said, by way of greeting. “I understand that you