A Feast for Dragons

felt no grief. Where are my tears?
Where is my rage? Jaime Lannister had never lacked for rage. “Father,” he
told the corpse, “it was you who told me that tears were a mark of weakness in
a man, so you cannot expect that I should cry for you.”
    A thousand lords and ladies had come that morning to file
past the bier, and several thousand smallfolk after noon. They wore somber
clothes and solemn faces, but Jaime suspected that many and more were secretly
delighted to see the great man brought low. Even in the west, Lord Tywin had
been more respected than beloved, and King’s Landing still remembered the Sack.
    Of all the mourners, Grand Maester Pycelle had seemed the
most distraught. “I have served six kings,” he told Jaime after the second
service, whilst sniffing doubtfully about the corpse, “but here before us lies
the greatest man I ever knew. Lord Tywin wore no crown, yet he was all a king
should be.”
    Without his beard, Pycelle looked not only old, but feeble. Shaving
him was the cruelest thing Tyrion could have done, thought Jaime, who knew
what it was to lose a part of yourself, the part that made you who you were.
Pycelle’s beard had been magnificent, white as snow and soft as lambswool, a
luxuriant growth that covered cheeks and chin and flowed down almost to his
belt. The Grand Maester had been wont to stroke it when he pontificated. It had
given him an air of wisdom, and concealed all manner of unsavory things: the
loose skin dangling beneath the old man’s jaw, the small querulous mouth and
missing teeth, warts and wrinkles and age spots too numerous to count. Though
Pycelle was trying to regrow what he had lost, he was failing. Only wisps and
tufts sprouted from his wrinkled cheeks and weak chin, so thin that Jaime could
see the splotchy pink skin beneath.
    “Ser Jaime, I have seen terrible things in my time,” the old
man said. “Wars, battles, murders most foul . . . I was a boy in Oldtown when
the grey plague took half the city and three-quarters of the Citadel. Lord
Hightower burned every ship in port, closed the gates, and commanded his guards
to slay all those who tried to flee, be they men, women, or babes in arms. They
killed him when the plague had run its course. On the very day he reopened the
port, they dragged him from his horse and slit his throat, and his young son’s
as well. To this day the ignorant in Oldtown will spit at the sound of his
name, but Quenton Hightower did what was needed. Your father was that sort of
man as well. A man who did what was needed.”
    “Is that why he looks so pleased with himself?”
    The vapors rising from the corpse were making Pycelle’s eyes
water. “The flesh . . . as the flesh dries, the muscles grow taut and pull his
lips upward. That is no smile, only a . . . a drying, that is all.” He blinked
back tears. “You must excuse me. I am so very tired.” Leaning heavily on his
cane, Pycelle tottered slowly from the sept. That one is dying too, Jaime realized. Small wonder Cersei called him useless.
    To be sure, his sweet sister seemed to think half the court
was either useless or treasonous; Pycelle, the Kingsguard, the Tyrells, Jaime
himself . . . even Ser Ilyn Payne, the silent knight who served as headsman. As
King’s Justice, the dungeons were his responsibility. Since he lacked a tongue,
Payne had largely left the running of those dungeons to his underlings, but
Cersei held him to blame for Tyrion’s escape all the same. It was my work,
not his, Jaime almost told her. Instead he had promised to find what
answers he could from the chief undergaoler, a bentback old man named Rennifer
Longwaters.
    “I see you wonder, what sort of name is that?” the man had
cackled when Jaime went to question him. “It is an old name, ’tis true. I am
not one to boast, but there is royal blood in my veins. I am descended from a
princess. My father told me the tale when I was a tad of a lad.” Longwaters had
not been a tad of a lad for many a year, to judge from his spotted head and the
white hairs growing from his chin. “She was the fairest treasure of the
Maidenvault. Lord Oakenfist the great admiral lost his heart to her, though he
was married to another. She gave their son the bastard name of ‘Waters’ in
honor of his father, and he grew to be a great knight, as did his own son, who
put the ‘Long’ before the ‘Waters’ so men might know that he was not basely
born himself. So I have a little dragon in me.”
    “Yes, I