A Feast for Dragons

of his own cock. Once, she
recalled, he had expelled all the whores from King’s Landing. He prayed for
them as they were driven from the city gates, the histories said, but would not
look at them.
    “Harlot,” a voice screamed. Another woman. Something flew
out of the crowd. Some rotted vegetable. Brown and oozing, it sailed above her
head to splash at the foot of one of the Poor Fellows.
I am not afraid.
I am a lioness
. She walked on. “Hot pies,” the baker’s boy was crying.
“Getcha hot pies here.” Septa Scolera rang her bell, singing,
“Shame, shame,
shame upon the sinner, shame, shame.”
The Poor Fellows went before
them, forcing men aside with their shields, walling off a narrow path. Cersei
followed where they led, her head held stiffly, her eyes on the far distance.
Every step brought the Red Keep nearer. Every step brought her closer to her
son and her salvation.
    It seemed to take a hundred years to cross the plaza, but
finally marble gave way to cobblestones beneath her feet, shops and stables and
houses closed in all around them, and they began the descent of Visenya’s Hill.
    The going was slower here. The street was steep and narrow,
the crowds jammed together tightly. The Poor Fellows shoved at those who
blocked the way, trying to move them aside, but there was nowhere to go, and
those in the back of the crowd were shoving back. Cersei tried to keep her head
up, only to step in something slick and wet that made her slip. She might have
fallen, but Septa Unella caught her arm and kept her on her feet. “Your Grace
should watch where she sets her feet.”
    Cersei wrenched herself free. “Yes, septa,” she said in a
meek voice, though she was angry enough to spit. The queen walked on, clad only
in gooseprickles and pride. She looked for the Red Keep, but it was hidden now,
walled off from her gaze by the tall timbered buildings to either side.
“Shame,
shame,”
sang Septa Scolera, her bell clanging. Cersei tried to walk
faster, but soon came up against the backs of the Stars in front of her and had
to slow her steps again. A man just ahead was selling skewers of roast meat
from a cart, and the procession halted as the Poor Fellows moved him out of the
way. The meat looked suspiciously like rat to Cersei’s eyes, but the smell of
it filled the air, and half the men around them were gnawing away with sticks in
hand by the time the street was clear enough for her to resume her trek. “Want
some, Your Grace?” one man called out. He was a big, burly brute with pig eyes,
a massive gut, and an unkempt black beard that reminded her of Robert. When she
looked away in disgust, he flung the skewer at her. It struck her on the leg
and tumbled to the street, and the half-cooked meat left a smear of grease and
blood down her thigh.
    The shouting seemed louder here than on the plaza, perhaps
because the mob was so much closer. “Whore” and “sinner” were most common, but
“brotherfucker” and “cunt” and “traitor” were flung at her as well, and now and
again she heard someone shout out for Stannis or Margaery. The cobbles
underfoot were filthy, and there was so little space that the queen could not
even walk around the puddles.
No one has ever died of wet feet
,
she told herself. She wanted to believe the puddles were just rainwater, though
horse piss was just as likely.
    More refuse showered down from windows and balconies:
half-rotted fruit, pails of beer, eggs that exploded into sulfurous stink when
they cracked open on the ground. Then someone flung a dead cat over the Poor
Fellows and Warrior’s Sons alike. The carcass hit the cobbles so hard that it
burst open, spattering her lower legs with entrails and maggots.
    Cersei walked on.
I am blind and deaf, and they are
worms
, she told herself.
“Shame, shame,”
the septas
sang. “Chestnuts, hot roast chestnuts,” a peddler cried. “Queen Cunt,” a
drunkard pronounced solemnly from a balcony above, lifting his cup to her in a
mocking toast. “All hail the royal teats!”
Words are wind
,
Cersei thought.
Words cannot harm me
.
    Halfway down Visenya’s Hill the queen fell for the first
time, when her foot slipped in something that might have been nightsoil. When
Septa Unella pulled her up, her knee was scraped and bloody. A ragged laugh
rippled through the crowd, and some man shouted out an offer to kiss it and
make it better. Cersei looked behind her. She could still see the great dome
and seven crystal towers of the