A Feast for Dragons

seen no reason for Tommen to join them.
Kinder to let the boy remain with his mother. The Seven only knew how long
mother and son might have together before Cersei’s trial … and possibly
her execution.
    Mace Tyrell was speaking. “We shall deal with your uncle and
his feigned boy in due time.” The new King’s Hand was seated on an oaken throne
carved in the shape of a hand, an absurd vanity his lordship had produced the
day Ser Kevan agreed to grant him the office he coveted. “You will bide here
until we are ready to march. Then you shall have the chance to prove your
loyalty.”
    Ser Kevan took no issue with that. “Escort Ser Ronnet back
to his chambers,” he said.
And see that he remains there
went
unspoken. However loud his protestations, the Knight of Griffin’s Roost
remained suspect. Supposedly the sellswords who had landed in the south were
being led by one of his own blood.
    As the echoes of Connington’s footsteps faded away, Grand
Maester Pycelle gave a ponderous shake of his head. “His uncle once stood just
where the boy was standing now and told King Aerys how he would deliver him the
head of Robert Baratheon.”
    That is how it is when a man grows as old as Pycelle.
Everything you see or hear reminds you of something you saw or heard when you
were young
. “How many men-at-arms accompanied Ser Ronnet to the city?”
Ser Kevan asked.
    “Twenty,” said Lord Randyll Tarly, “and most of them Gregor
Clegane’s old lot. Your nephew Jaime gave them to Connington. To rid himself of
them, I’d wager. They had not been in Maidenpool a day before one killed a man
and another was accused of rape. I had to hang the one and geld the other. If
it were up to me, I would send them all to the Night’s Watch, and Connington
with them. The Wall is where such scum belong.”
    “A dog takes after its master,” declared Mace Tyrell. “Black
cloaks would suit them, I agree. I will not suffer such men in the city watch.”
A hundred of his own Highgarden men had been added to the gold cloaks, yet
plainly his lordship meant to resist any balancing infusion of westermen.
    The more I give him, the more he wants
.
Kevan Lannister was beginning to understand why Cersei had grown so resentful of
the Tyrells. But this was not the moment to provoke an open quarrel. Randyll
Tarly and Mace Tyrell had both brought armies to King’s Landing, whilst the
best part of the strength of House Lannister remained in the riverlands, fast
melting away. “The Mountain’s men were always fighters,” he said in a
conciliatory tone, “and we may have need of every sword against these
sellswords. If this truly is the Golden Company, as Qyburn’s whisperers
insist—”
    “Call them what you will,” said Randyll Tarly. “They are still
no more than adventurers.”
    “Perhaps,” Ser Kevan said. “But the longer we ignore these
adventurers, the stronger they grow. We have had a map prepared, a map of the
incursions. Grand Maester?”
    The map was beautiful, painted by a master’s hand on a sheet
of the finest vellum, so large it covered the table. “Here.” Pycelle pointed
with a spotted hand. Where the sleeve of his robe rode up, a flap of pale flesh
could be seen dangling beneath his forearm. “Here and here. All along the
coast, and on the islands. Tarth, the Stepstones, even Estermont. And now we
have reports that Connington is moving on Storm’s End.”
    “If it is Jon Connington,” said Randyll Tarly.
    “Storm’s End.” Lord Mace Tyrell grunted the words. “He
cannot take Storm’s End. Not if he were Aegon the Conqueror. And if he does,
what of it? Stannis holds it now. Let the castle pass from one pretender to
another, why should that trouble us? I shall recapture it after my daughter’s
innocence is proved.”
    How can you recapture it when you have never captured
it to begin with?
“I understand, my lord, but—”
    Tyrell did not let him finish. “These charges against my
daughter are filthy lies. I ask again,
why
must we play out
this mummer’s farce? Have King Tommen declare my daughter innocent, ser, and
put an end to the foolishness here and now.”
    Do that, and the whispers will follow Margaery the
rest of her life
. “No man doubts your daughter’s innocence, my lord,”
Ser Kevan lied, “but His High Holiness insists upon a trial.”
    Lord Randyll snorted. “What have we become, when kings and
high lords must dance to the twittering of sparrows?”
    “We have foes on every hand,