A Feast for Dragons

Harys did not look happy at the prospect. “If I must.
But I say again, this trouble is not of my doing.”
    “No. It was Cersei who decided that the Iron Bank would wait
for their due. Should I send her to Braavos?”
    Ser Harys blinked. “Her
Grace … that … that …”
    Ser Kevan rescued him. “That was a jape. A bad one. Go and
find a warm fire. I mean to do the same.” He yanked his gloves on and set off
across the yard, leaning hard into the wind as his cloak snapped and swirled
behind him.
    The dry moat surrounding Maegor’s Holdfast was three feet
deep in snow, the iron spikes that lined it glistening with frost. The only way
in or out of Maegor’s was across the drawbridge that spanned that moat. A
knight of the Kingsguard was always posted at its far end. Tonight the duty had
fallen to Ser Meryn Trant. With Balon Swann hunting the rogue knight Darkstar
down in Dorne, Loras Tyrell gravely wounded on Dragonstone, and Jaime vanished
in the riverlands, only four of the White Swords remained in King’s Landing,
and Ser Kevan had thrown Osmund Kettleblack (and his brother Osfryd) into the dungeon
within hours of Cersei’s confessing that she had taken both men as lovers. That
left only Trant, the feeble Boros Blount, and Qyburn’s mute monster Robert
Strong to protect the young king and royal family.
    I will need to find some new swords for the Kingsguard
.
Tommen should have seven good knights about him. In the past the Kingsguard had
served for life, but that had not stopped Joffrey from dismissing Ser Barristan
Selmy to make a place for his dog, Sandor Clegane. Kevan could make use of that
precedent.
I could put Lancel in a white cloak
, he reflected.
There
is more honor in that than he will ever find in the Warrior’s Sons
.
    Kevan Lannister hung his snow-sodden cloak inside his solar,
pulled off his boots, and commanded his serving man to fetch some fresh wood
for his fire. “A cup of mulled wine would go down well,” he said as he settled
by the hearth. “See to it.”
    The fire soon thawed him, and the wine warmed his insides
nicely. It also made him sleepy, so he dare not drink another cup. His day was
far from done. He had reports to read, letters to write.
And supper with
Cersei and the king
. His niece had been subdued and submissive since
her walk of atonement, thank the gods. The novices who attended her reported
that she spent a third of her waking hours with her son, another third in
prayer, and the rest in her tub. She was bathing four or five times a day,
scrubbing herself with horsehair brushes and strong lye soap, as if she meant
to scrape her skin off.
    She will never wash the stain away, no matter how
hard she scrubs
. Ser Kevan remembered the girl she once had been, so
full of life and mischief. And when she’d flowered, ahhhh … had there
ever been a maid so sweet to look upon?
If Aerys had agreed to marry her
to Rhaegar, how many deaths might have been avoided?
Cersei could have
given the prince the sons he wanted, lions with purple eyes and silver
manes … and with such a wife, Rhaegar might never have looked twice
at Lyanna Stark. The northern girl had a wild beauty, as he recalled, though
however bright a torch might burn it could never match the rising sun.
    But it did no good to brood on lost battles and roads not
taken. That was a vice of old done men. Rhaegar had wed Elia of Dorne, Lyanna
Stark had died, Robert Baratheon had taken Cersei to bride, and here they were.
And tonight his own road would take him to his niece’s chambers and
face-to-face with Cersei.
    I have no reason to feel guilty
, Ser Kevan
told himself.
Tywin would understand that, surely. It was his daughter
who brought shame down on our name, not I. What I did I did for the good of
House Lannister
.
    It was not as if his brother had never done the same. In
their father’s final years, after their mother’s passing, their sire had taken
the comely daughter of a candlemaker as mistress. It was not unknown for a
widowed lord to keep a common girl as bedwarmer … but Lord Tytos soon
began seating the woman beside him in the hall, showering her with gifts and
honors, even asking her views on matters of state. Within a year she was
dismissing servants, ordering about his household knights, even speaking for
his lordship when he was indisposed. She grew so influential that it was said
about Lannisport that any man who wished for his petition to be heard should
kneel before her and speak