A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

chastisement of Sansa Stark. “The dwarf asked His Grace if he knew what had happened to Aerys Targaryen. When Ser Boros spoke up in defense of the king, the Imp threatened to have him killed.”
    Blount himself came next, to echo
that
sorry tale. Whatever mislike Ser Boros might harbor toward Cersei for dismissing him from the Kingsguard, he said the words she wanted all the same.
    Tyrion could no longer hold his tongue. “Tell the judges what Joffrey was
doing
, why don’t you?”
    The big jowly man glared at him. “You told your savages to kill me if I opened my mouth, that’s what I’ll tell them.”
    â€œTyrion,” Lord Tywin said. “You are to speak only when we call upon you. Take this for a warning.”
    Tyrion subsided, seething.
    The Kettleblacks came next, all three of them in turn. Osney and Osfryd told the tale of his supper with Cersei before the Battle of the Blackwater, and of the threats he’d made.
    â€œHe told Her Grace that he meant to do her harm,” said Ser Osfryd. “To hurt her.” His brother Osney elaborated. “He said he would wait for a day when she was happy, and make her joy turn to ashes in her mouth.” Neither mentioned Alayaya.
    Ser Osmund Kettleblack, a vision of chivalry in immaculate scale armor and white wool cloak, swore that King Joffrey had long known that his uncle Tyrion meant to murder him. “It was the day they gave me the white cloak, my lords,” he told the judges. “That brave boy said to me, ‘Good Ser Osmund, guard me well, for my uncle loves me not. He means to be king in my place.’”
    That was more than Tyrion could stomach. “
Liar!
” He took two steps forward before the gold cloaks dragged him back.
    Lord Tywin frowned. “Must we have you chained hand and foot like a common brigand?”
    Tyrion gnashed his teeth.
A second mistake, fool, fool, fool of a dwarf. Keep your calm or you’re doomed
. “No. I beg your pardons, my lords. His lies angered me.”
    â€œHis truths, you mean,” said Cersei. “Father, I beg you to put him in fetters, for your own protection. You see how he is.”
    â€œI see he’s a dwarf,” said Prince Oberyn. “The day I fear a dwarf’s wrath is the day I drown myself in a cask of red.”
    â€œWe need no fetters.” Lord Tywin glanced at the windows, and rose. “The hour grows late. We shall resume on the morrow.”
    That night, alone in his tower cell with a blank parchment and a cup of wine, Tyrion found himself thinking of his wife. Not Sansa; his
first
wife, Tysha.
The whore wife, not the wolf wife
. Her love for him had been pretense, and yet he had believed, and found joy in that belief.
Give me sweet lies, and keep your bitter truths
. He drank his wine and thought of Shae. Later, when Ser Kevan paid his nightly visit, Tyrion asked for Varys.
    â€œYou believe the eunuch will speak in your defense?”
    â€œI won’t know until I have talked with him. Send him here, Uncle, if you would be so good.”
    â€œAs you wish.”
    Maesters Ballabar and Frenken opened the second day of trial. They had opened King Joffrey’s noble corpse as well, they swore, and found no morsel of pigeon pie nor any other food lodged in the royal throat. “It was poison that killed him, my lords,” said Ballabar, as Frenken nodded gravely.
    Then they brought forth Grand Maester Pycelle, leaning heavily on a twisted cane and shaking as he walked, a few white hairs sprouting from his long chicken’s neck. He had grown too frail to stand, so the judges permitted a chair to be brought in for him, and a table as well. On the table were laid a number of small jars. Pycelle was pleased to put a name to each.
    â€œGreycap,” he said in a quavery voice, “from the toadstool. Nightshade, sweetsleep, demon’s dance. This is blindeye. Widow’s blood, this one is called, for the color. A cruel potion. It shuts down a man’s bladder and bowels, until he drowns in his own poisons. This wolfsbane, here basilisk venom, and this one the tears of Lys. Yes. I know them all. The Imp Tyrion Lannister stole them from my chambers, when he had me falsely imprisoned.”
    â€œ
Pycelle
,” Tyrion called out, risking his father’s wrath, “could any of these poisons choke off a man’s breath?”
    â€œNo. For that, you must turn to a rarer poison. When I