A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

red, but beneath the walls the night still huddled. The outer castle was so hushed that she could have believed all its people dead.
They should be. It is not fitting for Tywin Lannister to die alone. Such a man deserves a retinue to attend his needs in hell.
    Four spearmen in red cloaks and lion-crested helms were posted at the door of the Tower of the Hand. “No one is to enter or leave without my permission,” she told them. The command came easily to her.
My father had steel in his voice as well.
    Within the tower, the smoke from the torches irritated her eyes, but Cersei did not weep, no more than her father would have.
I am the only true son he ever had.
Her heels scraped against the stone as she climbed, and she could still hear the moth fluttering wildly inside Ser Osmund’s lantern.
Die,
the queen thought at it, in irritation,
fly into the flame and be done with it.
    Two more red-cloaked guardsmen stood atop the steps. Red Lester muttered a condolence as she passed. The queen’s breath was coming fast and short, and she could feel her heart fluttering in her chest.
The steps,
she told herself,
this cursed tower has too many steps.
She had half a mind to tear it down.
    The hall was full of fools speaking in whispers, as if Lord Tywin were asleep and they were afraid to wake him. Guards and servants alike shrank back before her, mouths flapping. She saw their pink gums and waggling tongues, but their words made no more sense than the buzzing of the moth.
What are they doing here? How did they know?
By rights they should have called her first. She was the Queen Regent, had they forgotten that?
    Before the Hand’s bedchamber stood Ser Meryn Trant in his white armor and cloak. The visor of his helm was open, and the bags beneath his eyes made him look still half-asleep. “Clear these people away,” Cersei told him. “Is my father in the privy?”
    â€œThey carried him back to his bed, m’lady.” Ser Meryn pushed the door open for her to enter.
    Morning light slashed through the shutters to paint golden bars upon the rushes strewn across the floor of the bedchamber. Her uncle Kevan was on his knees beside the bed, trying to pray, but he could scarcely get the words out. Guardsmen clustered near the hearth. The secret door that Ser Osmund had spoken of gaped open behind the ashes, no bigger than an oven. A man would need to crawl.
But Tyrion is only half a man.
The thought made her angry.
No, the dwarf is locked in a black cell.
This could not be his work.
Stannis,
she told herself,
Stannis was behind it. He still has adherents in the city. Him, or the Tyrells . . .
    There had always been talk of secret passages within the Red Keep. Maegor the Cruel was supposed to have killed the men who built the castle to keep the knowledge of them secret.
How many other bedchambers have hidden doors?
Cersei had a sudden vision of the dwarf crawling out from behind a tapestry in Tommen’s bedchamber with blade in hand.
Tommen is well guarded,
she told herself. But Lord Tywin had been well guarded too.
    For a moment she did not recognize the dead man. He had hair like her father, yes, but this was some other man, surely, a smaller man, and much older. His bedrobe was hiked up around his chest, leaving him naked below the waist. The quarrel had taken him in his groin between his navel and his manhood, and was sunk so deep that only the fletching showed. His pubic hair was stiff with dried blood. More was congealing in his navel.
    The smell of him made her wrinkle her nose. “Take the quarrel out of him,” she commanded. “This is the King’s Hand!”
And my father. My lord father. Should I scream and tear my hair?
They said Catelyn Stark had clawed her own face to bloody ribbons when the Freys slew her precious Robb.
Would you like that, Father?
she wanted to ask him.
Or would you want me to be strong? Did you weep for your own father?
Her grandfather had died when she was only a year old, but she knew the story. Lord Tytos had grown very fat, and his heart burst one day when he was climbing the steps to his mistress. Her father was off in King’s Landing when it happened, serving as the Mad King’s Hand. Lord Tywin was often away in King’s Landing when she and Jaime were young. If he wept when they brought him word of his father’s death, he did it where no one could see the tears.
    The queen could feel her nails digging into her palms. “How