A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

sire.
    â€œMother.” Tommen tugged her sleeve. “What smells so bad?”
    My lord father.
“Death.” She could smell it too; a faint whisper of decay that made her want to wrinkle her nose. Cersei paid it no mind. The seven septons in the silver robes stood behind the bier, beseeching the Father Above to judge Lord Tywin justly. When they were done, seventy-seven septas gathered before the altar of the Mother and began to sing to her for mercy. Tommen was fidgeting by then, and even the queen’s knees had begun to ache. She glanced at Jaime. Her twin stood as if he had been carved from stone, and would not meet her eyes.
    On the benches, their uncle Kevan knelt with his shoulders slumped, his son beside him.
Lancel looks worse than Father.
Though only seventeen, he might have passed for seventy; grey-faced, gaunt, with hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, and hair as white and brittle as chalk.
How can Lancel be among the living when Tywin Lannister is dead? Have the gods taken leave of their wits?
    Lord Gyles was coughing more than usual and covering his nose with a square of red silk.
He can smell it too.
Grand Maester Pycelle had his eyes closed.
If he has fallen asleep, I swear I will have him whipped.
To the right of the bier knelt the Tyrells: the Lord of Highgarden, his hideous mother and vapid wife, his son Garlan and his daughter Margaery.
Queen Margaery,
she reminded herself; Joff’s widow and Tommen’s wife-to-be. Margaery looked very like her brother, the Knight of Flowers. The queen wondered if they had other things in common.
Our little rose has a good many ladies waiting attendance on her, night and day.
They were with her now, almost a dozen of them. Cersei studied their faces, wondering.
Who is the most fearful, the most wanton, the hungriest for favor? Who has the loosest tongue?
She would need to make a point of finding out.
    It was a relief when the singing finally ended. The smell coming off her father’s corpse seemed to have grown stronger. Most of the mourners had the decency to pretend that nothing was amiss, but Cersei saw two of Lady Margaery’s cousins wrinkling their little Tyrell noses. As she and Tommen were walking back down the aisle the queen thought she heard someone mutter “privy” and chortle, but when she turned her head to see who had spoken a sea of solemn faces gazed at her blankly.
They would never have dared make japes about him when he was still alive. He would have turned their bowels to water with a look.
    Back out in the Hall of Lamps, the mourners buzzed about them thick as flies, eager to shower her with useless condolences. The Redwyne twins both kissed her hand, their father her cheeks. Hallyne the Pyromancer promised her that a flaming hand would burn in the sky above the city on the day her father’s bones went west. Between coughs, Lord Gyles told her that he had hired a master stonecarver to make a statue of Lord Tywin, to stand eternal vigil beside the Lion Gate. Ser Lambert Turnberry appeared with a patch over his right eye, swearing that he would wear it until he could bring her the head of her dwarf brother.
    No sooner had the queen escaped the clutches of that fool than she found herself cornered by Lady Falyse of Stokeworth and her husband, Ser Balman Byrch. “My lady mother sends her regrets, Your Grace,” Falyse burbled at her. “Lollys has been taken to bed with the child and she felt the need to stay with her. She begs that you forgive her, and said I should ask you . . . my mother admired your late father above all other men. Should my sister have a little boy, it is her wish that we might name him Tywin, if . . . if it please you.”
    Cersei stared at her, aghast. “Your lackwit sister gets herself raped by half of King’s Landing, and Tanda thinks to honor the bastard with my lord father’s name? I think not.”
    Falyse flinched back as if she’d been slapped, but her husband only stroked his thick blond mustache with a thumb. “I told Lady Tanda as much. We shall find a more, ah . . . a more fitting name for Lollys’s bastard, you have my word.”
    â€œSee that you do.” Cersei showed them a shoulder and moved away. Tommen had fallen into the clutches of Margaery Tyrell and her grandmother, she saw. The Queen of Thorns was so short that for an instant Cersei took her for another child. Before she could rescue her son from the roses, the press brought her