A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

secrets, and no living man will be able to withstand him.”
    â€œSo you say. Words are wind. When the hour is ripe, you may produce this paragon of yours and we will see if he is all that you have promised.”
    â€œThey will sing of him, I swear it.” Lord Qyburn’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Might I ask about the armor?”
    â€œI have placed your order. The armorer thinks that I am mad. He assures me that no man is strong enough to move and fight in such a weight of plate.” Cersei gave the chainless maester a warning look. “Play me for a fool, and you’ll die screaming. You are aware of that, I trust?”
    â€œAlways, Your Grace.”
    â€œGood. Say no more of this.”
    â€œThe queen is wise. These walls have ears.”
    â€œSo they do.” At night Cersei sometimes heard soft sounds, even in her own apartments.
Mice in the walls,
she would tell herself,
no more than that.
    A candle was burning by her bedside, but the hearthfire had gone out and there was no other light. The room was cold as well. Cersei undressed and slipped beneath the blankets, leaving her gown to puddle on the floor. Across the bed, Taena stirred. “Your Grace,” she murmured softly. “What hour is it?”
    â€œThe hour of the owl,” the queen replied.
    Though Cersei often slept alone, she had never liked it. Her oldest memories were of sharing a bed with Jaime, when they had still been so young that no one could tell the two of them apart. Later, after they were separated, she’d had a string of bedmaids and companions, most of them girls of an age with her, the daughters of her father’s household knights and bannermen. None had pleased her, and few lasted very long.
Little sneaks, the lot of them. Vapid, weepy creatures, always telling tales and trying to worm their way between me and Jaime.
Still, there had been nights deep within the black bowels of the Rock when she had welcomed their warmth beside her. An empty bed was a cold bed.
    Here most of all. There were chills in this room, and her wretched royal husband had died beneath this canopy.
Robert Baratheon, the First of His Name, may there never be a second. A dim, drunken brute of a man. Let him weep in hell.
Taena warmed the bed as well as Robert ever had, and never tried to force Cersei’s legs apart. Of late she had shared the queen’s bed more often than Lord Merryweather’s. Orton did not seem to mind . . . or if he did, he knew better than to say so.
    â€œI was concerned when I woke and found you gone,” murmured Lady Merryweather, sitting up against the pillows, the coverlets tangled about her waist. “Is aught amiss?”
    â€œNo,” said Cersei, “all is well. On the morrow Ser Loras will sail for Dragonstone, to win the castle, loose the Redwyne fleet, and prove his manhood to us all.” She told the Myrish woman all that had occurred beneath the shifting shadow of the Iron Throne. “Without her valiant brother, our little queen is next to naked. She has her guards, to be sure, but I have their captain here and there about the castle. A garrulous old man with a squirrel on his surcoat. Squirrels run from lions. He does not have it in him to defy the Iron Throne.”
    â€œMargaery has other swords about her,” cautioned Lady Merryweather. “She has made many friends about the court, and she and her young cousins all have admirers.”
    â€œA few suitors do not concern me,” Cersei said. “The army at Storm’s End, however . . .”
    â€œWhat do you mean to do, Your Grace?”
    â€œWhy do you ask?” The question was a little too pointed for Cersei’s taste. “I do hope you are not thinking of sharing my idle musings with our poor little queen?”
    â€œNever. I am not that girl Senelle.”
    Cersei did not care to think about Senelle.
She repaid my kindness with betrayal.
Sansa Stark had done the same. So had Melara Hetherspoon and fat Jeyne Farman when the three of them were girls.
I would never have gone into that tent if not for them. I would never have allowed Maggy the Frog to taste my morrows in a drop of blood.
“I would be very sad if you ever betrayed my trust, Taena. I would have no choice but to give you to Lord Qyburn, but I know that I should weep.”
    â€œI will never give you cause to weep, Your Grace. If I do, say the word, and I will give myself to Qyburn. I want only to