The Song Of Ice and Fire (226 page)

“If you lie to me, this session is at an end.” Catelyn held out her hands, to show him her fingers and palms. “The man who came to slit Bran’s throat gave me these scars. You swear you had no part in sending him?”

“On my honor as a Lannister.”

“Your honor as a Lannister is worth less than
this.
” She kicked over the waste pail. Foul-smelling brown ooze crept across the floor of the cell, soaking into the straw.

Jaime Lannister backed away from the spill as far as his chains would allow. “I may indeed have shit for honor, I won’t deny it, but I have never yet hired anyone to do my killing. Believe what you will, Lady Stark, but if I had wanted your Bran dead I would have slain him myself.”

Gods be merciful, he’s telling the truth.
“If you did not send the killer, your sister did.”

“If so, I’d know. Cersei keeps no secrets from me.”

“Then it was the Imp.”

“Tyrion is as innocent as your Bran.
He
wasn’t climbing around outside of anyone’s window, spying.”

“Then why did the assassin have his dagger?”

“What dagger was this?”

“It was so long,” she said, holding her hands apart, “plain, but finely made, with a blade of Valyrian steel and a dragonbone hilt. Your brother won it from Lord Baelish at the tourney on Prince Joffrey’s name day.”

Lannister poured, drank, poured, and stared into his wine cup. “This wine seems to be improving as I drink it. Imagine that. I seem to remember that dagger, now that you describe it. Won it, you say? How?”

“Wagering on you when you tilted against the Knight of Flowers.” Yet when she heard her own words Catelyn knew she had gotten it wrong. “No … was it the other way?”

“Tyrion always backed me in the lists,” Jaime said, “but that day Ser Loras unhorsed me. A mischance, I took the boy too lightly, but no matter. Whatever my brother wagered, he lost … but that dagger
did
change hands, I recall it now. Robert showed it to me that night at the feast. His Grace loved to salt my wounds, especially when drunk. And when was he not drunk?”

Tyrion Lannister had said much the same thing as they rode through the Mountains of the Moon, Catelyn remembered. She had refused to believe him. Petyr had sworn otherwise, Petyr who had been almost a brother, Petyr who loved her so much he fought a duel for her hand … and yet if Jaime and Tyrion told the same tale, what did that mean? The brothers had not seen each other since departing Winterfell more than a year ago. “Are you trying to deceive me?” Somewhere there was a trap here.

“I’ve admitted to shoving your precious urchin out a window, what would it gain me to lie about this knife?” He tossed down another cup of wine. “Believe what you will, I’m past caring what people say of me. And it’s my turn. Have Robert’s brothers taken the field?”

“They have.”

“Now there’s a niggardly response. Give me more than that, or your next answer will be as poor.”

“Stannis marches against King’s Landing,” she said grudgingly. “Renly is dead, murdered at Bitterbridge by his brother, through some black art I do not understand.”

“A pity,” Jaime said. “I rather liked Renly, though Stannis is quite another tale. What side have the Tyrells taken?”

“Renly, at first. Now, I could not say.”

“Your boy must be feeling lonely.”

“Robb was sixteen a few days past … a man grown, and a king. He’s won every battle he’s fought. The last word we had from him, he had taken the Crag from the Westerlings.”

“He hasn’t faced my father yet, has he?”

“When he does, he’ll defeat him. As he did you.”

“He took me unawares. A craven’s trick.”

“You dare talk of tricks? Your brother Tyrion sent us cutthroats in envoy’s garb, under a peace banner.”

“If it were one of your sons in this cell, wouldn’t his brothers do as much for him?”

My son has no brothers,
she thought, but she would not share her pain with a creature such as this.

Jaime drank some more wine. “What’s a brother’s life when honor is at stake, eh?” Another sip. “Tyrion is clever enough to realize that your son will never consent to ransom me.”

Catelyn could not deny it. “Robb’s bannermen would sooner see you dead. Rickard Karstark in particular. You slew two of his sons in the Whispering Wood.”

“The two with the white sunburst, were they?” Jaime gave a shrug. “If truth be told, it was
your
son that I was trying to slay. The others got in my way. I killed them in fair fight, in the heat of battle. Any other knight would have done the same.”

“How can you still count yourself a knight, when you have forsaken every vow you ever swore?”

Jaime reached for the flagon to refill his cup. “So many vows … they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It’s too much. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or the other.” He took a healthy swallow of wine and closed his eyes for an instant, leaning his head back against the patch of nitre on the wall. “I was the youngest man ever to wear the white cloak.”

“And the youngest to betray all it stood for, Kingslayer.”

“
Kingslayer,
” he pronounced carefully. “And such a king he was!” He lifted his cup. “To Aerys Targaryen, the Second of His Name, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and
Protector
of the Realm. And to the sword that opened his throat. A
golden
sword, don’t you know. Until his blood ran red down the blade. Those are the Lannister colors, red and gold.”

As he laughed, she realized the wine had done its work; Jaime had drained most of the flagon, and he was drunk. “Only a man like you would be proud of such an act.”

“I told you, there are no men like me. Answer me this, Lady Stark—did your Ned ever tell you the manner of his father’s death? Or his brother’s?”

“They strangled Brandon while his father watched, and then killed Lord Rickard as well.” An ugly tale, and sixteen years old. Why was he asking about it now?

“Killed, yes, but
how
?”

“The cord or the axe, I suppose.”

Jaime took a swallow, wiped his mouth. “No doubt Ned wished to spare you. His sweet young bride, if not quite a maiden. Well, you wanted truth. Ask me. We made a bargain, I can deny you nothing. Ask.”

“Dead is dead.”
I do not want to know this.

“Brandon was different from his brother, wasn’t he? He had blood in his veins instead of cold water. More like me.”

“Brandon was nothing like you.”

“If you say so. You and he were to wed.”

“He was on his way to Riverrun when …” Strange, how telling it still made her throat grow tight, after all these years. “… when he heard about Lyanna, and went to King’s Landing instead. It was a rash thing to do.” She remembered how her own father had raged when the news had been brought to Riverrun.
The gallant fool,
was what he called Brandon.

Jaime poured the last half cup of wine. “He rode into the Red Keep with a few companions, shouting for Prince Rhaegar to come out and die. But Rhaegar wasn’t there. Aerys sent his guards to arrest them all for plotting his son’s murder. The others were lords’ sons too, it seems to me.”

“Ethan Glover was Brandon’s squire,” Catelyn said. “He was the only one to survive. The others were Jeffory Mallister, Kyle Royce, and Elbert Arryn, Jon Arryn’s nephew and heir.” It was queer how she still remembered the names, after so many years. “Aerys accused them of treason and summoned their fathers to court to answer the charge, with the sons as hostages. When they came, he had them murdered without trial. Fathers and sons both.”

“There were trials. Of a sort. Lord Rickard demanded trial by combat, and the king granted the request. Stark armored himself as for battle, thinking to duel one of the Kingsguard. Me, perhaps. Instead they took him to the throne room and suspended him from the rafters while two of Aerys’s pyromancers kindled a blaze beneath him. The king told him that
fire
was the champion of House Targaryen. So all Lord Rickard needed to do to prove himself innocent of treason was … well, not burn.

“When the fire was blazing, Brandon was brought in. His hands were chained behind his back, and around his neck was a wet leathern cord attached to a device the king had brought from Tyrosh. His legs were left free, though, and his longsword was set down just beyond his reach.

“The pyromancers roasted Lord Rickard slowly, banking and fanning that fire carefully to get a nice even heat. His cloak caught first, and then his surcoat, and soon he wore nothing but metal and ashes. Next he would start to cook, Aerys promised … unless his son could free him. Brandon tried, but the more he struggled, the tighter the cord constricted around his throat. In the end he strangled himself.

“As for Lord Rickard, the steel of his breastplate turned cherry-red before the end, and his gold melted off his spurs and dripped down into the fire. I stood at the foot of the Iron Throne in my white armor and white cloak, filling my head with thoughts of Cersei. After, Gerold Hightower himself took me aside and said to me, ‘You swore a vow to guard the king, not to judge him.’ That was the White Bull, loyal to the end and a better man than me, all agree.”

“Aerys …” Catelyn could taste bile at the back of her throat. The story was so hideous she suspected it had to be true. “Aerys was mad, the whole realm knew it, but if you would have me believe you slew him to avenge Brandon Stark …”

“I made no such claim. The Starks were nothing to me. I will say, I think it passing odd that I am loved by one for a kindness I never did, and reviled by so many for my finest act. At Robert’s coronation, I was made to kneel at the royal feet beside Grand Maester Pycelle and Varys the eunuch, so that he might
forgive
us our crimes before he took us into his service. As for your Ned, he should have kissed the hand that slew Aerys, but he preferred to scorn the arse he found sitting on Robert’s throne. I think Ned Stark loved Robert better than he ever loved his brother or his father … or even you, my lady. He was never unfaithful to Robert, was he?” Jaime gave a drunken laugh. “Come, Lady Stark, don’t you find this all terribly amusing?”

“I find nothing about you amusing, Kingslayer.”

“That name again. I don’t think I’ll fuck you after all, Littlefinger had you first, didn’t he? I never eat off another man’s trencher. Besides, you’re not half so lovely as my sister.” His smile cut. “I’ve never lain with any woman but Cersei. In my own way, I have been truer than your Ned ever was. Poor old dead Ned. So who has shit for honor now, I ask you? What was the name of that bastard he fathered?”

Catelyn took a step backward. “
Brienne.
”

“No, that wasn’t it.” Jaime Lannister upended the flagon. A trickle ran down onto his face, bright as blood. “Snow, that was the one. Such a
white
name … like the pretty cloaks they give us in the Kingsguard when we swear our pretty oaths.”

Brienne pushed open the door and stepped inside the cell. “You called, my lady?”

“Give me your sword.” Catelyn held out her hand.

THEON

T
he sky was a gloom of cloud, the woods dead and frozen. Roots grabbed at Theon’s feet as he ran, and bare branches lashed his face, leaving thin stripes of blood across his cheeks. He crashed through heedless, breathless, icicles flying to pieces before him.
Mercy,
he sobbed. From behind came a shuddering howl that curdled his blood.
Mercy, mercy.
When he glanced back over his shoulder he saw them coming, great wolves the size of horses with the heads of small children.
Oh, mercy, mercy.
Blood dripped from their mouths black as pitch, burning holes in the snow where it fell. Every stride brought them closer. Theon tried to run faster, but his legs would not obey. The trees all had faces, and they were laughing at him, laughing, and the howl came again. He could smell the hot breath of the beasts behind him, a stink of brimstone and corruption.
They’re dead, dead, I saw them killed,
he tried to shout,
I saw their heads dipped in tar,
but when he opened his mouth only a moan emerged, and then something
touched
him and he whirled, shouting …

… flailing for the dagger he kept by his bedside and managing only to knock it to the floor. Wex danced away from him. Reek stood behind the mute, his face lit from below by the candle he carried. “What?” Theon cried.
Mercy.
“What do you want? Why are you in my bedchamber?
Why?
”

“My lord prince,” said Reek, “your sister has come to Winterfell. You asked to be informed at once if she arrived.”

“Past time,” Theon muttered, pushing his fingers through his hair. He had begun to fear that Asha meant to leave him to his fate.
Mercy.
He glanced outside the window, where the first vague light of dawn was just brushing the towers of Winterfell. “Where is she?”