Chapter Text
Tyrion felt strongly that he would have liked to wake up by slow degrees, awareness stealing back in one small bit at a time. Instead a violent throbbing pain went through his head all at once, what felt like a knife going into his skull, and he gasped and opened his eyes in full agonized consciousness, and found himself staring up into Varys’s grim and downturned face. “Did we lose?” he croaked out, and then registered afterwards that he was in his own bedchamber in the Tower of the Hand, with the sunlight streaming in gloriously, and shut his eyes on deep relief for one instant and then said, “Shit, fuck, ow,” as the movement sent another blaze of agony through him. He reached up his hand to his face, but Varys caught it before he could touch it.
“I think that would be unwise,” Varys said. “I must ask you to forgive me, my lord; the maesters said you ought to be given milk of the poppy and allowed to sleep for at least a full day more, but I overruled them. We need you awake.”
“But we did win,” Tyrion said, warily.
“It is most interesting, how subjective victory can be,” Varys said. “And how fleeting.”
“What’s happened?” Tyrion said, in rising alarm, trying to struggle up. “And—help me sit up!” he added, though it came out half-strangled with pain as he jolted himself. Podrick hurried round from the other side and got an arm behind him, helping him up.
Varys waited until he was slightly more vertical and breathing again instead of gasping, and then said, “A united Lannister-Tyrell force under the command of your father and Ser Loras Tyrell broke the siege. Lord Stannis retreated with the remnants of his men. While that was going on, however… Robb Stark slipped into the Red Keep with a small force of raiders. He seems to have found a way in through the underground passages.”
“Shit,” Tyrion said, through his panting breaths. “He took Sansa?”
“He took everyone,” Varys said.
Tyrion stared at him. “What? What do you mean, everyone? He took Cersei? Tommen?”
“Every Lannister who was not on the battlefield at the time,” Varys said. “Yes. Also your cousin Lancel—”
“I’m surprised he bothered,” Tyrion muttered, and then he went still and frozen. “Joffrey wasn’t on the battlefield at the time,” he said, flatly. “Varys, are you telling me that Robb Stark has the king?”
“Hm,” Varys said, with a small grimacing tilt of his head. “Part of him. He took the head. And threw the rest off the balcony.”
“Oh, shit,” Tyrion said, shutting his eyes, and Varys caught his hand once again before he could let his face sink into it. Tyrion just let it hang forward instead while he breathed deep through another terrible rolling wave of pain. “Does my father know yet?”
Varys paused and said, “I would imagine so, my lord.”
“You would—what?” Tyrion lifted his head.
“The passageway Robb Stark used connects to the throne room,” Varys said. “It appears to have been intended by the Targaryens as a final way to escape a siege. Your father and Ser Loras went there to find your sister, after the battle was won—” Tyrion was staring at him, the ocean of pain disappearing beneath a rising tide of pure horror, “—and ran into the Stark forces as they were about to leave.”
“He took them, too?” Tyrion said, a little faintly.
“No, my lord,” Varys said. “He left Ser Loras. And sent his respects to Highgarden.”
“He—Oh, that bastard,” Tyrion said, almost admiringly. He wasn’t sure what else there was to feel. “Varys, are you telling me I’m the only Lannister left?”
“I’m afraid so, my lord,” Varys said.
“And the Tyrells know all about it.”
“They do indeed,” Varys said.
“Get me out of this bed now,” Tyrion said, and grabbed for Podrick’s arm.
#
Tyrion managed to get himself dressed and to the Small Council chamber, although he fainted twice in the process, and once he was there, he wasn’t entirely sure why he’d bothered. They’d driven off Stannis, and Bronn—thank the gods for Bronn—had the goldcloaks keeping the city well in hand, and Uncle Kevan was two days’ march away with the rest of their army. Varys had already sent three ravens and three messengers on horseback to him, with urgent orders to send men looking for the Starks, which wasn’t going to work but was the only possibly useful thing anyone could have done. There just wasn’t anything else to do. Robb Stark had swept his entire hand of cards off the table, and Tyrion couldn’t see how to make a single play at all.
He looked up from the reports at Varys and Baelish and Pycelle, sitting across the table from him. “I don’t suppose any of you have any ideas?” he said, because there wasn’t any point in trying to put a good face on this.
Baelish shrugged and said, “You could take the throne yourself.”
“Yes, because that’s just what this situation calls for!” Tyrion said. “Putting a dwarf on the throne won’t at all look like we have no one else left. What use would that be, anyway? I don’t believe for an instant that the Tyrells will marry Lady Margaery to me, and we’ve got to have them!”
“Then…I suppose you find a trusted lord, one who is loyal to your house, and have him marry her and be crowned,” Baelish said, because he thought he was subtle, presumably.
“Shut up,” Tyrion said. He would have liked to order Bronn to stab Baelish in the back the way that deserved, but he couldn’t afford to throw away a single tatter-edged card right now. He closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair for several deep breaths. “Do we have any information on how Stark got into the city?” It was a pointless question, but he couldn’t think of anything to do except find some way to try to get his hands on someone. He was even regretting having sent Myrcella to Dorne; if she’d been here, he’d have her and Loras married and on the throne in five minutes. Except of course, if she’d been here, she would have been on her way to Winterfell along with the rest of his entire family.
“None so far,” Varys said. “I have men asking in the ports and checking at the gates, but…there was a great deal of confusion at both yesterday. Most people were trying to get out of the city, of course, but many others with wagons or boats did come in to take advantage of their eagerness to flee—”
He paused as Podrick opened the door, his face wide and anxious. Tyrion painfully straightened himself back up; he’d been waiting for the messenger from the Tyrells all morning. He knew what the offer was going to be, their play was obvious: marry Margaery to Tommen by proxy and crown her. But if he did, he’d be giving Robb Stark the king and Olenna Tyrell the queen, and both of them would be absolutely delighted to have all of House Lannister sitting in a northern prison for the rest of their lives, while Loras produced a passel of heirs for Highgarden, ready to be named as his sister’s heirs.
“M’lord,” Podrick began, and then the door was shoved open past him, and— Tyrion dragged in a gasp: Jaime walked in, almost unrecognizable in filthy homespun rags and an unkempt beard. He was unrecognizable, actually: Varys and Baelish and Pycelle were all staring at him quizzically, frowning.
“Sorry,” Jaime said, hoarsely, and all their eyes went wide. “I seem to have arrived a little late.”
“Not in the least,” Tyrion said, waveringly; he could have burst into tears of relief. “You’re exactly on time.”
#
“No!” Jaime said. “I’m not going to marry Margaery Tyrell, and I’m not going to take the throne! Are you out of your—”
Tyrion was leaning against the wall to keep from falling down, but he’d chosen his resting position strategically, so the rest of that pointless sentence got drowned out when he nudged the lever to dump the rinsing bucket of water onto Jaime’s head. Jaime came out of it in a spluttering glare, soap running down in rivulets from his hair and down his body, leaving little clean trails in the thick layer of grime that the two bath servants were busily scrubbing off him.
“Jaime, I’m not feeling very well, so I’m going to say this very slowly,” Tyrion said. “Robb Stark has our entire family. Father, Cersei, Tommen—”
“That’s a reason for me to take our army and go after him!” Jaime said.
“Go after him how?” Tyrion said. “He was in this city. Full of our soldiers. He got in and out again and no one saw him. We have no idea what road or ship he’s on or where he’s going—”
“He’s going north,” Jaime said. “And to do that he’s got to take Moat Cailin back from the ironborn. He’ll have to besiege them for three weeks at least—”
“No,” Tyrion said.
“Yes,” Jaime said. “No one can get an army into the North overland except by passing—”
“Shut up, no,” Tyrion said. “I’m not arguing with you about the military point. I’m telling you that Robb Stark isn’t an idiot and he will not keep our family hanging about Moat Cailin for a three-week siege so we can catch them, and even if he was that stupid, we still wouldn't need you to go get them. Uncle Kevan has already sent ten thousand men marching north on the kingsroad. If by some miracle we do get them back that way, they’ll be on their way home in a month, and we’ll claim you were just Tommen's proxy all along. Either way, what we need you to do is sit down in the chair and marry Margaery!”
Jaime drew breath, visibly about to start protesting yet again, and Tyrion put his hand meaningfully on the lever again—the bucket had already refilled—and gave Jaime an even more savage glare than the one he received. “Listen to me,” he said. “The only single piece of luck we’ve had in all of this, if you want to call it that, is that Robb Stark hated Joffrey enough to kill him instead of take him. If he’d done that, we’d be even more fucked. But he’s given us this tiny sliver of an opening. Tommen’s a child, and you’re one of the greatest knights and commanders of the realm, the heir of a Great House, and his uncle. No one is going to bat an eye at you being crowned instead of him in a time of war. And you’ve got to do it, because if you don’t, the Tyrells aren’t going to wait.”
“They’ll have to!” Jaime said. “Tell them that I’m going to go get Tommen—”
“They’ll believe you about as much as I do, or less!” Tyrion said. “And they don’t have to wait. We’re only the better of their options. We’ve got King’s Landing and the throne. We’ve got the goldroad and a bigger army and a bigger fleet, and deeper pockets. But they are looking for a good healthy chunk of the throne in exchange for their help, and if we don’t give it to them, they’ll move on to their second-best choice, which in case you need me to explain this to you is Robb Stark himself. And the instant he agrees to put aside that random camp follower he married in exchange for Margaery and the Iron Throne, we’ll have him coming at us from the north with thirty thousand men, and the Tyrells from the south with seventy thousand, in addition to the thirty thousand men they already have right here, most of them literally inside the city walls. And after they finish killing you and me and Uncle Kevan, they’ll put Father and Cersei and Tommen to the sword, and that will be the end of House Lannister. We have to get Margaery married now, and she won’t marry you unless you’re the king!”
“And then what?” Jaime burst out, a note of trapped-animal panic coming into his voice, which was good, since it meant he was finally starting to register just how fucked they were.
“Then I can at least get Cersei and Tommen back from Robb Stark by agreeing to recognize him as the King in the North,” Tyrion said. “But I can’t do even that so long as Tommen is the king and Cersei is the Queen Regent! There’s no deal to be made for those people. The only way I can get them back is if they’re just the sister and nephew of the king.”
“And what about Father?” Jaime said, in all apparent sincerity. Tyrion stared at him. “What?”
“Jaime, Father’s gone,” Tyrion said, flatly, and saw Jaime’s face go stunned blank, even panic falling away, finally understanding what had just happened to their house. “He’s not dead, but he might as well be. He’s going to spend the rest of his life in a small room in Winterfell, and we are never going to see him again.”
#
The Stark boy was as good as he was lucky, which was a very bad combination. Tywin had spent the last weeks evaluating the situation at a glacial remove, distant as a problem on a map board that he’d have set for Jaime as an exercise, because if he’d allowed himself to do anything else, he’d have choked to death on rage. He’d recognized the completeness of the disaster almost the instant the doors of the throne room had slammed behind his back and he’d turned round to see a dozen men dressed in Lannister armor putting down the bars to hold off the rest of his men; Cersei held by two of them with a hand clamped over her mouth and fury in her eyes, Lancel on his knees tied and gagged, and Tommen frightened in the arms of another man, while beside them a tall girl, red-haired, stood unrestrained, her face alight with fierce joy.
“Lord Tywin,” the man before him had said, the dark-haired young man with blue eyes, barely more than a beardless boy, with a dozen heavily bearded men at his sides, older and yet deferential, their swords a forest of points bristling towards Tywin’s throat; the handful of his guards who’d made it into the room had already been butchered. “I’m Robb Stark. It’s a great pleasure to meet you.”
That had been bad enough; worse had been when the boy had looked at Loras Tyrell, just as trapped beside him, and said, “Ser Loras, I’m here for justice against House Lannister, and I mean to take it, but my house has no quarrel with Highgarden. I hope you feel you can step aside with honor. You have my word that the queen and the prince will be treated gently. I don’t abuse women and children.”
Loras, not being an idiot, had immediately said, “Thank you, Your Grace. I know Stark honor is to be relied on,” and bowed himself out of the mess, leaving House Tyrell with a vastly improved position and his own teetering on the edge of a cliff. For all Tywin knew, there wasn’t a single Lannister left alive in the capital; Tyrion had been being tended unconscious on the field, and Kevan still two days’ march away.
They’d been taken out through a maze of tunnels beneath the keep. Tywin didn’t know how Stark had found a way through, although he did know there were several architects he’d execute if he ever got back to the capital to do it: he’d paid them a great deal of money back at the time of the rebellion to assure him that all the ancient routes into the city had long since collapsed over the years. The one that Stark took had clearly been blocked until recently, but only partially, and with a knot of loose rubble barely a foot wide; they had probably been able to reopen it with their bare hands. And on the other side, the tunnel carried them straight out onto the southern shore, beneath the keep, and four boats had come rowing in at a signal to take them off.
Tywin had still entertained a considerable measure of hope when they’d sailed into White Harbor: before Stark could retake Winterfell, he first had to take back Moat Cailin, which even the ironborn could easily hold against him for weeks of siege. Unless he was a complete fool, he’d leave his hostages with one of his bannermen for safe keeping, rather than have them exposed on the kingsroad with Lannister armies commanding the south. And Tywin had Lord Bolton already bought and paid for, and not yet spent; the man had looked at him across the tables, and asked Stark mildly if he wanted to send the prisoners to the Dreadfort, to hold them there until Winterfell was retaken.
“Thank you, Lord Bolton,” Stark had said. “But no. I have too much of a taste for Lannister company. I can’t bear to be parted from them.” And he’d promptly marched them with him towards the fortress after all, only he hadn’t been a complete fool, because he hadn’t besieged the ironborn. He’d taken the most impenetrable fortress in the Seven Kingdoms with a tin peddler’s wagon and six whores. The thing had been painted up in gaudy colors, and he’d hidden inside with a dozen of his best men; another four had ridden alongside, pretending to be guards for a traveling bawdy house, with the women hanging off the sides and lounging on the top, kissing their hands and displaying their breasts. He’d even driven a hard bargain: the ironborn had paid them twelve silver coins to drive the thing in through their wide-open gates.
Tywin knew all about the scheme because he’d spent the following week’s journey to Winterfell riding inside the painted wagon, with Cersei and Tommen; his bleating nephew had been left behind forlornly as hostage at Moat Cailin. The guards had delightedly told the story to anyone who would listen, and when they’d run out of audience, they’d told it over to each other.
And now he was in Stark’s castle. The wagon had waited outside while Winterfell received its lord; they’d been able to see the towers through a chink between the panels. It was late in the afternoon when it drove in through the gates, and when the guards opened it, they took him away from Cersei and Tommen and brought him to a small room in a tower in good repair, with a thin sliver of a northern view, dark endless woods and snow, and he knew as the door shut behind him exactly how small the chance was that he’d ever leave this room again alive.
Two guards had been left outside the door. A scullery maid came in to lay a fire, and they watched her unsmiling the entire time with the door open, to see to it she didn’t speak to him or give him anything. There was not a book nor so much as a scrap of paper in the room. When she left and the door was shut again, he sat down by the hearth, wishing he were not as grateful for the warmth as he was, and shut his eyes to review, in his mind, the order of battle of the force Kevan had been leading.
It was dark outside before anyone came to speak so much as a word to him, and then it was the Stark boy himself. Although the term grew less apt. Even in the month since their capture, he had come further across the line into manhood. Only a little softness in the face remained, and it was going quickly. He’d even grown in height, Tywin thought, although with more perhaps to come; Lord Eddard had been a big man. “Lord Stark,” Tywin said, a coldly deliberate greeting. If there had been any reason to play for time, he would have been conciliatory; as it was, he’d save himself the trouble. If the boy could be provoked, he’d provoke him sooner rather than later.
But Robb Stark only said, “If I meant to wait for you to call me a king, Lord Tywin, we wouldn’t be standing here. And I’ve no taste to triumph over a prisoner. I’ve come to tell you your daughter and grandson are safe, and that so long as she is housed here, once each week I’ll bring her to you, for an hour’s visit. I’ll not leave the two of you alone, but you’ll have the chance to know she and your grandson are well.”
Tywin forced himself to incline his head; it was a courtesy that deserved the same in return, even if in his heart he would almost have preferred to be insulted, and given an excuse for defiance. “That’s kind of you,” he said, measured. “May I know if you will ransom them?” He didn’t bother asking about himself. The boy wasn’t a fool.
“You may not,” Stark said. No, not a fool. “You and she will know when and if it’s done, and not before. I’ll bring her tomorrow.”
He was about to leave, and Tywin swallowed a little more of what pride he had left and said, stiffly, “Lord Stark.” The boy turned to look at him. “Shortly before you took me, I left my younger son in the hands of the medics on the field of battle. He’d been badly wounded, and they could not assure me of his survival. Will you have the kindness to tell me if you know he lives?” His stomach was a twisting knot of feeling: rage, that he had to hope, with every last fiber of his being, that Tyrion had lived.
“He does,” Stark said, and without another word went out of the room, and Tywin shut his eyes for a moment, his jaw shifting back and forth, and went to sit down on the one chair, seething with his own helpless relief.
A different scullery maid brought up dinner on a tray shortly after: only a little better than they’d eaten on the march, mostly a porridge of grain with a scant flavoring of meat, and a glass of bad wine. He ate and drank all of it regardless, just as he’d forced Cersei and Tommen to eat every last bite of the still-worse fare on the road: if there were ever a chance, they had to preserve as much of their strength as possible to be able to make use of it.
And as he scraped up the last spoonfuls, there was something in the bottom of the bowl: a thin sheet of paper had been folded and pressed down into the curve of the dish, before the porridge had been poured in. He peeled it carefully away, and with even more care unfolded it: he could see the ink had run a little, and he didn’t want to mar the message worse. He had to take it close to the fire and squint at it to puzzle out the words, but before he’d reached the end, his heart was pounding almost in disbelief, and he had to pace his way around the room, twice. He wasn’t a superstitious man; whatever gods there were had as much interest in the affairs of men as he did in those of the beggars of Lannisport. And yet it seemed almost a divine answer: he’d let himself ask, care, that Tyrion had survived, and now—
He drew a breath, and released it again, forcing himself to calmness. There was no divinity in it; or rather, the only sort there ever was: the reward of pains taken. He’d endured it, all these years: the dwarf child who’d killed Joanna and ever since had looked at him out of his too-large head with her stolen eyes. He’d let the child live. He’d had him educated, even after that grotesque day when he’d found him in Jaime’s room, not yet four years of age, reading aloud in his small voice, easily and fluently, from the very storybook that Tywin had spent the last week dragging Jaime through, by one laborious sentence after another, ignoring the tears that dripped upon the pages.
He’d nearly killed Tyrion right then; his eyes had dimmed with rage, and in a moment he would have gone in and seized him with his bare hands, and then Jaime had said, “Father?” uncertainly, from the corridor. So he’d turned and walked away, because he wouldn’t have his son marred with the terror of seeing him commit murder. When he’d calmed himself, he’d grimly sent a maester to take over Tyrion’s education from the elderly septa who had been responsible for his care, and he’d still more grimly endured the effusive reports that came thereafter. He’d made of the misbegotten creature whatever there was to be made. And now—
Jaime king, Margaery queen, the message said. Negotiating for Cersei and Tommen. After he’d made the circuit of the room, Tywin read it once more, to be sure he hadn’t made a mistake, hadn’t read a dream into the blurred ink, only he knew he had not; he wouldn’t have imagined this. It required an effort to force himself to put the note in the fire, even though the words were written into his heart.
He had no idea how Tyrion had found Jaime again; they hadn’t had a report of him in more than a month, since his escape from Stark’s camp. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that his son lived. His son lived, and was king, and married to the daughter of another Great House.
And Tyrion was the one who had seen it done. Tywin knew that much of a certainty: Jaime wouldn’t have taken the throne for himself, and he wouldn’t have listened to Kevan—or for that matter to him. An odd surprising lurch, to recognize that Tyrion had exceeded the limits of his own power, but Tywin had run up against those limits too often before not to know that they were there. Jaime was well aware that the throne would have been his, if he’d ever so much as suggested he’d sit down upon it; he knew of the longing that lurked in Tywin’s heart, the desire for a Lannister king. And Jaime had refused to meet it, over and over; he’d been armored against that paternal wish.
But not against his little brother, of whom Jaime had always insisted on making himself a protector, and who must have told him that it had to be done, in such a way that Jaime had listened to him. And for the very first time in his life, Tywin felt a pure unburdened gratitude, without any touch of rage or resentment, that Tyrion had lived.
#
Jaime had spent the last year making a completely fresh collection of the worst moments of his life, which had just been crowned, literally, on the morning after he’d arrived in King’s Landing. He hadn’t quite believed it was actually happening to him even while he was kneeling in the Sept of Baelor, with the fat slug of the High Septon pompously intoning vows for him to repeat, and then they’d shoved the fucking crown on his head and tied him up by the wrist to the delightful flower at his side.
And now he had to endure a wedding feast, which was shaping up to join the list, and that was even though he hadn’t eaten decent food in a year, and had spent most of the last week literally starving. After they’d run into a carter with a wagonload of refugees who’d told them that Stannis was heading for King’s Landing and would be there in three days, he’d begged Brienne to unchain him and go quicker so they could make it in time.
“If he’s going to be there in three days, we’re not going to,” she’d said, but when he’d literally gone on his knees to her, she’d sighed and then given in. She’d become much nicer to him after she’d beaten the shit out of him on that bridge. Or possibly he’d become much nicer to her; it was hard to say.
He hadn’t wanted to stop for so much as a dry piece of bread, desperate to get back to them: to Cersei and the children, alone without him, and Stannis Baratheon bearing down on them like a hurricane. Brienne had told him he was being foolish, and he wouldn’t be any use if he turned up at a battlefield not only weak but fainting with hunger, but she’d been wrong, hadn’t she. He’d been of enormous use. He’d missed the fighting, and he hadn’t managed to kill any of the enemies of his house, but here he was, exactly on time as Tyrion had said, to wear a ring of metal on his head, and keep a chair warm, and protect the virtue and virginity of a highborn maiden. Well, he wasn’t really sure how much of either Margaery Tyrell had left, but he would at least make sure to preserve it from any further damage.
She had been beaming serenely out upon the guests through the whole meal from beneath her own charming crown, which she wore with much more grace than he did his; as the servants cleared the fourth course, she turned to him and said earnestly, “I’m sorry, I know this must all be so brutal. After all this time, finally coming home, and this is what you find. You must be so worried for your family.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’re having a lovely time,” he said, resisting the extremely strong temptation to just start draining his wineglass over and over as quick as the servants refilled it. He’d never had any sympathy for Robert before. “The Starks are delightful hosts. I’d recommend their hospitality to almost anyone. Dead pigs, for instance. Maybe he’s even put them in my old pen.”
She sighed. “I know you’ve only married me to protect them,” she said, and how right she was. “But I still mean to do my best to be a good queen, and a good wife.”
Tyrion was on his other side giving him a pointed glare: say something nice back to the lady who’s giving us her army and her grain, and the wine just sat there glistening in the brimful goblet, and Jaime almost reached for it, and then he spotted Brienne at one of the lower tables shaking her head at the servant about to fill up her cup, and he grimaced and instead told Margaery, “How nice for you. I’m going to be a very bad king and a very bad husband, but don’t worry; we’ll get Tommen back and swap him in, and then you’ll be much happier,” and then he got up from the tables and went, because he was doing it, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
He stalked outside onto the terrace for some air, and he knew Tyrion was going to come after him for a lecture, so when the step came at his back, he said warningly, “If you say one word, I’ll throw the fucking crown off the keep and you can get someone else to do this.” There was a pause that wasn’t Tyrion’s, and he glanced back and found Brienne there frowning at him. “Oh,” he muttered. “Sorry, I thought you were my brother.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment and especially didn’t ask him if he was all right, which was the opening line that most of the hangers-on had been trying so far: he’d heard the question seventeen times today. Instead she said, “I didn’t mean to intrude. I thought I wouldn’t have another chance to take my leave of you. Seven blessings on your—”
“What?” he said, breaking in; he didn’t need to hear the end of that sentence, either. “Where are you going? You can’t possibly mean to go back to the Starks.”
She said, “No, I can’t,” sounding resigned about that. “Lady Catelyn asked me to exchange you for her daughters. I wasn't able to do that. Instead I’ve just brought you home, to be crowned.” She paused and then added, very stiffly, “And I’m not sorry you’re not dead—”
“That’s very kind of you, Lady Brienne,” he said, with a bow, and he did his absolute best to make it sound mocking, but he more or less meant it.
She ignored him either way. “—but as far as the Starks are concerned, I’ve aided their enemies. I’ve no place with them anymore. I’m going home to Tarth.” She paused and gave him a hard look. “Don’t make me sorry,” she added.
He stared at her, and then he leaned back against the balcony railing and folded his arms over his chest and said coolly, “I’m not making you any promises. You’ll just have to stay and make sure for yourself.”
She looked delightfully baffled. “What?”
“Why in the world would you go back to moulder on Tarth?” he said. “Stay here.”
“And do what?” she said, even more bewildered. “I’ve no place here—”
“Certainly you do,” he said, feeling a burst of nearly effervescent delight. “I’ve got a vacancy. I need a new Lord Commander for the Kingsguard.”
“You—” She stopped and glared at him. “I’ll be leaving now,” she told him coldly.
“I’m not joking,” he said. “You were Renly’s Kingsguard. Why not mine? I may not be much of a king, but I’m more of one than he was.” She glared at him even harder. “You’ve been doing the job for months already.”
“I’m not even a knight!” she said, exasperated, as if she still thought he wasn’t serious.
“So you’ll hold your vigil tonight, and I’ll knight you in the morning,” he said. She stared at him. “What, now are you going to tell me you don’t know the code of chivalry? I suppose I should examine you. Well? Come on, the seven duties of knighthood—”
“Stop being an ass!” she said. “You know you can’t knight me, I’m a woman.”
“Really? All this time and I hadn’t noticed,” he said. “I’m the king, I can knight anyone I want,” which was the first even remotely good part of it all, in fact, and he was even more determined to keep her. “Brienne. I’m not joking. Stay with me.”
He didn’t say please, but he meant it, and she heard it, too; she looked at him uncertainly, and then she frowned down at the floor and told the marble tiles, “All right,” without looking him in the face, and he almost sagged with relief. “Under one condition,” she added. Jaime glared at her speechlessly: he was going to make her the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and she had conditions? “I know the Starks are your enemies. I can’t ask you not to fight them. But if the Stark girls—” then she paused and amended, “if any of the women or children of your enemies ever come into your power, I do ask that you treat them with honor and respect. As I’m sure the Starks are treating your family.”
“What do you think I’m going to do to them?” he demanded, slightly huffy.
She raised her head again and looked at him hard. “Is that how you’d say your family treated Lady Sansa? Or Elia Martell and the children of House Targaryen?” His stomach tightened. “I won’t serve a king who’ll do something like that, or let it be done in his name. I can’t. If that’s a thing you’d allow—anyone to do, for vengeance or any other cause, then don’t ask me to stay.”
She just stopped there, in her abrupt and awkward way, looking him in the face, and he swallowed and said, a little stiffly himself, “You have my word,” and then she stared back at him a moment and then turned red and stared at the floor again and said, “Then it would be my honor, Your Grace,” and he had the absolutely horrible sensation of feeling for just one instant as if he actually was a king.