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Jaqen's figure slipped behind the door and was gone, as though he had never been there at all.
Lynn settled back into his chair and looked at the clay jar of grain sitting on the table.
The House of Black and White.
Blood Magic.
Jaqen hadn't said much. But what he had said carried weight.
That ancient, shadowy guild of killers , they were afraid of him. Afraid of his dragon. Afraid of what he was becoming.
They wanted balance.
And he, Lynn, was the one tipping the scales.
"Offer this gift that even the gods cannot refuse?"
He picked a piece of beef off the plate and chewed it slowly.
Not bad.
How generous of them.
He set the thought aside. He had no free hands for Braavos right now, and he wasn't in any hurry. Whatever he wanted, he'd take it himself when the time came.
For now, he only had to wait.
Wait for the south to get more interesting.
It was like a pot of broth left to simmer , someone just needed to keep adding ingredients. And Lynn had a feeling the fat man named Varys, somewhere in King's Landing, was a very good cook.
...
King's Landing. The Red Keep.
King Joffrey Baratheon was in a foul mood.
He drove his boot into the low table in front of him and sent it skidding across the floor. Golden goblets and a fruit platter went clattering in all directions.
"Useless! Every last one of you is useless!"
He screamed it at the servants cowering before him, his face gone scarlet, his blue eyes burning with something ugly , humiliation, barely contained.
Ever since his damned grandfather Tywin Lannister had returned to King's Landing, Joffrey had felt like a joke. Everyone orbited that old man. His own orders, his own will, meant less in this castle than one of his grandfather's farts.
He was the king.
The ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.
And yet he couldn't even punish a traitor without someone overruling him.
Just then, a small, thin servant boy gathering up the mess on the floor muttered under his breath, low enough to seem like an accident.
"The Knight of Flowers is going to wed the Queen Mother... how wonderful, the roses of Highgarden will bloom all over the Red Keep..."
Soft words. But the room was dead silent, and they reached Joffrey perfectly.
"What did you say?!"
"Your mother's the one marrying that limp-wristed corpse!"
Joffrey whipped around, eyes locking on the servant. The boy dropped to his knees immediately, shaking hard enough to rattle his teeth.
"Your Grace , I , I said nothing—"
"Say it again!"
Joffrey crossed the floor and put his boot into the boy's side.
"Speak."
"Outside , everyone outside is saying," The servant's words came apart with sobbing. "That , that Lord Tywin , is going to give the Queen Mother , give Queen Cersei , to Ser Loras Tyrell of Highgarden , to , to secure the alliance with House Tyrell, "
The sound in Joffrey's head was like a bell struck too hard.
He felt all the blood in his body surge upward.
His mother. Cersei Lannister. The Queen Mother of the Seven Kingdoms. Being handed off like cattle by that ancient, withered old man , to a Tyrell? To that preening, mincing knight who preferred men to women?
What was this?
This was a slap to his face. This was an announcement to every lord and peasant in Westeros.
That he, Joffrey Baratheon, couldn't even protect his own mother.
That this king was a puppet, clean through to the bone.
"Haha , hahahaha—"
The laughter came out of him without warning, wild and ragged. He rocked with it, tears spilling from his eyes. The servants and guards around him went rigid and said nothing.
He had lost his mind. They could all see it.
"Wonderful." Joffrey stopped laughing as suddenly as he'd started. His face had gone from manic to something colder, something sharp-edged and vicious. "My dear grandfather. Worrying himself sick for my sake. For the kingdom. Truly."
He kicked the servant out of his path.
"Guards!"
"Your Grace!" Two Kingsguard stepped forward at once.
"Every Gold Cloak. All of them. Now."
His voice was a blade dragged across stone.
"To the sept. Bring my mother out."
"Tell those Lannister knights, and my loving grandfather, that my mother is the Queen Mother of the Seven Kingdoms. She is not a bargaining chip. She is not a trade. She is my mother, and only I, her king, will decide her fate."
The Kingsguard exchanged a glance.
"Your Grace, this... this is Lord Tywin's command, "
CRACK!
Joffrey's palm connected with the man's face hard enough to snap his head sideways.
"Am I king, or is he king?"
"Go. Anyone who disobeys me loses his head."
The two Kingsguard went without another word.
Within minutes, the Red Keep rang with the thunder of boots and clashing steel. Hundreds of Gold Cloaks, eager as always for a crisis, marched behind their king in a bristling column toward the sept where Cersei was being held.
At the entrance, a line of Lannister soldiers blocked the path.
Their captain was Tywin's man, through and through.
"Your Grace." His tone was respectful. His stance was not. "You may not enter. By order of the Hand of the King, the Queen Mother receives no visitors."
"Go to hell."
Joffrey shoved his finger in the man's face. "You Lannister lapdog. Open your eyes and look at who your king is."
"My duty is to House Lannister."
The captain didn't move.
"Outrageous."
Joffrey was trembling. He yanked his sword free and leveled the blade at the captain's throat.
"One last time. Step aside. Or I'll have every one of you hanged for treason."
The Lannister soldiers drew in a single motion, SHING SHING SHING, steel ringing against steel as they squared off against the Gold Cloaks.
Inside the Red Keep, the king's men and the Hand's men stood blade to blade.
The air was wire-tight.
Then a voice came from the back of the crowd. Cold. Absolute.
"Put them away. All of you. Don't be fools."
Tywin Lannister walked through the crowd in his black Hand's robes, his personal guard falling in around him without a word. His pale green eyes moved across every face in the courtyard, unhurried, cataloguing, until they came to rest on his grandson.
"Joffrey." His voice carried no particular volume. It didn't need to. "What is this?"
"What is this?"
The moment Joffrey saw him, everything he had been holding back came loose.
"I should be asking you that, Grandfather. What is this? What do you think you're doing?"
"What is my mother to you? Livestock? You want to sell her to the Tyrells so they'll keep smiling at you?"
"Did you ask me? Did you think to ask me?"
"Do I exist to you at all?"
Tywin's face showed nothing.
"It is the arrangement most beneficial to the family and to the realm. I owe you no explanation."
"Beneficial." Joffrey let out a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "Every soul in Westeros laughing at me — that's beneficial? Marrying my mother off to a man who has no interest in women — that's beneficial?"
"It won't happen. I'm taking my mother out of here. Today."
Tywin looked at that twisted, furious young face. Somewhere in his pale eyes, something shifted , a flicker of disgust, barely concealed.
How Cersei had grown up so utterly stupid was beyond him. How this screaming boy had emerged from all of it was worse.
"You're tearing everything apart," Tywin said. His voice had gone colder. "You foolish boy. Do you know what it means to be king? It does not mean doing whatever you like."
"It means responsibility."
"Your greatest responsibility is keeping the seat you're sitting on. And sometimes that requires sacrifice. Including that pathetic thing you call dignity."
"My dignity is pathetic?"
Joffrey pressed a finger to his own chest.
"Let me tell you what's pathetic. You. The old man hiding behind the Hand's robes. You think I can't hold this throne without you?"
"I. Am. The king."
He raised his sword toward the Gold Cloaks.
"Charge! Kill these traitors who dare stand against their king!"
The Gold Cloaks didn't move.
They were Lynn's men, Ned's men , but they weren't stupid. One side was the king. The other side was the most powerful man in the realm. They stood frozen, caught between two gravitational fields with no safe direction.
"I'd like to see the man who moves."
Tywin's voice was ice.
The Lannister guards behind him stepped forward as one, sword pommels striking shields in a single dull, resonant thud.
"Treason?!" Joffrey's voice cracked into a shriek. "You're calling this treason?!"
He stared at the Gold Cloaks , hesitating, useless. He stared at Tywin's face, carved from stone and utterly unmoved. And something inside him broke open.
All the humiliation. All the powerlessness. It swallowed what was left of his reason whole.
He dropped the sword and raised his crossbow.
He pointed it at Tywin's chest.
"I'll say this once more."
"Release my mother."
"Or I will show you what a king's fury looks like."
The courtyard went absolutely still.
Every eye in it fixed on the two of them: the boy with the crossbow, and the old man who had not so much as blinked.
The King of the Seven Kingdoms, weapon leveled at his own grandfather, his own Hand.
A scene that would be written down. A scene that would not be forgotten.
Tywin looked at the dark mouth of the crossbow. He looked at Joffrey's face , wild, trembling, unhinged.
And something in his eyes changed.
Not disgust this time.
Something more deliberate than that. More measured.
The look of a man appraising something he was considering removing.
"You have made a mistake, Joffrey."
Tywin's voice was perfectly, terribly calm.
"A mistake that even Aerys never dared to make."
➤ Next: Swords Drawn
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