Chapter 39: A Different Joffrey Baratheon
The hunting party came back through Winterfell's gates in the long light of late afternoon, the sun going amber behind the treeline and painting everything it touched in shades of copper and gold.
The wagons told the story of the day. Three flatbeds loaded with the Wolfswood's contribution to the evening's feast — boars, stags, pheasants, a quantity of hares that had clearly not had a good afternoon. The boards of the lead wagon flexed under the weight of a black boar that was, by any reasonable measure, enormous.
Robert reined in beside it and pointed at the boar with his wineskin in the manner of a man making a significant point.
"There, Ned. Tell me that isn't the finest boar you've seen pulled out of any wood in the Seven Kingdoms." He uncorked the wineskin and drank without taking his eyes off it, and some of it went into his beard, which he did not appear to notice. "Eight hundred pounds if it's a stone. The man is a genuine menace to the local wildlife."
"He's hunted the Kingswood for the better part of a decade," Eddard said, looking at the boar with an expression that was as close to dry amusement as Eddard Stark generally got. "I imagine the Wolfswood's boars had no warning."
"Your Majesty is generous," Henry said, riding up alongside them. "I know how boars move. After six years in the Kingswood, tracking one is more habit than skill."
"And me." Joffrey pressed his horse forward on Robert's other side. The flush of the day's exercise was still on his face, and he was holding himself with the brightness of someone who had done something well and was reasonably certain about it. "Mine was close to five hundred pounds. I took it clean — one shot with the boar spear, no second pass."
Robert turned to look at him. Something moved through his expression — surprise, assessment, and then something that looked like genuine approval.
He reached over and clapped Joffrey on the shoulder, hard enough that the boy had to steady himself in the saddle. "Good lad. Five hundred pounds is nothing to wave away." He looked at him a moment longer. "You've been working."
"Ser Henry makes me work," Joffrey said, which was accurate, and said without resentment.
Robert laughed and looked at Henry over Joffrey's head with an expression that was part gratitude and part something more complicated. Henry received it without comment.
Robb rode near the middle of the column and did not join the conversation at the front.
He had his reasons. The day had not gone well for him — he'd had a young deer and three hares to show for eight hours in the field, which was honest enough hunting but which looked like precisely nothing next to the contents of the lead wagon. He was not sulking, exactly. But he was quiet in the way a person is quiet when they are processing something and have not finished.
Jon rode beside him without speaking, which was the right call. He glanced at his brother occasionally and said nothing useful, which was more useful than words would have been.
The commotion at the gates came from inside — a guard pushing out against the flow of the returning column, his face the color of a man who has been running and has bad news waiting at the end of it.
He reached Eddard before Eddard reached him.
"Lord Stark." The guard's voice had the stripped quality of someone who has decided that preamble is a luxury. "It's Bran. He fell from the Broken Tower an hour ago. Maester Luwin is with him — he's still unconscious."
The column stopped.
Eddard's face went the color of the granite walls around him. His hands tightened on the reins without visible decision behind the motion — a body reacting before a mind had finished receiving the information.
"How," he said, and then stopped, and started again. "How does a boy fall from the Broken Tower."
The guard had no answer for that. No one did, yet.
Robert had gone quiet beside him — no wineskin, no laughter, nothing. He looked at Eddard with the expression of a man who understands that there is nothing useful he can do and is holding himself still around that understanding.
Eddard wheeled his horse and went through the gates at speed.
The Lannister family took their supper in one of Winterfell's smaller halls, which suited them better than the great hall's formality. The children had been seated by the time Tyrion arrived, which meant the servants had been working. He walked in and assessed the table and issued his requirements to the nearest attendant without breaking stride — bread, fish, bacon grilled until the outside had commitment to it, something dark to drink — and lowered himself into the seat that Tommen vacated when Tyrion arrived, because Tommen had learned that his uncle's arrival generally improved an evening and adjusted accordingly.
"Brother," Jaime said, setting down his knife.
"Jaime. Cersei. Children." Tyrion placed a leaf from the godswood at the center of the table and reached across for a strip of bacon before his plate had technically arrived. "I trust the afternoon was tolerable."
Tommen leaned forward with the directness of a child who has one question and cannot manage small talk while it's unresolved. "Uncle, do you know how Bran is?"
Tyrion chewed, swallowed, and gave the question the respect it deserved. "I looked in on Maester Luwin this morning. He said the boy hasn't worsened, which the old man considers significant. He wouldn't have lasted four days without any change if he were going to simply give out."
Tommen absorbed this. "Will he wake up?"
"The Maester believes there's a chance of it, yes."
Myrcella exhaled — a small sound, genuine relief. Tommen's expression settled from worry into something more manageable. Joffrey, who had been sitting with his shoulders carrying a particular kind of tension since the fall was announced, let some of it go. His posture changed. He picked up his knife and started eating again, which he had apparently not been doing properly before.
Cersei set down her wine cup and looked at Tyrion with what she intended to be casual interest. "And if he wakes — what does Luwin think his condition will be?"
Tyrion looked at her.
The question was reasonable on its surface. The urgency underneath it was not something she had managed to keep out of her voice entirely, and Tyrion had spent his life learning to hear the difference between what Lannisters said and what they meant.
He filed it away.
"His back is broken," Tyrion said, directing his answer to the table generally. "He won't walk. He'll live, if he wakes — the Maester thinks the wolf has something to do with it. The animal won't leave the window. They tried closing it once and the boy's breathing worsened within the hour. They opened it again and he stabilized." He paused. "Whatever the connection is, Luwin isn't touching it."
"He dreamed of the Kingsguard," Joffrey said.
Everyone looked at him. He was eating steadily now, not looking up.
"Bran. His mother told me. He wanted to be a knight." Joffrey reached into his jacket and set his hunting knife on the table beside his plate — the antler-handled blade, the one Henry had given him. He looked at it for a moment. "I left it with him yesterday. Figured he should have something to look at."
No one said anything immediately.
Joffrey had, two days prior, been in a shouting match with Robb Stark and spoken sharply enough to Bran that the words had been heard by most of the training ground. The fact that he had gone to the boy's room afterward — alone, apparently, without being told to — and left the knife he valued most sat in the hall without commentary.
"He won't fight," Tyrion said, more gently than his usual register. "Unless you're prepared to accept a Kingsguard who takes the field in a chair and uses the antler as a jousting lance, which would at least be memorable."
Joffrey made a sound that was not quite a laugh but was adjacent to one.
"Those wolves are not coming south," Cersei said, the conversation having given her a direction. "They are dangerous animals and I will not have them in King's Landing."
"You don't have much say in it," Jaime said. "The girls won't be separated from them. Nor would they listen if you tried."
"Someone should try."
"Someone is welcome to explain to Arya Stark why she cannot bring her wolf," Tyrion said pleasantly. "I would pay to watch that conversation."
Cersei's attention had moved to the leaf on the table. "What is that?"
"Heart tree leaf. For Bran." He picked it up. "A northern custom — you bring it to someone who's ill, as a kind of prayer to the old gods. I thought it couldn't hurt."
"You have northern friends now."
"One or two." He smiled. "You wouldn't enjoy the names."
Cersei looked at it. Then she looked at Tyrion with the particular expression she used when she had made a calculation and was satisfied with the result. "I'm visiting Bran this afternoon in any case. I'll take it for you."
"By all means." Tyrion released the leaf without ceremony. "Your generosity is boundless, sister."
She took the leaf and rose and collected the two younger children with the efficient motion of a woman who has decided what she is doing next. They filed out. Joffrey followed a moment later, pausing to pull on his gloves.
"I'm going to find Ser Henry," he said. "We're discussing the ride north tomorrow."
He left.
Tyrion poured himself more of the dark ale and looked at the door.
"She'll tell the boy she thought of it herself," he said.
Jaime was watching him with the measuring expression he put on when he was working something out. "You know," he said, "with the Stark boy's condition what it is, Ned may not feel he can leave Winterfell."
"He'll go when Robert tells him to go." Tyrion broke a piece of bread. "And Robert will tell him. There's nothing Ned can do here that Luwin can't do better, and he knows it."
Jaime's voice dropped a register. "If it were my son lying like that, I'd make the merciful choice. Put him out of it. Kinder than letting him wake to that life."
Tyrion was quiet for a moment. He looked at his ale, then at his brother.
"When you're dead, everything is over," he said. "When you're alive, things can still change." He set down the cup. "I want the boy to wake up. Partly because Tommen would be glad of it. Partly because I'm curious what he knows."
Jaime's expression sharpened. He looked at Tyrion the way he looked at things he hadn't expected to need to look at carefully.
"Sometimes," Jaime said, "I genuinely can't work out which side you're on."
Tyrion picked up the last of his bread and mopped the plate with it. He chewed, swallowed, drank, and looked at his brother with an expression of complete innocence that had taken years to perfect.
"My own, obviously," he said. "Same as everyone else at this table. I simply find it more productive to be honest about it."
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