The straw on the floor stank of urine. There was
no window, no bed, not even a slop bucket. He remembered walls of
pale red stone festooned with patches of nitre, a grey door of
splintered wood, four inches thick and studded with iron. He had
seen them, briefly, a quick glimpse as they shoved him inside. Once
the door had slammed shut, he had seen no more. The dark was
absolute. He had as well been blind.
Or dead. Buried with his king. “Ah, Robert,” he
murmured as his groping hand touched a cold stone wall, his leg
throbbing with every motion. He remembered the jest the king had
shared in the crypts of Winterfell, as the Kings of Winter looked
on with cold stone eyes. The king eats, Robert had said, and the
Hand takes the shit. How he had laughed. Yet he had gotten it
wrong. The king dies, Ned Stark thought, and the Hand is
buried.
The dungeon was under the Red Keep, deeper than he dared
imagine. He remembered the old stories about Maegor the Cruel, who
murdered all the masons who labored on his castle, so they might
never reveal its secrets.
He damned them all: Littlefinger, Janos Slynt and his gold
cloaks, the queen, the Kingslayer, Pycelle and Varys and Ser
Barristan, even Lord Renly, Robert’s own blood, who had run
when he was needed most. Yet in the end he blamed himself.
“Fool,” he cried to the darkness, “thrice-damned
blind fool.”
Cersei Lannister’s face seemed to float before him in the
darkness. Her hair was full of sunlight, but there was mockery in
her smile. “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you
die,” she whispered. Ned had played and lost, and his men had
paid the price of his folly with their life’s blood.
When he thought of his daughters, he would have wept gladly, but
the tears would not come. Even now, he was a Stark of Winterfell,
and his grief and his rage froze hard inside him.
When he kept very still, his leg did not hurt so much, so he did
his best to lie unmoving. For how long he could not say. There was
no sun and no moon. He could not see to mark the walls. Ned closed
his eyes and opened them; it made no difference. He slept and woke
and slept again. He did not know which was more painful, the waking
or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbing dreams
of blood and broken promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do
but think, and his waking thoughts were worse than nightmares. The
thought of Cat was as painful as a bed of nettles. He wondered
where she was, what she was doing. He wondered whether he would
ever see her again.
Hours turned to days, or so it seemed. He could feel a dull ache
in his shattered leg, an itch beneath the plaster. When he touched
his thigh, the flesh was hot to his fingers. The only sound was his
breathing. After a time, he began to talk aloud, just to hear a
voice. He made plans to keep himself sane, built castles of hope in
the dark. Robert’s brothers were out in the world, raising
armies at Dragonstone and Storm’s End. Alyn and Harwin would
return to King’s Landing with the rest of his household guard
once they had dealt with Ser Gregor. Catelyn would raise the north
when the word reached her, and the lords of river and mountain and
Vale would join her.
He found himself thinking of Robert more and more. He saw the
king as he had been in the flower of his youth, tall and handsome,
his great antlered helm on his head, his warhammer in hand, sitting
his horse like a horned god. He heard his laughter in the dark, saw
his eyes, blue and clear as mountain lakes. “Look at us,
Ned,” Robert said. “Gods, how did we come to this? You
here, and me killed by a pig. We won a throne together . . . ” I failed you, Robert, Ned thought. He could not say the words. I
lied to you, hid the truth. I let them kill you.
The king heard him. “You stiff-necked fool,” he
muttered, “too proud to listen. Can you eat pride, Stark?
Will honor shield your children?” Cracks ran down his face,
fissures opening in the flesh, and he reached up and ripped the
mask away. It was not Robert at all; it was Littlefinger, grinning,
mocking him. When he opened his mouth to speak, his lies turned to
pale grey moths and took wing.
Ned was half-asleep when the footsteps came down the hall. At
first he thought he dreamt them; it had been so long since he had
heard anything but the sound of his own voice. Ned was feverish by
then, his leg a dull agony, his lips parched and cracked. When the
heavy wooden door creaked open, the sudden light was painful to his
eyes.
A gaoler thrust a jug at him. The clay was cool and beaded with
moisture. Ned grasped it with both hands and gulped eagerly. Water
ran from his mouth and dripped down through his beard. He drank
until he thought he would be sick. “How long . . . ?”
he asked weakly when he could drink no more.
The gaoler was a scarecrow of a man with a rat’s face and
frayed beard, clad in a mail shirt and a leather half cape.
“No talking,” he said as he wrenched the jug from
Ned’s hands.
“Please,” Ned said, “my daughters . . . ”
The door crashed shut. He blinked as the light vanished, lowered
his head to his chest, and curled up on the straw. It no longer
stank of urine and shit. It no longer smelled at all.
He could no longer tell the difference between waking and
sleeping. The memory came creeping upon him in the darkness, as
vivid as a dream. It was the year of false spring, and he was
eighteen again, down from the Eyrie to the tourney at Harrenhal. He
could see the deep green of the grass, and smell the pollen on the
wind. Warm days and cool nights and the sweet taste of wine. He
remembered Brandon’s laughter, and Robert’s berserk
valor in the melee, the way he laughed as he unhorsed men left and
right. He remembered Jaime Lannister, a golden youth in scaled
white armor, kneeling on the grass in front of the king’s
pavilion and making his vows to protect and defend King Aerys.
Afterward, Ser Oswell Whent helped Jaime to his feet, and the White
Bull himself, Lord Commander Ser Gerold Hightower, fastened the
snowy cloak of the Kingsguard about his shoulders. All six White
Swords were there to welcome their newest brother.
Yet when the jousting began, the day belonged to Rhaegar
Targaryen. The crown prince wore the armor he would die in:
gleaming black plate with the three-headed dragon of his House
wrought in rubies on the breast. A plume of scarlet silk streamed
behind him when he rode, and it seemed no lance could touch him.
Brandon fell to him, and Bronze Yohn Royce, and even the splendid
Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.
Robert had been jesting with Jon and old Lord Hunter as the
prince circled the field after unhorsing Ser Barristan in the final
tilt to claim the champion’s crown. Ned remembered the moment
when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his
horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay
the queen of beauty’s laurel in Lyanna’s lap. He could
see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost.
Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but
beneath the pale blue petals the thorns lay hidden. He felt them
clawing at his skin, sharp and cruel, saw the slow trickle of blood
run down his fingers, and woke, trembling, in the dark. Promise me, Ned, his sister had whispered from her bed of blood.
She had loved the scent of winter roses.
“Gods save me,” Ned wept. “I am going
mad.”
The gods did not deign to answer.
Each time the turnkey brought him water, he told himself another
day had passed. At first he would beg the man for some word of his
daughters and the world beyond his cell. Grunts and kicks were his
only replies. Later, when the stomach cramps began, he begged for
food instead. It made no matter; he was not fed. Perhaps the
Lannisters meant for him to starve to death. “No,” he
told himself. If Cersei had wanted him dead, he would have been cut
down in the throne room with his men. She wanted him alive. Weak,
desperate, yet alive. Catelyn held her brother; she dare not kill
him or the Imp’s life would be forfeit as well.
From outside his cell came the rattle of iron chains. As the
door creaked open, Ned put a hand to the damp wall and pushed
himself toward the light. The glare of a torch made him squint.
“Food,” he croaked.
“Wine,” a voice answered. It was not the rat-faced
man; this gaoler was stouter, shorter, though he wore the same
leather half cape and spiked steel cap. “Drink, Lord
Eddard.” He thrust a wineskin into Ned’s hands.
The voice was strangely familiar, yet it took Ned Stark a moment
to place it. “Varys?” he said groggily when it came. He
touched the man’s face. “I’m not . . . not
dreaming this. You’re here.” The eunuch’s plump
cheeks were covered with a dark stubble of beard. Ned felt the
coarse hair with his fingers. Varys had transformed himself into a
grizzled turnkey, reeking of sweat and sour wine. “How did
you . . . what sort of magician are you?”
“A thirsty one,” Varys said. “Drink, my
lord.”
Ned’s hands fumbled at the skin. “Is this the same
poison they gave Robert?”
“You wrong me,” Varys said sadly. “Truly, no
one loves a eunuch. Give me the skin.” He drank, a trickle of
red leaking from the corner of his plump mouth. “Not the
equal of the vintage you offered me the night of the tourney, but
no more poisonous than most,” he concluded, wiping his lips.
“Here.”
Ned tried a swallow. “Dregs.” He felt as though he
were about to bring the wine back up.
“All men must swallow the sour with the sweet. High lords
and eunuchs alike. Your hour has come, my lord.”
“My daughters . . . ”
“The younger girl escaped Ser Meryn and fled,” Varys
told him. “I have not been able to find her. Nor have the
Lannisters. A kindness, there. Our new king loves her not. Your
older girl is still betrothed to Joffrey. Cersei keeps her close.
She came to court a few days ago to plead that you be spared. A
pity you couldn’t have been there, you would have been
touched.” He leaned forward intently. “I trust you
realize that you are a dead man, Lord Eddard?”
“The queen will not kill me,” Ned said. His head
swam; the wine was strong, and it had been too long since
he’d eaten. “Cat . . . Cat holds her brother . . . ”
“The wrong brother,” Varys sighed. “And lost
to her, in any case. She let the Imp slip through her fingers. I
expect he is dead by now, somewhere in the Mountains of the
Moon.”
“If that is true, slit my throat and have done with
it.” He was dizzy from the wine, tired and heartsick.
“Your blood is the last thing I desire.”
Ned frowned. “When they slaughtered my guard, you stood
beside the queen and watched, and said not a word.”
“And would again. I seem to recall that I was unarmed,
unarmored, and surrounded by Lannister swords.” The eunuch
looked at him curiously, tilting his head. “When I was a
young boy, before I was cut, I traveled with a troupe of mummers
through the Free Cities. They taught me that each man has a role to
play, in life as well as mummery. So it is at court. The
King’s Justice must be fearsome, the master of coin must be
frugal, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard must be valiant . . . and the master of whisperers must be sly and obsequious and without
scruple. A courageous informer would be as useless as a cowardly
knight.” He took the wineskin back and drank.
Ned studied the eunuch’s face, searching for truth beneath
the mummer’s scars and false stubble. He tried some more
wine. This time it went down easier. “Can you free me from
this pit?”
“I could . . . but will I? No. Questions would be asked,
and the answers would lead back to me.”
Ned had expected no more. “You are blunt.”
“A eunuch has no honor, and a spider does not enjoy the
luxury of scruples, my lord.”
“Would you at least consent to carry a message out for
me?”
“That would depend on the message. I will gladly provide
you with paper and ink, if you like. And when you have written what
you will, I will take the letter and read it, and deliver it or
not, as best serves my own ends.”
“Your own ends. What ends are those, Lord
Varys?”
“Peace,” Varys replied without hesitation. “If
there was one soul in King’s Landing who was truly desperate
to keep Robert Baratheon alive, it was me.” He sighed.
“For fifteen years I protected him from his enemies, but I
could not protect him from his friends. What strange fit of madness
led you to tell the queen that you had learned the truth of
Joffrey’s birth?”
“The madness of mercy,” Ned admitted.
“Ah,” said Varys. “To be sure. You are an
honest and honorable man, Lord Eddard. Ofttimes I forget that. I
have met so few of them in my life.” He glanced around the
cell. “When I see what honesty and honor have won you, I
understand why.”
Ned Stark laid his head back against the damp stone wall and
closed his eyes. His leg was throbbing. “The king’s
wine . . . did you question Lancel?”
“Oh, indeed. Cersei gave him the wineskins, and told him
it was Robert’s favorite vintage.” The eunuch shrugged.
“A hunter lives a perilous life. If the boar had not done for
Robert, it would have been a fall from a horse, the bite of a wood
adder, an arrow gone astray . . . the forest is the abbatoir of the
gods. It was not wine that killed the king. It was your
mercy.”
Ned had feared as much. “Gods forgive me.”
“If there are gods,” Varys said, “I expect
they will. The queen would not have waited long in any case. Robert
was becoming unruly, and she needed to be rid of him to free her
hands to deal with his brothers. They are quite a pair, Stannis and
Renly. The iron gauntlet and the silk glove.” He wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand. “You have been foolish, my
lord. You ought to have heeded Littlefinger when he urged you to
support Joffrey’s succession.”
“How . . . how could you know of that?”
Varys smiled. “I know, that’s all that need concern
you. I also know that on the morrow the queen will pay you a
visit.”
Slowly Ned raised his eyes. “Why?”
“Cersei is frightened of you, my lord . . . but she has
other enemies she fears even more. Her beloved Jaime is fighting
the river lords even now. Lysa Arryn sits in the Eyrie, ringed in
stone and steel, and there is no love lost between her and the
queen. In Dorne, the Martells still brood on the murder of Princess
Elia and her babes. And now your son marches down the Neck with a
northern host at his back.”
“Robb is only a boy,” Ned said, aghast.
“A boy with an army,” Varys said. “Yet only a
boy, as you say. The king’s brothers are the ones giving
Cersei sleepless nights . . . Lord Stannis in particular. His claim
is the true one, he is known for his prowess as a battle commander,
and he is utterly without mercy. There is no creature on earth half
so terrifying as a truly just man. No one knows what Stannis has
been doing on Dragonstone, but I will wager you that he’s
gathered more swords than seashells. So here is Cersei’s
nightmare: while her father and brother spend their power battling
Starks and Tullys, Lord Stannis will land, proclaim himself king,
and lop off her son’s curly blond head . . . and her own in
the bargain, though I truly believe she cares more about the
boy.”
“Stannis Baratheon is Robert’s true heir,” Ned
said. “The throne is his by rights. I would welcome his
ascent.”
Varys tsked. “Cersei will not want to hear that, I promise
you. Stannis may win the throne, but only your rotting head will
remain to cheer unless you guard that tongue of yours. Sansa begged
so sweetly, it would be a shame if you threw it all away. You are
being given your life back, if you’ll take it. Cersei is no
fool. She knows a tame wolf is of more use than a dead
one.”
“You want me to serve the woman who murdered my king,
butchered my men, and crippled my son?” Ned’s voice was
thick with disbelief.
“I want you to serve the realm,” Varys said.
“Tell the queen that you will confess your vile treason,
command your son to lay down his sword, and proclaim Joffrey as the
true heir. Offer to denounce Stannis and Renly as faithless
usurpers. Our green-eyed lioness knows you are a man of honor. If
you will give her the peace she needs and the time to deal with
Stannis, and pledge to carry her secret to your grave, I believe
she will allow you to take the black and live out the rest of your
days on the Wall, with your brother and that baseborn son of
yours.”
The thought of Jon filled Ned with a sense of shame, and a
sorrow too deep for words. If only he could see the boy again, sit
and talk with him . . . pain shot through his broken leg, beneath
the filthy grey plaster of his cast. He winced, his fingers opening
and closing helplessly. “Is this your own scheme,” he
gasped out at Varys, “or are you in league with
Littlefinger?”
That seemed to amuse the eunuch. “I would sooner wed the
Black Goat of Qohor. Littlefinger is the second most devious man in
the Seven Kingdoms. Oh, I feed him choice whispers, sufficient so
that he thinks I am his . . . just as I allow Cersei to believe I
am hers.”
“And just as you let me believe that you were mine. Tell
me, Lord Varys, who do you truly serve?”
Varys smiled thinly. “Why, the realm, my good lord, how
ever could you doubt that? I swear it by my lost manhood. I serve
the realm, and the realm needs peace.” He finished the last
swallow of wine, and tossed the empty skin aside. “So what is
your answer, Lord Eddard? Give me your word that you’ll tell
the queen what she wants to hear when she comes calling.”
“If I did, my word would be as hollow as an empty suit of
armor. My life is not so precious to me as that.”
“Pity.” The eunuch stood. “And your
daughter’s life, my lord? How precious is that?”
A chill pierced Ned’s heart. “My daughter . . . ”
“Surely you did not think I’d forgotten about your
sweet innocent, my lord? The queen most certainly has
not.”
“No,” Ned pleaded, his voice cracking.
“Varys, gods have mercy, do as you like with me, but leave my
daughter out of your schemes. Sansa’s no more than a
child.”
“Rhaenys was a child too. Prince Rhaegar’s daughter.
A precious little thing, younger than your girls. She had a small
black kitten she called Balerion, did you know? I always wondered
what happened to him. Rhaenys liked to pretend he was the true
Balerion, the Black Dread of old, but I imagine the Lannisters
taught her the difference between a kitten and a dragon quick
enough, the day they broke down her door.” Varys gave a long
weary sigh, the sigh of a man who carried all the sadness of the
world in a sack upon his shoulders. “The High Septon once
told me that as we sin, so do we suffer. If that’s true, Lord
Eddard, tell me . . . why is it always the innocents who suffer
most, when you high lords play your game of thrones? Ponder it, if
you would, while you wait upon the queen. And spare a thought for
this as well: The next visitor who calls on you could bring you
bread and cheese and the milk of the poppy for your pain . . . or
he could bring you Sansa’s head.
“The choice, my dear lord Hand, is entirely
yours.”
The straw on the floor stank of urine. There was
no window, no bed, not even a slop bucket. He remembered walls of
pale red stone festooned with patches of nitre, a grey door of
splintered wood, four inches thick and studded with iron. He had
seen them, briefly, a quick glimpse as they shoved him inside. Once
the door had slammed shut, he had seen no more. The dark was
absolute. He had as well been blind.
Or dead. Buried with his king. “Ah, Robert,” he
murmured as his groping hand touched a cold stone wall, his leg
throbbing with every motion. He remembered the jest the king had
shared in the crypts of Winterfell, as the Kings of Winter looked
on with cold stone eyes. The king eats, Robert had said, and the
Hand takes the shit. How he had laughed. Yet he had gotten it
wrong. The king dies, Ned Stark thought, and the Hand is
buried.
The dungeon was under the Red Keep, deeper than he dared
imagine. He remembered the old stories about Maegor the Cruel, who
murdered all the masons who labored on his castle, so they might
never reveal its secrets.
He damned them all: Littlefinger, Janos Slynt and his gold
cloaks, the queen, the Kingslayer, Pycelle and Varys and Ser
Barristan, even Lord Renly, Robert’s own blood, who had run
when he was needed most. Yet in the end he blamed himself.
“Fool,” he cried to the darkness, “thrice-damned
blind fool.”
Cersei Lannister’s face seemed to float before him in the
darkness. Her hair was full of sunlight, but there was mockery in
her smile. “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you
die,” she whispered. Ned had played and lost, and his men had
paid the price of his folly with their life’s blood.
When he thought of his daughters, he would have wept gladly, but
the tears would not come. Even now, he was a Stark of Winterfell,
and his grief and his rage froze hard inside him.
When he kept very still, his leg did not hurt so much, so he did
his best to lie unmoving. For how long he could not say. There was
no sun and no moon. He could not see to mark the walls. Ned closed
his eyes and opened them; it made no difference. He slept and woke
and slept again. He did not know which was more painful, the waking
or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbing dreams
of blood and broken promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do
but think, and his waking thoughts were worse than nightmares. The
thought of Cat was as painful as a bed of nettles. He wondered
where she was, what she was doing. He wondered whether he would
ever see her again.
Hours turned to days, or so it seemed. He could feel a dull ache
in his shattered leg, an itch beneath the plaster. When he touched
his thigh, the flesh was hot to his fingers. The only sound was his
breathing. After a time, he began to talk aloud, just to hear a
voice. He made plans to keep himself sane, built castles of hope in
the dark. Robert’s brothers were out in the world, raising
armies at Dragonstone and Storm’s End. Alyn and Harwin would
return to King’s Landing with the rest of his household guard
once they had dealt with Ser Gregor. Catelyn would raise the north
when the word reached her, and the lords of river and mountain and
Vale would join her.
He found himself thinking of Robert more and more. He saw the
king as he had been in the flower of his youth, tall and handsome,
his great antlered helm on his head, his warhammer in hand, sitting
his horse like a horned god. He heard his laughter in the dark, saw
his eyes, blue and clear as mountain lakes. “Look at us,
Ned,” Robert said. “Gods, how did we come to this? You
here, and me killed by a pig. We won a throne together . . . ” I failed you, Robert, Ned thought. He could not say the words. I
lied to you, hid the truth. I let them kill you.
The king heard him. “You stiff-necked fool,” he
muttered, “too proud to listen. Can you eat pride, Stark?
Will honor shield your children?” Cracks ran down his face,
fissures opening in the flesh, and he reached up and ripped the
mask away. It was not Robert at all; it was Littlefinger, grinning,
mocking him. When he opened his mouth to speak, his lies turned to
pale grey moths and took wing.
Ned was half-asleep when the footsteps came down the hall. At
first he thought he dreamt them; it had been so long since he had
heard anything but the sound of his own voice. Ned was feverish by
then, his leg a dull agony, his lips parched and cracked. When the
heavy wooden door creaked open, the sudden light was painful to his
eyes.
A gaoler thrust a jug at him. The clay was cool and beaded with
moisture. Ned grasped it with both hands and gulped eagerly. Water
ran from his mouth and dripped down through his beard. He drank
until he thought he would be sick. “How long . . . ?”
he asked weakly when he could drink no more.
The gaoler was a scarecrow of a man with a rat’s face and
frayed beard, clad in a mail shirt and a leather half cape.
“No talking,” he said as he wrenched the jug from
Ned’s hands.
“Please,” Ned said, “my daughters . . . ”
The door crashed shut. He blinked as the light vanished, lowered
his head to his chest, and curled up on the straw. It no longer
stank of urine and shit. It no longer smelled at all.
He could no longer tell the difference between waking and
sleeping. The memory came creeping upon him in the darkness, as
vivid as a dream. It was the year of false spring, and he was
eighteen again, down from the Eyrie to the tourney at Harrenhal. He
could see the deep green of the grass, and smell the pollen on the
wind. Warm days and cool nights and the sweet taste of wine. He
remembered Brandon’s laughter, and Robert’s berserk
valor in the melee, the way he laughed as he unhorsed men left and
right. He remembered Jaime Lannister, a golden youth in scaled
white armor, kneeling on the grass in front of the king’s
pavilion and making his vows to protect and defend King Aerys.
Afterward, Ser Oswell Whent helped Jaime to his feet, and the White
Bull himself, Lord Commander Ser Gerold Hightower, fastened the
snowy cloak of the Kingsguard about his shoulders. All six White
Swords were there to welcome their newest brother.
Yet when the jousting began, the day belonged to Rhaegar
Targaryen. The crown prince wore the armor he would die in:
gleaming black plate with the three-headed dragon of his House
wrought in rubies on the breast. A plume of scarlet silk streamed
behind him when he rode, and it seemed no lance could touch him.
Brandon fell to him, and Bronze Yohn Royce, and even the splendid
Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.
Robert had been jesting with Jon and old Lord Hunter as the
prince circled the field after unhorsing Ser Barristan in the final
tilt to claim the champion’s crown. Ned remembered the moment
when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his
horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay
the queen of beauty’s laurel in Lyanna’s lap. He could
see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost.
Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but
beneath the pale blue petals the thorns lay hidden. He felt them
clawing at his skin, sharp and cruel, saw the slow trickle of blood
run down his fingers, and woke, trembling, in the dark. Promise me, Ned, his sister had whispered from her bed of blood.
She had loved the scent of winter roses.
“Gods save me,” Ned wept. “I am going
mad.”
The gods did not deign to answer.
Each time the turnkey brought him water, he told himself another
day had passed. At first he would beg the man for some word of his
daughters and the world beyond his cell. Grunts and kicks were his
only replies. Later, when the stomach cramps began, he begged for
food instead. It made no matter; he was not fed. Perhaps the
Lannisters meant for him to starve to death. “No,” he
told himself. If Cersei had wanted him dead, he would have been cut
down in the throne room with his men. She wanted him alive. Weak,
desperate, yet alive. Catelyn held her brother; she dare not kill
him or the Imp’s life would be forfeit as well.
From outside his cell came the rattle of iron chains. As the
door creaked open, Ned put a hand to the damp wall and pushed
himself toward the light. The glare of a torch made him squint.
“Food,” he croaked.
“Wine,” a voice answered. It was not the rat-faced
man; this gaoler was stouter, shorter, though he wore the same
leather half cape and spiked steel cap. “Drink, Lord
Eddard.” He thrust a wineskin into Ned’s hands.
The voice was strangely familiar, yet it took Ned Stark a moment
to place it. “Varys?” he said groggily when it came. He
touched the man’s face. “I’m not . . . not
dreaming this. You’re here.” The eunuch’s plump
cheeks were covered with a dark stubble of beard. Ned felt the
coarse hair with his fingers. Varys had transformed himself into a
grizzled turnkey, reeking of sweat and sour wine. “How did
you . . . what sort of magician are you?”
“A thirsty one,” Varys said. “Drink, my
lord.”
Ned’s hands fumbled at the skin. “Is this the same
poison they gave Robert?”
“You wrong me,” Varys said sadly. “Truly, no
one loves a eunuch. Give me the skin.” He drank, a trickle of
red leaking from the corner of his plump mouth. “Not the
equal of the vintage you offered me the night of the tourney, but
no more poisonous than most,” he concluded, wiping his lips.
“Here.”
Ned tried a swallow. “Dregs.” He felt as though he
were about to bring the wine back up.
“All men must swallow the sour with the sweet. High lords
and eunuchs alike. Your hour has come, my lord.”
“My daughters . . . ”
“The younger girl escaped Ser Meryn and fled,” Varys
told him. “I have not been able to find her. Nor have the
Lannisters. A kindness, there. Our new king loves her not. Your
older girl is still betrothed to Joffrey. Cersei keeps her close.
She came to court a few days ago to plead that you be spared. A
pity you couldn’t have been there, you would have been
touched.” He leaned forward intently. “I trust you
realize that you are a dead man, Lord Eddard?”
“The queen will not kill me,” Ned said. His head
swam; the wine was strong, and it had been too long since
he’d eaten. “Cat . . . Cat holds her brother . . . ”
“The wrong brother,” Varys sighed. “And lost
to her, in any case. She let the Imp slip through her fingers. I
expect he is dead by now, somewhere in the Mountains of the
Moon.”
“If that is true, slit my throat and have done with
it.” He was dizzy from the wine, tired and heartsick.
“Your blood is the last thing I desire.”
Ned frowned. “When they slaughtered my guard, you stood
beside the queen and watched, and said not a word.”
“And would again. I seem to recall that I was unarmed,
unarmored, and surrounded by Lannister swords.” The eunuch
looked at him curiously, tilting his head. “When I was a
young boy, before I was cut, I traveled with a troupe of mummers
through the Free Cities. They taught me that each man has a role to
play, in life as well as mummery. So it is at court. The
King’s Justice must be fearsome, the master of coin must be
frugal, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard must be valiant . . . and the master of whisperers must be sly and obsequious and without
scruple. A courageous informer would be as useless as a cowardly
knight.” He took the wineskin back and drank.
Ned studied the eunuch’s face, searching for truth beneath
the mummer’s scars and false stubble. He tried some more
wine. This time it went down easier. “Can you free me from
this pit?”
“I could . . . but will I? No. Questions would be asked,
and the answers would lead back to me.”
Ned had expected no more. “You are blunt.”
“A eunuch has no honor, and a spider does not enjoy the
luxury of scruples, my lord.”
“Would you at least consent to carry a message out for
me?”
“That would depend on the message. I will gladly provide
you with paper and ink, if you like. And when you have written what
you will, I will take the letter and read it, and deliver it or
not, as best serves my own ends.”
“Your own ends. What ends are those, Lord
Varys?”
“Peace,” Varys replied without hesitation. “If
there was one soul in King’s Landing who was truly desperate
to keep Robert Baratheon alive, it was me.” He sighed.
“For fifteen years I protected him from his enemies, but I
could not protect him from his friends. What strange fit of madness
led you to tell the queen that you had learned the truth of
Joffrey’s birth?”
“The madness of mercy,” Ned admitted.
“Ah,” said Varys. “To be sure. You are an
honest and honorable man, Lord Eddard. Ofttimes I forget that. I
have met so few of them in my life.” He glanced around the
cell. “When I see what honesty and honor have won you, I
understand why.”
Ned Stark laid his head back against the damp stone wall and
closed his eyes. His leg was throbbing. “The king’s
wine . . . did you question Lancel?”
“Oh, indeed. Cersei gave him the wineskins, and told him
it was Robert’s favorite vintage.” The eunuch shrugged.
“A hunter lives a perilous life. If the boar had not done for
Robert, it would have been a fall from a horse, the bite of a wood
adder, an arrow gone astray . . . the forest is the abbatoir of the
gods. It was not wine that killed the king. It was your
mercy.”
Ned had feared as much. “Gods forgive me.”
“If there are gods,” Varys said, “I expect
they will. The queen would not have waited long in any case. Robert
was becoming unruly, and she needed to be rid of him to free her
hands to deal with his brothers. They are quite a pair, Stannis and
Renly. The iron gauntlet and the silk glove.” He wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand. “You have been foolish, my
lord. You ought to have heeded Littlefinger when he urged you to
support Joffrey’s succession.”
“How . . . how could you know of that?”
Varys smiled. “I know, that’s all that need concern
you. I also know that on the morrow the queen will pay you a
visit.”
Slowly Ned raised his eyes. “Why?”
“Cersei is frightened of you, my lord . . . but she has
other enemies she fears even more. Her beloved Jaime is fighting
the river lords even now. Lysa Arryn sits in the Eyrie, ringed in
stone and steel, and there is no love lost between her and the
queen. In Dorne, the Martells still brood on the murder of Princess
Elia and her babes. And now your son marches down the Neck with a
northern host at his back.”
“Robb is only a boy,” Ned said, aghast.
“A boy with an army,” Varys said. “Yet only a
boy, as you say. The king’s brothers are the ones giving
Cersei sleepless nights . . . Lord Stannis in particular. His claim
is the true one, he is known for his prowess as a battle commander,
and he is utterly without mercy. There is no creature on earth half
so terrifying as a truly just man. No one knows what Stannis has
been doing on Dragonstone, but I will wager you that he’s
gathered more swords than seashells. So here is Cersei’s
nightmare: while her father and brother spend their power battling
Starks and Tullys, Lord Stannis will land, proclaim himself king,
and lop off her son’s curly blond head . . . and her own in
the bargain, though I truly believe she cares more about the
boy.”
“Stannis Baratheon is Robert’s true heir,” Ned
said. “The throne is his by rights. I would welcome his
ascent.”
Varys tsked. “Cersei will not want to hear that, I promise
you. Stannis may win the throne, but only your rotting head will
remain to cheer unless you guard that tongue of yours. Sansa begged
so sweetly, it would be a shame if you threw it all away. You are
being given your life back, if you’ll take it. Cersei is no
fool. She knows a tame wolf is of more use than a dead
one.”
“You want me to serve the woman who murdered my king,
butchered my men, and crippled my son?” Ned’s voice was
thick with disbelief.
“I want you to serve the realm,” Varys said.
“Tell the queen that you will confess your vile treason,
command your son to lay down his sword, and proclaim Joffrey as the
true heir. Offer to denounce Stannis and Renly as faithless
usurpers. Our green-eyed lioness knows you are a man of honor. If
you will give her the peace she needs and the time to deal with
Stannis, and pledge to carry her secret to your grave, I believe
she will allow you to take the black and live out the rest of your
days on the Wall, with your brother and that baseborn son of
yours.”
The thought of Jon filled Ned with a sense of shame, and a
sorrow too deep for words. If only he could see the boy again, sit
and talk with him . . . pain shot through his broken leg, beneath
the filthy grey plaster of his cast. He winced, his fingers opening
and closing helplessly. “Is this your own scheme,” he
gasped out at Varys, “or are you in league with
Littlefinger?”
That seemed to amuse the eunuch. “I would sooner wed the
Black Goat of Qohor. Littlefinger is the second most devious man in
the Seven Kingdoms. Oh, I feed him choice whispers, sufficient so
that he thinks I am his . . . just as I allow Cersei to believe I
am hers.”
“And just as you let me believe that you were mine. Tell
me, Lord Varys, who do you truly serve?”
Varys smiled thinly. “Why, the realm, my good lord, how
ever could you doubt that? I swear it by my lost manhood. I serve
the realm, and the realm needs peace.” He finished the last
swallow of wine, and tossed the empty skin aside. “So what is
your answer, Lord Eddard? Give me your word that you’ll tell
the queen what she wants to hear when she comes calling.”
“If I did, my word would be as hollow as an empty suit of
armor. My life is not so precious to me as that.”
“Pity.” The eunuch stood. “And your
daughter’s life, my lord? How precious is that?”
A chill pierced Ned’s heart. “My daughter . . . ”
“Surely you did not think I’d forgotten about your
sweet innocent, my lord? The queen most certainly has
not.”
“No,” Ned pleaded, his voice cracking.
“Varys, gods have mercy, do as you like with me, but leave my
daughter out of your schemes. Sansa’s no more than a
child.”
“Rhaenys was a child too. Prince Rhaegar’s daughter.
A precious little thing, younger than your girls. She had a small
black kitten she called Balerion, did you know? I always wondered
what happened to him. Rhaenys liked to pretend he was the true
Balerion, the Black Dread of old, but I imagine the Lannisters
taught her the difference between a kitten and a dragon quick
enough, the day they broke down her door.” Varys gave a long
weary sigh, the sigh of a man who carried all the sadness of the
world in a sack upon his shoulders. “The High Septon once
told me that as we sin, so do we suffer. If that’s true, Lord
Eddard, tell me . . . why is it always the innocents who suffer
most, when you high lords play your game of thrones? Ponder it, if
you would, while you wait upon the queen. And spare a thought for
this as well: The next visitor who calls on you could bring you
bread and cheese and the milk of the poppy for your pain . . . or
he could bring you Sansa’s head.
“The choice, my dear lord Hand, is entirely
yours.”