He dreamed of a cracked stone ceiling and the smells of
blood and shit and burnt flesh. The air was full of acrid smoke.
Men were groaning and whimpering all around him, and from time to
time a scream would pierce the air, thick with pain. When he tried
to move, he found that he had fouled his own bedding. The smoke in
the air made his eyes water. Am I crying? He must not let his
father see. He was a Lannister of Casterly Rock. A lion, I must be
a lion, live a lion, die a lion. He hurt so much, though. Too weak
to groan, he lay in his own filth and shut his eyes. Nearby someone
was cursing the gods in a heavy, monotonous voice. He listened to
the blasphemies and wondered if he was dying. After a time the room
faded.
He found himself outside the city, walking through a world
without color. Ravens soared through a grey sky on wide black
wings, while carrion crows rose from their feasts in furious clouds
wherever he set his steps. White maggots burrowed through black
corruption. The wolves were grey, and so were the silent sisters;
together they stripped the flesh from the fallen. There were
corpses strewn all over the tourney fields. The sun was a hot white
penny, shining down upon the grey river as it rushed around the
charred bones of sunken ships. From the pyres of the dead rose
black columns of smoke and white-hot ashes. My work, thought Tyrion
Lannister. They died at my command.
At first there was no sound in the world, but after a time he
began to hear the voices of the dead, soft and terrible. They wept
and moaned, they begged for an end to pain, they cried for help and
wanted their mothers. Tyrion had never known his mother. He wanted
Shae, but she was not there. He walked alone amidst grey shadows,
trying to remember . . .
The silent sisters were stripping the dead men of their armor
and clothes. All the bright dyes had leached out from the surcoats
of the slain; they were garbed in shades of white and grey, and
their blood was black and crusty. He watched their naked bodies
lifted by arm and leg, to be carried swinging to the pyres to join
their fellows. Metal and cloth were thrown in the back of a white
wooden wagon, pulled by two tall black horses. So many dead, so very many. Their corpses hung limply, their
faces slack or stiff or swollen with gas, unrecognizable, hardly
human. The garments the sisters took from them were decorated with
black hearts, grey lions, dead flowers, and pale ghostly stags.
Their armor was all dented and gashed, the chainmail riven, broken,
slashed. Why did I kill them all? He had known once, but somehow he
had forgotten.
He would have asked one of the silent sisters, but when he tried
to speak he found he had no mouth. Smooth seamless skin covered his
teeth. The discovery terrified him. How could he live without a
mouth? He began to run. The city was not far. He would be safe
inside the city, away from all these dead. He did not belong with
the dead. He had no mouth, but he was still a living man. No, a
lion, a lion, and alive. But when he reached the city walls, the
gates were shut against him.
It was dark when he woke again. At first he could see nothing,
but after a time the vague outlines of a bed appeared around him.
The drapes were drawn, but he could see the shape of carved
bedposts, and the droop of the velvet canopy over his head. Under
him was the yielding softness of a featherbed, and the pillow
beneath his head was goose down. My own bed, I am in my own bed, in
my own bedchamber.
It was warm inside the drapes, under the great heap of furs and
blankets that covered him. He was sweating. Fever, he thought
groggily. He felt so weak, and the pain stabbed through him when he
struggled to lift his hand. He gave up the effort. His head felt
enormous, as big as the bed, too heavy to raise from the pillow.
His body he could scarcely feel at all. How did I come here? He
tried to remember. The battle came back in fits and flashes. The
fight along the river, the knight who’d offered up his
gauntlet, the bridge of ships . . . Ser Mandon. He saw the dead empty eyes, the reaching hand, the
green fire shining against the white enamel plate. Fear swept over
him in a cold rush; beneath the sheets he could feel his bladder
letting go. He would have cried out, if he’d had a mouth. No,
that was the dream, he thought, his head pounding. Help me, someone
help me. Jaime, Shae, Mother,
someone . . . Tysha . . .
No one heard. No one came. Alone in the dark, he fell back into
piss-scented sleep. He dreamed his sister was standing over his bed,
with their lord father beside her, frowning. It had to be a dream,
since Lord Tywin was a thousand leagues away, fighting Robb Stark
in the west. Others came and went as well. Varys looked down on him
and sighed, but Littlefinger made a quip. Bloody treacherous
bastard, Tyrion thought venomously, we sent you to Bitterbridge and
you never came back. Sometimes he could hear them talking to one
another, but he did not understand the words. Their voices buzzed
in his ears like wasps muffled in thick felt.
He wanted to ask if they’d won the battle. We must have,
else I’d be a head on a spike somewhere. If I live, we won.
He did not know what pleased him more: the victory, or the fact he
had been able to reason it out. His wits were coming back to him,
however slowly. That was good. His wits were all he had.
The next time he woke, the draperies had been pulled back, and
Podrick Payne stood over him with a candle. When he saw Tyrion open
his eyes he ran off. No, don’t go, help me, help, he tried to
call, but the best he could do was a muffled moan. I have no mouth.
He raised a hand to his face, his every movement pained and
fumbling. His fingers found stiff cloth where they should have
found flesh, lips, teeth. Linen. The lower half of his face was
bandaged tightly, a mask of hardened plaster with holes for
breathing and feeding.
A short while later Pod reappeared. This time a stranger was
with him, a maester chained and robed. “My lord, you must be
still,” the man murmured. “You are grievous hurt. You
will do yourself great injury. Are you thirsty?”
He managed an awkward nod. The maester inserted a curved copper
funnel through the feeding hole over his mouth and poured a slow
trickle down his throat. Tyrion swallowed, scarcely tasting. Too
late he realized the liquid was milk of the poppy. By the time the
maester removed the funnel from his mouth, he was already spiraling
back to sleep.
This time he dreamed he was at a feast, a victory feast in some
great hall. He had a high seat on the dais, and men were lifting
their goblets and hailing him as hero. Marillion was there, the
singer who’d journeyed with them through the Mountains of the
Moon. He played his woodharp and sang of the Imp’s daring
deeds. Even his father was smiling with approval. When the song was
over, Jaime rose from his place, commanded Tyrion to kneel, and
touched him first on one shoulder and then on the other with his
golden sword, and he rose up a knight. Shae was waiting to embrace
him. She took him by the hand, laughing and teasing, calling him
her giant of Lannister.
He woke in darkness to a cold empty room. The draperies had been
drawn again. Something felt wrong, turned around, though he could
not have said what. He was alone once more. Pushing back the
blankets, he tried to sit, but the pain was too much and he soon
subsided, breathing raggedly. His face was the least part of it.
His right side was one huge ache, and a stab of pain went through
his chest whenever he lifted his arm. What’s happened to me?
Even the battle seemed half a dream when he tried to think back on
it. I was hurt more badly than I knew. Ser
Mandon . . .
The memory frightened him, but Tyrion made himself hold it, turn
it in his head, stare at it hard. He tried to kill me, no mistake.
That part was not a dream. He would have cut me in half if Pod had
not . . . Pod, where’s Pod?
Gritting his teeth, he grabbed hold of the bed hangings and
yanked. The drapes ripped free of the canopy overhead and tumbled
down, half on the rushes and half on him. Even that small effort
had dizzied him. The room whirled around him, all bare walls and
dark shadows, with a single narrow window. He saw a chest
he’d owned, an untidy pile of his clothing, his battered
armor. This is not my bedchamber, he realized. Not even the Tower
of the Hand. Someone had moved him. His shout of anger came out as
a muffled moan. They have moved me here to die, he thought as he
gave up the struggle and closed his eyes once more. The room was
dank and cold, and he was burning.
He dreamed of a better place, a snug little cottage by the
sunset sea. The walls were lopsided and cracked and the floor had
been made of packed earth, but he had always been warm there, even
when they let the fire go out. She used to tease me about that, he
remembered. I never thought to feed the fire, that had always been
a servant’s task. “We have no servants,” she
would remind me, and I would say, “You have me, I’m
your servant,” and she would say, “A lazy servant. What
do they do with lazy servants in Casterly Rock, my lord?” and
he would tell her, “They kiss them.” That would always
make her giggle. “They do not neither. They beat them, I
bet,” she would say, but he would insist, “No, they
kiss them, just like this.” He would show her how.
“They kiss their fingers first, every one, and they kiss
their wrists, yes, and inside their elbows. Then they kiss their
funny ears, all our servants have funny ears. Stop laughing! And
they kiss their cheeks and they kiss their noses with the little
bump in them, there, so, like that, and they kiss their sweet brows
and their hair and their lips,
their . . . mmmm . . . mouths . . . so . . . ”
They would kiss for hours, and spend whole days doing no more
than lolling in bed, listening to the waves, and touching each
other. Her body was a wonder to him, and she seemed to find delight
in his. Sometimes she would sing to him. I loved a maid as fair as
summer, with sunlight in her hair. “I love you,
Tyrion,” she would whisper before they went to sleep at
night. “I love your lips. I love your voice, and the words
you say to me, and how you treat me gentle. I love your
face.”
“My face?”
“Yes. Yes. I love your hands, and how you touch me. Your
cock, I love your cock, I love how it feels when it’s in
me.”
“It loves you too, my lady.”
“I love to say your name. Tyrion Lannister. It goes with
mine. Not the Lannister, t’other part. Tyrion and Tysha. Tysha and
Tyrion. Tyrion. My lord
Tyrion . . . ” Lies, he thought, all feigned, all for gold, she was a whore,
Jaime’s whore, Jaime’s gift, my lady of the lie. Her
face seemed to fade away, dissolving behind a veil of tears, but
even after she was gone he could still hear the faint, far-off
sound of her voice, calling his name. “ . . . my lord, can you hear me? My
lord? Tyrion? My lord? My lord?”
Through a haze of poppied sleep, he saw a soft pink face leaning
over him. He was back in the dank room with the torn bed hangings,
and the face was wrong, not hers, too round, with a brown fringe of
beard. “Do you thirst, my lord? I have your milk, your good
milk. You must not fight, no, don’t try to move, you need
your rest.” He had the copper funnel in one damp pink hand
and a flask in the other.
As the man leaned close, Tyrion’s fingers slid underneath
his chain of many metals, grabbed, pulled. The maester dropped the
flask, spilling milk of the poppy all over the blanket. Tyrion
twisted until he could feel the links digging into the flesh of the
man’s fat neck. “No. More, “ he croaked, so
hoarse he was not certain he had even spoken. But he must have, for
the maester choked out a reply. “Unhand, please, my
lord . . . need your milk, the
pain . . . the chain, don’t, unhand,
no . . . ”
The pink face was beginning to purple when Tyrion let go. The
maester reeled back, sucking in air. His reddened throat showed
deep white gouges where the links had pressed. His eyes were white
too. Tyrion raised a hand to his face and made a ripping motion
over the hardened mask. And again. And again.
“You . . . you want the bandages off,
is that it?” the maester said at last. “But I’m
not to . . . that would
be . . . be most unwise, my lord. You are not
yet healed, the queen would . . . ”
The mention of his sister made Tyrion growl. Are you one of
hers, then? He pointed a finger at the maester, then coiled his
hand into a fist. Crushing, choking, a promise, unless the fool did
as he was bid.
Thankfully, he understood. “I . . . I
will do as my lord commands, to be sure,
but . . . this is unwise, your wounds . . . ”
“Do. It.” Louder that time.
Bowing, the man left the room, only to return a few moments
later, bearing a long knife with a slender sawtooth blade, a basin
of water, a pile of soft cloths, and several flasks. By then Tyrion
had managed to squirm backward a few inches, so he was half sitting
against his pillow. The maester bade him be very still as he slid
the tip of the knife in under his chin, beneath the mask. A slip of
the hand here, and Cersei will be free of me, he thought. He could
feel the blade sawing through the stiffened linen, only inches
above his throat.
Fortunately this soft pink man was not one of his sister’s
braver creatures. After a moment he felt cool air on his cheeks.
There was pain as well, but he did his best to ignore that. The
maester discarded the bandages, still crusty with potion. “Be
still now, I must wash out the wound.” His touch was gentle,
the water warm and soothing. The wound, Tyrion thought, remembering
a sudden flash of bright silver that seemed to pass just below his
eyes. “This is like to sting some,” the maester warned
as he wet a cloth with wine that smelled of crushed herbs. It did
more than sting. It traced a line of fire all the way across
Tyrion’s face, and twisted a burning poker up his nose. His
fingers clawed the bedclothes and he sucked in his breath, but
somehow he managed not to scream. The maester was clucking like an
old hen. “It would have been wiser to leave the mask in place
until the flesh had knit, my lord. Still, it looks clean, good,
good. When we found you down in that cellar among the dead and
dying, your wounds were filthy. One of your ribs was broken,
doubtless you can feel it, the blow of some mace perhaps, or a
fall, it’s hard to say. And you took an arrow in the arm,
there where it joins the shoulder. It showed signs of
mortification, and for a time I feared you might lose the limb, but
we treated it with boiling wine and maggots, and now it seems to be
healing clean . . . ”
“Name,” Tyrion breathed up at him.
“Name.”
The maester blinked. “Why, you are Tyrion Lannister, my
lord. Brother to the queen. Do you remember the battle? Sometimes
with head wounds—”
“Your name.” His throat was raw, and his tongue had
forgotten how to shape the words.
“I am Maester Ballabar.”
“Ballabar,” Tyrion repeated. “Bring me.
Looking glass.”
“My lord,” the maester said, “I would not
counsel . . . that might be, ah, unwise, as it
were . . . your
wound . . . ”
“Bring it,” he had to say. His mouth was stiff and
sore, as if a punch had split his lip. “And drink. Wine. No
poppy.”
The maester rose flush-faced and hurried off. He came back with
a flagon of pale amber wine and a small silvered looking glass in
an ornate golden frame. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he poured
half a cup of wine and held it to Tyrion’s swollen lips. The
trickle went down cool, though he could hardly taste it.
“More,” he said when the cup was empty. Maester
Ballabar poured again. By the end of the second cup, Tyrion
Lannister felt strong enough to face his face.
He turned over the glass, and did not know whether he ought to
laugh or cry. The gash was long and crooked, starting a hair under
his left eye and ending on the right side of his jaw.
Three-quarters of his nose was gone, and a chunk of his lip.
Someone had sewn the torn flesh together with catgut, and their
clumsy stitches were still in place across the seam of raw, red,
half-healed flesh. “Pretty,” he croaked, flinging the
glass aside.
He remembered now. The bridge of boats, Ser Mandon Moore, a
hand, a sword coming at his face. If I had not pulled back, that
cut would have taken off the top of my head. Jaime had always said
that Ser Mandon was the most dangerous of the Kingsguard, because
his dead empty eyes gave no hint to his intentions. I should never
have trusted any of them. He’d known that Ser Meryn and Ser
Boros were his sister’s, and Ser Osmund later, but he had let
himself believe that the others were not wholly lost to honor.
Cersei must have paid him to see that I never came back from the
battle. Why else? I never did Ser Mandon any harm that I know of.
Tyrion touched his face, plucking at the proud flesh with blunt
thick fingers. Another gift from my sweet sister.
The maester stood beside the bed like a goose about to take
flight. “My lord, there, there will most like be a
scar . . . ”
“Most like?” His snort of laughter turned into a
wince of pain. There would be a scar, to be sure. Nor was it likely
that his nose would be growing back anytime soon. It was not as if
his face had ever been fit to look at. “Teach me, not to,
play with, axes.” His grin felt tight. “Where, are we?
What, what place?” It hurt to talk, but Tyrion had been too
long in silence.
“Ah, you are in Maegor’s Holdfast, my lord. A
chamber over the Queen’s Ballroom. Her Grace wanted you kept
close, so she might watch over you herself.” I’ll wager she did. “Return me,” Tyrion
commanded. “Own bed. Own chambers.” Where I will have
my own men about me, and my own maester too, if I find one I can
trust.
“Your own . . . my lord, that would
not be possible. The King’s Hand has taken up residence in
your former chambers.”
“I. Am. King’s Hand.” He was growing exhausted
by the effort of speaking, and confused by what he was hearing.
Maester Ballabar looked distressed. “No, my lord,
I . . . you were wounded, near death. Your lord
father has taken up those duties now. Lord Tywin, he . . . ”
“Here?”
“Since the night of the battle. Lord Tywin saved us all.
The smallfolk say it was King Renly’s ghost, but wiser men
know better. It was your father and Lord Tyrell, with the Knight of
Flowers and Lord Littlefinger. They rode through the ashes and took
the usurper Stannis in the rear. It was a great victory, and now
Lord Tywin has settled into the Tower of the Hand to help His Grace
set the realm to rights, gods be praised.”
“Gods be praised,” Tyrion repeated hollowly. His
bloody father and bloody Littlefinger and Renly’s ghost?
“I want . . . ” Who do I want? He
could not tell pink Ballabar to fetch him Shae. Who could he send
for, who could he trust? Varys? Bronn? Ser Jacelyn?
“ . . . my squire,” he finished.
“Pod. Payne.” It was Pod on the bridge of boats, the
lad saved my life.
“The boy? The odd boy?”
“Odd boy. Podrick. Payne. You go. Send him.”
“As you will, my lord.” Maester Ballabar bobbed his
head and hurried out. Tyrion could feel the strength seeping out of
him as he waited. He wondered how long he had been here, asleep.
Cersei would have me sleep forever, but I won’t be so
obliging.
Podrick Payne entered the bedchamber timid as a mouse. “My
lord?” He crept close to the bed. How can a boy so bold in
battle be so frightened in a sickroom? Tyrion wondered. “I
meant to stay by you, but the maester sent me away.”
“Send him away. Hear me. Talk’s hard. Need
dreamwine. Dreamwine, not milk of the poppy. Go to Frenken.
Frenken, not Ballabar. Watch him make it. Bring it here.” Pod
stole a glance at Tyrion’s face, and just as quickly averted
his eyes. Well, I cannot blame him for that. “I want,”
Tyrion went on, “mine own. Guard. Bronn. Where’s
Bronn?”
“They made him a knight.”
Even frowning hurt. “Find him. Bring him.”
“As you say. My lord. Bronn.”
Tyrion seized the lad’s wrist. “Ser
Mandon?”
The boy flinched. “I n-never meant to
k-k-k-k—”
“Dead? You’re, certain? Dead?”
He shuffled his feet, sheepish. “Drowned.”
“Good. Say nothing. Of him. Of me. Any of it.
Nothing.”
By the time his squire left, the last of Tyrion’s strength
was gone as well. He lay back and closed his eyes. Perhaps he would
dream of Tysha again. I wonder how she’d like my face now, he
thought bitterly.
He dreamed of a cracked stone ceiling and the smells of
blood and shit and burnt flesh. The air was full of acrid smoke.
Men were groaning and whimpering all around him, and from time to
time a scream would pierce the air, thick with pain. When he tried
to move, he found that he had fouled his own bedding. The smoke in
the air made his eyes water. Am I crying? He must not let his
father see. He was a Lannister of Casterly Rock. A lion, I must be
a lion, live a lion, die a lion. He hurt so much, though. Too weak
to groan, he lay in his own filth and shut his eyes. Nearby someone
was cursing the gods in a heavy, monotonous voice. He listened to
the blasphemies and wondered if he was dying. After a time the room
faded.
He found himself outside the city, walking through a world
without color. Ravens soared through a grey sky on wide black
wings, while carrion crows rose from their feasts in furious clouds
wherever he set his steps. White maggots burrowed through black
corruption. The wolves were grey, and so were the silent sisters;
together they stripped the flesh from the fallen. There were
corpses strewn all over the tourney fields. The sun was a hot white
penny, shining down upon the grey river as it rushed around the
charred bones of sunken ships. From the pyres of the dead rose
black columns of smoke and white-hot ashes. My work, thought Tyrion
Lannister. They died at my command.
At first there was no sound in the world, but after a time he
began to hear the voices of the dead, soft and terrible. They wept
and moaned, they begged for an end to pain, they cried for help and
wanted their mothers. Tyrion had never known his mother. He wanted
Shae, but she was not there. He walked alone amidst grey shadows,
trying to remember . . .
The silent sisters were stripping the dead men of their armor
and clothes. All the bright dyes had leached out from the surcoats
of the slain; they were garbed in shades of white and grey, and
their blood was black and crusty. He watched their naked bodies
lifted by arm and leg, to be carried swinging to the pyres to join
their fellows. Metal and cloth were thrown in the back of a white
wooden wagon, pulled by two tall black horses. So many dead, so very many. Their corpses hung limply, their
faces slack or stiff or swollen with gas, unrecognizable, hardly
human. The garments the sisters took from them were decorated with
black hearts, grey lions, dead flowers, and pale ghostly stags.
Their armor was all dented and gashed, the chainmail riven, broken,
slashed. Why did I kill them all? He had known once, but somehow he
had forgotten.
He would have asked one of the silent sisters, but when he tried
to speak he found he had no mouth. Smooth seamless skin covered his
teeth. The discovery terrified him. How could he live without a
mouth? He began to run. The city was not far. He would be safe
inside the city, away from all these dead. He did not belong with
the dead. He had no mouth, but he was still a living man. No, a
lion, a lion, and alive. But when he reached the city walls, the
gates were shut against him.
It was dark when he woke again. At first he could see nothing,
but after a time the vague outlines of a bed appeared around him.
The drapes were drawn, but he could see the shape of carved
bedposts, and the droop of the velvet canopy over his head. Under
him was the yielding softness of a featherbed, and the pillow
beneath his head was goose down. My own bed, I am in my own bed, in
my own bedchamber.
It was warm inside the drapes, under the great heap of furs and
blankets that covered him. He was sweating. Fever, he thought
groggily. He felt so weak, and the pain stabbed through him when he
struggled to lift his hand. He gave up the effort. His head felt
enormous, as big as the bed, too heavy to raise from the pillow.
His body he could scarcely feel at all. How did I come here? He
tried to remember. The battle came back in fits and flashes. The
fight along the river, the knight who’d offered up his
gauntlet, the bridge of ships . . . Ser Mandon. He saw the dead empty eyes, the reaching hand, the
green fire shining against the white enamel plate. Fear swept over
him in a cold rush; beneath the sheets he could feel his bladder
letting go. He would have cried out, if he’d had a mouth. No,
that was the dream, he thought, his head pounding. Help me, someone
help me. Jaime, Shae, Mother,
someone . . . Tysha . . .
No one heard. No one came. Alone in the dark, he fell back into
piss-scented sleep. He dreamed his sister was standing over his bed,
with their lord father beside her, frowning. It had to be a dream,
since Lord Tywin was a thousand leagues away, fighting Robb Stark
in the west. Others came and went as well. Varys looked down on him
and sighed, but Littlefinger made a quip. Bloody treacherous
bastard, Tyrion thought venomously, we sent you to Bitterbridge and
you never came back. Sometimes he could hear them talking to one
another, but he did not understand the words. Their voices buzzed
in his ears like wasps muffled in thick felt.
He wanted to ask if they’d won the battle. We must have,
else I’d be a head on a spike somewhere. If I live, we won.
He did not know what pleased him more: the victory, or the fact he
had been able to reason it out. His wits were coming back to him,
however slowly. That was good. His wits were all he had.
The next time he woke, the draperies had been pulled back, and
Podrick Payne stood over him with a candle. When he saw Tyrion open
his eyes he ran off. No, don’t go, help me, help, he tried to
call, but the best he could do was a muffled moan. I have no mouth.
He raised a hand to his face, his every movement pained and
fumbling. His fingers found stiff cloth where they should have
found flesh, lips, teeth. Linen. The lower half of his face was
bandaged tightly, a mask of hardened plaster with holes for
breathing and feeding.
A short while later Pod reappeared. This time a stranger was
with him, a maester chained and robed. “My lord, you must be
still,” the man murmured. “You are grievous hurt. You
will do yourself great injury. Are you thirsty?”
He managed an awkward nod. The maester inserted a curved copper
funnel through the feeding hole over his mouth and poured a slow
trickle down his throat. Tyrion swallowed, scarcely tasting. Too
late he realized the liquid was milk of the poppy. By the time the
maester removed the funnel from his mouth, he was already spiraling
back to sleep.
This time he dreamed he was at a feast, a victory feast in some
great hall. He had a high seat on the dais, and men were lifting
their goblets and hailing him as hero. Marillion was there, the
singer who’d journeyed with them through the Mountains of the
Moon. He played his woodharp and sang of the Imp’s daring
deeds. Even his father was smiling with approval. When the song was
over, Jaime rose from his place, commanded Tyrion to kneel, and
touched him first on one shoulder and then on the other with his
golden sword, and he rose up a knight. Shae was waiting to embrace
him. She took him by the hand, laughing and teasing, calling him
her giant of Lannister.
He woke in darkness to a cold empty room. The draperies had been
drawn again. Something felt wrong, turned around, though he could
not have said what. He was alone once more. Pushing back the
blankets, he tried to sit, but the pain was too much and he soon
subsided, breathing raggedly. His face was the least part of it.
His right side was one huge ache, and a stab of pain went through
his chest whenever he lifted his arm. What’s happened to me?
Even the battle seemed half a dream when he tried to think back on
it. I was hurt more badly than I knew. Ser
Mandon . . .
The memory frightened him, but Tyrion made himself hold it, turn
it in his head, stare at it hard. He tried to kill me, no mistake.
That part was not a dream. He would have cut me in half if Pod had
not . . . Pod, where’s Pod?
Gritting his teeth, he grabbed hold of the bed hangings and
yanked. The drapes ripped free of the canopy overhead and tumbled
down, half on the rushes and half on him. Even that small effort
had dizzied him. The room whirled around him, all bare walls and
dark shadows, with a single narrow window. He saw a chest
he’d owned, an untidy pile of his clothing, his battered
armor. This is not my bedchamber, he realized. Not even the Tower
of the Hand. Someone had moved him. His shout of anger came out as
a muffled moan. They have moved me here to die, he thought as he
gave up the struggle and closed his eyes once more. The room was
dank and cold, and he was burning.
He dreamed of a better place, a snug little cottage by the
sunset sea. The walls were lopsided and cracked and the floor had
been made of packed earth, but he had always been warm there, even
when they let the fire go out. She used to tease me about that, he
remembered. I never thought to feed the fire, that had always been
a servant’s task. “We have no servants,” she
would remind me, and I would say, “You have me, I’m
your servant,” and she would say, “A lazy servant. What
do they do with lazy servants in Casterly Rock, my lord?” and
he would tell her, “They kiss them.” That would always
make her giggle. “They do not neither. They beat them, I
bet,” she would say, but he would insist, “No, they
kiss them, just like this.” He would show her how.
“They kiss their fingers first, every one, and they kiss
their wrists, yes, and inside their elbows. Then they kiss their
funny ears, all our servants have funny ears. Stop laughing! And
they kiss their cheeks and they kiss their noses with the little
bump in them, there, so, like that, and they kiss their sweet brows
and their hair and their lips,
their . . . mmmm . . . mouths . . . so . . . ”
They would kiss for hours, and spend whole days doing no more
than lolling in bed, listening to the waves, and touching each
other. Her body was a wonder to him, and she seemed to find delight
in his. Sometimes she would sing to him. I loved a maid as fair as
summer, with sunlight in her hair. “I love you,
Tyrion,” she would whisper before they went to sleep at
night. “I love your lips. I love your voice, and the words
you say to me, and how you treat me gentle. I love your
face.”
“My face?”
“Yes. Yes. I love your hands, and how you touch me. Your
cock, I love your cock, I love how it feels when it’s in
me.”
“It loves you too, my lady.”
“I love to say your name. Tyrion Lannister. It goes with
mine. Not the Lannister, t’other part. Tyrion and Tysha. Tysha and
Tyrion. Tyrion. My lord
Tyrion . . . ” Lies, he thought, all feigned, all for gold, she was a whore,
Jaime’s whore, Jaime’s gift, my lady of the lie. Her
face seemed to fade away, dissolving behind a veil of tears, but
even after she was gone he could still hear the faint, far-off
sound of her voice, calling his name. “ . . . my lord, can you hear me? My
lord? Tyrion? My lord? My lord?”
Through a haze of poppied sleep, he saw a soft pink face leaning
over him. He was back in the dank room with the torn bed hangings,
and the face was wrong, not hers, too round, with a brown fringe of
beard. “Do you thirst, my lord? I have your milk, your good
milk. You must not fight, no, don’t try to move, you need
your rest.” He had the copper funnel in one damp pink hand
and a flask in the other.
As the man leaned close, Tyrion’s fingers slid underneath
his chain of many metals, grabbed, pulled. The maester dropped the
flask, spilling milk of the poppy all over the blanket. Tyrion
twisted until he could feel the links digging into the flesh of the
man’s fat neck. “No. More, “ he croaked, so
hoarse he was not certain he had even spoken. But he must have, for
the maester choked out a reply. “Unhand, please, my
lord . . . need your milk, the
pain . . . the chain, don’t, unhand,
no . . . ”
The pink face was beginning to purple when Tyrion let go. The
maester reeled back, sucking in air. His reddened throat showed
deep white gouges where the links had pressed. His eyes were white
too. Tyrion raised a hand to his face and made a ripping motion
over the hardened mask. And again. And again.
“You . . . you want the bandages off,
is that it?” the maester said at last. “But I’m
not to . . . that would
be . . . be most unwise, my lord. You are not
yet healed, the queen would . . . ”
The mention of his sister made Tyrion growl. Are you one of
hers, then? He pointed a finger at the maester, then coiled his
hand into a fist. Crushing, choking, a promise, unless the fool did
as he was bid.
Thankfully, he understood. “I . . . I
will do as my lord commands, to be sure,
but . . . this is unwise, your wounds . . . ”
“Do. It.” Louder that time.
Bowing, the man left the room, only to return a few moments
later, bearing a long knife with a slender sawtooth blade, a basin
of water, a pile of soft cloths, and several flasks. By then Tyrion
had managed to squirm backward a few inches, so he was half sitting
against his pillow. The maester bade him be very still as he slid
the tip of the knife in under his chin, beneath the mask. A slip of
the hand here, and Cersei will be free of me, he thought. He could
feel the blade sawing through the stiffened linen, only inches
above his throat.
Fortunately this soft pink man was not one of his sister’s
braver creatures. After a moment he felt cool air on his cheeks.
There was pain as well, but he did his best to ignore that. The
maester discarded the bandages, still crusty with potion. “Be
still now, I must wash out the wound.” His touch was gentle,
the water warm and soothing. The wound, Tyrion thought, remembering
a sudden flash of bright silver that seemed to pass just below his
eyes. “This is like to sting some,” the maester warned
as he wet a cloth with wine that smelled of crushed herbs. It did
more than sting. It traced a line of fire all the way across
Tyrion’s face, and twisted a burning poker up his nose. His
fingers clawed the bedclothes and he sucked in his breath, but
somehow he managed not to scream. The maester was clucking like an
old hen. “It would have been wiser to leave the mask in place
until the flesh had knit, my lord. Still, it looks clean, good,
good. When we found you down in that cellar among the dead and
dying, your wounds were filthy. One of your ribs was broken,
doubtless you can feel it, the blow of some mace perhaps, or a
fall, it’s hard to say. And you took an arrow in the arm,
there where it joins the shoulder. It showed signs of
mortification, and for a time I feared you might lose the limb, but
we treated it with boiling wine and maggots, and now it seems to be
healing clean . . . ”
“Name,” Tyrion breathed up at him.
“Name.”
The maester blinked. “Why, you are Tyrion Lannister, my
lord. Brother to the queen. Do you remember the battle? Sometimes
with head wounds—”
“Your name.” His throat was raw, and his tongue had
forgotten how to shape the words.
“I am Maester Ballabar.”
“Ballabar,” Tyrion repeated. “Bring me.
Looking glass.”
“My lord,” the maester said, “I would not
counsel . . . that might be, ah, unwise, as it
were . . . your
wound . . . ”
“Bring it,” he had to say. His mouth was stiff and
sore, as if a punch had split his lip. “And drink. Wine. No
poppy.”
The maester rose flush-faced and hurried off. He came back with
a flagon of pale amber wine and a small silvered looking glass in
an ornate golden frame. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he poured
half a cup of wine and held it to Tyrion’s swollen lips. The
trickle went down cool, though he could hardly taste it.
“More,” he said when the cup was empty. Maester
Ballabar poured again. By the end of the second cup, Tyrion
Lannister felt strong enough to face his face.
He turned over the glass, and did not know whether he ought to
laugh or cry. The gash was long and crooked, starting a hair under
his left eye and ending on the right side of his jaw.
Three-quarters of his nose was gone, and a chunk of his lip.
Someone had sewn the torn flesh together with catgut, and their
clumsy stitches were still in place across the seam of raw, red,
half-healed flesh. “Pretty,” he croaked, flinging the
glass aside.
He remembered now. The bridge of boats, Ser Mandon Moore, a
hand, a sword coming at his face. If I had not pulled back, that
cut would have taken off the top of my head. Jaime had always said
that Ser Mandon was the most dangerous of the Kingsguard, because
his dead empty eyes gave no hint to his intentions. I should never
have trusted any of them. He’d known that Ser Meryn and Ser
Boros were his sister’s, and Ser Osmund later, but he had let
himself believe that the others were not wholly lost to honor.
Cersei must have paid him to see that I never came back from the
battle. Why else? I never did Ser Mandon any harm that I know of.
Tyrion touched his face, plucking at the proud flesh with blunt
thick fingers. Another gift from my sweet sister.
The maester stood beside the bed like a goose about to take
flight. “My lord, there, there will most like be a
scar . . . ”
“Most like?” His snort of laughter turned into a
wince of pain. There would be a scar, to be sure. Nor was it likely
that his nose would be growing back anytime soon. It was not as if
his face had ever been fit to look at. “Teach me, not to,
play with, axes.” His grin felt tight. “Where, are we?
What, what place?” It hurt to talk, but Tyrion had been too
long in silence.
“Ah, you are in Maegor’s Holdfast, my lord. A
chamber over the Queen’s Ballroom. Her Grace wanted you kept
close, so she might watch over you herself.” I’ll wager she did. “Return me,” Tyrion
commanded. “Own bed. Own chambers.” Where I will have
my own men about me, and my own maester too, if I find one I can
trust.
“Your own . . . my lord, that would
not be possible. The King’s Hand has taken up residence in
your former chambers.”
“I. Am. King’s Hand.” He was growing exhausted
by the effort of speaking, and confused by what he was hearing.
Maester Ballabar looked distressed. “No, my lord,
I . . . you were wounded, near death. Your lord
father has taken up those duties now. Lord Tywin, he . . . ”
“Here?”
“Since the night of the battle. Lord Tywin saved us all.
The smallfolk say it was King Renly’s ghost, but wiser men
know better. It was your father and Lord Tyrell, with the Knight of
Flowers and Lord Littlefinger. They rode through the ashes and took
the usurper Stannis in the rear. It was a great victory, and now
Lord Tywin has settled into the Tower of the Hand to help His Grace
set the realm to rights, gods be praised.”
“Gods be praised,” Tyrion repeated hollowly. His
bloody father and bloody Littlefinger and Renly’s ghost?
“I want . . . ” Who do I want? He
could not tell pink Ballabar to fetch him Shae. Who could he send
for, who could he trust? Varys? Bronn? Ser Jacelyn?
“ . . . my squire,” he finished.
“Pod. Payne.” It was Pod on the bridge of boats, the
lad saved my life.
“The boy? The odd boy?”
“Odd boy. Podrick. Payne. You go. Send him.”
“As you will, my lord.” Maester Ballabar bobbed his
head and hurried out. Tyrion could feel the strength seeping out of
him as he waited. He wondered how long he had been here, asleep.
Cersei would have me sleep forever, but I won’t be so
obliging.
Podrick Payne entered the bedchamber timid as a mouse. “My
lord?” He crept close to the bed. How can a boy so bold in
battle be so frightened in a sickroom? Tyrion wondered. “I
meant to stay by you, but the maester sent me away.”
“Send him away. Hear me. Talk’s hard. Need
dreamwine. Dreamwine, not milk of the poppy. Go to Frenken.
Frenken, not Ballabar. Watch him make it. Bring it here.” Pod
stole a glance at Tyrion’s face, and just as quickly averted
his eyes. Well, I cannot blame him for that. “I want,”
Tyrion went on, “mine own. Guard. Bronn. Where’s
Bronn?”
“They made him a knight.”
Even frowning hurt. “Find him. Bring him.”
“As you say. My lord. Bronn.”
Tyrion seized the lad’s wrist. “Ser
Mandon?”
The boy flinched. “I n-never meant to
k-k-k-k—”
“Dead? You’re, certain? Dead?”
He shuffled his feet, sheepish. “Drowned.”
“Good. Say nothing. Of him. Of me. Any of it.
Nothing.”
By the time his squire left, the last of Tyrion’s strength
was gone as well. He lay back and closed his eyes. Perhaps he would
dream of Tysha again. I wonder how she’d like my face now, he
thought bitterly.