TYRION
He had found, over the years, that the best libraries were the ones nobody else used. Winterfell's was not exceptional as libraries went. It smaller than the one at Casterly Rock, considerably smaller than the Citadel's, with none of the architectural grandeur that the Red Keep's maester liked to pretend justified the poor organisation of its shelves.
But it was quiet, and it was warm, and it smelled of old parchment and tallow in the particular combination that Tyrion had loved since he was a boy small enough to hide between the shelves and not be found for hours. Back when he had thought to be High Septon, before Tysha.
Tyrion shook the thought away in surprise. He had not thought of her in sometime.
Two days remained before the column rode south. One more night in the north. Tyrion intended to spend the last afternoon of it, after Robert's gods forsaken hunt, in the best possible company.
He was three-quarters through a dense, well aged book on the changing of the seasons when a knock came at the door. He did not look up. If it was a servant they would go away. If it was Cersei, he would desperately need wine. If it was—
"You're in a library, Nuncle." said Joffrey, a hint of surprise in his tone.
Tyrion turned a page. "Observant as ever."
His nephew came in and dropped into the chair across the reading table without the thought that his company may not have been wanted. He was in dark clothes without the gold, which meant he had come from the yard or was heading there, and he looked at the shelves around him with mild interest.
Tyrion's reading lamp was running low and beginning to flicker pathetically, it painted his nephew's face in red, gold and orange and for a moment Tyrion was looking at a young Jamie with golden eyes.
At fourteen, he was already larger than Tyrion, which was not a high bar to clear but which still provoked the particular small rueful feeling Tyrion had been made to learn to have quickly and set aside easily.
"We leave the day after tomorrow," Joffrey said. "I would have thought you'd be on your third or fourth—"
"Fifth," Tyrion cut in.
"—brothel visit by now. Seeing as northern whores are so soon to be behind you."
"And ahead of me is the Wall, which is not known for its whores." He turned the page. Though Tyrion wasn't truly reading anymore, the book was dreadfully dull."I am being economical."
"You're gambling with your balls, Nuncle."
A bark of laughter escaped Tyrion. "Nephew, not all whores have the pox."
"As you say, Nuncle." Joffrey didn't look convinced. He was quiet for a time. This was nothing new, the prince liked to listen more than he spoke, though he could speak as well as anyone.
"You should come to dinner this evening. Just the family. Mother has had the kitchens do something she's described as a Lannister meal, by which I assume she means expensive and slightly aggressive." He felt Joffrey's gaze on him.
"I wouldn't miss it." Tyrion set a finger in his page and looked up. "What are you reading?"
"Nothing at the moment."
"I meant in general."
Joffrey looked at the shelves. "Gyldayn's histories. The collected accounts of the Targaryen kings and their progeny." He paused. "I find it useful to know what not to do."
Tyrion snorted. "Most of it should be obvious nephew."
Joffrey looked at him with something that was almost amusement. "Don't worry Nuncle, you shan't catch me drinking wildfire or marrying my sister."
"Good, Myrcella's too sweet for you." Tyrion japed.
Joffrey leaned back in the chair and looked at the ceiling. He had Jaime's ease of posture and none of Jaime's vacancy. It was, Tyrion had always thought, one of the more interesting paradoxes of his nephew's existence — a boy made of his mother's beauty and his uncle's grace, who had somehow become neither. "What are you reading?"
Tyrion held up the spine.
"One Hundred Years and their Seasons," Joffrey read. He looked at Tyrion. "Not going to read up on the wall?."
"You think I should? There's nothing beyond it but unwashed wildlings." Tyrion chuckled and put the book down properly, resigning himself to a conversation, which was not an entirely unpleasant thing, conversation was with Joffrey never was. "Your grandsire thinks it's a relic and a drain. The Small Council thinks it's a relic and a drain. The king—"
"The king thinks it's a fine excuse for a drinking song about rangers." Joffrey's voice was even. "I know."
"And you?"
"I think men wouldn't man the largest structure in the known world for eight thousand years over nothing." He said it simply, the way he said most things. "I think whatever put it there has not necessarily gone away simply because we'd find it more convenient if it had."
Tyrion studied his nephew for a moment. There was, he had always felt, something slightly unnerving about Joffrey's clarity. Mayhaps it was his eyes, they reminded him of his father. He withheld a grimace.
Joffrey's eyes had not always been so. They had been the green of his mother and uncle and siblings when he was young. But at some point he had come down with a fever, or was it an injury? The particulars escaped Tyrion at the moment, but when Joffrey woke, his eyes had been gold, not just flecked like his grandsire's. The maesters thought it slightly odd but they said children eyes changed colours sometimes when young. The colour they deigned to show was up to the gods. Pycell even hypothesised that perhaps Tommen and Myrcella's eyes would one day deign to be blue like Robert's, but Tyrion doubted that.
It wasn't just the boy's eyes however. Most men of fourteen were a confusion of appetites and performances. Joffrey had appetites — he was not stone — but they did not appear to confuse him. He seemed to know what he thought about most things, including things boys of fourteen had no business thinking about at all, and this knowledge sat in him quietly, without show.
"I have some letters," Joffrey announced. He reached inside his doublet and produced them — three, sealed with plain wax rather than the royal seal, which was interesting. "For the Lord Commander. Would you carry them?"
Tyrion took them and turned them over in his hands, wondering of their purpose. "What's in them?"
"An acknowledgment that the crown has received his ravens. That his requests for men and supplies have been heard, and are being considered, and that he has not been forgotten." Joffrey paused. "Also that we intend to do something about it."
Tyrion knew by 'we', Joffrey mostly meant himself. "Do we?"
"I visited the dungeons before we left King's Landing." Joffrey said, easily. "There are men there — were men there, rather, being transferred to Eastwatch by ship — who I thought might be useful to the Watch in some capacity." He left the nature of this usefulness unelaborated, which was another of his habits. "When I am back in the city, I intend to take control of the city watch."
Tyrion blinked. "You do?"
"It's been left in a state for too long." Joffrey drummed his fingers against the arm of his chair.
Tyrion felt a smile hint on his lips. "And they'll just have you, will they? With what qualifications nephew?"
"I am their prince." And Joffrey could have left it at that, but apparently he was feeling talkative today. "But no, I don't expect them to just accept it. It is about time I earned my spurs. Father shall no doubt announce a tourney when we return—"
"He does love tourneys, your father."
"— either for his new hand or to announce my betrothal. I will win, either the melee, the joust or both, and father shall knight me there and then."
The melee, the joust or both. Sometimes Tyrion couldn't decipher whether it was simple confidence or arrogance that laced his nephews words. But Tyrion supposed, he was his father's son.
"Your mother will not let you." Tyrion thought to remind him.
"That's what mystery knights are for." Joffery replied. "Afterwards, I will assume command of the gold cloaks and raise the matter of the Watch's provisioning with the Small Council. With Lord Stark as Hand, it should be easier. He takes the north seriously."
Tyrion weighed the letters in his palm. Three letters, plain seals, delivered by way of a dwarf going to see the Wall. There was a jest in there somewhere. "You've been thinking about this for some time."
"The Night's Watch sends ravens every few months. Every raven says the same things — more men, more food, wildlings amassing beyond the Wall. Every raven gets the same answer, which is that the matter is being considered." Joffrey looked at his hands. "I have been reading those ravens since I was eleven. That is three years of the same letter arriving and the same answer going back. I thought someone ought to break the pattern."
Tyrion considered this. He thought about some of the watch men he had met on the road north and the recruiters he had seen in his life. Weathered black-cloaked men, all with dead eyes and cold faces, men who had given up names and lands and futures for an oath that the rest of the realm had largely stopped believing was necessary.
He thought about standing on top of the Wall and pissing off the edge of the world, which he had told Jaime he would do and which was what he was going to do, and he thought about the other thing, the thing he had not told Jaime, which was that he was also going to look over the edge and see what was there. Just for curiosity's sake.
"I'll give him your letters," Tyrion decided. The crown prince's eyes were still on him.
"And tell me what you find," Joffrey said.
It wasn't a question.
"And tell you what I find," Tyrion agreed. He tucked the letters inside his own doublet and picked up his book. "Now. Dinner."
"Is that a question or a statement?" Joff laughed and stood.
"With me, it's always a statement." Tyrion closed the book and left it. "Lead the way, your grace. I haven't eaten since midday and I do so enjoy your mother's company."
The family assembled in a private solar. It was small enough to feel intimate, warm in the strange way that Winterfell was, and large enough that Cersei could position herself at a remove from anyone she chose to be at a remove from. She had chosen to be at a remove from the window, which meant she was at a remove from the view of the yard, which meant she did not have to look at the Stark castle's grey stones any more than she already had.
Tyrion glanced at her and observed that she had dressed for the south, the crimson and gold of Lannister rather than the muted colours she had worn for the northern court. In Cersei's mind, he understood, they had already left.
Tommen launched himself at Joffrey's midsection the moment he came through the door, which Joffrey absorbed with the long-suffering patience of a large tree tolerating a climbing child. He picked him up and placed his brother on his shoulders like a sack of grain, ruffled the boy's hair and said something in his ear that made Tommen laugh. He always had a something ready, small and specific, for each of his siblings.
Myrcella was more contained than her brother — she was nine and had more of their mother's dignity, though mercifully less of her mother's talent for deploying it — but even she brightened when she laid eyes on her brother, in a way she did not always bother to around the rest of the family.
This is the thing, Tyrion thought, taking his seat and accepting wine from the servant who appeared at his elbow. This is the thing about him that no one outside this room quite understands.
He was good with them. It was not a performed goodness, or if so the boy was an exceptional mummer. No, it was the kind that knew Tommen was frightened of the dark and let Tommen sneak into his rooms, and knew Myrcella was cleverer than people allowed her to be and spoke to her accordingly.
Tyrion had no idea where this quality had come from. He was fairly certain it had not come from their parents.
Jaime was already seated, elegant and lazy, pouring his own wine without waiting for service because he was Jaime Lannister and he did as he pleased. He caught Tyrion's eye across the table and gave him the slight upward tilt of the chin and a cocksure smile that was his version of greeting.
Cersei surveyed them all from the head of the table with an expression that was approaching warmth though still many leagues away.
"Is Father joining us?" Myrcella asked, hopeful.
"Your father," Cersei spat the words with distain, "is probably ensuring that our hosts' hospitality extends to their wine cellar." A pause, very slight. "Or elsewhere."
No one at the table required the elsewhere to be further explained.
Joffrey said nothing, which was also something. He poured watered wine for Myrcella, juice for Tommen, and attended to his own plate with the focused appreciation he always had when he had spent the day in the yard and was genuinely hungry. Tyrion watched his sister watch Joffrey and thought: there it is again.
It had been there for as long as he could remember, that particular quality in Cersei's watching of her eldest son — something between pride and frustration and something else he had never quite named.
She had made him, or helped to make him, and the result had outgrown her understanding of what she had intended, and she did not entirely know how to be the mother of something she did not entirely understand.
He felt, occasionally, a very faint sympathy for her. Only very faint. Very, very faint. She was still Cersei.
"The Stark girl," the queen said eventually, when the children had been served and had been eating for sometime. Her tone was mild with only a hint of danger. "The betrothal."
"Yes," said Joffrey.
"I want you to know that I think—"
"Mother." Not sharp. Never sharp. Not with her, just final. "We've spoken about this."
"We've spoken," Cersei agreed, with a smile that did not reach anything above her mouth, and the words were mocking. "You've spoken. I have raised objections."
"Which have been noted and considered." He ate. "Sansa Stark is an excellent choice and you would not have been happy with any other choice either."
Cersei set down her knife. "That is not—"
"Margaery Tyrell," said Jaime in an amused drawl. They had been over this before. "Too grasping, you said."
"The Tyrells are grasping." Cersei near growled. "That boy, Loras, is a fool!"
"The Florent girl," Tyrion offered pleasantly. "If memory serves. Teeth."
"I said nothing about her teeth."
"You said something about her teeth," Jaime said.
"I said her chin," Cersei said.
"Her chin. Which was attached to—" Tyrion began.
"Enough." But her mouth had moved, slightly, in the direction of something that was not entirely displeasure, which was as close as Cersei generally got to admitting she had been amused despite herself. "The Tyrells are grasping. That is a fact and not a criticism, it is simply what they are, they should know their place. I say it because one should know what one is dealing with."
"I know what I'm dealing with," Joffrey said. "Which is why I can deal with it. Loras will be in the Kingsguard. Margaery will marry Tommen—"
"She will not!"
"—instead of me. The Tyrells will have their blood on the thrown eventually. Mace Tyrell will grumble and Lady Olenna will say something devastating about it at a dinner party, and then they will come around because they are practical people and the practical arrangement is available. Or perhaps they won't. Perhaps they will try to force our hand." Joffrey shrugged. "I have their son. A third son perhaps. But one who they love. One who is dedicated to me. They know what will happen."
Dedicated was one word for Loras Tyrell felt for Joffrey, Tyrion supposed. Can you carry out that threat nephew?
Joffrey considered his plate. "The grasping ones are always manageable."
Tommen's eyes had grown heavy with the particular determination of a child trying not to be sent to bed. Myrcella had already listed slightly sideways in her chair. Cersei looked at them both and made the small sound that meant the calculation had been done. "Come," she said, rising. "Both of you. The hour is late."
Tommen protested as Tommen always protested, which was to say briefly and without much conviction. Myrcella said goodnight with the grave courtesy of a child who has been well-taught, and leaned up to kiss Joffrey's cheek before she went. Joffrey said something in her ear. She went pink and smiled and followed her mother.
The door closed and the room felt different. Adult. Thrumming with tension. Jaime refilled his wine. Tyrion accepted a top-up without complaint. He had a feeling he was going to need more soon.
"Lysa Arryn," Cersei said, returning to her chair. The pleasantness she had maintained for the children's benefit had been put away with them. "Lord Stark's wife's sister. Who sits in the Eyrie, with some asinine belief, that we had something to do with her husband's death."
"Jon Arryn died of a fever," Tyrion said mildly.
The look Cersei gave him managed to be both withering and entirely noncommittal, which was a talent he had to admire about his sweet sister.
"She is untouchable," Cersei continued. "In the Eyrie. The Eyrie is impregnable."
"From the outside," said Joffrey, still eating.
Cersei looked at him. Jaime looked at him. Joffrey took his cup and drank.
"From the outside," he said again, once he noticed the silence. "From within it is a castle like any other, with lords who have opinions and interests and now a boy lord who requires managing, and the question of who manages him is the more interesting one." He set down his cup. "Robin Arryn is sickly. He has been sickly his whole life. The Eyrie's maesters will do what they can, but—" He did not finish the sentence. He didn't need to. "The Lords of the Vale will need a regent eventually. Or a new lord. Harry Hardying is the heir."
"Hardying," Tyrion said, tasting the name.
Joffrey had thought about this before, no doubt.
"Harry Hardying, and Bronze Yohn Royce to hold the regency until matters clarify. Royce is a good friend to Ned Stark, which makes him trustworthy to Ned Stark, which is useful. And he has a widowed niece. We have plenty of Lannisters to spare." Joffrey concluded.
Tyrion did not say the thought aloud. That a match between Myrcella and Hardying, or between Tommen and the Royce girl, would tie the Vale far more firmly than any regency arrangement. He could see from the slight set of Joffrey's mouth that the thought had occurred to him too. He was not saying it because their mother was in the room, and their mother had strong opinions about where her youngest children were to be sent.
Some battles needn't be fought.
"Place Nestor Royce at the Gate of the Moon, instead of the blackfish," Jaime said thoughtfully. He was not objecting. Jaime in full thoughtfulness was a different creature from Jaime at his most decorative — slower, more careful, the years of the Kingsguard having taught him things about tactics that he had not bothered to learn as a young man. "The Vale lords would accept him. Or not. Either way we'd have an in, thanks to your future lady wife."
Cersei sniffed.
"Lord Stark's recommendation for Bronze Yohn would help," Joffrey said. "If Father asks it of him."
"You would be giving Ned Stark allies throughout the realm," Cersei said and shook her head in disbelief. Her voice had the quality it got when she was marshalling herself. "The North is his. The Riverlands through his wife. The Vale through Royce and his wife's family. If he chose to resist—"
"He won't." Joffrey looked at his mother. "I am marrying his daughter, Mother. His bastard is one of my closest companions." Cersei scowled at the reminder.
"I am offering his family more than any Hand has been offered in living memory. I have no designs against him and he has no reason to have designs against me." He paused. "They say he is the most honourable man in the Seven Kingdoms. He will be loyal to the king who gives him no cause for disloyalty."
There it was again. The look. Quick as a sword-draw and gone, between Cersei and Jaime — there and away before the ordinary person would have caught it. Tyrion was not the ordinary person.
He had seen that look before. He had been seeing it, in various forms, for as long as he had been watching them closely, which was as long as he could remember. He had long since arrived at the only conclusion available to a man of his intelligence, and it sat in him quietly, heavily, painfully.
He reached for his cup. It was empty.
"Well," he said pleasantly, to no one in particular. "The north agrees with you, nephew. I haven't seen you in this much good temper since the first time you slipped through Jaime's guard."
"He got lucky," Jaime said, frowning at the memory.
"He gets lucky with remarkable frequency," Tyrion observed. "I would call that skill."
Joffrey's mouth curved. The look between his mother and his uncle had lasted a heartbeat and was gone. Whether he had seen it, his face gave nothing.
His face, Tyrion reflected, never gave anything. That too was a quality he had not inherited from either parent.
Tyrion got up to get more wine. He decided not to think about his strange nephew