It was a phantom's jest, a sharp, prickling tingle that seemed to dance across fingers that were currently rotting in a midden heap at Harrenhal. Jaime Lannister shifted in his saddle, his left hand tightening on the reins. The movement sent a jolt of dull, throbbing pain up his forearm, a reminder that the world didn't care for the comfort of the Kingslayer.
The Kingslayer. The Golden Lion. A man of honor, according to the songs he used to love. Now, he was just a weary traveler in a dirty white cloak, riding a horse that smelled of old sweat and desperation.
Beside him, Brienne of Tarth rode in silence. She looked like a mountain that had been dressed in a man's armor and then dragged through a briar patch. Her face was a ruin of bruises and half-healed scrapes, her eyes fixed on the road ahead with a grim, unwavering intensity. She didn't talk much, which Jaime found both a mercy and a frustration. He wanted to needle her, to see that spark of indignant justice in her blue eyes, but the heat of the Riverlands had sapped even his appetite for mockery.
"We'll be at the city by nightfall," Steelshanks Walton called out from the head of the column.
The Bolton man was as charming as a gout of cold spit. He sat his horse with the stiffness of a man who expected an arrow in the back at any moment, his grey eyes scanning the treeline. Roose Bolton had sent him to ensure the "precious cargo" reached Lord Tywin intact, but Jaime knew he was less a guard and more a witness.
"Nightfall," Jaime muttered. "Just in time for the rats to come out. My sister will be delighted."
Brienne turned her head slightly. "You shouldn't speak of the Queen that way."
"I'll speak of her however I damn well please, Wench. I'm the one who's been sleeping in the mud while she's been drinking Arbor gold and whispering in the boy-king's ear."
He felt the familiar, bitter taste of Cersei on his tongue. He wanted her—he wanted the scent of her hair and the heat of her skin—but the thought was tangled with the image of her face when she saw the stump. Would she still want a lion with only one paw? Or would she look at him with the same clinical disgust his father always reserved for the weak?
They were passing through a village that had been picked clean by the war. The cottages were hollow shells, their thatched roofs long since burned away, leaving blackened rafters that looked like the ribs of a giant. A dog, so thin its skin was draped over its bones like wet silk, was gnawing on something in the middle of the road. It didn't move as the horses approached. It just watched them with yellow, indifferent eyes.
A rider appeared from the south, a flash of red and gold against the dusty green of the trees. He was pushing his horse hard, the animal's flanks white with lather.
Walton raised a hand, and the column ground to a halt. Jaime felt his heart give a small, traitorous thud. Red and gold. Lannister colors.
The messenger pulled up, his horse skidding in the dirt. He was a young man, his surcoat caked with the dust of the Kingsroad. He looked at Walton, then at the man in the dirty white cloak. His eyes widened.
"Ser Jaime?" the boy gasped, his voice cracking. "Gods be praised. We thought... the rumors said you were dead."
"I was," Jaime said, lifting his right arm. The stump was wrapped in stained linen, a blunt, ugly ending. "I got better. What news of the city? Does my father still sit on the privy, or has he finally ascended to the throne himself?"
The messenger swallowed hard, his gaze darting away from the stump. "Lord Tywin is well, Ser. He... he sent me to find the Bolton escort. There is news. Great news. The war is over."
Jaime felt a strange, cold sensation wash over him. Over? He thought of the Whispering Woods, the way the Stark boy had looked under his weirwood tree, the sheer, relentless momentum of the Northern tide. It didn't feel like something that could just end.
"How?" Brienne asked, her voice low and sharp. "Did the Young Wolf surrender?"
The messenger shook his head, a small, nervous smile playing on his lips. "There was a wedding, my lady. At the Twins. Lord Walder Frey and Lord Bolton... they took the Starks unawares. Robb Stark is dead. His mother, too. The Northmen are broken. The King has declared a day of thanksgiving in the city."
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush a man.
Jaime looked at Brienne. Her face hadn't just gone pale; it had gone white, the color of a guttering candle. She sat so still she might have been carved from the stone of the mountains. He remembered the way she had talked about Catelyn Stark—the "Lady Mother," the woman she had sworn to serve.
"Dead?" Jaime asked. He felt a sudden, inexplicable anger. It wasn't the anger of a Lannister; it was the anger of a swordsman. "At a wedding? Who did the killing? Walder Frey's jesters?"
"They say it was Lord Bolton himself who delivered the final blow to the Young Wolf," the messenger said, puffing out his chest as if he were the one who had done the deed. "The Frey boys sowed the head of his direwolf onto his shoulders. A 'Wolf-King' for a 'Wolf-Wedding.' The city is laughing about it, Ser."
Jaime felt a surge of bile in the back of his throat. He thought of Catelyn Stark—the woman who had sat in his cell and talked to him of honor and children. She had released him, had gambled everything on the slim hope that he was a man of his word. And now she was fish-food in the Green Fork, butchered in a hall where she should have been safe.
"It was a massacre," Brienne whispered. It wasn't a question.
"It was a victory!" the messenger insisted. "Lord Tywin says—"
"I don't give a damn what my father says!" Jaime roared. The sound surprised him; it was the voice of the man he used to be, the Golden Lion who had led the charge at the Golden Tooth.
He kicked his horse forward, closing the distance to the messenger in three strides. The boy shrank back, his eyes wide with terror as Jaime loomed over him.
"A wedding," Jaime hissed. "He killed them at a wedding. Under guest right. With bread and salt still in their bellies."
"The... the Freys provided the salt, Ser. Lord Tywin provided the steel."
Jaime let out a breath that felt like a curse. Steel. No, it wasn't steel. Steel was what happened on a battlefield. This was ink. This was a man sitting in a solar with a quill and a stack of parchment, deciding who lived and who died based on a ledger. It was efficient. It was clean. And it made Jaime feel like he wanted to strip off his white cloak and burn it in the road.
He looked back at Brienne. She was crying. There was no sound to it, no sobbing, just the slow, steady tracks of tears through the grime on her cheeks. She looked smaller than he had ever seen her.
"I'm sorry," Jaime said. The words felt clumsy, a blunt instrument in a world of sharp edges.
"For what?" she asked, her voice like a jagged piece of glass. "For being a Lannister? Or for being alive when they are dead?"
Jaime had no answer for that. He turned his horse and looked toward the south. The towers of King's Landing were visible now, a jagged silhouette against the orange-pink sky. The sun was setting, casting long, bloody shadows across the fields.
The war is over, he thought. And we are the winners.
He looked at his stump. The itch was gone, replaced by a deep, hollow ache that seemed to reach all the way to his heart. He had spent his whole life trying to be the man the songs promised, and then he had spent the rest of it mocking the songs because they were lies. But this—this betrayal in the dark, this butchery at a feast—it was a new kind of lie.
"Walton," Jaime called out, his voice flat and dead. "Move the column. I want to see my father before I lose the urge to look at him."
They rode in a silence that was far more bitter than the one before. The road was lined with the same ruins, the same starving dogs, but now the air felt different. It felt heavy with the scent of a peace that smelled like a grave.
As they approached the Lion Gate, the guards recognized him. There was a flurry of activity, the sound of horns blowing, the gates swinging open with a rhythmic groan. People began to gather in the streets, whispering his name.
"The Kingslayer! He's back!"
"Look at his hand! The wolf bit it off!"
Jaime didn't look at them. He didn't look at the banners of the lion flying from the walls. He looked only at the Red Keep, perched on the hill like a scab on the face of the city.
He thought of the Stark boy. He had been a green boy, a pup who didn't know when to quit. He had broken his word for a girl, and he had paid for it with his life. Jaime had broken his word for a king, and he had paid for it with his honor.
We are two of a kind, Stark, he thought. Except I'm the one who's still breathing.
He reached the inner ward of the castle. The air here was thicker with the scent of jasmine, the sound of lutes drifting from the windows of the Maidenvault. It was a world of silk and gold, insulated from the mud and the blood of the road.
He dismounted, his legs stiff and uncooperative. A group of squires rushed forward to take his horse, their eyes wide as they stared at his stump. Jaime ignored them. He walked toward the Great Hall, his boots clicking on the stones.
"Ser Jaime!"
It was Ser Meryn Trant. The man looked as arrogant as ever, his white armor polished to a mirror finish. He bowed, but his eyes were mocking. "Lord Tywin is in the Tower of the Hand. He has been expecting you."
"I'm sure he has," Jaime said. He turned to Brienne, who was still on her horse, looking like a ghost in the twilight. "Go to the stables. Find a place to wash. I'll send for you."
"Jaime," she said. It was the first time she had used his name without a title. "The vow. You swore."
"I know what I swore, Wench."
He turned and walked away before she could say anything else. He climbed the stairs of the Tower of the Hand, his left hand gripping the rail. Every step felt like a mile. Every breath felt like a chore.
He reached the doors of his father's solar. The guards—two men in the crimson cloaks of the Rock—stepped aside without a word. Jaime pushed the doors open.
Lord Tywin Lannister sat behind a massive oak desk, surrounded by stacks of parchment. He was writing, the quill scratching against the paper with a sharp, rhythmic sound. He didn't look up. He didn't say a word. He just kept writing, his face a mask of cold, clinical focus.
Jaime stood in the center of the room. He smelled of horse, sweat, and the Green Fork. He was a ruin of a man, a broken toy in a room full of power.
Finally, Tywin laid down the quill. He looked up, his pale green eyes flecked with gold, unblinking and indifferent. He looked at Jaime's face, then his eyes traveled down to the linen-wrapped stump at the end of his arm.
"You're late," Tywin said.
Jaime looked at his father. He thought of the wedding. He thought of Catelyn Stark's throat. He thought of the direwolf's head sewn onto a boy's body.
"And you," Jaime said, his voice a low, dangerous rasp, "are exactly where I expected you to be."
He didn't bow. He didn't smile. He just stood there in the silence of the room, while outside, the bells of King's Landing began to ring for a peace that had been bought with the blood of a thousand broken hearts.