章 2386: 21
21.
Nooks and Crannies
Winterfell
As Sansa Stark entered the Godswood thick layers of accrued white snow thwarted her steps toward its very core, the Heart Tree. As she strode forward, the ancient tree's crimson leaves stood out against the dark blue landscape. Her younger brother, Bran, sat in his wheelchair beneath the crown-like canopy, looking indifferent to the small mounds of snow piling up on the shawl of his fur coat, one she had made herself, as for all her siblings.
Her panting after trudging through the snow and the crunchy sound beneath her boots betrayed her arrival.
Bran turned his expressionless face slowly. "A storm rages in King's Landing, delaying Jon and the Northern envoy's journey back home," he announced.
"So they're coming back? Jon and Arya? Are they safe?" She blurted out question after question. She did not ask him about the cursed mission they had set out on. She preferred to know as little as possible about it now, for she reckoned that, whatever the outcome, the North as a realm would face difficulties in the near future.
"They are safe, at least the last time I saw them. It's hard to use my power like this."
"Like what?"
"Like if there was something preventing me from going further."
At times, Sansa didn't understand a whit of Bran's words, but that his powers were somehow weakened amid the forces that loomed in the South and beyond the Wall was a bad omen.
"And the Army of the Dead? Are they getting close enough to send ravens?"
"Not quite," Bran answered and he frowned deeply as he added, "Strange; things aren't supposed to go this way."
"What way?" she inquired, blinking curiously.
But no answer came and only silence ensued after the ominous declaration.
She dismissed it as one of his oddities, attuned by now with her brother's changed behavior and frequent moments of estrangement. Bran seemed to think so too, because the next thing he did was to tell her, "Littlefinger is looking for you."
Sansa sighed and moved closer, sitting down beside him on a thick root protruding from the ground, summoning the courage to approach the subject that prickled her insides with the earnest it demanded.
"Bran," she almost whispered, "I know he can't be trusted. So, I need you to tell me something, to confirm what I already assume." As she said this, Sansa's blue eyes bore into her brother's brown ones, gently spurring him to be honest. "He betrayed father?"
The words came out of her trembling lips. Her long gaze was pleading. The gloved hand she had gently laid on her brother's arm now closed in a stiff grip.
"He did," Bran confirmed, being flat and level as a contrast to her heart bottoming out. A sharp breath followed before he added: "He also betrayed you...and yet you returned to him."
Aghast, she shrouded away from him. Just like the time he'd brought to her the night of her wedding with Ramsey, Sansa blamed his tactless blow on the unknown nature of the power that took hold of his being. No, this was not just her little brother Bran anymore. She was not certain if beyond the carcass there was still some essence of him but was undeniable and true was that his appearance was proof enough that he was real and he was there with them.
She couldn't stand still and quiet as she did before. She ought to be clear and own up to the decisions she made.
"I needed his aid to take back Winterfell," she admitted, swallowing hard. "And I've not lightly forgotten or forgiven what his usage of me for his slippery schemes has brought upon me. I have not," she ascertained, "The very suggestion that I am somehow allied or associated with Lord Petyr Baelish hurts me, brother. Can you not see that he is not easy to get rid of? That I'm better off dealing with him myself?"
Of course, they could not, Sansa thought. Just last evening she's been in a tense discussion with Ser Yohn Royce, on the matter of Littlefinger's constant presence and intromission to matters that don't concern him.
'Do you believe we should send him back, to run and complain before his protegee, the Little Robin?' Sansa politely inquired to the seasoned knight. He hung his thin lips, and deepened the furrow of the many lines on his face. After the pause, there was no answer, and his hesitation spoke for him. I thought so,' Sansa concluded.
"You could have told Jon," Bran said, dragging her back to this present conversation. "He and Arya believe you did it to claim the victory of Winterfell for yourself alone, no matter the cost in lives, including Jon's own."
She didn't miss the way he only included their two absent siblings in this accusation.
"I know I am far from Jon and Arya's grace. I always have been," she replied ruefully. "Jon wouldn't have trusted Littlefinger," she explained, for what seemed to be the umpteenth time.
"He had trusted you," Bran countered.
She felt it like a slap in the face, searing her with its burning hand. She thought of herself at that moment, just a few months ago, and the position she found herself in when she stood in the fork in the road. On the one hand, she could have trusted Jon, a brother she'd longed for many years to see again, but who was practically a stranger to her at the time. Relief washed over her when she saw him for the first time again, affection for him bursting in her heart, yet recoil and estrangement returned not long after, to reclaim any rational thought and the impulses it triggered with its presence.
On the other side, the one she chose in the end, was the road she already knew and had traveled for so long. That path she knew well. The one that had only the worst outcome.
"I didn't know that," she sighed, "If I have made Jon aware, Petyr might have found a way to hurt him. He thinks I despise Jon."
"And do you?"
"Of course, I do not!" she stated, "I love Jon as I love Arya and I love you. He's my brother in the same extent of the word that any of you, regardless of the mother that bore him."
A stealthy glint betrayed the surprise in his eyes.
"What?" Sansa inquired, sensing there was something else behind it.
"It's rare to hear you being honest about your feelings. You're quite reserved about them.
Without further word, Bran rolled his eyes back submerged himself again into that world of vast knowledge of lost memories, leaving Sansa bereft of peace of mind, left to her own devices to figure out what to do next, to prove at last that she was capable of handling the current situation while keeping her family together and safe.
***
King's Landing
It wasn't in his nature to dwell on his emotions. If he were to be commanded to put into words what he was feeling, then Grey Worm would say anger — frenzied and unbridled.
Once, as he lay bedridden after battle, he confessed to Missandei about feeling fear for the first time, but not for his life (for fear was unknown or indifferent at the very least to Torgo Nudho, given the gruesome training and survival required to become an Unsullied) but because he'd thought he would never see her again. He'd been a soulless weapon in the hands of a master, stripped of the very property of his own thoughts. But that he has left behind in the Plaza of Pride where his queen Daenerys Targaryen had freed him and his fellow Unsullied. What he'd come to become, what he'd come to achieve, come with a high cost: fear of losing it.
Even with adrenaline pumping through his system, he'd still commanded the full use of his restraint. His Queen had been clear with her order: interrogate by whatever means necessary to obtain information from the Lannisters. And so Grey Worm obeyed.
Again, he punched the traitor Jaime Lannister's face, with his fists that were covered with an iron tool that closed around his knuckles (a tool hitherto unknown to him that they had found in the armory). The bloodied and battered face of the traitor seemed to mock him every time he looked back at him with his glassy eyes almost swollen shut, so Grey Worm would strike again, and again.
"We know nothing about her escape!" cried the treacherous dwarf out of despair. He was still chained to the far, opposite corner.
His turn will come, Grey Worm thought.
"While you pointlessly beat the shit out of this idiot's face, Cersei could be at this very moment leaving the city or worse, plotting to destroy it!"
"We are all dead already," Jaime murmured through torn and bloodied lips. "I preferred her safely tied up in a bed...to protect our child," he hauled out the words, throwing his head back as if he was having trouble keeping it up, "Now we will all die."
"What do you mean?" Grey Worm asked with a strong accent. The kind of torture he inflicted was a caress compared to what he had gone through as a child. "What. Do. You. Mean?" he demanded, grabbing his golden hair and tilting his head up.
The unlocking of the door interrupted the senseless sounds emitted in response. Grey Worm straightened up and walked a few steps backward, watching Mhysa enter into the hole.
His head bowed slightly in acknowledgment.
Behind her came the bald man they called the Spider. Another character he held under heavy scrutiny.
"The Queen has cleared all servants of suspicion," she announced, surprising Grey Worm. "For we have stumbled upon a startling breakthrough."
"I suppose we will not suffer the same fortune as our fellow prisoners?" Jaime taunted with a throat so hoarse that the Spider jumped to help him some water.
The Queen did not protest, so Grey Worm clapped his hand back and stared with a deep frown.
"You will suffer, that I can guarantee you," the Queen promised.
He didn't understand what was happening there but he learned to trust his Queen's judgment unconditionally. When her gaze locked onto his, he received the assurance that something was going on its way.
***
Collected and earnest, Daenerys clasped her hands in the front of her gown and observed the wretch before her. Jaime Lannister was a man disgraced and dispossessed, destroyed in every sense a man or woman could be, beyond repair. There was no comeback from the path he'd chosen, even if this time around he outlived himself from the previous life. He has tried to kill her in that life. With a spear, if she recalled it well before Drogon has hindered his silly, rushed attempt. She knew of him what Tyrion had confided her in times past when confidence was easily given between the two of them.
"His love for Cersei has driven him mad and rendered him useless in some sense," Tyrion had said. "It will destroy him," he added, with regret.
Let's see it, Dany thought.
"I see no amount of beaten has broken you, Ser Jaime," Daenerys observed, striking for a conversation that would lead them where she needed him. For that, she'd granted him the honor to address him by his ousted title.
"Ha ha," dismissed Jaime, "You will need more than beating to break me, child."
Dany stood there surprised at his dismissal. Not because he did it, after all, it was something Tyrion often complained about his personality: his arrogance.
Curiously, something Daenerys knew abundant of.
"I've met torture and savored pain. Been at war, wandered places you've never even heard of, been caged in my own shit, dragged across the continent, and had my sword hand dangling as a prize around my neck," he moved on, looking up at Daenerys with a defiant gaze. "I've lived twice as long as you. Lived through the atrocities of your father, the Mad King. So believe me when I say this: your cockless soldiers cannot break me. Your dragons can burn and chew me and spit me out in my blackened bones, and still, I'll not break."
"You are right," she stated with a smile. His face flashed surprised before she'd added, "When you speak about his insincere confidence and quick quackery," she said, addressing Tyrion.
The Kingslayer turned to his brother, whose silent gaze offered neither apology nor retraction.
"I've noticed your voice cracked, Ser Jaime, midway through your speech and I'll assume that's because an unpleasant memory inadvertently came to you, from which you desire to recoil, isn't it?"
And Daenerys was positive it had nothing to do with the experiences he boasted had gone through and survived.
"You'll see, Ser Jaime," she took up, "We share some things in common, unfortunately. For starters, we both had fathers whose atrocities are recounted across the Seven Kingdoms, though one as feats and the other as for what they are, atrocities. Yes, you have lived twice as long, it's true. But I'm far from being a child. And let me tell you why: the moment I slipped out of my mother's womb, not a child but a target to be aimed at.
"My childhood, what it is? but a handful of painful memories tainted with the melancholy of what could or should have been. Same deprivations and humiliations I've gone through, although at a younger age. I have also traveled and wandered places you never heard of across the sea and suffer from great, unrepairable trauma.
"You surely remember Viserys, don't you, Ser Jaime? You surely remember the mischievous, spoiled child turned an orphan and forced into exile at only eight? Madness might have found its way to his mind, regardless of his upbringing but you cannot deny that there's history behind the devious, unmerciful creature he'd become by the end. His viciousness was rather fed by the circumstances. And yet, mad as he was, I loved him until the very last day — the day he decided to threaten something that was more important to me then," Almost unwittingly, her hand traveled to her flat midsection. "We cannot escape the reality of loving somebody that only means us harm unless we love something else more."
She seemed lost in the far distant memories and for a moment, an awkward, heavy silence settled in the dungeons.
"You know nothing about Cersei," Jaime finally said.
Daenerys rose her eyes and grew still.
"I know this, Ser. I know that Cersei does not love you, but you as an extension of herself. While you...you, poor fool, are willing to give up your life and the countless life at danger for a love that is not reciprocal." She walked closer, her face just a few inches from his. "It would be absurd if I pass judgment on your loving what is capable of destroying you because unfortunately I also understand what that feels like. But if love is what counts here, then I am also willing to do anything for it. And your sister took something for which I am willing to give my life. My people." She swallowed hard and cut him a sharp look. "We differ little, you see but that difference is not insignificant. I have learned to love beyond blood."
Without another word and leaving Jaime wordless, she swooped around and call for the Maester that'd been interrogated. He revealed the truth of it all.
***
The ceaseless rainfall and the strong rush of the wind flood the streets, causing mudslides. The people of King's Landing couldn't be more abuzz and restless with the inclement weather and threat of something worse hanging over their heads. Unsullied and Dothraki warriors guarded each nook they turned in, their vigilance was impossible to escape, yet they gave no second thought to Jon and Arya slogging through the mud and rain and no impediment cross their path as they led to the poorest part of the city: the Flea Bottom.
"Are we certain this is the right place?" Jon asked Arya when they stepped on a street that lacked cobblestone and better lighting. The night was almost settled. If Jon knew something about the place was thanks to Ser Davos' tales and recollections. It astounded him it was much worse than he'd imagined.
"You trust me, don't you?" Arya responded, without turning an eye. "I've survived it when I was ten and one. We are fine."
His heart ached at the thought of his little sister being left alone at such young age. He resorted to thinking about the weather and the uncomfortable feeling of being soaked wet without the relief of a cool breeze.
This feels like the seventh hell, Jon thought.
Finally, Arya halted their trek and stood at a wretched, little house with a wooden door she hit twice with both fists. Not soon after a young, nice woman passed through it.
"Oh! I see you find your brother!" she said, sounding friendly enough to reveal some form of acquaintance.
"Where is Gendry?" Arya blurted, which made clear the purpose of their journey to Flea Bottom; she was seeking her old friend.
Before the girl could respond, another person came to the door and stood behind her.
It was the same man Jon saw earlier carrying heavy bags on his shoulders.
Gendry, bastard son of Robert Baratheon, his mind quickly recalled.
"Uhm," the other man hummed looking confused at the Stark siblings standing there. "...Your Grace?" he addressed Jon, unsure of what else he was supposed to say or do in the circumstances.
"Forget about that, Gendry. We've not come to collect pleasantries. We need your help," Arya shouted above the sounds of the storm, lifting a hand to cover her eyes from the rain. "Can we discuss it? Preferably inside!"
***
It was not much better inside but it was not something that surprised Jon. The tales of Ser Davos were always descriptive of the flaws and deprivations that the people of the poorest neighborhood of King's Landing endure since years ago. Jon was familiar with living under deplorable conditions but in the austere ways of the Night's Watch rather than because of poverty.
"Milord shall want some broth?"
Jon looked up to meet the stern gaze of the girl that had received them affable and welcoming in the beginning and whose disposition had turned sour for some reason. He learned her name was Hale.
Perhaps she didn't want us to take their scarce resources.
"He's actually a King..." Gendry corrected, to which both Jon and Arya interjected categorically saying:
"That doesn't matter."
Jon breathed sharply.
"Thank you, my Lady, but no. We've not come to abuse of your generosity." He turned serious eyes on Arya and prodded her to continue explaining what the reason for their visit was.
"...You know all the nooks and crannies of this city, surely better than any of us, including the Dragon Queen's soldiers. There has to be a place within the city where she's hiding."
This Gendry lad observed his sister with uncertainty.
"How are you certain she's still in the city? I would have escaped if I was her."
"Cersei doesn't surrender. It is either winning or dying for her. She will not leave the city unless it is to destroy it and watch from afar."
This declaration startled them all. Jon was aware to some extent of the damage that hateful woman was capable of but didn't want to think she'd be capable of going after the entire city.
"That's...awful, Arya. We should leave the city," Gendry said.
"The Dragon Queen will not allow it," Hale interrupted, voice quivering with pent-up anger. "We are cattle enclosed by fences while the fields are burning and the lions hunting."
Jon turned around and looked up at her. Her dainty features were crossed with fear and rage.
"Daenerys has a lot to lose in this as well. Her trusted advisor has been taken away," he said, matter-of-factly.
"The rumors in the streets say she will burn us all," she responded.
Jon removed his eyes from her stare and blink several times while those same images of havoc and destruction flashed across his mind.
"Cersei already burned a great part of the city with wildfire," came Arya's distant voice, "The Lannisters have taken a fancy for such thing. I am certain that she is thinking about it, just as the Dragon Queen must. I can end this if I only know where to start looking."
"Well, you've come to the wrong place, Arya. I know as much as any of us living down here could know: that the safest place in the entire city is the Red Keep," Gendry stated.
With that, Jon felt their hope was fading into a glimmer of nerve. He thought Arya would manage a way to find Cersei Lannister before the night ended or the storm subsided and she could complete her escape. That she was capable of blowing the city up to its foundation stone was another matter.
Jon felt the stare of Gendry on him. He rose his eyes to him.
"Your father and mine were friends," he commented, mustering an unsteady smile.
"Aye, I heard so," Jon answered.
Arya looked at them confused.
"What Father?" she asked Gendry.
Gendry blinked rapidly and focus on her, still a bit dazed.
"Oh...I never got to tell ya'..." he lamented.
So Gendry told Arya the story that began after his abduction by the Red Priestess and ended with the escape from Dragonstone thanks to Ser Davos' help. When Arya turned her questions to Jon, he just mentioned that Davos had told him the story, and not that those strange memories were flooding his mind with the information he knew nothing about before arriving at King's Landing.
"Well, that's sure a thing," Arya quipped.
Silence ensued and she frown deeply as though she was lost in some lost thought.
"That's it!"
She rose to her feet.
"What?" Jon, Gendry, and Hale followed her.
She chuckled.
"Gendry you're a genius."
"What? What happened?" the Baratheon bastard stuttered cluelessly.
A smile boarded in Arya's face.
"Cersei is still in Red Keep," she said.
***
A waft of wind came sweeping down making Missandei shiver with chills. Rudely, the sackcloth was removed from her head, the sudden influx of light made her squint.
"Tell me, slave girl, do you speak the common tongue?" a rough voice asked her. When Missandei focused her eyes on the shadowy figure standing just in front of her, she realized it was no other than Cersei Lannister.
"I'll assume you do," Cersei stated, smiling haughtily at her.
Missandei looked around. They were both in some kind of empty hall, the roof of which rose high above them.
"Guess where we are?" Cersei continued, sliding about the ample space at her disposition. Missandei's arms and hands were tied to her back. "The problem with your savior is that she doesn't even know where she's standing, my dear. We are just under her nose, right now. And yet, she doesn't even suspect it!"
A thundering peal of laughter followed it.
***
The raging storm slackened to a ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly. Daenerys stood quietly in front of a large window overlooking the city, wondering to herself how many of her kin stood in that very spot, staring from above and thinking power was this. It wasn't for her mother, she knew. For Rhaella Targaryen this was rather a prison. And even if Dany has seen and lived in places without number across the narrow sea, ironically she'd seen little beyond the walls of this city, as Jaime Lannister remarked.
"I must say, your Grace, that no matter how this night ends, your forbearance towards adversity is admirable."
Daenerys dragged in a puff of air and let go. Varys' subtlety was welcome confirmation of her granted suspicions that no matter his stern words and encouragement, he would remain what he was: a mummer.
"Spare me your flattery, Varys. The night ahead is long and full of terrors." A pause. "There's still plenty of time to turn loyalties around."
The spider nodded and with a light step, he disappeared through the doors.
Daenerys was only the tranquil and silent presence of Ser Jorah. He stood behind her at a respectful distance from her and her feelings.
"Do you think what the Maester revealed is enough to make Jaime Lannister turn on Cersei?" she asked him.
Jorah seemed to hesitate before answering, "Regardless of whether it does, the man truly is broken."
"How can you know?" Daenerys was truly curious.
She looked above her shoulder at him.
"Because I was once in the same place as him," he replied.
His words hung in the air even as he withdrew to leave her alone in the company of her bare solitude.
Daenerys remembered that distant evening when he had confessed to her about his wife, the woman who had demanded so much of him that in the end, she had left him with nothing and even took away her love. At the time, young and naïve, she could not even measure the enormity of the notion of lovelessness. It seems that all loves were inevitably the union of two individuals, one of whom loved more than the other. Jorah loved his wife immensely more than she loved him. Jaime Lannister was either in love or obsessed with Cersei, far more than she entertained the thought of him. And she...
No, she chided herself. So much was at stake for her to wring in the mud, lamenting past errors. Her feelings could not betray her again, sending her to make rash decisions.
Even if the admiration for Lord Varys was feigned, Daenerys had to grasp onto that pretense. Only in that way could she save herself and the others who depended on her.
***
The dark corridors beneath Red Keep seemed endless and dangerous, probably more of a weakness than help in wartime. That night they serve the purpose of escaping route for Queen Rhaella, her son Viserys and their retinue; a retinue Daenerys was now part of.
Trying to move along through the crowded people in the small space, Daenerys watched as her mother walked with her back to her, along with a small Viserys at her side. The surprise of seeing her brother as a child did not pass her by. He was just another child, like any other, clutched to his mother as if life depended on it. Her heart turned over at the sight of this idyllic scene — the innocent child that was to become her abuser and torment. Life had twisted ways of confronting one with its resentments, for to see Viserys like this filled Daenerys with anguish, eager to save her brother and keep safe his innocent state from his unhinged demise.
You don't have that power, you don't have it, she told herself.
They made a stop and Daenerys sat alone in the farthest most hiding corner she found.
There was a small fleet ready to set sail for Dragonstone but they had to take the southernmost route to avoid being intercepted by Stannis Baratheon's fleet. Or so Daenerys heard over the murmurs of the people stationed around her. She was cloaked in a veil, meticulously covering her silver hair. Her lowered gaze was a way to avoid being confronted by those who could question her presence and her appearance. Rhaella assured her that she would come to her once they were on the ship.
A chubby little hand rested in her lap, making her startled. Dany looked up to find a pair of glowing eyes watching her curiously.
She swallowed hard. It was a boy.
Dany blinked rapidly and opened her mouth but didn't know what to say. Luckily she didn't have to, as the boy smiled at her and quickly handed her a biscuit.
The gesture made her smile with hesitation.
"Thank you," she stuttered, still taken by surprise.
"Aurane Waters, come here, you little brat!" a squeaky voice reproached. Daenerys glanced to the side and noticed a woman — probably his nurse — calling out to the little boy.
He scampered back to her, leaving a trail of giggles behind him.
Waters, Dany thought, tasting the biscuit as the knowledge lit up in her mind; he was a bastard. A noble one.
"Daenerys..."
It was but a whisper she heard, but noticeable enough to send shivers down her back.
"Daenerys..." insisted the disembodied voice.
It was Brandon's voice.
***
"Your Grace."
A voice startled her.
Daenerys turned around and met the same Aurane Waters of her memories, not a little boy anymore. Just there she realized the strange familiarity she felt when they first met, in this time. It was brief back then, their encounter, yet it was so clear in her mind now that she remembered.
Aurane cleared his throat.
"That man is here again; the Northman," he briefed her about, oblivious to Daenerys state of mind. "I could make my men take them back to their ships—"
The Northman?
Jon, she thought immediately.
She was so engrossed in the discovery that for a moment she forgot Jon and his people.
What would they want now?
"Is there something wrong, your Grace?" Aurane asked her with a tilt of his head. She saw the glimpse of worry then, which finally made her fully conscious.
"I can handle them," Dany responded.
***
The Dragon Queen surged through the side door and walked into the Throne Room without looking up, straight to sit on her imposing throne. Arya noticed Jon staring almost longingly, something that made her feel uncomfortable and want to roll her eyes at the same time.
He started talking.
"I know you have reasons not to hear us and misgivings about our intentions but I swear nonetheless, your Grace, we have not come in vain nor are we here to waste your time."
Daenerys Targaryen looked them up and down with a frown, her eyes suspicious but exhausted. Beneath them, the shadows gathered, her grief transparent in her sullen expression.
The Queen sucked in a deep breath.
"I'm listening to you," she said.
Notes:
Originally, I had meant to conclude Cersei's arc in this chapter but it happens sometimes that I get to a point where I just decide to stop writing and start again on a blank page, LOL.
I hope this isn't a cause of anger and frustration for you guys.
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