Chapter Text
{I}
They rode into King’s Landing through the Lion’s Gate; as it was only fitting.
“Smile,” Caesar told Jeyne, waving at the crowds as they passed by. He was a favorite of the people of King’s Landing, of course, and she could see how much he enjoyed the attention. Well, she thought to herself, of course he would. For her part, Jeyne just looked around.
“Was it always so crowded?” she asked him, surprised. She had not been in King’s Landing since the wedding, three years prior; and this new city in front of her eyes was much different from the one in her memories.
“It’s the autumn,” he explained. “People flee King’s Landing in summer, from the heat, and they always come back when it’s over.”
Jeyne tried to picture King’s Landing under the snow, and failed. She wondered how it would look like, the Red Keep and Baelor’s and the harbor all painted white; and she wondered how many people would die when the cold came. Winter is coming, she almost thought; but those were the Stark words, and she hadn’t be allowed to be Stark even when she believed herself to be one.
“It’s very pretty,” Caesar said, and she turned to look at him.
“What?”
“You were thinking about King’s Landing during the winter,” he repeated, a smug smile on his face; and Jeyne almost considered telling him that no, she hadn’t, if only to wipe it off. “You can’t feel the stench quite as much,” and here he smirked. “And it can be pretty, like a snow globe. I wager Lady Sansa would love it.”
“A snow globe?” Sansa would. She wrote often as possible, and her letters were always beautifully crafted exercises of penmanship, about this and that other wonderful thing she had seen and done; and Jeyne was sure she struggled for hours and hours to make the wording as elegant as possible. Sansa Stark loved pretty things; and so she did her pretty maiden’s cloak and her pretty prince. And good for her that she does.
“King’s Landing, silly,” Caesar said. “And it’s all the better for her.”
Someone has to. Jeyne surely hadn’t missed this city.
“Do you like the Rock, Jeyne?” he asked, all of a sudden; and she had to think about it.
Casterly Rock was the glowing mist on Lannisport in the morning and the fiery red of the sun setting in the ocean. It was the Hall of Heroes and the Stone Gardens, and the lions carvings on the grand walnut doors of the Lord’s solar. Casterly Rock was life under Tywin’s shadow and Joanna’s ghost, and crimson and gold and a life that wasn’t hers; but could be. Jeyne did not belong in Casterly Rock, but she hadn’t belonged in Winterfell either, and that had never stopped her.
“I like it better than here,” she told him then; and it was true, because in Casterly Rock she was Caesar’s wife and not just Ned Stark’s bastard.
Tyrion came looking for her as soon as they made it into the Tower of the Hand, in Caesar’s chambers. The place was much different now from how it had been when Lord Eddard had lived there, Jeyne noticed, but she didn’t mind.
“Dear sister,” Tyrion greeted her; and she was almost sure the warmth in his voice was genuine and not a mockery. It was hard to tell, with Tyrion Lannister. “I hate a treat for you.”
I can see that, Jeyne thought, taking in Tyrion’s anticipatory smile. The last time he’d looked like that, he had ended up giving her a detailed account of King Robert’s latest drunken scene, and it had been… interesting, to say the least.
“You have a visitor waiting for you,” he said; and she blinked.
Do I, now?
“A visitor from Winterfell,” Tyrion continued, and Jeyne flinched in surprise.
“From Winterfell?” she repeated. “But the king…” wouldn’t look kindly on any visitors from Winterfell, no matter how lonely Sansa must feel. No, Eddard Stark would never again set foot in King’s Landing until both he and the king lived, Jeyne was sure. But perhaps…
“Is it Benjen?” Jeyne asked Tyrion. “My uncle Benjen, of the Night’s Watch?” She had missed Benjen most of them all, and the letters they exchanged were few and far between.
Tyrion’s surprise was enough to tell Jeyne that she had been wrong, even before he started to speak. “It’s Lord Stark’s heir,” he said. “Young Lord Robb.”
“And the king let him come?” Jeyne blurted out, voice thick with disbelief. Robert had never been the forgiving type.
“The Lady Sansa asked him,” Tyrion said. “And you know how His Grace can be, when it comes to a girl’s sweet pleas.”
“And where is my visitor?” she asked. She had not seen Robb since leaving Winterfell, but by then they hadn’t been close enough that he missed him. Not like she had missed Arya and Sansa and even Lord Eddard, and the freshness of the newly-fallen snow; but sometimes, the memories… It will be good to see him.
“You will,” Tyrion told her; and Jeyne realized she had spoken out loud. “Tomorrow.”
{II}
The next morning the sun rose on King’s Landing hidden under a mantle of clouds, and the air was so still and warm that Jeyne found herself desperately wishing for some rain. Sansa’s pretty dress will be ruined, but it would be well worth it.
She saw Robb for the first time at the ceremony; and he’d become tall and broad-shouldered and every bit as handsome as she’d known he would. He stood in the place his father could not be, still and silent as the candles burned and the perfume of flowers grew to fill to Sept; and it hit her then, how alike Robb and Sansa looked, with their sky-blue eyes and auburn curls.
Jeyne thought of Arya then, her wild little girl; and realized that she too would be married soon. In the North, she hoped, to someone who will make her happy.
Sansa Stark left the Grand Sept as Princess Sansa Baratheon, the heavy golden cloak trailing from her shoulders, and Jeyne clapped and smiled with the others as she walked.
“She looks so happy, doesn’t she?” she told Caesar, and found herself wondering just how much Sansa knew of the reasons why her betrothal to Prince Steffon had not been broken when the Starks had left King’s Landing. And what would she do if she knew? Nothing at all.
Jeyne remembered her own wedding, and everything that had followed. It had been in King’s Landing, same as Sansa’s, because Lord Eddard would not travel west, no matter how long Lord Tywin had insisted on it. And after that, the Lion of the Sea and Oldtown and Lys and Volantis; until the day Caesar had received Robert’s message, to come back to court because he needed a new Hand.
“Jeyne,” Robb called then; and he embraced her, this Tully-looking stranger with a voice so different from the boy in her memories.
“Robb,” she said, and smiled at him. “How are you?”
“Well enough.” He let her go then, and she could feel his eyes trailing on her body, from the pendant that had been Lady Joanna’s to her silken gown, a crimson dress for a Lannister lady, paid for with gold from Casterly Rock. “You look good,” Robb said, his voice odd; and Jeyne’s smile only widened.
Look at me, she thought, and hoped he would tell of this to Lady Stark when he returned North. You never expected me to raise so high, and here I am.
“How is everyone?” she asked. “Father?”
Robb’s eyes darted around slightly to the crowds in the Sept, to Caesar who sat in his father’s seat and to Robert who’d asked him to. “Father is well enough,” he said, sounding stiff; and Jeyne frowned. Does it think I’m glad for what happened? But no, it couldn’t be.
“Bran has been squiring for the Blackfish,” Robb continued, and there he smiled. “Arya says she misses you, and Rickon…”
Rickon was barely three when I left and doesn’t even remember who I am, she though; but Robb was too kind to bring it up.
“And you, Jeyne?”
He sounded so much like his father had at her own wedding feast. And you Jeyne? he’d asked, when she had pointed out how happy Sansa looked, dancing away with Prince Steffon. Will you be happy, Jeyne?
“I’m perfectly happy,” she told Robb now, same as she had told Lord Stark then. And I am, she thought. Am I?
And then it came the bedding, and King Robert; and the day after that, a broken promise.
Sansa’s own wedding feast was nowhere as scandalous, though considerably more elaborate. She and Caesar were sat next to Lord Renly Princess Lemore who, at eleven, had been deemed old enough to attend. Queen Alysanne, some six or seven seats on the right, had her mouth twist into a thin line every time she looked in their direction, and Jeyne wondered why was that. She cannot possibly be still angry at me for what happened with the Starks. Not when Robb makes such a better target.
Caesar didn’t say a thing, but she was sure he must have noticed. And so had Renly, who turned towards her with a warm smile.
“So, lady Jeyne,” he began, “we haven’t seen you in so long. Will you stay in the city after the wedding?”
The queen’s gaze was cold as ice. “Oh, I don’t know,” Jeyne said. “I miss my daughter already, and it’s not even been a month.” And that she did. She was beautiful, her little Lya, with golden hair and Jeyne’s eyes, and barely one year old.
“You should bring her to court,” Renly said, and Jeyne smiled at him. I think not.
“Oh, you should bring her to visit Winterfell,” the queen said, loud enough for king Robert to take notice. “To see Lord Stark.”
“Lord Renly,” Caesar cut in, and finally. Jeyne gave him a sideways glare, and he only smiled. “And where is your brother? I was expecting him.”
Renly laughed as if it were the funniest joke in the world. “Dragonstone. He writes that he’s too sick to travel. Were anyone else, I’d believe it, but we all know how much Stannis just loves weddings.”
Nowhere as much as Lord Eddard does, she thought, remembering…
{III}
“What do you mean,” Jeyne had asked him, confused. “My mother wouldn’t have wanted it? What mother doesn’t dream of her daughter making a good match?” And this is the best one there is.
“To a Lannister,” he had told her, softly. “Jeyne, my girl, your mother wouldn’t have wanted a Lannister for you.”
“I could have believed you if I knew her name,” it was always the same story, since Jeyne had been old enough to ask. “And no woman would want her daughter to remain a bastard when she could become the Lady of the Rock instead.”
“Jeyne…”
“Father,” she’d answered. “I know.”
I’ll tell you when you are married, Lord Stark had told Jeyne once, when she had been seven or eight. She had found it terribly unfair back then, that she had to marry if she wanted to know who her mother was, back when her favorite dream was to become Winterfell’s new master of horse when Hullen was too old; but she had come to see the sense of it later on.
When I’m married, and bound to a husband who wouldn’t let me go on a mad quest for my mother across the kingdoms.
And now he did not want her married; and Jeyne did not know why. It could be genuine distaste for Lord Tywin, maybe, or truly her mysterious mother’s will, or a simple excuse not to have to tell her; she did not know.
But Jeyne did marry in the end, a true Stark at last for the few precious hours before she became a Lannister instead; and to a man who’d organized a bridal tour of the Free Cities for after the ceremony and gifted her a Dothraki dragonbone bow because she’d once told him she liked archery. Perhaps he won’t mind it if I go looking for my mother.
But her wedding day had come and gone; and her father, honorable Lord Eddard whose word was a guarantee of honesty throughout the realm, hadn’t told her a thing.
“You promised me,” Jeyne had reminded him, making him flinch, but not talk.
“I’m sorry, Jeyne,” and he had looked sorry, but it hadn’t been enough. “I cannot. Perhaps if you...” he had stopped there, but Jeyne had understood well enough. Perhaps if you hadn’t married a Lannister...
But she had, and he’d broken his promise; and Jeyne had left five days after and not talked to her father since then. And when Caesar and Tywin had told her that he wasn’t her father at all, she almost hadn’t believed them, until she’d remembered his reluctance, and then everything had started to make sense.
She had never felt more betrayed in her life.
{IV}
“The queen doesn’t seem to like me much.”
“I think everyone noticed it, sweetling.”
It was the day of Robb’s departure, ten days after the wedding. He had arrived by ship and meant to leave the same way, but after meeting Loras and Garlan Tyrell he’d been persuaded to go with them instead, and visit Highgarden. And their sister, too, Jeyne had thought, amused; but she hadn’t told Robb that.
Jeyne had waved at him as he rode away; and all that thinking of Loras Tyrell had brought Lord Renly to her mind. After that…
“I said,” Jeyne repeated, slowly. “The queen doesn’t like me, and I’ve done nothing to her. Why is that?” She bit on her lower lip. “Is it because of… Lord Eddard leaving King’s Landing?”
Caesar laughed. “Oh, no.”
“Ned Stark has nothing to do with that,” he paused for a moment. “If you really want to know –”
“– I do.”
“I think it might be because of me.”
Jeyne closed her eyes for a moment at that, letting out a breath. Of course it’s him, she thought; and wondered why she’d never thought of it before. Caesar was could be the perfect courtier, and Queen Alysanne was reportedly very unhappy in her marriage. Who wouldn’t be, married to Robert Baratheon?
“Is this why she asked me to come South, the first time?”
He nodded. “I asked her to. And now…”
Now you married me, and made a fool of her. “She doesn’t dislike me,” Jeyne realized. “She probably hates me.”
She told as much to Tyrion later that day, still furious.
“He should have told me sooner,” she said, because Tyrion Lannister was the only person she could count on to take her side against his brother. “Before the wedding, at least.”
“To be fair,” Tyrion said, “you wouldn’t have come in King’s Landing if he had.”
Jeyne only looked at him. “I would have. Now move.”
They had been playing cyvasse, a game Jeyne had learned in Lys even before the Dornish made it popular. Tyrion would win, that was almost a given; but Jeyne’s personal challenge was to make the game last as long as she could before he took all of her pieces.
“There,” he said; and Jeyne looked down at the board to see that he had won again.
“Care for another?”
It was hours into the night already, but Jeyne wasn’t tired.
“Another,” she agreed.
They played until dawn, and in the morning a message arrived, saying that Stannis Baratheon was dead.
{V}
Jeyne had thought it a waste of time at first.
“It should be Robert first,” she had told Caesar; but that had been only a month after her wedding, the king’s behavior during the bedding still fresh in her memory.
“Robert is already killing himself with every drink he takes,” it had been Caesar’s dismissive response. “And if he dies first, who knows who could be the new Regent.”
But that had been years ago, when Eddard Stark had been Hand of the King, admired by half the lords of King’s Landing and despised by the other half; and there had been no way to know where the tide would go if ever Robert died. Three years later, things would have been easier had the king died first, but changing a plan already set in motions would be a needless waste – and the Lannisters, Jeyne had learned, did not like to be wasteful.
And now Stannis was dead.
“Will they let the daughter keep Dragonstone?” Jeyne asked. “Shireen, right?”
Gods, how she hated to be kept in the dark. Another good reason to leave King’s Landing, Jeyne decided, after yet another day spent doing nothing but exchanging pleasantries with Sansa, listening to her moon and gush about her new husband, all the while waiting for her own to be done with the council.
“And he is so sweet, Jeyne. And so kind,” Sansa was saying. “I already knew if, of course, but these days he’s been…”
Poor Sansa, Jeyne thought. No one had bothered to teach her something of the ways of the world, not prim-and-perfect Lady Stark; not the father who’d left her alone in the South so that she could have her dream wedding; not the queen or the ladies of the court after the Starks had fallen out of favor with the king.
“Is your lord husband kind with you, Jeyne?”
She raised her head at that, turning to look Sansa straight in the eyes. Her wide, blue, innocent eyes. “Oh, yes,” she told her. “Very.”
Inspiration struck her then. “Perhaps you could come with me when I go back West,” Jeyne said. “I’m sure you’d love it there. And you could finally meet Lya, it would be wonderful.”
She was delighted at that; of course she was. Not one letter from Sansa arrived in which she didn’t ask after her niece; and, Jeyne decided, between Stannis’s sudden death and all the ones to come it would be a good thing to leave the city.
Especially for a daughter of Ned Stark, she realized later that day, when Caesar returned from the Small Council meeting, with news from Varys’s man in the East. He’d written of a Dothraki horde sacking the city of Mantarys, burning it to the ground, and King Robert had laughed and asked Varys what was to him if some eastern city burned.
“And Varys told the king that the riders are led by Khal Drogo, Daenerys Targaryen’s husband.”
Daenerys Targaryen, the girl bride that Robert had wanted dead and Ned Stark had tried to save, the reason why the king no longer even wanted to hear the name of his former Hand spoken in his presence. Daenerys Targaryen, who had survived, in spite of everything.
“And they will be making for Volantis next, if it hasn’t been sacked already, and the Seven Kingdoms after that.”
Jeyne could almost imagine Robert’s face at that, his worst nightmare come to life. His anger, too; and she was suddenly glad that Robb had already left.
“All in the name of his son, Rhaego.”
And so it starts.