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Her armour is heavy steel plate, overlaid in brilliant rose-gold like a red dawn. The sword on her hip is ever bloody, and the shield on her back is scored and striated by enemies who were fool enough to test her directly.
Brave fools, but fools nonetheless.
She wears a crown in place of a helm, bright yellow gold wound round with her golden hair, finished with bloody rubies to match the crimson silk of her tabard.
She never rests. Everywhere there is war, she is called, for what war is not at least a little Unjust?
Cersei, she who is Injustice, she who nurses grudges at her breast and gives suck to cruelty, does not ride alone.
Her mount is like fire, difficult to look upon, red and dark and awful.
Its twin is golden, a little faster but not so strong or so hateful.
Cersei’s twin, the golden mount’s rider, is no more virtuous than his sister.
Bloodlust rides brilliant across the field, shining brighter the further he rides. He laughs to hear the call to war, and revels in the cries of victory and agony alike.
Jaime’s armour is golden, too, not just his mount. His golden sword drips blood enough for centuries, and his shield shows his enemies at their worst and weakest.
Cersei likes to polish her sword by the fire, so even when the blood is gone the red remains.
“Sister,” says the Imp, by way of greeting. “The lusty light has returned to your eyes, I see - how is our dear brother?”
She does not look up, but she does smile. Just a little.
“He sends his regards,” she says. “And our lord father?”
“A little more putrid, a little more infectious,” Tyrion says. “Our proud lord of Pestilence is pleased with all our progress.”
Tyrion, Mayhem and Misdirection bright in his mismatched eyes, sows his Discord wherever he wanders. Only their father has ever been able to stop it, rotting away Tyrion’s slyness with a wave of his mottled hand. He can stay any of them, robbing them of their petitioners by claiming sacrifice after sacrifice at his fetid altar.
Only Death can topple Lord Tywin, and she so far has stayed her hand. The Lady Joanna is merciless, and sometimes she is cruel and even wasteful, but she is careful of her champions. Pestilence brings her more even than Famine, even than War, and so he is her favourite.
Tyrion sets a cup of wine on the table with her sword oil and her polishing cloths, smiling all the while. Cersei must rise soon, lest he cause a row and draw down their father’s wrath upon her undeserving head.
“And your husband?” he asks. “How is dear Conquest?”
Cersei packs away her oils and polishes and cloths, drains her wine, and rises.
She will not speak of him.
Injustice and Conquest are not such strange bedfellows, or so Cersei is often told. Injustice, after all, often follows where Conquest treads. Even their armour - red and gold, gold and dark - seems to pair well at first glance.
She has always preferred Bloodlust as a companion. They are a matched pair, one leading to the other to the one to the other. A perfect balance, complementing one another as only matched halves of a whole can.
But she is not wed to Bloodlust. She was sold to Conquest, and perhaps that was a self-fulfilling prophecy - how could Injustice ever have justice, after all?
(Justice, meanwhile, sits on high with her Dutiful husband. She and Cersei have never gotten along well, but they have shared company if only because Robert, the fool, was not always Conquest. Once, before he claimed Conquest from his betters with his hammer and the swords of many other men, he was Wrath, and Wrath has always taken comfort in pretending to be Duty’s brother.)
The only joy Cersei has taken of her marriage is her children, which always makes her laugh. As if she would submit to bearing slobbering Robert’s filthy heirs - no, she who wears Corruption’s crown, who rides to war on Misrule while Bloodlust rides at her side on Brutality, she could never bear the children of a man who let others earn his greatness.
But Bloodlust and Injustice are such fine bedfellows.
Joffrey is her pride, Warmongering and fierce, with scar-faced Myrcella garbed in shifting, Deceitful gold, that reveals whichever side of her face will do the most harm. Tommen had seemed so useless at first, against Warmonger and Deceit, but Beguilement is so much more effective in one so sweet and innocent as her fat little boy.
Cersei could never have made such fine children without Jaime. She has seen the muck Robert’s too-widely sown seed produces.
When last there was a true war-
Cersei remembers it. She did not ride, then, because Death rose from her bier and pulled her daughter away from the field. Injustice would have had to ride at Carnage and Conquest’s side, then, and Death would not allow it.
Aerys, Lord of Carnage, had sought to claim Death a very long time ago, and the Lady Joanna never forgot such a slight.
Conquest, the one Cersei would have wed in another life, made the mistake of taking Bravery away from her family. Cersei remembers Brave Lyanna well, and still dislikes the chit all these years later. She still cannot see what about the girl made her worth felling the nations, but Conquest deemed it so, and thus fell Rhaegar and thus rose Robert.
Rhaegar-who-was-Conquest was worthy of Victory’s crown, or so Cersei had thought. Then he fell.
When next there is a true war-
Cersei and Jaime, Injustice and Bloodlust, will lead the van, and Pestilence and Death will spread their terrible shadows across the field. Beguilement and Deceit will bring them allies, and Discord will splinter their enemies. Tyrion has already been sent east to start his work, Tommen and Myrcella south, and Joffrey need only claim a northern bride to complete their work - Justice and Duty have two daughters, and either one will do.
Robert is falling, becoming Sloth. Conquest’s double crown of Victory and War will come to Joffrey, even if Cersei has to wring Rhaegar’s sister’s neck with her own two hands.
Daenerys, whose followers call her Mother, call her Dragon, who wears her father’s crown of Carnage and her mother’s crown of Mercy - what is she, against Death’s daughter?