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The Inn of the Kneeling Man was smaller and drabber than Jaime remembered. Last time he’d been here it had been early autumn, with leaves barely goldening on the trees near the inn and warm light brushing its stone walls, whitewashed upper storey and roof slates. Later seasons were harsher on buildings as well as crops and people. Rain dribbled from the eaves to the muddy courtyard without, and the sign was rustier than ever.
Jaime hadn’t expected innkeep or serving boy to be alive, with all the ravaging the riverlands had suffered; neither recognised him, which was considerably more understandable. They seemed hale, if thin, when the man bowed him and his entourage inside and the stripling came to take the horses. As Jaime shook rain off his cloak in the front taproom while the innkeep’s wife and a second servant brought out warmed wine, he reflected how lucky he was to be alive himself.
Last time he’d had just Cleos Frey and Brienne of Tarth with him in place of half a hundred knights: there’d been no escort of soldiers and men-at-arms making camp outside, and the three of them hadn’t dared the beds for fear of outlaws. In the end their precaution hadn’t helped for long. Cleos had died, and then –
His cousin Daven looked more like a mastiff than a lion, standing dripping in the taproom torchlight with a pewter tankard in his right hand an a laugh in his voice as he recounted an off-colour story to his squire and one of his household knights. Ser Ilyn stood in the shadows smiling at each man there in turn. Did he know all the others’ secrets as well as he knew Jaime’s? Even copper-haired Addam Marbrand had seemed to relax as soon as he entered thick stone walls. They’d not slept this protected since leaving Riverrun.
But Jaime couldn’t relax. Memories haunted him as much as present responsibility. The camp was spreading around the inn: were the scouts still vigilant, or had the illusion of safety blinded them? Were the inn’s old resident outlaws as long gone as they appeared?
Those outlaws weren’t the ones who killed Cleos, nor the ones who cut my hand off and threatened to rape and kill Brienne. But even if they’re long gone or dead, Beric Dondarrion is nearby. Can’t fault him for Freyicide, but I won’t have him threaten us. And the Blackfish is in these woods somewhere... a better scout than any we have, and cannier.
He evaded the proffered wine, went back outside and surveyed the camp from under the porch. Tents were sprouting in the surrounding fields, with a brief palisade beyond them. Defences on the river side of their position would have seemed neglected had the Red Fork not swollen with rain till it seemed like the river had gout. Still, it was likely navigable. “More scouts along the bank,” he murmured.
“My Lord?” He turned. Peck had popped up at his elbow. His mouse-brown hair was rain-darkened and plastered to his head.
“In what state did you find the stables?” Jaime asked.
“I saw no leaks in the roof, my Lord, and they were as clean as inn stables ever are. The ostler’s competent too.”
“How many other horses?”
“None.”
“When do you judge there last were any here?”
He saw the squire ponder the question and noted with pleasure the surprise dawning on Peck’s face. “Some days past, maybe a week.”
No outlaws. Good. “War makes for poor travel, and worse trade at inns.” Jaime clapped Peck’s shoulder. “Get inside, dry out and have yourself some wine. Lew and Garrett took your traps upstairs with theirs and mine.”
Afternoon was already broadening to evening, and after Jaime had finished his brief and increasingly muddy circuit of the camp, evening was becoming night and rain had turned to sleet. As the Lord Commander walked back to the inn he heard from all sides the curses of inexperienced campaign soldiers as their camp fires died before them, and the sympathy or advice or laughter of older men who knew how to shield their fire-pits. The advantages of command always had included a tent big enough for braziers: he was trebly glad that tonight his privilege included four stone walls and a fireplace.
He reached the end of the last tent-row and stopped. He was maybe twenty feet from the inn porch. A couple of his men-at-arms were ahorse by the door, and with them was a third rider astride a fine grey mare. The arms on the heavy shield glowed in the lamplight like a second sunset, and Jaime caught his breath at the sight of the falling star. Then he recognised the horse and rider and gasped again.
“Brienne?” he called, approaching. Had she been making for Riverrun on her search? He could at least save her part of a journey, if so.
She half-turned in her saddle as he came up to her. In the poor light he couldn’t see her expression, but her shoulders were slumped in weather-provoked dejection. She must have removed her helm to ride into the camp: her hair was sodden and part-covered her face.
“Ser Jaime.” If she were as surprised to meet him here as he was, she didn’t show it. Her voice was flat and unenthusiastic. “I need to make a report.”
“You can make it inside. Come and dry out.” She hesitated but dismounted. The innkeep appeared in the doorway: “We’ll need another chamber,” Jaime informed him.
“Begging my Lord’s pardon, but there aren’t any more. I can set up a cot –”
“Do that, but not for her.” As the innkeep double-took, Jaime looked past him and gestured to Peck. “Shift my things into my cousin’s room.”
Addam Marbrand appeared behind the squire. “Not a good idea,” he informed Jaime in an undertone, and he gestured significantly over his shoulder towards the private taproom in the back.
“Daven picked up a whore?” the Lord Commander hazarded.
“No, two.”
“I won’t put you out of your bed,” Brienne objected. “I can camp –”
“In this weather?” Jaime interrupted. He didn’t need the comfortable bed half as much as it appeared she did. “Peck, move me in with Ser Addam.” He raised an eyebrow at the City Watch commander. “No whores, I trust.” The other man did not reply, just cocked a bemused eyebrow at Jaime, who shrugged.
Brienne emerged from behind her horse with a saddlebag slung over her left arm behind her shield. She was favouring her right arm: her fingers at her saddle’s straps were deft enough but she moved to put her second bag on her left arm too before Jaime grabbed it.
She demurred at that as well. “Must you?”
“What? Remind myself that chivalry’s more than just an eight-letter word?” He relieved her of the other bag too. “Come in and start dripping all over the floor like the rest of us instead of freezing half to death out here. You look like someone drowned you and woke you up again three days later.”
“Scarcely chivalrous,” Marbrand murmured. He stood aside to let Brienne sidle into the inn. Like most men he had to look up at her, but he had the decency not to blink at her height or her appearance. “The innkeep’s wife is preparing supper, my lady. Perhaps you would eat with us in a little while?”
“Thank you, ser, but I prefer to rest.”
Jaime read shyness beneath the refusal and grimaced. She’s definitely tired: she’s been travelling all day – and most likely on an empty stomach. Stupid stubborn wench. He scraped the worst of the mud off his once-white boots and beckoned Brienne up the stairs on the right.
“How far have you ridden?” he asked her over his shoulder.
“Since the last inn.” He heard her sigh. “A few days, I think.”
He stopped on the landing and looked back at her. His walk had left him muddy to the thighs: she was thoroughly flecked with dirt cast up by the grey mare’s hooves. For a moment he looked into her big blue eyes and shivered: the sea-deep pools held a core of ice... but she averted her face and the vision left him.
“My washerwoman’s around somewhere. I’ll send her to clean your things and draw you a bath.”
She hung her head even further. “I haven’t any spare garments.”
He hefted the saddlebags. They were light in his left hand: she wouldn’t be the first traveller to have all her clothes wear out on her on the road. “I can find you some.”
She looked up at that. She seemed almost angry. “You gave me your bedchamber already; you needn’t give me your clothes too.”
“You wouldn’t fit mine: I’m too thin.”
“Far too thin. Do you ever eat?”
“Occasionally.” He’d always been slim-framed. Muscles he’d built with ease as a boy were proving much more difficult to rebuild as a man. “Daven wouldn’t oblige us with a spare corner of a chamber; he can donate you a shirt at least.”
Orange torchlight flickered on the timber and lathe walls. Brienne shifted on her big feet like an overgrown girl. “Ser Jaime –” she began.
Peck emerged from Ser Addam’s room and almost walked into Jaime. He bowed an apology: Jaime thrust Brienne’s saddlebags at the boy. “Take these, and send Pia to see to Lady Brienne. You’ll know where to find her, I trust.” The squire flushed scarlet beneath his thin beard. Jaime retreated into Addam’s chamber, now also his, and kicked his own ankle when the door had closed. He’d no right to snap like that at anyone.
He changed his dirty clothing by the light of a candle as stumpy as his right arm. It was at least quarter of an hour before he went back down the stairs with his white doublet laced far less tightly than it should have been. Makes me look even thinner.
Ser Addam was still at the bottom of the stairs, leaning on the wall with a fresh wine cup in his hand. “Who is she?” he demanded. “And what’s going on?”
“She is the heir to Tarth, and while she’s here she’ll be treated that way.” Jaime thought about the shadows in a pair of sapphire eyes. “As to the what, I intend to find out.”
Supper in the private tap was more boisterous than Jaime would have wished. Days spent camping in alternate snow, rain and mud had given his knights a fresh appreciation for unexpected stone walls, even those of a travellers’ inn, and the wife and her kitchen boy made far better food than Jaime remembered, though it was plain fare. He had Garrett Paege take some to Brienne via Pia.
Brienne...
How was he to talk to her of her mission in the middle of this crowd? More to the point, what had happened to her on the road?
Just thinking about a few of the possibilities turned Jaime’s stomach. He abandoned his fish pie and roast mutton, made his excuses to the men alongside him and left the table.
The night had chilled even more. Earlier sleet was now falling as heavy snow. Jaime stood at the inn door and watched the quiet encampment for a long few minutes. Tents were felt-shrouded and sentries muffled in scarves so tightly that it was a miracle they could breathe.
So a clever, experienced scout would wait in the tents’ shadows and pass the sentries on the more muffled side. Snowfall covers sounds, and though a light fall aids tracking, this stuff’s coming down so hard it’ll hide footprints after only a few minutes. Anyone wanting to kill me would realise I was in the inn... and would assume I was in the big front chamber. Ah.
He went back inside. Pia was visible in the scullery fighting with a damp bathtub as large as she was. Good. Jaime took the stairs two at a time and pushed open Brienne’s door.
A startled gasp greeted him. “Only me,” he soothed, closing the door behind him. “I just –”
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, at the head end, next to the dresser. Candles perched before the dresser-top mirror cast light across the whole room. She was fully clad, in one of Daven’s shirts and a pair of breeches that were, for a miracle, too large for her, but she was shrinking from him like he’d barged in on her naked.
She’d flung up a large hand to cover the left side of her face as she’d once, long ago, covered her teats from him in a Harrenhal bathtub. A mark peeked from beneath her fingers. Her hair had hidden it before. He saw a bloody bandage lying in front of the mirror. “Brienne?” he demanded.
“Please go away.”
“A chivalrous man would obey you. Guess Ser Addam was right.” He tucked his golden fingers into her hand and drew it away from her face.
A dark wound clung to her once-freckled cheek like a leech. “That’s horrific,” he whispered, touching its edge with his left fingertips. He felt her warm breath on his hand. “That blow must have come close to taking your head off. What happened?”
She shivered. “The Brave Companions.”
His hand froze still touching her. She pulled away from him and averted her face. He could still see her right eye in the mirror; blue, and as empty as his heart. The ghost of his right hand screamed.
“Tell me they didn’t rape you.”
“No.” She shook her head. Her back was set stiff and hard. Jaime clutched her right shoulder in involuntary relief, but let her go at once, feeling like a guilty boy.
He sat on the edge of the bed beside her. “Kill them?” he asked in a steadier voice.
“Just five of them,” she said quietly. “The rest are still out there...”
“‘Out there’, in this, they’ll freeze,” he muttered. “Hoat’s dead.”
That sparked her interest. “How?”
Ah. “Gregor Clegane.”
She turned back towards him and looked at him, almost inside him. “What aren’t you saying?”
He fought not to squirm. Hoat hacked my hand off, but he didn’t feed it to me afterwards. “Nothing I intend to say.”
“How did Gregor Clegane kill Vargo Hoat?” she said, as if to a child.
He shook his head. “You want it clearer, wench? I won’t tell you. Anything else. Not this.” For a moment her eyes shone bright with frustration, but she seemed to catch herself and looked away to the lion-hilted sword leaning on the dresser.
She’d always been awkward in company. She’d never hidden this much: her beautiful blue eyes had always seen things at their face value. Her past scorn for him had been far preferable to this.
“I owe you a very big apology,” he murmured.
“For giving me a priceless sword?” Her eyes still traced the colours in the steel.
“For what I took from you in return.”
“You...” She shivered, though the fire in the grate behind Jaime’s back warmed the room. “You didn’t do anything. I know you didn’t.” The last words came out almost in a whisper.
He touched her arm but drew back at the feel of a splint. “Broke this? Good thing I have three squires: I can lend you one.” She didn’t answer.
Silence from Ilyn Payne induced him to relax. Silence from Brienne practically induced him to violence. “If you were making for Riverrun, I should warn you it’s not the most comfortable of bivouacs right now,” he snapped. “The castle surrendered. Emmon Frey holds it for the king. We took a few high-ranking prisoners, notably Edmure Tully and Jeyne Stark; they’re on their way to Casterly Rock. Brynden Tully, though, escaped, and is most likely roaming the riverlands looking for me. As you discovered, I’m not hard to find. If he passes our sentries and reaches the inn, he may assume I’m still in the nice big bedroom and break in. Luckily, you’re not Cersei and hence look nothing like me – not that I’m half as pretty as she is anymore – but he may borrow your lovely lion-hilted sword to skewer me with. It’s the sort of gesture he might find appealing.”
“It’s your sword, not mine. I need – to give it back to you.”
“Do you see me growing a new right hand yet?” He held up the gold one for her inspection. “Until I do, the sword is yours.” Something about her right arm belatedly struck him. “Where did you find a maester out here?”
“I didn’t. The innkeep of another inn set it.”
“Is it healed enough for sword-work?” He’d spent three hours a day with Ser Ilyn, but Brienne was a better blade than the tongueless knight, and seemed near enough as discreet as him. Training with her would be a nice change.
“I wouldn’t care to battle with it, but I can hold a sword.” She lifted Oathkeeper and tested its edge with her left hand. As if she needed to bother – Valyrian steel stayed sharp.
Her hands trembled. That was a cause for concern while she was still holding the sword. Jaime stared at her and tried to work out what was wrong.
“You needn’t worry about anything you don’t want to worry about now,” he tried. “My missing jewel will find itself sooner or later, I’ve no doubt.” She didn’t answer. “If you want to stay in our party, you can,” he offered, more in hope than expectation of a response. “We’re going back to King’s Landing.” King’s Landing and Cersei, and we’re taking our time. “Not a man here’ll bother you. I already got rid of Connington.”
Brienne jumped. “Ronnet Connington?”
“He wasn’t with us past Harrenhal,” Jaime assured her. “After I knocked him down that staircase he developed a dislike for my company as acute as mine for his, and he jumped at the opportunity to go riding through enemy territory escorting a prisoner. I trust that Wylis Manderly’s less dangerous a cargo than I was.”
The big woman’s posture screamed shock. “You... oh, Jaime. You shouldn’t have hit him.”
“He was rude about you. He won’t be again.”
“But –” Even in candlelight he saw her flush scarlet. She turned away again and her swordpoint scraped the floorboards.
“He won’t be rude about you again,” he repeated. He tentatively touched her shoulder.
“He’ll gossip.” She sounded very tired. “Men always gossip about – women.”
“If I thought he’d do that, I’d –” Jaime checked himself. “I thought I was past the age when violence was my first impulse.”
“You shouldn’t have hit him even once. He’ll talk about you.”
“Everyone talks about me, and none of them say nice things. You’re one of few who’s honest enough to speak where you know I can hear.” He sighed. “Connington’s long gone. I hope the mermen eat him. Help us ride round the riverlands hanging outlaws before we go home: a good hanging’s beneficial for the soul.”
“Hanging.” She stared towards the candles, the mirror, the reflection of her ruined cheek. Her voice was so quiet he could barely hear it. “The outlaws hanged my squire. He was just a boy – your brother’s squire once. He wanted to help me. But they hanged him.”
Outlaws. Jaime stared at her and felt sick dread twist his stomach. What lay around them? Doom, only doom.
“Hyle Hunt, too. I hated the man, but he wasn’t bad, just venal. He offered to help them but they hanged him anyway. He was Randyll Tarly’s man, and Tarly’s strung up enough outlaws to give them a spurious reason.” The last words came shaking out of her. Jaime inched closer. Something felt like it was about to snap.
“Dondarrion’s band?” he guessed.
“Beric Dondarrion is dead.”
“That’s been said before.”
Her harsh breath sounded like the first edges of hysteria. “He was dead then, too. He died six times. And each time the red priest Thoros breathed his god’s fire into him and brought him back.”
It sounded like the wild whispers of the riverland smallfolk. “That is a tale...”
“You don’t believe. You might, in time. They let me go, ser. They let me go.”
“When they killed your companions.” He dared to touch her shoulder again. “But Lord Beric –”
“Is dead now, in truth.” Her voice was level again. “He and his men were by a riverbank when they came on a three-day-old corpse. Thoros wouldn’t do anything – he said it was too dangerous – but Lord Beric breathed the fire instead. And he died, and she rose.”
“She?” A memory stirred. “The smallfolk speak of a new bandit leader. Lady Stoneheart. Some call her Lord Beric’s lover.”
“He kissed her but the once, but she is the one he raised to life, and who let me go.”
“Doubtless she had a reason. Maybe your sapphire eyes charmed her, or perhaps your beautiful sword –”
“It was the sword.”
Brienne lifted Oathkeeper in her weakened right hand. Black steel seemed to drink the light and the red streaks shone like new blood. She pivoted, still seated, and laid the edge against Jaime’s neck.
He didn’t move. He couldn’t. He felt the hairs on his throat flicker as he breathed, and the blade, so close to his jugular, seemed to pulse with its own mad life.
Brienne’s eyes were still beautiful. They still shone like two jewels in her broad scarred face. But now the jewels glistened with a sheen he couldn’t try to read. “I swore to serve Catelyn Stark, Ser Jaime. Alive, dead or revenant, she hates you all the same. She bade me kill you from my duty to her, or face her justice too.”
Jaime took a careful breath. It might be one of his last. “I killed Aerys Targaryen with a gold sword,” he observed. “Lannister gold. My father wanted this sword in Lannister crimson, but it came out Targaryen red-black instead. It fits.”
He lifted Oathkeeper’s blade in the groove of his golden hand. Brienne didn’t fight him as he slowly guided it down and left till the point rested over his heart. “I swore to obey, long ago, and the order came to kill my own father.” But I did that too, many years later. “You’ve heard men call me worse than fickle. I am no one to dictate how another approaches an oath.” He touched the blade’s foible with his left forefinger. The point had pierced his doublet and shirt already: he felt it prickle his chest. “I have never feared dying. You taught me, once, how not to fear living. You saved my life then at the cost of a word. If you wish to end it now, do so. I won’t hold it against you.”
It seemed like the snowfall outside had smothered the whole world. Jaime could hear his breathing unnaturally loud in his chest and throat. What would it feel like when the blade drove home? Stupid stubborn wench: honourable to a fault –
Brienne’s thick lips quivered. “How did I ever think I could?” she whispered.
The sword trembled in her hand. Jaime felt the point scrape his skin and fought not to move. Then Brienne pulled it back and dropped it on the bed beside her and covered her face with her hands, and Jaime gave in to blind instinct and pulled her into his arms.
He held her for long minutes while she wept against his shoulder, as silent as the night. As he stroked tangles from her hair he considered. A prominent outlaw band not many days’ ride away – if Brienne could show them the way...
Brienne was a capable warrior, not a sighing vapid lady. Of course she would be able to retrace her route! He just hoped she’d have the sense not to be embarrassed about this later. How much did the two of them truly have to hide from each other?
He feathered a kiss into her hair. “Less of that,” he whispered into her ear when her shoulders started shaking harder. “This – it’ll be all right.”
She pulled away from him. “All right? I’m supposed to kill you!”
“Then either do it or decide on a way to get out of it with as much honour as possible. Sitting around agonising over things only makes them worse.”
“You saved my life.” Her voice was dull and quiet. “How can I end yours?”
“I suggest, with your eyes closed and your escape route already prepared.” He remembered the dressing she’d been changing when he barged in. “Do you have spare bandages?”
“Yes.”
He waited for her to elaborate. When she didn’t, he searched her closest saddlebag till he found a moist dressing that smelt of herbs and potash wrapped in a square of oil-cloth. “My handkerchief’s fresh enough.” He dipped it in her bedside water ewer and gently cleaned the wound, almost surprised she let him, more surprised at the relatively good condition of the wound. It was awkward, him with just his left hand trying to deal with the left side of her face, and she gave him no help, just sat with her big hands folded in her lap and her big eyes fixed on them.
“I need your help to arrange the dressing,” he warned. “Three hands are better than one.”
“I can manage on my own.”
“Doubtless you can. But I command this expedition, and the welfare of everyone on site is my concern.”
Her eyes met his. Their earlier dark emptiness had been replaced not by their customary clarity but by an edge of the confusion and pain he’d seen long ago when he’d teased her. The world was brighter, then, and I had two hands.
“Do you concern yourself with every one of your knights’ and soldiers’ wounds?” she asked.
He remembered a minor knight in Marbrand smoke-grey who’d been dragged from his horse by a wolf two days outside Riverrun and had his stomach clawed open. Jaime had sat by him for half an hour till he died. “You aren’t just anyone.”
“No: I’m not part of your army.”
“Do you want to be?”
“That...” She took the dressing from his hand and looked away. “That would neither be possible nor proper.”
“Is it what you want?”
“I’m not sure what I want, now.”
“You’d do best to make up your mind.”
“What do you want?”
He paused with his good hand touching hers. What do I want? Spring sunshine, two whole hands and an end to this bloody warring. “I need to do my duty. My wants are irrelevant.”
“Your duty. As I should, by rights, do mine.” Her voice caught. “To my father and Tarth; to Lady Catelyn – to you. They conflict. You told her once, they always do.”
“Of them all, your ‘duty’ to me is least relevant. It’s my duty, which I foisted onto you.” She tried to argue: he shook his head. “We’ve discussed Catelyn Stark. Tarth remains – home and family.” She didn’t speak. “You told me once you’re your father’s only child.”
“I am.”
He stared down at their hands and fancied he saw a dark shadow where his right hand should have lain. War makes spectres of us all. “Then return home before the winter settles in. Put any thoughts of the mainland behind you until spring. Marry someone –”
She yanked her hands from his. “Who? Did you have a particular candidate, or were you planning to throw me at one of your retainers?”
“I –” Jaime stopped before he could complete the retort. Connington said she’d been betrothed to two men besides him. Seven know how the other two fell through. “Most of them are married already,” he said instead, as levelly as he could. “Daven isn’t, but he’s betrothed to a Frey.”
“Which Frey?”
“Any Frey.”
“I wish him happiness with his bride – for the brief period before the reanimated corpse of my liege lady kills them both.”
She’d turned a chilly shoulder on him. He sighed at her hunched back. “Not every man is a Connington. Any number would treat you decently, even well.”
“No.” Her voice sounded as dead as it had just before she’d threatened to kill him. “I’ve ceased to entertain such futile hopes. Men are made for japes and mockery, or perhaps I am, when I encounter them.”
Fight fire with fire: fight stubbornness with stubbornness. “I realise that I am the last person to advise another to marry –” Part of the puzzle started to make more sense. “Particularly when that person’s affections centre on the unattainable.” Renly Baratheon was young, strong, handsome and unfailingly courteous. Any woman would have been smitten. But from what Loras says... “But you need to consider your position.” What did that overdressed poseur ever do for her anyway? His ‘respect’ for her was as false as that of all the men who pander to me. “I – I could tell you I sympathise with the pressure on you, but we both know the comparison would be spurious. I found an escape route. I was even happy to take it, at first. You haven’t the same outlet.”
“I could always join the silent sisters,” she muttered.
“Take some advice from a man practically twice your age: don’t.”
She looked sideways at him. “You’re not old.”
“If my father’d married me off when he intended, I’d have had children your age or a year younger.” He looked at his reflection in the candlelit mirror and tried to see himself as something other than worn out and broken. At least in this light the sprinkled silver hairs on his head and in his beard were indistinguishable from the gold.
Would dungeon life age Cersei as fast as it had aged him? He imagined his sister thinner and lined-faced with all the life gone from her hair. But the picture was wrong. She still had two hands. He remembered revulsion and contempt.
And now she wants the useless, repulsive hindrance back again, for she sees a use for him. I am a great golden fool to be even riding in her direction. Why couldn’t that raven, of all ravens, have been shot down?
He snatched the damp poultice from Brienne and laid it across her cheek wound. She silently held down the edges till they adhered to her face. The skin would grow back, in time, but she would always have a scar. Had the gods thought she needed another barrier to finding a decent husband?
For every man wise enough to love his ugly wife, there are three who scorn and dishonour her. The trick is to find a man like my uncle Kevan instead of another Jon Bettley.
“Could you stop talking about husbands?” Brienne muttered.
Jaime realised he’d said the last sentence out loud. “I apologise. It’s none of my business.”
”That’s true.”
Her face was averted in a particularly pointed manner. He sighed. “You have very pretty eyes; don’t ruin them with crying.”
He saw her right hand start to move and dodged on instinct. She yanked back her hand before she came close to hitting him, but he slipped off the bed and fell sprawling onto the floor with an almighty crash.
“What in hells was that about?” he spluttered.
“You’re the single cruellest man in Westeros,” she hissed.
Jaime pushed himself half-upright. One of the straps on his golden hand had broken when he put his right arm out to break his fall. “Of that I’m well aware, but –”
A sharp rap on the door interrupted him. Brienne froze. Her broad ugly face creased with an unseemly degree of shock. Jaime scrambled to his feet, staggered to the door and cracked it open.
Addam Marbrand stood on the landing, frowning hard. Torchlight shone in his copper hair, crowning him. “Is everything all right in here?” he demanded.
“Absolutely perfect.”
“Lord Jaime –”
“Just go away.” He shut the door in Marbrand’s face and turned back to Brienne.
She was still sitting near the head of the bed but was clutching her right hand in her left. “I am truly sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I should never have – I...”
“Nothing happened.” Jaime felt his broken strap and wondered how best to explain it to his squires. “Of which I’m more than glad. I dare say you’d hit a lot harder than Cersei.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. “She hit you?”
“A few times.” Robert Baratheon had a habit of drinking too much, killing or fucking everything that moved, and hitting anything he couldn’t kill or fuck, including both me and my eldest misbegotten son. I wonder if he hit Cersei? She despised the man: now she becomes him...
“Forget about killing you.” Brienne’s face reverted to her familiar stubbornness. “I’m going straight back to King’s Landing and killing her.”
“Don’t do that till we’ve worked out whether you’d be fêted or executed for it.”
She’d seemed set to spring straight off the bed and ride away at once, but at that she stopped. “I beg your pardon?”
“She’s been locked up by the High Septon on charges of fornication.” But not of incest. Does that hurt? Should it, that they found evidence of her brief trysts with other men, but passed over all our years together as if they were naught?
Brienne was staring at him like he’d just told her Cersei had been carrying on a passionate love affair for the past fifteen years with Rhaegar Targaryen’s ghost. “Truth is stranger than tales sometimes,” Jaime said mildly. He sat back down beside her, perhaps an inch closer than he’d been before. “This is where we were, I think. Now. What did I do that made you want to hit me?”
“You –” She looked down at their practically touching knees. “You shouldn’t have said it.”
Jaime pondered their conversation. He couldn’t recall anything offensive creeping out. Damn it, he’d stopped trying that sort of thing with her!
“I’ve had enough of that sort of baseless comment thrown at me,” she went on with an air of dogged despair. “I won’t have it from you. You’re better than that.”
“The only person in Westeros who holds me to such high standards: I should employ you to...” He belatedly worked it out. “Did you mean what I said about your eyes?” Her mouth moved but she didn’t speak. Jaime hissed in annoyance and stood up. “You’ve got gorgeous eyes. The mirror’s there; look in it.” He stalked towards the door, grabbed for it with his useless right hand and swore, quietly but at considerable length.
Her hand on his elbow stopped him. “Sorry,” he muttered. “That’s no way to speak in front of a lady.”
“I’ve heard you saying worse.”
“Yes; I doubt I was the best of conversationalists right after Zollo hacked my hand off.”
“You weren’t. I remember particularly disliking, ‘I’ll die if it pleases me’.”
“Not half as bad as a lot of other things I said to you before that.” He looked down at his golden hand. “My conduct towards you then was as unattractive as my right arm is now.”
“It’s just an arm.”
“That was rather my point.” He tried to laugh, but it didn’t work. Can I remember how to do so, except out of mockery? Did I ever know? “I suppose you have seen me looking rather worse than this. Anything would be an improvement upon ragged, filthy, half-starved, flea-ridden and stinking of my own shit and rotten flesh.” The ruin of a man. It mirrored the ruin of my reputation.
“You – even then, you were beautiful.”
He froze. He could not have heard that correctly. “What?”
“You were.” He felt her draw back from him. “Now – you’re magnificent.”
He turned to her. She held his eyes for bare seconds before looking away towards the window and the snowy night. She seemed, in those seconds, more frightened than she had when facing death in the Harrenhal bear pit.
All he could think of was the disdain in Cersei’s eyes whenever she looked at him. “You’ve become a ghost of what you were, a pale crippled thing. So bloodless, always in white.” He studied his reflection in the mirror again, saw unruly hair and lines and shadows marring his face, and remembered shuttered pity from Amerei Frey and Flement Brax. Tyrion’s mocking figure lurked behind them all, his shadow thrown high as a giant’s instead of a dwarf’s. “You poor stupid blind crippled fool,” he jeered.
Jaime raised his golden hand in the candlelight. “You know what I am. What I’ve done.” How I pissed on everything I should have held holy – on everything you did hold holy.
“I know you’re a far better man than you claim.” She looked back at him again. Her blue eyes were shining in the near-dark.
In this light she could almost be a beauty, he thought dizzily. In this light she could almost be a knight.
And because he knew full well she had all the knightly virtues he’d abandoned, as well as several he’d never had in the first place, he grabbed her naked blade from the bed before going to her. He wrapped her right hand over the hilt.
“Why?” she asked, confused.
“To give you the chance to change your mind and gut me after all.” Hands and sword trapped between them, he kissed her.
It was awkward and hesitant. He’d never kissed a woman other than Cersei before, and her tentative response – as if she’d never been kissed – was nothing like as ardent as his twin’s would have been and was nothing he knew how to handle. He stopped and drew back after a little while.
Brienne looked considerably less foolish than Jaime felt. Her broad lips were flushed and damp. He was struck by a strong impulse to kiss them again, but didn’t.
“Did you mean that?” Her voice was very quiet. “No teasing. No games or –”
“I meant it.” Her right hand still clutched Oathkeeper. He covered it with his. She shivered at the cold golden touch. “I mean it this time too.”
The second kiss worked rather better.
Several minutes later Jaime remembered where he was and slowly released Brienne. Her fine fair hair was mussed again, but she smiled at him, as delicate and shy as their first kiss. He’d never seen her smile before.
“Get some sleep,” he told her gently. He realised he was smiling too, though he’d had to manoeuvre to avoid gelding himself on Oathkeeper’s blade when his cock had woken up and decided it wanted to join in the fun. It would have to remain disappointed. They were who they were. “Try to decide what you’re going to do.”
“I already have. I – would be grateful for your escort back to King’s Landing, my Lord.”
“I’m happy to provide it.” He left her there still holding the sword.
The candle was out in Marbrand’s chamber when Jaime sneaked inside. He tiptoed towards the cot under the window. “I’m awake,” Ser Addam informed him from somewhere directly in front of him.
“Good. I’d hate for my clanking to wake you.”
He heard a creak, probably Ser Addam sitting up in bed. “I thought you weren’t coming. The bed in there is plenty big enough for two.”
“Do I look like the type of man to despoil highborn maidens in country inns?”
Marbrand sighed. “You were gone a very long time.”
“She and I had a lot to discuss.”
“Such as?”
He thought about a Valyrian blade lying across his neck, and the same blade cold against their bodies later. “Something we’re going to keep between us.” He belatedly realised from which direction Ser Addam’s voice was coming. “I thought I was taking the cot.”
“I left you the bed. You’re the Lord Commander.”
“I refuse to take advantage of my subordinates’ generosity.”
“You’re older than I am; you’re starting to creak.”
“Addam –”