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Jaime went to the ruins just before dawn. The city always stank, even the salt wind off the Blackwater couldn’t combat the pungent aromas of sweat, manure, and spices. This morning the air smelled of soot and meat just starting to turn. The streets were empty, no carts or beggars, no women tipping nightsoil from their windows. A black pillar billowed where white stone had soared up to the sky every morning of his life.
That same stone, pocked and blackened, littered the streets. A massive bell lay cracked in the middle of a pot shop, its outer wall blasted away to expose the tiny, overcrowded rooms above the shop. Dried blood smeared the ground and splattered the walls. The narrow streets had offered little protection from falling debris.
Burn them all. Burn them in their homes. Burn them in their beds.
Jaime had never told her about the wildfire caches. At first he’d planned to find and dispose of them, but too many watchful eyes followed the Kingslayer in the early moons of Robert’s reign. Now Jaime wondered who’d found the cache under the Sept. He owed a sharp blade and a quick death to whoever had whispered that knowledge in his sweet sister’s ear.
As Jaime walked, cracked and fallen walls gave way to rubble. At last he approached the steps. The silence gave way to the pop and hiss of fires that might take moons to burn themselves out. Whispers on the wind, the voices of the dead. How long ago had he ridden up these steps, so sure of himself, to bring Tommen’s queen home to him? And the last words between them had been harsh and angry.
A huge, sooty arm poked up from the rubble, the Father’s scales dangling from broken fingers. Part of the Crone’s face was broken on the steps. The trial was held on the first day of the Feast of the Mother. The High Sparrow must have thought himself so clever. Jaime wondered if he'd known in the end that Cersei had outplayed him.
She’d planned it all carefully, waited until all her enemies were in one place, and then watched her triumph. With pleasure.
A lion still has claws, and mine are long and sharp, my lord. As long and sharp as yours.
Maegor’s Holdfast had a direct view of the Great Sept. Tommen must have heard the explosion, must have seen the eerie green flames. His city in ruins, his wife murdered. The king was still a boy, the crown too heavy on his head, too eager to please and too easily led. And he’d shattered, alone with his grief.
Jaime knew that grief too well, the blackness that swallowed a man’s soul, but he’d not borne his pain alone. He’d been held and cared for, pulled out of the dark by strong hands and bright eyes.
Jaime turned back to look toward the Red Keep. He could almost pick out Tommen’s window even from here. No one saw the king jump. All eyes were turned toward the lurid green fireball, the screams and the chaos in the streets.
Tommen had been found in the gardens at the base of the tower, and burned before the sun set. His ashes were here. Somewhere.
With Robert, Father, Joffrey, and Myrcella.
With Margaery, Loras, Lord Mace. With Kevan and Lancel.
Jaime sat, heavily, on the steps, grit under his palm and his heels. His breaths seemed loud to his own ears. Just there, Lancel had stood holding his mace. And there Margaery, chin held high and likely terrified. The High Septon smiling with smug satisfaction at his own victory.
May the Father judge him justly.
Jaime’s gaze followed the steps down, beyond the huddled buildings to the calm, implacable blue water.
Had Brienne found her way back to Sansa Stark? Did she stand even now, steady as ever, by the girl’s side? They’d heard along the road that the girl and her bastard brother had won back Winterfell, and some fool lords had named Jon Snow King in the North.
If the queen did not know, she would soon. She might send Jaime north again. He was always leaving, always coming back, the tidal pull of Cersei calling him home. But this was not his home. This was a nightmare from which he could not wake.
Twenty years ignoring the whispers behind his back, pretending indifference to everyone and everything but her. All for this. A blasted city, all seven kingdoms in disarray, and his children burned to ash.
Jaime scooped up a handful of dust and ash, wondered how many lives he held in his palm.
He’d spent a night on his knees in this sept after his knighting, praying to each of the Seven, though the Warrior was his god, always had been. Ser Arthur Dayne had touched Dawn to Jaime’s shoulder when he was a boy no older than Tommen, and charged him to be brave and just, to defend the innocent, to protect women. Jaime knew only one who clung to those vows, and she wasn’t even a knight. How Brienne had judged him, how she would still judge him if he ever told her about the night Lord Rickard died, and the screaming afterward in Queen Rhaella’s chambers.
I know there is honor in you. I've seen it.
Who had she seen in that tent at Riverrun? The man who saved her maidenhead with a lie and her life with his own body. The man who gave her armor, a fine sword, and a squire to get her out of the city before Cersei decided that she was a threat. Jaime would take that look in Brienne’s eye to his grave, and prayed here before the Seven that she never saw who he was really was, even if that meant he never saw her again. He suddenly realized he was praying aloud, but it made no matter. The dead knew no treason.
The sun was rising. The queen would summon him soon. Jaime must return to the Red Keep, to the nightmare he had made.
He opened his hand and let the wind carry the ashes away.