Chapter Text
She had expected marriage to Lord Tywin Lannister to be intimidating, political, and cold. She had not expected it to become increasingly inconvenient every time he told a grown man to stop wasting his time.
For three months, Lady Ysilla Lannister had been trying to determine the precise shape of her marriage.
It was not an unhappy marriage, which surprised her more than it ought to have done. Nor was it a cruel one, though every girl from the Arbor to the Wall had been raised on enough stories of Lord Tywin Lannister to imagine cruelty waiting behind every closed door of Casterly Rock. He did not shout. He did not strike. He did not indulge in drunkenness, insult, or foolish display.
In truth, that was very nearly the problem.
Had he been monstrous, she might have known what to do with him. Had he been lecherous, or vain, or stupid, she might have borne him with the private contempt due to such men. Had he been kind, the matter might have been simpler still.
But Lord Tywin was none of those things. He was courteous in the way a closed gate was courteous: perfectly made, perfectly placed, and entirely unwilling to move merely because one wished it would.
He told her good morning. He offered his arm when propriety demanded it. He ensured her household was well supplied, her correspondence delivered, her dowry lands accounted for, and her place at table respected by every man with enough sense to value his future prospects.
What he did not do was explain what he expected of her beyond dignity, discretion, and the avoidance of foolishness.
Ysilla had therefore devoted herself to not being foolish.
This was more difficult than she had anticipated.
On the morning the trouble began, she was seated at the far end of the solar with a cup of watered wine cooling untouched beside her hand and a stack of household petitions arranged before her according to urgency, cost, and the likelihood that she would embarrass herself by answering incorrectly.
Across the room, Lord Tywin stood before the great window, reading a report from Lannisport with the expression of a man who had discovered incompetence in written form and found it personally offensive. The steward waited before him, sweating into his collar.
Ysilla tried not to listen. This was easier in theory than practice, as Lord Tywin’s voice possessed the unfortunate quality of making every other sound in the room seem impertinent.
“You purchased twice the required grain at a price thirty percent above market,” he said.
“The roads were poor, my lord, and the sellers—”
“Were delighted to find a fool with access to my coin.”
The steward’s mouth closed with an audible click.
Ysilla lowered her eyes very quickly to the petition in front of her. It concerned the replacement of laundry stones in the western yard. She read the first sentence four times and understood none of it.
“Send word to Lannisport,” Tywin continued. “The excess will be sold before the next rain spoils it. The loss will be deducted from the remainder of your salary over the next year. You will provide me, by sunset, with the names of the men who advised the purchase, the men who approved the transport, and the men who thought to conceal the difference in the accounts.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And if you are tempted to omit your own name from that list,” said Tywin, “resist the impulse.”
The steward bowed so low he nearly folded in half and fled.
Ysilla stared at the petition. Her pulse had done something undignified. This was unfortunate. It was also, she decided, temporary. A woman could not be expected to remain wholly unmoved when her husband saved an estate from ruin with nothing more than arithmetic, contempt, and a quill. That was not admiration. It was relief. Possibly civic mindedness.
By luncheon, she had almost convinced herself of this.
Unfortunately, Merra had known her since girlhood and possessed the sort of loyalty that expressed itself most often through cruelty. “You are flushed,” Merra said, arranging a tray of fruit with unnecessary precision.
“Casterly Rock is warm.”
“It is made of stone.”
“The sun reaches the western windows.”
“At luncheon?” Merra asked. “In a chamber facing north?”
Ysilla selected a pear and considered throwing it at her. “I am merely tired,” she said.
Merra hummed in a manner that suggested tiredness was not the diagnosis she had chosen.
“Say it,” Ysilla warned.
“I value my life.”
“Then value your silence.”
Merra smiled into the fruit tray.
That afternoon offered no improvement.
A section of scaffolding in the lower gallery had collapsed during repairs, sending three servants into a panic and one young mason into extravagant apology. Ysilla arrived to find a long carved beam blocking the passage and half the household standing around it as though it had been placed there by the gods.
Tywin arrived moments later.He took in the beam, the mason, the gawking servants, and the blocked passage with one flat look.
“Is there a reason,” he said, “that the obstacle is being discussed rather than moved?”
Several people discovered urgent reasons to look useful. The mason stammered something about needing more men. Tywin removed his gloves.
Ysilla looked away at once. This was wise, she thought. A prudent wife did not watch her husband roll back his sleeves. She watched anyway.
Tywin did not make a spectacle of it. That would have been merciful. He merely set one hand beneath the carved edge, ordered two men into position with a clipped gesture, and lifted his end of the beam as though the matter had bored him into strength.
The passage cleared in less than a minute.
Ysilla had never before considered efficiency a personal attack.
She opened her fan with rather more force than elegance.
“My lady?” Merra murmured at her shoulder.
“It is warm,” Ysilla said.
Merra looked pointedly at the shaded stone gallery, the open windows, and the grey western sky. “Of course,” she said.
Ysilla fanned herself twice, stopped when she realized the motion looked frantic, and then began again more slowly, which was somehow worse.
Merra, who valued her life slightly less than she had claimed, said nothing very loudly.
Across the gallery, Tywin had paused to put his gloves back on. His gaze found hers. Ysilla forgot, for the space of a heartbeat, how one was meant to arrange one’s face. Tywin’s expression did not change.
His gaze dropped briefly to the fan in her hand, then returned to her face.
Naturally, this did not improve matters.
By supper, Ysilla had resolved to behave with impeccable composure.
This resolution lasted through the soup.
It began to fail during the fish, when a young knight from House Crakehall, invited to dine as part of some tiresome matter of roads and levies, mistook Lord Tywin’s silence for permission to speak at length.
He spoke of hunting. He spoke of tourneys. He spoke, with the confidence of a man who had never been made to regret confidence, of the difficulty of commanding men who lacked breeding.
Ysilla saw the moment Tywin decided he had heard enough. It was not dramatic. He merely set down his knife.
The young knight, to his credit, noticed one heartbeat before disaster.
“Men who lack discipline are commanded by giving them discipline,” Tywin said. “Men who lack sense are commanded by men who possess it. Men who lack breeding are most often ruined by those who believe breeding excuses the absence of both.”
The table went quiet. The young knight stared at his plate as though hoping to find new parentage beneath the trout.
Ysilla pressed her napkin to her mouth.
This was not because she wished to laugh. It was, she informed herself sternly, because she had taken too large a sip of wine.
Tywin turned his head. Not fully. Only enough. His gaze rested on her hand, then on her face, then on the napkin she had crushed between her fingers. Ysilla lowered it at once.
“Something amuses you, my lady?” he asked.
Every head at the table turned toward her.
Wonderful.
“No, my lord.” Her voice sounded far too calm to belong to her. “I was only admiring the efficiency of your phrasing.”
Merra, stationed discreetly by the wall, made a small sound that could generously have been mistaken for a cough.
Tywin looked at Ysilla for a long moment. Then, very slowly, the corner of his mouth shifted. It was not a smile. Ysilla would not have survived a smile. It was merely acknowledgment.
Mercy, apparently, was not among his habits.
“Efficient phrasing,” he repeated.
“Yes, my lord.”
“How fortunate,” said Tywin, returning his attention to his wine, “that one of us is making proper use of the evening.”
Ysilla looked down at her plate.
Her husband, she realized with mounting horror, had noticed the pattern: she was becoming increasingly poor at hiding her admiration whenever he made another man regret speaking.
And worse still, he did not appear displeased.