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“You cannot have him!” Mother said, and Lord Karstark snarled back at her, “I’ll have him, or I’ll have my sons back, that I gave your son. Harrion died on the field keeping the Kingslayer from his throat, and Torrhen trying to guard him as his prisoner, and you’d deny me my vengeance so you could hand the man over to the Lannisters for two girls!”
“I could have had my daughters back for him six months ago!” Mother said. “He’s stayed in that pen so we might have a hostage against Tywin Lannister, not that you might cut off his head for your own satisfaction. Had we not the right to put him to death after they killed Ned? Had we not the right after we knew he’d crippled Bran? Robb!” She turned to him in desperation. “If you let the Kingslayer be butchered in our camp like this, you know what Tywin Lannister will do. He’ll take the girls and hand them to the Mountain, the way he did Elia Martell, and they will suffer a thousand deaths before they die!”
She stopped, her face crumpling into the horror of her own words as she spoke them. But Lord Karstark’s face was hard and implacable, a flat refusal to yield, and Robb knew he wasn’t wrong, either. Harrion had died in his guard, and Torrhen had died because he’d ordered him to guard Lannister’s pen—had ordered him, because he’d trusted Torrhen not to let the Kingslayer go, no matter any bribe, because the man had killed his brother. So Robb couldn’t simply refuse him vengeance.
He stood across from them both on the other side of his table, and he stared down at his maps, as if he’d find some answer there. They’d given him a thousand others; he’d found his way here upon them, to Casterly Rock in his sights and the Lannister armies smashed before him, a campaign so full of victory that his pens groaned with prisoners, and the Lannisters had no one else of rank to trade along with his sisters, not a single bannerman or even the son of one of his lords, of whom he could have made some threadbare excuse. But the maps couldn’t help him find his way through this.
He could gladly have handed Jaime Lannister to the Karstarks, and watched his head go rolling in the dirt with pleasure, but Sansa and Arya stood like a shield before the Kingslayer, smiling as Robb had last seen them, the day they’d gone riding away south from Winterfell, and Mother was right. She was right, because that was why Tywin Lannister had sent the Mountain to rape and murder Elia Martell and the Targaryen children. So that all men would know he would do such a thing, if they so much as slighted him or his house. That he would revenge himself without mercy or honor, even on the innocent, even on women and children.
He looked up and said, quietly, “Lord Karstark, I would gladly give you vengeance. But not my sisters’ lives, and you must know my mother speaks the truth of what the Lannisters would do to them. Is there nothing else you can ask of me, that I can give in honor?”
Karstark grated out, “And when you’ve given it, you’ll send him back to his father, and set him loose to come back and kill more of us again?”
“I’ll not keep him in our camp to make more dissent among us. And if he does return to the field, and you or any of your men should meet him there, you may cut him down, and I will be glad of every drop of his blood we shed,” Robb said.
Karstark glared at him, his mouth an angry hard line. “If you’d shield him from my vengeance,” he said, savagely, “I’ll stand for nothing less than the old way: if he’s a man, he must answer for it, so if you’d let him escape, you must make him otherwise. Give me his head, or his manhood, or his sword-hand—” Grey Wind lifted his head from the cot in the corner and growled deeply, but though Karstark flinched, a moment, he didn’t stop, and went on, “and if you will give me none of those, you can cover him on stone and under sky, and mark him for yours before the gods and my house for witness, and then do what you will with him afterwards.”
“How dare you, sir!” Mother said, wheeling on him. “That rite was outlawed by the High Septon five centuries ago, and it was shameful then! You would have your king stain himself—”
“If he’s my king, he’s the king in the North, and no business of the Septon or the Seven what he does,” Karstark spat back, and Robb slammed his fist on the table.
“That’s enough!” he snapped. “I am your king, Lord Karstark, unless you are forsworn.”
Karstark turned back to him, his eyes mean and narrow. “Then, my king,” he said, and made the words near an insult, “you’ve asked me to name a thing you can give me, and I’ve done it.”
“To satisfy you, I must maim him or I must rape him, is that it?” Robb said, a snarl coming into his throat, and Grey Wind gave a low growling to match him. “And you call that a thing I can give you in honor?”
“Let him say, then,” Karstark said. “If he’d live, then he may choose it, and lay down for you of his own will. And if you won’t do it yourself, I’ll let my own men cover him for you, whichever of them want the pleasure.”
Robb swallowed the answer he wanted to give, which was to seize the old man by the throat and break his neck. “You’ll have my answer in an hour,” he said. “Now leave me,” and Grey Wolf added a low growl; Karstark said nothing more, only flung his cloak round his neck and went out.
“Robb, you need not do this thing yourself,” Mother said, turning back to him. “Let Karstark’s men have him—”
“He that passes the sentence must swing the sword!” Robb said, savagely, and she fell silent. He shook his head. “And he’ll not live through it, if I give him to the Karstarks. The old man wants payment for his sons, and his men know it. If I won’t give him Lannister’s death, and Sansa and Arya to pay for it, he’ll make me pay in their stead. That’s why he’ll take this revenge. It’s not only on the Kingslayer.”
But—that was a bargain he couldn’t refuse. Sansa and Arya had gone south with Father, his arm standing over them, their shield. Robb knew to his bones that Father had died on that block with that false confession in his mouth still trying to shelter them until the very end of his breath, and spending the last coin of his own honor to do it. That same duty was his now, along with all the rest. And even Lord Karstark’s pain was his duty to answer. The man’s sons had died in his service, fighting to save his own father, and now to make him a king. Karstark had the right to expect him to avenge their deaths as well. Robb felt a great coldness descending upon him, the anger dying down into banked coals, winter-grey with ash. He looked at Olyvar, who’d been cringing by the mouth of the tent with his eyes huge. “Go and tell the Kingslayer his choices,” he said. “His head, his hand, or his body.”
“Robb, if he—” Mother said.
“I’ll not force him!”
“What honor does he have to defend?” she said, pleading. “Kingslayer and kinslayer, an oathbreaker a hundred times over, an incestuous sinner and a murderer of children—he doesn’t fear the gods, why should he fear this?”
“That’s for him to say,” Robb said. “He’s never surrendered to us, never given his parole. He’s broken oaths enough, but he didn’t break one trying to escape. So if he chooses to die, he’ll have a clean death. And we’ll send his body and his arms to Tywin Lannister afterwards and tell him that his son died with honor, even if he didn’t live with it. And we’ll tell him also that if he chooses to avenge that on my sisters, I will put to the sword every last Lannister and every one of his lords and knights who are now or ever will come into my hands. Go,” he added, and Olyvar nodded his head in a jerk and left the tent.
Mother went and sat down, staring stricken and unseeing into the dark corners of the tent, her hands twisted together in her lap. Robb looked away from her, and into his own dark instead. He almost didn’t know what answer he desired. He did know the one he wouldn’t get: the Kingslayer might choose death, but he wouldn’t hold out his hand for the knife. Robb had seen the man fighting, a lion beset by wolves on all sides. They’d pulled him down together, but there’d been such terrible grace in every movement, even as he fell. That was a gift the gods had handed to him, and almost not a mortal thing. Robb would let him sacrifice it to them for his life, if Lannister wanted to, but he’d think it a fool’s choice.
But if Lannister chose death—and if Lord Tywin didn’t believe the threat, or cared as little for the fate of the men in his service as his son had cared for the life of his own cousin—then Robb would have to carry out the oath he would swear to try and save his sisters. He would give the task to no other man. He’d have to stand at a block, his sword raised and swung and raised again, a hideous reaping to raise a cairn of skulls for his sisters, the heads of men who had surrendered to him, and he would carry the blood and shame of it on him to his death, and have to answer for it to the gods.
So Robb had to hope instead that the Kingslayer wanted to be free badly enough to be a whore, and then make himself a man who’d use one. He’d never done it before; he’d never even wanted to. Theon had tried to persuade him to come with him a dozen times, had even taunted him with his refusals, but Robb had only felt repulsed by the idea. He had tumbled in a hayloft above the tavern in Oldtown a few times with the innkeeper’s willing daughter, the warm heavy weight of her soft breast in his hand and her curious fingers exploring his cock with her lip caught between her teeth, shared laughter and sweet kisses, but only until his father had gently asked him to stop going back before he hurt the girl’s honor, and his own with it.
And yesterday morning he’d walked in the woods with another woman, a woman of courage and wit and fire and beauty, everything he could have desired in his bed and in his life, and when she had smiled at him, he’d felt his honor straining at the leash again, a thousand times worse. But even then he’d wanted nothing of her that wasn’t given with joy. He couldn’t even imagine it. And he was glad now, so glad, that he hadn’t lain down with her after all; that he hadn’t snapped the traces and gone to her tent, the night they’d camped outside the Crag. It would have been worse, a thousand times worse, to have to go from that bed to this thing that he had to hope for, now.
The wind came in, when Olyvar lifted the flap, and one look at his head, his eyes fixed upon the ground, told Robb the answer. “He’ll—he says he’ll—lie down,” Olyvar said, unnecessary, speaking to the floor. “He asked for a bath, first,” he added, and Robb could almost hear Lannister saying it, the studied arrogance that would make a joking matter even of this, and Mother made a sound of disgust even as the relief untwisted her clenched hands. She stood and turned to him. “Robb—”
“It must be done, so it’ll be done,” he said to her. “We’ll not speak of this again. When the girls are back, you’ll go home with them to Winterfell.” Mother pressed her lips together, and then with tears in her eyes bowed her head, and then turned and left.
“Get the Kingslayer his bath,” Robb told Olyvar. “And tell Lord Karstark to gather whichever of his men he wants for witness on the crown of the hill to the east of camp, where the great stone stands.” Olyvar was about to turn, when Robb added, savagely, “And go to the camp followers, and ask among them if there’s one who knows the way of it, who’ll come and show me how.”
#
When he went up to the hill himself, he ordered the men to put up torches, standing round the stone, close in. It made it a little better: the men watching on the other side became only faceless bulky shadows to him, suggestions of fur cloaks and helms, light catching on mail or in an eye, nothing more: he could almost imagine the old gods had come for witness instead, standing outside the ring of mortal light, to what he’d do to save his sisters.
Lord Karstark only was standing in the light, hard and savage and unsmiling, hawk-eyes glaring and yellow with reflections. Robb wanted to hate him, wanted to swear a vengeance in his own heart against him for this, but the man’s face was bitter and empty of true satisfaction; he was old, a father who had seen two sons die before him, and the gods were watching. Robb drew a deep breath and went to face him; Karstark turned the anger towards him, and Robb said, “Lord Karstark, though you’ve done it unwilling, still you’ve given me my sisters’ lives. I won’t forget it. I can’t give you back the sons you’ve lost, but I know you’ve a granddaughter by your third. And when the war ends, I’ll dower her with the ransom of every other Lannister prisoner I hold, to bring you your choice of men to stand beside her in Karhold.”
The old man’s mouth trembled, when Robb had spoken, and a little of the hardness broke; there were tears in his eyes as he looked away and said harshly, “Don’t let him forget it, Stark. That is all I ask. Let him remember for the rest of his days. As I will remember the boys he took from me, for all the rest of mine,” the words a prayer, and Robb breathed out and nodded his head once.
And then the guards were bringing the Kingslayer up the hill, a low angry murmuring going round the circle as he came into the light. He’d been bathed, and in the firelight, even in nothing but a loose shirt and trousers, and despite the manacles around his wrists, he looked again as he had riding into the yard at Winterfell, shining and golden; he was smiling, smirking even, and Robb couldn’t help but feel grateful this once, for the man’s brazen courage. Until Lannister opened his mouth, and said, “Well, well, Stark,” mocking and insinuating, “I see you do have a taste for this sort of thing after all. You didn’t need to go to all these theatrical lengths, you know. I’d probably have agreed to bend over just for the bath. I never had any idea how magical it would feel to be clean. I suppose you Northerners are used to this sort of thing, bathing once a year in winter—”
“Let him stand free,” Robb said, keeping back everything he might have said. The answer he was going to have to make was a worse one than words. The guards let Jaime go, and stepped back out of the light themselves, leaving him standing alone. “You know your choices, Lannister. You can lie down for me, and if you do, I’ll exchange you for my sisters, and send you home to yours. Or lay your head on it, if you want a clean death instead.”
“Since I’m fucked either way, I’ll take the less permanent alternative,” Jaime said. “Do you suppose someone could give me a blanket or something before I lie down on a freezing rock? It’s a bit nippy out here. I don’t see why you couldn’t rape me inside in front of a nice roaring fire.”
It almost passed belief. Robb took off his own cloak and threw it to him; Lannister’s smile only widened, even more mirthful. “How very kind of you, your Grace,” he said, and as he swung the cloak over his own shoulders, Robb belatedly remembered that in the south, a man laid a cloak on his wife when he married her: as if he had to do this by the rites of both the old gods and the new. “How do you want me? On my back, or on my front—”
“I’ll have you either way, so get on with it,” Robb said.
“Mm, I do like a masterful man,” Jaime said, and spread himself onto the rock; the great boulder was low and flat, a little below waist height, and he lay his chest down on it and pillowed his head on his arm and made a show of settling himself comfortably. “Any time you like, Stark. Do be gentle with me, I am a noble-born virgin, after all.”
Robb tried not to want to see Lannister break, but it was hard, his own anger and pain rising: not only the Karstarks, but his father murdered and his sisters imprisoned; his home and his family broken; all the men in his service and even those in Lannister red who had died and suffered in their war, and all because this man refused to fear the gods, just as his mother had said. He’d lain with his own sister and cuckolded his own sworn king, and heaped more treacheries around that first treason until they’d come toppling down upon them all.
He stepped forward and threw the cloak up and over his back, and pushed down Lannister’s trousers, loose and falling easily to puddle around his ankles. Then Robb put his hand on the small of Jaime’s back and with the other opened the small sack of tallow that the camp follower had given him, which he’d hung from his belt. Lannister twitched a little when Robb put it on him. “That’s cold,” he said, complainingly, but there was an edge of tension running along his voice, and Robb paused and said quietly, “If you’ve changed your mind—”
“Are you that worried about it, Stark?” Jaime said, craning his head around with false tones of concern. “Is there some difficulty with the equipment? I suppose we could always trade places if you like, I’ve never tried it, but I’m sure I could manage—”
“Let’s see how long you can make a joke of it,” Robb said, unable to stop himself, his temper sliding out of his grip. He lifted the skirts of his armor and pushed down his own hose. He hadn’t any worry. His cock had never refused to stand to attention, and it didn’t now; he was hard from the first greased stroke along his own length, and he put it to Lannister’s hole and shoved in.
Jaime grunted, and his weight shifted, but there wasn’t any great resistance. Robb stopped only because the woman had told him to go by slow stages; he felt he could as easily have pushed onward, the citadel breached and ready to be stormed, and he hadn’t expected to like it; he didn’t want to like it, but the heat and the tight clenching around him made him harden still more, swelling; he wanted to keep going, or at least his body did—
Then Lannister said, though his voice sounded thicker, “Is that really all there is of the North? I was expecting it to be a bit larger.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Kingslayer,” Robb said through his own clenched teeth. “We’re only just at Moat Cailin now.” He gripped his hips and pressed deliberately forward and in, hearing Lannister’s breath coming loud, drawn in raggedly, and stopped again. He bent forward over his back, towards his ear. “There, now we’re at Winterfell,” he said, low and savage. “Still a long way to go to get to the Wall. Do you want to tell me when you’re ready?”
“No—sense—in dawdling,” Jaime said, his voice only a little unsteady. “You—might as well get us there, Stark,” and then he was panting with his mouth open, his eyes closing, gulping great draughts of air, his body tightening, as Robb pressed all the rest of the way in. “Well, I suppose—there’s a little something to it—after all,” he still managed to get out, after. “Are you—going to do anything with it, do you think?”
“Are you in such a hurry when you fuck the queen?” Robb said. “I’m surprised you’ve got three bastards, then.”
“If you’re enjoying yourself, by all means linger,” Jaime said. “I wouldn’t want to spoil your pleasure. Have you even fucked any girls before? A good-looking boy like you, I’d think you’d have your pick if you wanted them—or did Lady Catelyn frown on that sort of thing? I’m surprised she didn’t frown on this, too, actually.”
“I’m glad you like my looks so well,” Robb said. The hardest part of it was not coming, but Robb couldn’t come. He was sweating all over, his skin prickly, and his cock was buried in sweetness and heat and pressure, and all he wanted was to fuck Lannister a couple of times and then let go and be done, but he couldn’t, because it wouldn’t be enough. He could tell it wouldn’t be enough. Lannister would get up from this altar and thank him for his speedy work and compliment his cock and then go back to his pen whistling, and back to his father the same way, and he wouldn’t remember; he’d forget about this the way he’d forgotten every other crime, and he’d go back to the nearly-unbroken luxury and indulgence of his golden life.
So instead Robb waited, long enough for Lannister to start twitching beneath him, small shifting movements; long enough for his own cock to stop throbbing, insistently; long enough that the clenching around him released a little, slowly, and when it had fully eased, he gently drew back out a little distance—barely fifty miles, only to the Gift, and then just as gently pushed back in. And then he did it again, pressing a little deeper, moving his hips up and down to rub up against anything around him, and little by little Jaime’s body started to move with him, as if Lannister couldn’t help it. He was panting in silence now, and his mouth had gone into a still straight line.
“I think you’re about ready for it now, aren’t you,” Robb said, breathing hard, and Lannister had to drag in a breath to answer him, so before he could, Robb took hold of his hips and pressed him against the rock and fucked him, three hard strokes.
Lannister was gasping under him, his face drawn as if in pain, but he was sweating. Robb reached up to slide his hand onto the back of his neck, letting the curve of his hand cup the base of Jaime’s skull, his thumb sliding along the side of his neck. “Are you feeling it yet?” he said. “You will, Lannister. You’ll know when I’m done that you’ve lain down for me,” and when he pressed him down into the stone a little harder, something went through Jaime’s body, a small desperate jerking, and even deep in his own struggle, Robb caught it, like the scent of prey on the wind.
He started chasing it, using more of his strength on him, pulling out and stroking back in deep. Jaime’s hips were rolling with his strokes, rising to meet him, and Robb paused again, deep in him, and bent over him again and said, low, “Go on, then.”
“What?” Lannister grated out.
“Move for me,” Robb said. “Like a woman does, to make her man feel good.” Lannister was tense and rigid underneath him, the muscles of his body coiled and hard. “Unless you’d like to give up now, after all this,” Robb added, and stroked his thumb along his neck. “Come on, Kingslayer. Make me end it.”
Lannister’s jaw shifted, grinding back and forth, and then he did move; he moved his hips in small jerks, at first, and then Robb drew out of him a little and held there, waiting, until Lannister gave a hiss and pushed back up to take him back in, and when he did, Robb rewarded him, gave him a battering of hard, fast, strokes, pounding him until his breath went high and in his nose, and then Robb stopped again, gasping, and when he had his own breath back, he leaned over and said softly, “Not that time,” and pulled back again—
Jaime was moving up to try and stay with him at once, trying to get at him, and Robb let him catch up and then fucked him back down into the rock again hard, and Lannister made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded nothing like pain or rage, a whine of pleasure, and Robb drew all the way out of him, hauled him up off the rock and turned him over and pushed him back down, the cloak spread beneath him, Lannister’s cock standing hard and red and proud against his own belly, his face glittering with rage and flushed with lust, and Robb seized the chain around his wrists and drew it taut, dragged them down to Jaime’s hips, just in reach of his own cock, and pushed his leg up and went back into him.
“You wanted a master, I’ll be yours,” he said, a savage hunger wide awake in him now; he kept fucking Jaime, slow deep strokes, watching them move over his face. “I give you my word, Lannister. I’ll come after you do. While you’re mine, tight around me, moving for me. Only then, and not before. Word of a Stark,” he added.
The fury in Jaime’s eyes, the rippling of frustration along his jaw, was like hot blood in his mouth; and then Lannister twisted his hands in the chain and went for his own cock, to bring himself off, and Robb pulled them hard away. “No, not like that,” he said. Jaime jerked to stare up at him, gone into rising outrage, realizing he’d taken a feint. “You’ll come for me, not in your own hand. You can do it on my cock, or you can ask me for a little help, if you want it over quicker. But you’ll yield before you get off this rock, one way or another,” and Lannister suddenly tried to move at him, to wrench loose and get the chains round his neck, but Robb had told the men to watch for that, even before he’d come up the hill; three men came in a rush out of the circle, and seized Lannister’s hands and pulled them back over his head, and drove an iron spike through the middle link into the stone.
Robb didn’t look at them; he kept looking into Jaime’s face, the twisting, struggling rage, and stayed in him. He pressed in a little deeper with each ringing hammer blow, and when the work was done and the men had gone back out of the light, he leaned forward and cupped Jaime’s cheek and said, “You can keep fighting as long as you like,” gently, even as he kept fucking him. “If you tire, and your cock flags, I’ll come out of you, and let them take you to rest, and tomorrow night they’ll bring you back to me, and I’ll take you again. And again the next night, and the night after that, through every camp of this war, and still I won’t finish until you do; if I take the Red Keep, I’ll have you that night in the bed where you cuckolded the king, and if you still don’t yield, I’ll take you back North with me, and you’ll warm my bed every night of winter,” and Lannister’s eyes had gone wide and staring on his face, his mouth panting, stricken, an animal panic struggling up out of him and rising with every slow deliberate thrust.
“And if that’s what you want,” Robb said, still more gently, still moving, “if you want to spend the rest of your life beneath me, you’ll have it, unless you finish now,” and he made it a command, and Lannister’s cock jerked and spurted just a little beneath him, and then all at once he was going, his head falling back against the rock, gazing blindly up into the night with his breath coming in gulps as his cock spilled all over his own belly and his chest, staining his shirt and dripping down onto the cloak, and Robb drew out, and finished himself with his hand and spilled over him as well.
Jaime was dragging in his breaths one after another, ragged. Robb wiped himself clean with the cloak, and stood as the men came back to pry the spike out of the rock. He was trembling a little in his body, his breath coming hard and fast, but he’d been drilling twice each day, and riding hard; his wind came back quickly, and the strength in his muscles. He felt terribly, savagely sated; a meal he hadn’t known he wanted, devoured to the last licking of his chops. Or nearly; there was a part of him that wanted to take Lannister off the rock and back to his own tent and have him again, master him again. It would be easier, the second time; Lannister wouldn’t fight as hard, would give way before the end, and be yielding beneath him for a long time—his mouth, Robb wanted his mouth, wanted to kiss him and bite him and push Jaime’s head down to his cock—
He was glad for his covering armor, as he bent and drew his own hose back up beneath the kilt; he was already hard again, a half-painful tightness. They’d taken the spike out of the rock, and Robb reached his hand out for the chain; they gave it to him, and he pulled Jaime up sitting. He was still catching his own ragged breath, his eyes shut. Robb stepped back and waved the guards forward. “Take him to bathe again, and give him clean clothing before you put him back in his pen. And double his guard. Lord Karstark,” he said, turning; the old man had a look that felt half familiar, and Robb recognized it as the mirror of his own furious satisfaction: the wolf that had been fed. “You will choose ten of your men to go to Lord Tywin in the morning, to offer him the terms of exchange, and escort my sisters back. They’re not to taunt him with this, or speak of it to him. He’ll know soon enough, without discourtesy.”
And Karstark bowed his head, and said, “It’ll be done as you command—my king,” and it was an honest salute: another kind of yielding, sliding down Robb’s gullet to join in the rest of the feast.
The guards had got Jaime up; he was staggering a little, but his eyes had cleared, and he looked back at Robb with rage blazing through him and said, low and utterly flat, “The next time I see you, Stark, I’ll kill you.”
Another wave of hunger came flooding hot in Robb’s mouth, and with it an unexpected burst of an almost tender feeling: the golden lion, his golden lion, still fighting, still needing to be tamed. “The next time I see you, Ser Jaime,” he said, “if you ask nicely, I’ll do it again.”
#
Tyrion could tell that Father was enjoying the review of Lord Baelish’s account books almost as much as he was, namely not at all, which was a consolation he was in fact—though very privately—enjoying. Robert had racked up truly ludicrous amounts of debt, and the rate of spending had been even worse over the last year, albeit for far more urgently necessary expenses. But the even worse part was that Father wasn’t saying we’ll pay down half the debt, and get them to give us new rates, which was so much the obvious thing to do that if he wasn’t saying it, the only possible answer was that he didn’t have the money to do it. Which would have been the first time in Tyrion’s entire life that anyone had suggested there was a limit on House Lannister’s funds.
He was just debating internally whether he needed to ask Father about what those limits actually were, or if it would be better to let the sleeping lion lie, and that wasn’t any more pleasant than the account books, so he was actually grateful at first when the page came in, pale and sweating. “My Lord,” the young man said, almost inaudibly.
It was obviously bad news, but Tyrion was stupidly thinking that it couldn’t possibly be as bad as the idea that they were running out of money. In fact, Father clearly felt the exact same way; he put the account book he was studying from him and said, “What is it?” in only a faintly impatient way.
And then the boy swallowed and said, “My Lord—there are—there’s an envoy. From the Starks,” and a terrible cold line went running straight down Tyrion’s back, staring at the trembling boy who couldn’t look his father in the face, and he said, flatly, “Is Jaime dead?”
The boy darted a desperate look at him. “No, m’lord,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye, Tyrion saw Tywin’s hand flex open, a small flinching gesture, a relief. “They’ve… they’ve come to exchange him, m’lord.”
“For what?” Tyrion said.
“Lady Sansa, Lady…Lady Arya,” the boy stumbled a little; obviously he knew they didn’t have her, “and Lord Stark’s sword.”
Then he stopped there, in a silence that went so long that Tyrion had to conclude that was it. He looked over at Father, incredulously, but Father had his gaze fixed on the terrified boy. “Those are their full terms?” he said. The boy nodded, without looking up. “And Robb Stark sent them? Not Catelyn?”
“Yes, m’lord,” the boy said.
“What did they do to him?” Tyrion said, and the boy looked at him again in utter despair.
“Out with it,” Tywin said, through his teeth, and the boy bent his head and told them, in a bare whisper, what absolutely every last person in the entire capital if not the entire realm was going to know about by the end of the week.
Robb Stark’s messengers were Karstarks themselves, and presumably had been among the direct witnesses. They’d obviously shared the information widely on their way, and with the boy, but they didn’t say a word about it to Father themselves; they only came in and formally gave him the terms, and the letter they handed over was brief but not discourteous: Lord Tywin, these men are here at my command to ransom my sisters and my father’s sword from you. Return them to me, unharmed, and I will release your son Ser Jaime Lannister to whatever escort you choose to send with them, and see them safely back out of the territory which I control. To these terms I give my oath. Robb Stark, King in the North.
There wasn’t a word of taunting or insult, which in fact made it a truly extraordinary insult. Tyrion saw Father’s face as he read it, before he handed it over so Tyrion could look at it himself, and there was murder in it. Tyrion couldn’t blame him; he felt fairly murderous himself, but he could tell Father wasn’t thinking straight, and one of them had to, if they were going to get out of this with Jaime and Sansa both still among the living, and ideally in opposite places.
“I’ll give you my answer tonight,” Father said, meaning he himself recognized that he was in a flat rage, and jerked his head to dismiss the envoys; Tyrion got up and went out after them.
“Patros, was it?” he said, catching the chief Stark man outside the door. “If you don’t mind, I have a few questions. Is my brother in good health?”
“Fine when we left,” Patros said; he was a shaggy bearded fellow who hadn’t smiled once, hadn’t said a word about what they’d done to Jaime, and was nevertheless still so visibly and deeply pleased with what he wasn’t talking about that Tyrion found he had a difficult time not turning to the guards at the door and telling them to just whack his head straight off his shoulders.
He drew a breath through his nose instead and said, “I’m glad to hear it. One more. After the festivities were over, did my brother say anything to Lord Stark?”
He was hoping for something he could use to help calm his father down; he didn’t know how badly Stark had hurt Jaime, raping him, but he did know that unless Jaime had literally been near-dead on the floor bleeding, he’d have said something afterwards: not bad for a boy your age, or thank you for a lovely evening or something clever about Stark’s cock.
Then the man said, “Told the king next time he saw him, he’d kill him.”
“What?” Tyrion said. “Sorry, what exactly did he say?”
“ ‘Next time I see you, Stark, I’ll kill you,’” the man said, obligingly, and shrugged. “He’s welcome to try. The king’s not worried, I reckon.”
Tyrion stared at him, and then he said, “Wait. Come with me,” and went back in to Father, who was standing on the balcony looking out over the bay, his jaw moving slightly back and forth as if he was trying his teeth against each other, tearing flesh in his mind; he turned and glared at Tyrion, who turned round and said, “Patros.”
The Stark man came closer, and Tyrion said, flatly, “We don’t have Lady Arya. She disappeared the day her father was arrested.” The man’s eyes narrowed, and a greedy light came into them, glad to hear it; no, this man didn’t want Jaime coming home at all. “So you’ll be taking back Lady Sansa and Ned Stark’s greatsword—”
The man started saying, “King Robb’s terms—”
Tyrion raised his voice to override him, “And a peace agreement of mutual non-aggression, as part of which we will recognize him as King in the North.”
The man paused. Father stalked back into the room to stare at him, obviously thinking he’d lost his mind. But Tyrion turned and looked him full in the face, hard, and tried to let him see it wasn’t a joke, it was an absolute necessity, and he was doing it this way because it had to be done this way: no, they couldn’t talk it over, and no, there weren’t any alternatives, and he hoped like hell that Father would realize there was only one possible reason why he’d do any of that, and that was saving Jaime’s life.
After a moment, Father jerked his head, a tiny nod, and went out onto the balcony, and Tyrion let out a slow breath and turned back to the Northerner. “I’ll have Lady Sansa down in the courtyard ready to go within the hour, along with the blade, and the rest of our terms. And if your king doesn’t want to accept them when you get there, our soldiers will bring her and the sword back instead of my brother. Now get out of this room before I give in to the temptation to have you and all your men killed slowly.”
When they were gone, he went to the desk and pulled himself into the chair and wrote the terms out, just as brief as the ones Robb Stark had sent, and then took it and the pen out to Father for his signature.
“Why?” Father bit out, one short word, without even looking down at him.
“We have to get him back now. Not after two or three back and forths, not after giving them a chance to do anything else to him. And the men Robb sent are Karstarks. They don’t want to give Jaime back. If we give them any excuse, any possible justification for refusing to take Sansa back with them, they will. Besides, look on the bright side,” he added, through his own teeth, “It’ll be easier to have Stark murdered if we’re not at war with him.”
#
Tyrion had twelve different assassination plans drawn up, in fact, by the time Jaime rode in through the gates four weeks later, and spoiled them all by telling Father, savagely, that the only person allowed to kill Robb Stark was him. “You’re not going to have him poisoned, and you’re not going to have him stabbed in his bed at night, and you’re not going to have him shot with crossbows while he’s hunting,” he said. “None of it. The only way he’s going to die is while I watch his corpse sliding off my blade as his eyes go dim,” and Father, who didn’t know his son nearly as well as he thought he did, promised him.
Tyrion threw his hands up and went back to his rooms and contemplated his plans and then just put them in the fire. He’d spent most of the last twenty years doing his best to save Jaime from himself, but trying to do it with Father getting in the way was going to be a lot harder.
It became monumentally so when he discovered that Father had agreed to meet Robb Stark in person to sign the new accord, at the crossroads inn, and Jaime had insisted on coming. “This is a terrible idea that is going to end badly for everyone involved!” Tyrion said, but no one was listening to him anymore; Jaime and Father both clearly thought—without ever having discussed the plan or the many obvious obstacles out loud—that when they all got there, Jaime was going to slip along to Robb Stark’s rooms in the night and murder him, and then they’d fight a battle with the Stark forces while they were demoralized and unsuspecting.
Tyrion managed to tag along with the embassy at least, and he tried to more or less attach himself to Jaime for the entire night; Father had deliberately timed their arrival for late in the evening, after the Starks had already come, so they wouldn’t be signing the accord until the next morning, at which point he obviously thought there wouldn’t be an accord anymore. It wasn’t like Father to be quite this irrationally hopeful about his plans, but he was still in a murderous rage himself; he wanted Jaime’s fantasy almost as much as Jaime did.
And there wasn’t any way to get either of them to let go of it. The only real hope had been for Robb Stark to go away: murdering him would have by far been the best solution, but if not, that would have been the real point of giving him the North. Winter was coming, as he’d have said, and with any luck he’d vanish beneath the snows; even if he didn’t starve, none of them would have to think of him for five or six years, which might just barely be long enough. If only Tyrion could get Jaime through the signing of the damned accord and just get him back to King’s Landing—
It didn’t work. It wasn’t even midnight when Jaime pressed Tyrion back down into his chair, as he rose himself. “Just stay here for now. I’ll need some help tidying up later. There might be a bit of a mess,” which was an understatement if Tyrion had ever heard one.
“Jaime,” he said, in desperation, “listen to me. Please. If you have ever trusted me, or followed one single piece of my advice, please just sit down and finish—” But Jaime was already shaking his head, and smiling, and off he went to his doom. Tyrion looked across the room at Father, who was only watching Jaime go with a hard gleam of satisfaction in his face, because apparently everyone in his family was an idiot. At least where love was involved. Tyrion shut his eyes and sighed from the soles of his feet, and then he got up to get ready to tidy up the mess that Jaime was off to make; because, after all, he loved his brother, so he would have to be an idiot too.
#
Jaime had been completely prepared to deal with any guards, but there weren’t any. Trusting of the Stark boy. Maybe he thought they were giving him the title because they were actually afraid of him, instead of just quieting his army down for a bit while they dealt with Stannis. That wouldn’t take too long. Father had betrothed Joffrey to Margaery as soon as Sansa had crossed the threshold going the other way; the Tyrell money and troops were coming to them, now. Jaime was looking forward to taking them stormwards. As soon as he paid this one little debt.
He had his sword out of his sheath when he opened the door. He’d already decided if the boy was asleep, he’d wake him, and let him get a sword. He didn’t want Robb Stark to die in his sleep, any more than he’d wanted him to die of poison in another part of the world. He wanted to cut Stark up slowly, carve the awareness of death into him, before he finally fucked him with the sword and then dragged his bloody corpse out into the yard for display. He was almost hard with hunger for it; he’d never lusted for another man’s death before, only ever victory, but now he did.
Robb Stark wasn’t in his bed. He was standing by the open doors of the balcony, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, naked. “Expecting someone, Stark? Is that why there aren’t any guards?” Jaime said, and Robb turned. It was a bad angle; there wasn’t any light in the room, and he couldn’t see Stark’s face with the moon at his back. Not very satisfying. Jaime shut the door and came into the room towards him, letting his sword lead the way. “Do you have a sword handy? You can get it if you like. I’m afraid I can’t offer you a clean death, but you can have a fight if you want. At least a little bit of one.”
“The guards aren’t there because I didn’t want you to kill them on the way,” Robb said, without even the slightest hint of fear in his voice. “And I have the only sword I need for you.”
Jaime stared at him down the extended length of his own sword, silver with moonlight coming in the window, his whole body tightening up, muscles tensing to spring, and then the shadows in the room moved, took shape, and the direwolf came out of the dark and closed its jaws around his forearm. He froze in place with the yellow eye fixed upon him, almost at the height of his own head; the teeth were pressing against his flesh above and below, at the elbow and the wrist, secure. His heart was pounding.
“He’s grown since the last time you saw him,” Robb said, coming to stand beside the wolf, close enough that Jaime could see his face, too; in a trick of the light, his eyes almost seemed to gleam yellow as well. “The sword, or the hand that wields it, Kingslayer. You choose.”
“You like to give choices, don’t you?” Jaime said savagely, and let the sword go in a clatter to the floor.
“What we choose matters,” Robb said. He kicked the sword away. “Now the swordbelt.”
“I could use my other hand to help get it off,” Jaime said, in desperation.
Robb only smiled a little. “Go on and manage without. See how you like it. Just in case you’re tempted.”
The wolf’s breath came hot over his hand, and it shifted its jaws a little, moving the teeth against him without ever letting go enough to pull away. Jaime reached down with his left hand and worked open the buckle on his belt, and let it go, thudding to the ground with his short blade.
Stark kicked that away, too. “And the knives,” he said, as if he knew how many there were, and apparently he did; Jaime dropped two in their sheaths, and Stark tilted his head. “The other one, too,” and the jaws tightened. Jaime clenched his own teeth and drew the third one in its sheath from the small of his back, and let it fall as well.
They all went to the pile, and Stark went and picked them all up and threw them over the balcony; Jaime heard them splashing down into the reedy marsh ground outside, underneath the balcony. “You’ll have to collect them tomorrow,” Robb said, coming back.
“Are you really going to be stupid enough to let me live?” Jaime said. “You do realize, my father’s only letting me have first crack. We have forty thousand men on the northern side of the crossroads, right now.”
“Aye, you do,” Robb said. “And I have fifteen on either side flanking them, and five thousand to the south. So either your father can start his men falling back to Harrenhal, or we can have it out now for once and for all. I’m satisfied with my ground if he is, and my men are holding all the doors on this side of the inn.”
Jaime had thought he’d wanted to kill Robb before; but now it wasn’t lust anymore, it was something beyond that, something more like need, a desperation beyond thirst and hunger. He couldn’t even make words come to his mouth, as if the only thing that could come out of him if he opened his throat was a roaring, wordless, and then Robb said, “Now the jerkin.”
“What?” Jaime grated out, rustily.
“You heard me,” Robb said. “The jerkin. Take it off,” and the wolf gave a small twitch of its head, mouthing his arm like a dog with a bone, tugging him off balance as easily as if he was a child being dangled.
It was like—being up on that hill again, in the dark, with the torches all around, the watching shadows of men, and the cold stone beneath him like an altar or a tomb. He’d told himself it didn’t matter, Robb Stark didn’t matter, any more than Alton had mattered, or the Karstark boy he’d strangled. The only people who mattered, the only people in the whole world, were his family, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to get free, to get back to them, where he belonged. He wouldn’t care afterwards.
But then Robb Stark had put his hand on the back of his neck and made him yield, and Jaime had cared, he did care, and he couldn’t stop caring. The only thing that was going to stop it was killing him, but Jaime couldn’t kill him. He could only do what he was told or die, or worse yet live with his sword-arm torn off his body by a direwolf’s teeth; his choices in this room were all in Robb Stark’s hands. The same choices Stark had given him before.
He pulled open the neck of his jerkin, working open the buttons awkwardly with his left hand, shrugging out of it until it was dangling from the side of the wolf’s jaws closed at his elbow. “Let me guess—the trousers, next?” he said, through his teeth.
“Go on, then,” Robb Stark said, with a nod of his head, and Jaime got them open, fury making his breath come hard and fast; he shoved them down his hips and twisted his body to let them fall, and didn’t bother waiting for instructions before he pulled his shirt off as well, to join the dangling jerkin on his elbow. He was naked too, then, and Robb stepped closer, close enough that Jaime could have let the direwolf take his arm, and reached to grab his throat with the other one instead, but before he could steel himself to do it, Robb said, “Well?”
“What?” Jaime said through his teeth.
“I told you,” Robb said, softly, and he reached up and took hold of Jaime’s head, his palm warm on his cheek, his sword-callused fingers curling around the back of Jaime’s skull and brushing the back of his neck, where Robb had pushed him down onto the stone before he’d— “Ask me nicely.”
It was dark. The moon dimmed, a cloud going by, and the wolf let go of his arm. It fell to hang at his side, a blank, dreamlike moment where he could do anything, anything, and Jaime heard his own voice saying, “Please,” and Robb was pulling his head down, and kissing him.
Robb walked him back a dozen paces, still kissing him with terrible sweetness, and Jaime fell backwards onto the bed and let Robb push his legs up and come in between them. There was grease in a jar next to the bed, waiting, waiting, and Robb put his cock into him quite gently, an easy summer’s journey all the way to the Wall, and then he left it there. Jaime was sprawled out staring blindly up at the canopy, breathing in ragged deep gulps, and Robb was standing between his legs, looking down at him with that wolf’s gleam in his eye, framed between the heavy bedcurtains.
“You chose,” he said softly, tenderly. “You gave yourself to me, and I cloaked you, and I took you before the gods. So you’re mine, now, and I’ll teach you that as many times as you need me to.” He was starting to move, to fuck him, a rising pace. “Come and meet me,” and Jaime was pushing up his hips to each stroke, taking it deeper, every hard thrust so good his breath was coming in whining gasps, and then Robb slid out and had him get on the bed and kneel up, bracing himself on the headboard while Robb fucked him there, even harder, even better, and when he reached around to stroke Jaime’s cock, Jaime came at once, spilling wildly through Robb’s hand as he closed it over the head, sliding his thumb back and forth gently over the spurting flow.
And afterwards, Robb went and wiped himself clean, and came back to the bed and kissed him again, taking Jaime’s gasping mouth for long hard kisses until his lips felt soft and swollen and almost bruised, the delicious scratch of Robb’s beard against his cheeks. He stopped with his head against Jaime’s and said, “I want your mouth,” his voice low and thick with lust, and Jaime lay back and put his head over the side and let Robb slide his cock into his mouth and down his throat and sucked on him, his own cock coming up again too, and Robb said, “How do you want me to come in you?” and he groaned around Robb’s cock and slid off and turned over again.
Robb climbed in and blanketed him with his own body, tucked up close as he put his cock back inside, and he pushed in deep and said, “You know what I want,” and Jaime did; he did know what Robb wanted, and he moved his hips and clenched down on him and moved again until Robb pressed in hard and came, gasping a little raggedly with the pulses.
They lay next to each other for a long while, Robb stroking his head and down his back, rubbing a thumb over his mouth and following it with his own, and Jaime just breathed beneath his lips and his touch, his whole body relaxed into a deep perfect languor, pleasure still sparking through him in occasional shivers. He couldn’t move or think; anything outside the bed was too far beyond what he could bear at the moment. He even dozed for a little while, though the moon hadn’t yet set when he woke.
Robb’s hand was in his hair. Jaime still didn’t want to think; he pushed himself up instead and kissed Robb again. And then he got fucked once more, because Robb was nineteen and could fuck him three times in a night without any difficulty, and wasn’t that delightful; so many advantages to a young, virile lover. Jaime almost wanted to laugh while he was getting thoroughly pounded yet again, only if he’d started laughing, he’d probably have burst into tears.
Afterwards they were lying next to each other breathing deeply, and Jaime was trying not to notice time passing; the world had fallen apart and was still refusing to come back together into any kind of sense that would let him decide—on anything, anything to say or do, and if Robb told him to come North with him, he’d get up and go; in fact that sounded considerably better than going to Father and telling him to withdraw to Harrenhal, being asked why and what happened; his brain recoiled from the idea.
But instead Robb sighed and said, “We’d better go, before some idiot starts the fighting, and we all have to kill each other after all.”
“Let them cut each other to pieces without us,” Jaime said, desperately. “I don’t care,” and Robb’s hand in his hair tightened again, painful, and jerked his head back.
“If you won’t care for your own men, I’ll care for all of them together for us both,” he said, a cold edge in his voice, and shoved him away a little before he got out of the bed on the other side, and went to dress. Jaime sat up trying to stir his own anger like a dead fire, but Robb came round to him, reached for his head and kissed him again, and the embers sank back into ash. “Stop daring the gods to break you,” Robb said, more gently, their foreheads together. “Go and do your duty to your men.” And then he kissed him one last time, a farewell kiss, and went out of the room with the wolf behind him.
Jaime put on his clothes and went back to his own room, blank and unsteady. The world still didn’t feel entirely real around him, and he couldn’t even begin to imagine how he was going to go and tell Father even a single word: it was impossible. It would’ve been easier to go dig his sword up out of the marsh and fall on it. But he couldn’t even do that, either, because he had to do his duty to his men. He couldn’t see a single way forward.
Then he opened the door and stopped: Tyrion was sitting at the small table in an island of candlelight, his head bowed, with two glasses and a bottle before him. He looked up, his face weary and knowing, and Jaime said, his voice far away to his own ears, “How did you know?”
Tyrion said, “If you cared enough to want to kill him, you cared.” He reached out and poured the cup full, and pushed it over to the other chair. Jaime closed the door behind him and came to the table and drank it, and Tyrion refilled the cup at once, but Jaime pushed it aside and put his head down in his arms, and then Tyrion was reaching for him, drawing him up and into an embrace, and Jaime buried his head against his shoulder.
When he could breathe again, he sat up and told the wine cup, “He’s got us outflanked with a leading force south of the inn.”
“I’ll go tell Father,” Tyrion said, and Jaime shut his eyes in desperate gratitude. “Jaime. You know you can’t go North with him.”
“Can’t I?” Jaime said, half longing. “What can I do, then?”
“I don’t know,” Tyrion said. “But if you go with him, Father’s going to kill him, and he’ll make it as gruesome and horrible as possible. You know he will. The only reason he won’t is if you stay home defending what he still thinks of as your kill, and don’t let him have it.”
Jaime bent his head. “I can’t talk to him about it.”
“You won’t have to,” Tyrion said. “He lost this one, and I’m going to make him feel it. I’ll tell him that Robb had guards hiding in his room, and taunted you with the rape before letting you go to warn us. And I got you drunk and put you to bed to stop you immediately riding out to die fighting them on your own. Father won’t say a word to you about it, and if he suggests killing Robb, you’ll only have to flatly refuse all help and immediately leave the room. If it gets more complicated than that, I’ll come up with something.”
Jaime nodded a little, and then he managed to say, “Thank you.” Tyrion reached out and took his hand, and Jaime held on, gripping tight.
Tyrion got up finally and said, “Have another cup and go to bed. You’ll feel more like yourself in the morning. Give it a week and you might even be able to imagine you want to kill him again,” he added, a little pointedly, a small step of gentleness away from I told you so.
Jaime managed to grimace at him in apology, and then after Tyrion left he did drink another cup of wine, and went to his own balcony, standing there to breathe the cold night air. There was a narrow brook running behind the inn, and he caught glimpses of horses moving in the trees on the other side: the Northerners, coming out of concealment. Robb would be with them shortly. And he’d let the Lannister army retreat past them to Harrenhal—another yielding of lions, chastened before the gods—and he’d take his family and his armies back to the North, where they belonged.
Jaime could easily have climbed over the railing and got down and gone to join them. He shut his eyes and leaned into the possibility of it, a sensation like a strap drawn to the breaking point. I’ll take you back North with me, and you’ll warm my bed every night of winter, Robb had said over him like a promise, as sure as the stone that had been cold and hard beneath him. A wave of lust came running sweet and hot through Jaime’s body with the memory, and a wave of mortification with it, tangled up in a knot he couldn’t pull apart, tied around this thing he wasn’t allowed to want, the terrible mastering pressure forcing him to bend his neck.
And he wanted it desperately, but even now he hated Robb at the same time for making him want it. Tyrion was right: Jaime could tell already that if he didn’t climb down and go, right now, then in the morning, in a week or two, he would feel more like himself again. And he would be able to lie to himself long enough to imagine wanting Robb dead again, the same way he’d been lying to himself even while he’d been walking down the corridor to Robb’s bedroom on fire with lust.
He drew a deep shaky breath and opened his eyes, and the direwolf was there on the far bank: it had come slinking silently out of the brush to stand there with its vast grey head looking up at him, the yellow eyes like agates and its tongue panting from its jaws. Robb rode out after it a moment later, big in his heavy furred cloak, and Jaime stared down at him, hunger making his mouth dry.
Robb was looking up at him with his own eyes hard and intent, full of an answering hunger, and Jaime was almost furiously waiting for him to do it, to tell him to come down, knowing already that if Robb told him to, he would. And then Robb grimaced, and smiled up at him with only the corner of his mouth, wry and sorry, and said, “I shouldn’t have traded you back.”
Jaime breathed out, a gasp somewhere between relief and misery. “No, you really shouldn’t have,” he said after a moment, when he could trust his voice to sound like his own.
Robb huffed a little. “Now I’ll have it all to do over again next time, won’t I?”
Jaime felt almost light-headed with lust, but he made himself fold his arms and lean against the balcony wall, putting on a cool insouciance he couldn’t quite feel; but even as he did, it already felt less like a mask than like a favorite linen shirt, worn soft and fine to his body by long habit, one layer up from the skin. He’d probably forget he even had it on by morning. “Of course. Don’t expect me to make it easy for you, Stark,” he said. “I can’t even imagine how you think you’re ever getting your hands on me again.”
He couldn’t let it become a plea, but it was, and Robb’s eyes glittered almost golden with answer. “Oh, don’t worry your head, Lannister,” he said. “I’ll find a way,” a low growling in his voice that gave Jaime the promise of teeth on him, of being forced to his knees again, and he held on to it deep in his belly like a live coal as he watched Robb turn and vanish into the woods, going into the dark, into the North, away.
# End