And I the elder and more terrible, part 4/4
PART FOUR
I
She will never be able to step down now, Tywin thinks as he watches Cersei climb the throne to be seated besides King Robert Baratheon. Around them, the great hall explode with earth-shattering exultation.
“Long live the King! Long live his Queen!”
And the young man on the Iron Throne is a triumphant king now - if ill at ease in the crowd - but he might not always be. And if he falls, if he dies, he will leave Cersei alone in a kingdom that's ripe for conquest and she must fight to keep the throne just as Robert had done; she must fight until there is no one of her future sons left to put on the throne, until the last of her kin is defeated.
Robert is a strong man with a weak claim, Kevan had said as the negotiations with Lord Arryn begun. Uncertain kingdoms demand claimant kings and queens.
So now, Tywin thinks, now while the king is still welcome everywhere and forgiven everything, they must build their own throne beneath him.
He looks at Jaime who stands with the rest of the Kingsguard; his face is stern and as pale as his cloak, as stubborn as his refusal to be released from the vows sworn to a madman - Tywin had convinced King Robert to relieve Jaime of service but Jaime had refused, claiming he wanted to remain at court, serving his king. A fool's decision, but he has time to change his mind yet. And he will, Tywin knows.
Once, when they were stretched out in bed with Joanna curled into him and his arms were wrapped around her, she had asked what he imagined would become of their children. Our beautiful little terrors, she had said, in that tone that had been equal parts exasperation and gentleness. What will they be like? Tywin had suggested that his son would be a knight and his daughter would become a queen and Joanna had smiled, knitted her eyebrows. You're as romantic as a bard, dear husband. Who would have thought?
Tywin pushes the thoughts of her away as he meets the gaze of their daughter.
“Is she a queen now?” Tyrion asks, a boy of nearly ten now, though no taller than a small child. He sounds bored already.
“Yes,” Tywin says, without taking his eyes off the ceremony. “Your sister is the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms now.”
II.
When Tyrion is a small child, he seems to forget Tywin whenever he stays away for too long.
He returns to Casterly Rock to find his servants greeting him and his son fleeing to one of his many hiding places, remaining there until someone with enough patience coxes him out of it. At first he thinks it's a child's game. Jaime and Cersei would play hide-and-seek, too, take cover behind furniture and spring up on him when they thought he would not expect it, their giggles and squeals leaving a loud trace behind them as they attacked. Usually Joanna, but even Tywin would fall prey to their pranks when they had got used to him again after his absences.
But the dwarf never jumps out of hiding place, he merely remains hidden. When he is still plying his way towards language and seems to constantly make noise, he stays silent in Tywin's presence; when he grows older, words sprouting out of him more easily than they ever did for his other children, there's a reserve in him whenever he shares a room with his father, a temperance he otherwise doesn't show.
From his bedchamber and its balcony Tywin sometimes watches the boy play. With Jaime before he leaves for Crakehall, with Gerion when he deigns to honour them with his presence at, with his cousins if they are visiting; he basks in their attention, craving their admiration for whatever foolish trick he has up his sleeve. A prideful little lion, Genna says in his head but when Tywin asks her what pride there is in cartwheeling across the dinner table, she cannot answer.
He is merely insatiable, Tywin thinks. It's as though he already knows he will have nothing.
No lord will give his daughter to an imp, no army will be led by a man with a child's strength, no legacies can be forged by cursed blood and the knowledge spreads in him, dark and resentful, making a mockery of everything in these halls.
“So send him to the Citadel then.” Kevan suggests. “The boy is clever, Tywin.”
*
For his twelfth nameday, the boy wants a ship of his own.
Gerion chuckles at the suggestion and tries for several days to convince Tywin to give him one.
“Oh come now, brother. What harm will it do?”
“He is not a pirate, he's a lion.” At least half a lion.
At Tyrion's age, Tywin recalls, Jaime had been presented with his first armour - a handsome work, befitting a young lord and embellished with the Lannister crest - as well as a longsword to replace the wooden ones. His eyes had been wide open as he struggled to maintain the dignified calm of a twelve year old boy holding his first proper blade in his hands but mere moments after Tywin had left the room, he had heard his son all but stumble his way into the armour to try it on.
Tywin has a similar suit of armour made, several years later and several sizes smaller.
Tyrion says nothing as he looks at the gifts; he struggles to even lift the plate from the table and his gaze darkens as he looks at the sword that is created to fit his build. Small enough for a suckling babe, one of the guardsmen had whispered, Tywin had ignored the jape.
“Your brother has a sword like that,” he says, pointedly. “He can teach you how to use it, I am certain.”
“Thank you, Father.” Tyrion's voice is devoid of all emotions; he has the sword and the armour carried to the spot in their armoury that has been reserved for the youngest son of Casterly Rock ever since Gerion created one for him. Placed there, beside each other, they resemble small mountains of silver and gold.
When Tywin returns to the castle again after a long stop at King's Landing, he finds them in the exact same spot, untouched.
III.
“I know you care about all of your children, even if you’re an unregenerate fool.”
Genna stands in front of his desk, hands on hips and a deeply worried expression on her face. It blends with the anger in her voice, clashes against his own icy fury.
“The boy needs to be taught a lesson,” he says with a calmness he does not feel.
He has offered that wretched boy to every respectable lord in the Seven Kingdoms - he has deliberately suggested the youngest daughters, the widows, the still unwed ones who no longer can hope for a better match - and they have all turned him down. The singers will sing songs of this for centuries, he thinks. The Lannister imp, spitting on his heritage and dragging whores into the castle. Just like Lord Tytos. It has taken Tywin his whole life to wash the stains of his father's sins away; he is not going to let a commoner's daughter and a stunted fool of a son dishonour their name.
“One of these days someone is going to teach you a lesson, if you keep at this.” Genna is as unshakeable as the Rock itself. “You are too cruel, Tywin.”
“Thank you for your invaluable and astute advice.”
They both look at each other for a moment, then Genna looks away. “You will not hang the girl.”
“You are hardly the judge of that.”
“I won't allow it.” She shakes her head. “If Joanna was alive-“
“She isn’t.”
If Tywin could have bargained for her life, he would have done so thirteen years ago. He would do it still, Seven help him. When he tells his sister this she merely scoffs, but it's a moaning sound, as though his words wound her.
“He's a young man, a boy. You do remember faintly what it was like, don’t you? Being young?”
He does. He remembers training with their master-at-arms every day, he remembers maps and books and swords and duty, duty, duty.
“I did not wed whores in a drunken folly,” he says coolly.
“No,” Genna agrees, soft-spoken now. “You were brilliant and fierce and adored by our remarkable cousin. Who can your son hope to be adored by?”
Anyone he pays handsomely enough.
“The gods made him an imp, they did not force him to be a useless fool. I will not pity him.”
“No, of course not.” Genna's eyes are dark, almost endlessly so, like a force has been released in her. “The great Lord Tywin does not pity anyone. Perhaps you ought to start, dear brother. You could start by pitying yourself, for having become such a remorseless creature that Joanna would cry if she could see you-”
“Enough!” He slams his fist down on the table, and before he has even blinked, his sister has slammed her own fist down too, with equal force. Between them, ink and wine flow out over the old map Gerion had found recently.
“Yes.” Genna's voice is cold. “I believe I have had enough of you for today.”
When she has left, he watches the stains being soaked up by the old parchment, crumpling it up in the process.
He shakes his head and leans forward in his chair, sighing.
*
In the end, the girl he doesn't hang looks up at him from the floor with empty eyes that reminds him of soldiers in battle. His orders had been to treat her like they would any whore and pay her handsomely for it; he had not watched.
While two of his men escort Tyrion out, the girl remains on the floor, and he wonders why until it dawns on him that she's waiting for him to go last. A twist of disgust deep in his stomach causes him to purse his lips at the mere thought. When did it come to this?
“My lord, I-”
Holding up a hand to silence her, he turns to one of the guards. “See that she gets out of here.”
She scrambles up from the floor, shaking and fumbling with her tattered clothes and the coins that spill out of her hands, and roll between her legs and feet. It's a pathetic sight, relentless and heavy at the back of his mind, so he turns away from it.
*
“You did not tell me you intended to give her to the guards, Father.” Jaime squares his shoulders, pauses briefly in his pacing to give Tywin a disgusted look. “You never said you were going to have her raped.”
He can still hear Genna in his head, her voice breaking through the stale air of this room. Tyrion is more like you than you will ever admit. Jaime is Joanna's son. But Joanna would have understood. Joanna would know that if you cannot have respect, you need to invoke fear. She would know, too, that this is how the world is. Then Jaime stops in front of him, very close, raking a hand through his hair and making a sound that sounds like a sob, and Tywin can feel his firm conviction slip away.
“Would it have changed your mind?” he asks evenly, already knowing the answer.
“Yes!”
“It shouldn't have.“
For a moment, Jaime looks as though he is about to hit him. His face is distorted with shades of guilt and anger and disgust; then he gathers himself, resembling his mother more than ever as he walks out of the room without saying another word, without hearing as Tywin calls his name.
Epilogue
The flames are blazing nicely in the fireplace and the wine in his cup is richly flavoured with just the right touch of sweetness. It is not quite sufficient to distract him from the assorted troubles in King's Landing, but it's doing its best. He never drinks much, not even today, but he makes an exception for his brother's offerings.
“Do you remember what Father used to say about this place?” Kevan stretches out in his chair, looking down at the cup in his hand.
Lord Tytos had hated the politics of court, that was no secret in the Seven Kingdoms and certainly not to his children who often had listened to their father's complaints as he returned or as he was about to depart.
Tywin has no taste for nostalgia but he nods; he remembers. It has been a tumultuous new year where things have begun to slip out of his hands. For the first time in his life he feels old, lacking the young man's unbroken steel, the fire he had spotted in Jaime's eyes as he hotly declared his intentions to keep hiding behind the white cloak, wasting the rest of his life as well. Even in the spiteful idiocy of Tyrion's behaviour at the trial, in his refusal to employ a single scrap of sense, there had been the passion of a lion.
He takes a large swallow of the wine. It hits his stomach and glows there briefly before the coldness of his body extinguishes it again.
“Jaime will come to his senses soon enough,” Kevan says, as always in tune with Tywin's thoughts.
“He is as stubborn as Joanna. When did she ever change her mind?”
His brother smiles. “I can recall a few occasions when you wore her down.”
The difference, Tywin knows, is that Joanna had trusted him. Always. Without explanations, without fear, she had looked into his eyes and nodded. She is the only person who has ever looked at him that way. And he has missed her every day for more than twenty years and yet, he thinks with a stitch of anger, he is almost grateful she is not here to witness the things he has seen recently. She has not seen her grandson murdered or her son stand accused of the deed, she has not seen her firstborn son - her beloved, golden child - maimed and tormented by his own misdoings. She has not heard the whispers in the walls here, or understood the reason for the vile accusations all too well.
“We will put Tommen on the throne,” Tywin says, without a trace of uncertainty. “And we wed him to Margaery Tyrell. It will make little difference to Highgarden and Tommen will likely be better for the realm.”
Kevan nods. “Yes.”
And then they will make certain Cersei is wed again as well, giving her enough of an occupation to leave the education of her son in the hands of capable men at court.
“I still intend for Tyrion to take the black.” He takes another sip of wine.
He had fought a long and relentless battle for that deal, he is not about to let it go because his son is a stubborn fool. I am not a kinslayer, he had told Cersei, who had not listened any more to that than she had listened to him when he told her she ought to restrain her grief. Am I not allowed to weep for my own son, Father? She had been furious, of course, behind her tears. Would you not weep for Jaime if he died? For me?
Not where I could be seen, Tywin had thought, wondering if even that is true. The years, they say, either harden or soften a man. The years he has lived through have arranged themselves around him, a bone-hard suit of armour. He feels so little these days and it's an advantage he knows how to employ.
We are old, brother, he thinks as he looks at Kevan again. But who will take over after us?
“Winter most certainly is upon us,” Kevan says, bringing him out of his thoughts. He inches his chair a little bit closer to the fireplace. He has lost much over the past few years, Tywin thinks. War has demanded great prices from everyone, but he has been successful and he will put an end to the continuing fighting as well, given time.
War is not too costly if they win.
Once they were boys, no older than his grandson. Boys climbing in the Stone Garden, playing war games among ancient maps and portraits of all those men who lived before them. Kevan who was King Mern of the Reach and Tywin who had been a King Loren reluctant to surrender his Rock to the dragons because he had never understood why anyone would bow his head.
Once they were boys, restless and wakeful in the Stone Garden where the ancient scraps of legend and myth crawled into their blood and dreams.
Tywin thinks of their own sons, thinks of Tyrion in his cell, Lancel on his knees in the sept, Jaime wrapped in white, always at a distance.
He thinks of their own sons; he sits with his brother until the flames burn down.
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