The Red Keep — The Lannister Chambers
The door closed behind Cersei with the particular precision of a woman who has learned that the force with which one closes doors communicates things that words sometimes cannot.
Jaime looked up from where he was sitting — sprawled, really, with the physical ease that he applied to most situations, the unconscious grace of a man whose body had always cooperated with whatever he asked of it.
He read his sister’s face in the way that only he could read it, with the fluency of people who have known each other from before either of them had learned to wear their faces properly.
He said nothing.
He waited.
Cersei moved to the window.
She stood with her back to him for a moment, looking out at the yard below where the preparations for the tournament were already underway — the lists being constructed, the pavilions going up, the organized industry of a castle preparing for spectacle.
Her hands were at her sides, which meant she was controlling something.
When Cersei’s hands were still, something was being held in place by effort.
“Robert,” she said.
“What about him?”
“Did you see him in the throne room?” She turned.
Her face had the quality it got when she was angry in the specific way — not the hot anger that showed itself freely, but the cold and managed kind, the kind that had been refined by years of practice into something that looked, to casual observation, almost like composure.
“He stepped off the throne. He walked down the aisle to greet them. He *laughed.*”
Jaime considered this.
“Robert laughs often.”
“Not like that.” She looked at him with the green eyes that were their father’s eyes, carrying something complicated.
“Not since — not in a long time. He was *enthusiastic,* Jaime. Like a boy who has been told his friends are coming.” Her voice had a precise contempt in it, not entirely directed at Robert.
“Over Stark children.”
“They are Ned’s children,” Jaime said, with the reasonable tone of a man who finds the explanation sufficient.
“Robert loves Ned. He has always loved Ned. This is not a surprise.”
“The bastard was with them.”
Jaime was quiet for a moment.
“Jon Stark,” he said carefully.
“Jon *Snow,*” Cersei said, and the correction was its own statement — the refusal of the name, the insistence on the original designation, carrying in it the entirety of what she thought about Ned Stark’s decision and Robert’s acquiescence to it and the general situation that had put a bastard’s legitimization on the list of things she was required to tolerate.
“He has been Jon Stark for three years, Cersei.”
“He has been legitimized by a lord who had no business legitimizing him and endorsed by a king who — “she stopped.
She breathed.
She reapplied the control that had slipped for a moment.
“Robert was *happy* to see him. He looked at that boy and he saw Ned’s face and he was *happy.*”
Jaime stood.
He moved to his sister with the ease of long practice — the specific navigation of her moods that he had been performing since childhood, the calibration of when to approach and how.
He stopped beside her and looked out the window at the same yard she had been looking at.
“They will be gone after the tournament,” he said.
“Two weeks, perhaps three. Robert will feast them and watch them compete and send them back to their frozen castle and everything will return to what it was.”
“Will it?” She looked at him.
“The eldest. Cregan.” The name in her mouth was precise, deliberate, as though she was examining it for weaknesses.
“Did you see him in the throne room?”
“I saw him.”
Thirteen years old.
“He is a child,” Jaime said, not entirely convincingly even to himself.
“He is a child who has made the Starks the richest house in Westeros,” Cersei said.
“Who built a fortress that cannot be taken and a fleet that ended ironborn raiding and a city the size of our own and a steel that our best smith cannot reproduce.” She looked at her brother steadily.
“And he walked into that throne room today and handled Robert perfectly and said exactly the right things and watched everyone in that room without appearing to watch anyone.” She paused.
“That is not a child, Jaime. That is something wearing a child’s age.”
Jaime said nothing. Get faster updates on g.com.
Because she was not wrong.
He had seen it too, had registered it with the same unease she was naming, had filed it in the category of things that deserved continued attention.
“Father is here,” Cersei said.
“Father is always managing something.”
“He is managing something about this.” She looked back at the window.
“He has been managing something about this for eight years and he has not solved it, which means it is a genuine problem, which means—” She stopped again.
Jaime looked at his sister.
She was afraid.
Not in the way she would ever acknowledge or display — Cersei Lannister did not display fear, had learned very young that displayed fear was an invitation and had consequently buried hers so deep that it came out only in the privacy of rooms like this one, only in the presence of the one person who was permitted to see it.
But it was there, in the controlled stillness of her hands and the quality of her voice and the way she was looking at the yard below without seeing the yard at all.
She was afraid of what the Stark heir represented, and what it meant that their father had not found a solution, and what would happen in a realm where the Lannisters were no longer the unquestioned apex of everything that mattered.
He wanted to tell her it would be fine.
He was not certain it would be fine.
“They are going to the feast tonight,” he said instead.
“Robert will drink and tell stories about Ned and ask the boys about the North and by the end of the evening he will be their devoted friend for life, because that is what Robert does.” He looked at his sister.
“Smile at them, Cersei. Say the right things. Let them go back to their castle after the tournament with a favorable impression of the court.”
“I hate them,” she said quietly.
Not performed.
Not strategic.
Simply true, said in the flat tone of a woman stating a fact she has long since stopped being surprised by.
“I know,” Jaime said.
“Ned Stark’s family. His sister first.” The words came out with the specific weight of things that have been carried for a very long time.
“Rhaegar and Lyanna and the war and everything that came from it. And then Robert comes home with his bastard and his northern opinions and his friendship that never—” She stopped.
“And now his children are here and Robert is *delighted* and I am supposed to smile.”
Jaime put his hand over hers.
She let him.
She looked at his hand for a moment, then out the window again.
“Smile,” he said quietly.
“For tonight. Just tonight.”
A long silence.
“I hate the North,” she said.
“I know.”
“I hate all of it.”
“I know, Cersei.”
She straightened.
The composure reassembled itself with the practiced speed of long habit — the face settling, the hands relaxing, the green eyes clearing into the expression that the court saw and that contained almost none of what had just been visible in this room.
She moved to the door.
“Come,” she said.
“We will be late.”
The Guest Tower — The Stark Chambers
Jon was looking at the doublet with the expression of a man encountering something he has not considered and is now being required to consider.
“We are dressing for dinner,” Cregan said, from where he was standing before the glass in his own room, adjusting the collar of a shirt that had been made in Wintercity by a tailor who understood, because Cregan had explained it to him carefully, that clothing worn in King’s Landing would be seen by people who assessed such things professionally and should consequently be made to a standard that rewarded professional assessment.
“I have dressed for dinners before,” Jon said.
“Northern dinners.” Cregan looked at him in the glass.
“This is different.”
“Because we are in the South.”
“Because we are in the South and we are representing the North and every person in that feasting hall tonight will draw conclusions about the North from how we conduct ourselves.” He turned. Visit novelping dot com for the full chapter.
“They expect us to arrive wearing furs and looking uncomfortable. They expect Northern lords to be impressive in the way of things that are large and cold and somewhat rough — to be taken seriously as a force while being privately condescended to as a culture.”
Jon absorbed this.
“So we do not wear furs,” he said.
“We wear exactly what the occasion requires,” Cregan said.
“Correctly made, correctly fitted, nothing that apologizes for where we come from and nothing that tries to be something we are not.” He looked at his brother steadily.
“The North is not inferior to the South. It is not rougher or less sophisticated or less capable of producing men who know how to dress for a royal feast. We simply haven’t had reason to demonstrate that recently.”
He turned back to the glass.
He looked at himself.
The doublet was grey — the specific grey of Northern wool dyed to a shade that was intentional rather than accidental, dark enough to be serious and carrying in it the quality of Stark colors without being a simple declaration of house.
The direwolf embroidered at the breast in silver thread was understated.
The Wolfsteel pin at the collar was small and perfect and would be recognized by anyone in that room who had spent any money in the last two years.
He looked, he thought, like what he was.
Not a Northern savage.
Not a Southern imitation.
Something that did not require either of those frames.
“They will look at us tonight,” he said, “and they will form opinions. Those opinions will travel back to every house those lords belong to and become part of how the realm understands what Winterfell is.” He met Jon’s eyes in the glass.
“We are not dressing for dinner. We are making an argument.”
Jon looked at him for a moment.
Then he looked at his own doublet — also grey, slightly different in shade, made by the same tailor with the same attention.
He picked it up.
“What is the argument?” he asked.
“That the North has arrived,” Cregan said simply.
“And intends to stay.”
Robb appeared in the doorway connecting their rooms, already dressed, his auburn hair — their mother’s hair — combed into the reluctant order that it permitted on formal occasions.
He looked at them both.
“You both look like you are preparing for battle,” he observed.
“We are,” Cregan said.
Robb looked at the doublet in Jon’s hands.
At Cregan’s reflection in the glass.
At the general quality of focused intention that had settled over the room.
He straightened.
“Right,” he said.
In the tone of someone who has understood something and adjusted accordingly.
“Then let us go.”
Cregan looked at his brothers — Robb, who would be a great lord because he could not help it, who led with his chest and his heart and made people want to follow him by the simple force of caring completely.
Jon, who would be a great lord because he had chosen it, who had built himself into something from materials that had not originally included the name or the seat or the certainty.
Both of them, in the grey of the North, carrying themselves the way their father had taught them to carry themselves and the way Cregan had been teaching them to carry themselves, which was the same lesson from two different angles.
*With dignity.
Without apology.*
He turned from the glass.
“Stay close,” he said.
“Watch everything. And whatever happens in there—” He looked at them both.
“Remember who we are.”
Robb nodded.
Jon nodded.
The three of them walked to the door.