Chapter 239 - Reunion at the Red Keep

Tywin's hand came down.

The westerlands knights kept their swords drawn, but no one moved.

Tywin Lannister sat on his horse and stared at the open doors of the Great Sept of Baelor. Snow settled on his crimson-and-gold pauldrons. He said nothing for a long time.

Then he turned his horse, touched a heel lightly to its flank, and rode toward the north end of the square.

His guard fell in behind him like a current of iron pulling tight.

The High Sparrow stood on the Sept steps and watched the Lannister army withdraw from the square inch by inch.

The snow beneath his feet had been trampled to gray slush. His frost-reddened toes pressed flat against the cold stone.

He did not move until the last red-cloaked knight disappeared around the corner. Then he turned and walked back inside.

The Sons of the Warrior closed ranks. Silvered armor clinked softly in the snow-light. The doors shut behind them.

The Poor Fellows began to scatter, pulling back like a tide into the nameless, narrow alleys of King's Landing.

The washerwoman tucked her wooden club under her arm, ducked her head, and disappeared in the direction of Flea Bottom.

The old man with the missing teeth clapped Barristan Selmy on the shoulder, pocketed his iron pipe, muttered something about meeting here again tomorrow, and walked away.

Barristan pulled his hood lower and drifted west along the edges of the thinning crowd.

Snow was still falling. It settled on his shoulders in a thin, quiet layer.

He walked past Iron Street, past the foot of Visenya's Hill. When he reached the corner of Silent Sisters Street, his steps slowed.

Someone was following him.

The boot-falls were heavy. The particular weight of iron soles on flagstone.

More than one.

He shifted slightly, swept a sidelong glance back. Three Lannister guardsmen in red cloaks. Snow on their pauldrons. Their hands were close to their hilts, but nothing was drawn yet.

Barristan stopped. He pushed his hood back, rested his hand on his own hilt, and turned to face them.

The lead guard spoke first. "Ser Barristan Selmy?"

Barristan said nothing.

"The Hand of the King would like to catch up on old times."

The word was "like." But from the way the three men had already closed around him, it meant something closer to "will." Barristan looked at them once and let go of his hilt.

"Lead the way."

The gates of the Red Keep seemed taller than he remembered. Or he had simply grown old.

He walked the gatehouse tunnel, boots treading the passage he had walked more times than he could count. Some of the wall bricks were new replacements. Others were the originals, still carrying fire-scars from the Mad King's time, worn gray-black by the years.

He crossed the courtyard, passed the corridor of the Kingsguard, and climbed the spiraling stone stair.

When the oaken door of the Tower of the Hand swung open before him, he realized he still remembered the sound the hinges made.

Tywin Lannister sat behind the desk.

He had removed his armor and changed into a dark red woolen doublet. A map lay unrolled across the desk. Beside it sat a cup of wine, the surface undisturbed.

He raised his eyes and let his gaze move from Barristan's face to his left arm, then back again.

Tywin had served as Hand to the Mad King Aerys for twenty years. He had known Barristan Selmy for most of them. Outside the Great Sept, he had picked the hooded old man out of the crowd at a single glance.

"You're wounded."

"Blood is part of the work." Barristan settled into the chair across from him. When his back touched the chair, it gave a faint creak, exactly as he remembered.

Tywin had no interest in pleasantries. He went straight to it, the way he always had. "The wildfire explosion on Iron Street. Was that your doing?"

Barristan was quiet for two seconds.

His honor had never permitted him to lie. "My men lit the wildfire. But the wildfire was already there. Someone had placed it beforehand."

"I had intended to move those caches. We ran into a full patrol of gold cloaks. That explosion was not part of my plan."

"How did you know Cersei had buried so much wildfire beneath the city?"

Tywin's knuckle tapped once against the desk. "Especially after that horse-lord you serve rode in on his dragon and scattered tens of thousands of pamphlets across the sky. I thought at first it was simply his scheme to destroy my daughter's reputation."

"The one I serve is not a horse-lord. It is Daenerys Targaryen." Barristan corrected the phrasing.

"In my eyes, you are one and the same." Tywin did not press the point. "Give me the answer. How did you know what she intended to do?"

Barristan leaned back. The wound on his shoulder pulled, and he frowned.

"Tyrion came to Dragonstone. He wanted to persuade Khal Drogo not to attack King's Landing, because the city was filled with wildfire beneath it. He said that if dragonflame set it off, half a million people would burn to ash."

"Tyrion." Tywin repeated the name. His tone was flat as still water.

"The horse-lord does not care whether the people of King's Landing live or die." Tywin continued. "After he sent Tyrion north beyond the Wall to capture a wight, he has been probing the city's defenses without pause. Striking every few days, not hard, but never stopping. He is looking for a weakness."

"That appears to be the case."

"He has given me trouble enough already. Just his flying about on that dragon forced me to redeploy a third of the gold cloaks to the walls to man the scorpions."

"And I have been commanding an army. I had no time to watch Cersei."

Tywin's voice dropped a shade. "She did those things behind my back."

Barristan studied his face. It was still composed. But the lines around his mouth were a little deeper than they had been a moment ago.

"Like father, like daughter."

Tywin glanced up. He was not angry. He simply returned his gaze to the map, as though the remark did not merit the effort of a response.

After a moment, he said, "If the horse-lord does not care whether the people of King's Landing live or die, why did he send you into the city to clear out the wildfire?"

Barristan shook his head.

"Khal Drogo truly does not care."

"The lords of Westeros do not care about their own smallfolk either. They use them as leverage, willing to drag an entire city into the grave to threaten an enemy."

"So why should a Dothraki from Essos care about the lives of Westerosi smallfolk?"

He let out a slow breath.

"But Daenerys does. She genuinely does. Khal Drogo respects her wishes, and he sent me into the city to do this — half of it to set her heart at ease."

Barristan looked down at his own hands. "The other half was for myself. I guarded King's Landing for so many years. It doesn't matter who sits at this desk. The smallfolk of King's Landing are still the smallfolk of King's Landing. I cannot watch them burn to ash in wildfire and pretend I see nothing."

Tywin did not answer at once. He tapped the edge of the desk with his knuckle once, then again.

Silence settled over the stone walls of the Tower of the Hand like a cold mist.

Then he spoke.

"Ser Barristan," Tywin Lannister said. "I want to make a deal with you."

➤ Next: Six Hundred Thousand Lives