Chapter 240 - Six Hundred Thousand Lives

Barristan listened.

Tywin's voice was not loud. But every word landed like a command, not an invitation to discuss.

"I will clear all the wildfire beneath King's Landing. In return, you enter the Great Sept of Baelor and get Cersei out."

"Unharmed. Just as you brought Aerys out."

Barristan did not answer immediately.

He sat in his chair and studied Tywin's face, which had quietly grown old. Tywin was thinner than before. The skin beneath his chin had loosened, folding into a deep crease.

"Aerys was the king I swore my oath to. Joffrey stripped me of my honor, and before I left King's Landing, he sent men to hunt me down."

"I have sworn to die only for a true king. Cersei is not worth my life."

"You are not being asked to die for her. You are doing this for six hundred thousand lives." Tywin's voice did not shift. "These past days, refugees have been pouring into King's Landing from the Riverlands and the Stormlands. The city already holds six hundred thousand people."

"The High Sparrow has no evidence for his charges against Cersei."

Barristan pushed back. "The adultery and the kingslaying are real enough. The witness for both is Lancel — your own blood, a Lannister. He confessed it himself."

"Kingslaying." Tywin's tone did not waver. "Robert's death was an accident. Lancel brought him the wine. Cersei never told him to add poison."

He turned it on Barristan. "You were there. You were Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. You did not stop Robert from drinking himself to death. Does that make you a kingslayer too?"

Barristan came out of his chair.

Tywin did not move. "You know perfectly well that kingslaying charge is a deliberate smear. Her enemies put it there."

"Even if it was an accident, she still bears responsibility."

"Accidental death and kingslaying are not the same charge." Tywin's voice stayed flat. "I am not asking you to defend her. I am asking you to bring her out alive so she can face a secular trial, not be buried under a pile of accusations by the Faith."

"I cannot enter the Great Sept unnoticed. Everyone knows me. No guard in that building would fail to recognize this face."

"You do not need to enter unnoticed," Tywin said. "You go in under the pretext of visiting the Queen Mother. You are the former Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. A legend the whole of the Seven Kingdoms acknowledges. The Faith's men respect you. They will let you through."

"And once I am inside? She is locked in a cell. The Sons of the Warrior stand guard at her door around the clock."

"Kill whoever stands in your way and bring her out."

Barristan did not answer right away.

He thought of Duskendale. He had been young then. He had ridden alone into a castle seized by rebels, passed through six gates, killed seven guards, and carried the Mad King out of a windowless stone cell on his back.

His white cloak had been soaked through with blood.

That was many years ago. He was too old now. Too old to dare the same thing again.

"I have always wondered," he said. "If I had not gone to rescue Aerys that day, Prince Rhaegar could have taken the throne without a war. Whether everything would have turned out differently."

Tywin glanced at him. "Do not waste your mind on things that never happened."

"Prince Rhaegar was ten times the man Aerys was. If he had reigned..."

"He was better than Aerys." Tywin cut him off. "But the whole rebellion started because he took Robert's betrothed. You are constructing a fantasy. Rhaegar went to Harrenhal and chose Lyanna. That is what happened. Everything else is noise."

Barristan went quiet.

He knew Tywin was right. But the thought had worked itself into bone, and there was no pulling it free.

He had ridden in that tourney at Harrenhal too.

"If I had been a better knight. If I had unhorsed him in the final tilt. If it had been my choice to make..."

Everyone knew whose choice Rhaegar had made.

That girl from Winterfell. Brown hair, and when she smiled, you could almost smell the cold wind of the North, the damp earth of it.

In front of tens of thousands, Rhaegar had placed a crown of blue winter roses on her head.

Something shifted in Tywin's face. "Let me tell you something," he said. "When Cersei was a girl, she was mischievous and full of life."

"The first time her moon blood came..." He paused. "Was there ever a girl that sweet in all the world?"

Barristan sat back down.

The steel in Tywin's eyes had softened. "Aerys refused the match between her and Rhaegar. If he had agreed — if Cersei had married Rhaegar — how many lives would have gone differently?"

"She would have given Rhaegar children. Violet-eyed, silver-haired children. Dragon and lion, both."

"With a wife like that beside him, would Rhaegar have spared Lyanna Stark a second glance?"

"The girls of the North have their own wild beauty. But torchlight is not the rising sun."

Barristan said nothing. He did not know what to say.

All these years, and he had never heard anything like that from Tywin's mouth.

The man who always wore a stern face, who calculated everything without leaving a crack, that Tywin Lannister now sat behind his desk like an old man who had only just realized he was old.

The room was quiet for a long moment. Outside, the snow kept falling. A thin layer had settled on the windowsill of the Tower of the Hand.

Then Tywin lifted his cup and drained it. He set it down.

"So you will do this for me," Tywin said. "Not just for Cersei. If you need a reason you can live with, then do it for the six hundred thousand lives in that city. Or do it because it is a small thing an old father can still do for his daughter."

Barristan stood. His hand rested on the back of the chair for a moment. Then he nodded.

"I will go to the Great Sept of Baelor."

Tywin did not rise to see him out. He simply watched Barristan's back cross the room toward the door, and said one thing.

"Selmy."

Barristan turned.

"Come back alive," Tywin said.

Barristan gave no answer. He pulled the door open and stepped into the spiraling stone stairwell. His footsteps descended, one step at a time, until the sound of them faded.

He walked out of the Tower of the Hand and pulled his hood close. As he walked, he turned over what Tywin had said and tried to separate what was calculation from what was real.

Six hundred thousand lives? That part was true.

In the days he had kept low in King's Landing, he had seen it with his own eyes. Refugees flooding in from the Riverlands and the Stormlands, filling the ruins of Flea Bottom and the Street of Steel until there was nowhere left to stand.

600,000 people in this city. Wildfire under their feet. Empty bellies. A venomous Queen Mother and a king who had lost his mind.

Barristan moved through the muddy streets. His boots cracked the frozen puddles underfoot, and every step felt like treading on shards of memory.

He had ridden this road once, the king's banners trailing behind him, the smallfolk calling his name from both sides.

Now no one looked at him. The refugees huddled in the doorways did not have the strength to lift their heads.

An emaciated woman sat against a wall, clutching an infant. The child could not cry. It only breathed, thin and shallow, barely there.

He kept walking. He pulled his hood lower.

The spire of the Great Sept of Baelor came into view ahead, its gray-white stone walls hunched beneath the leaden sky like a beast waiting.

His mind was already made up. He would not make the same mistake twice.

➤ Next: I Have Forgiven You