Chapter 244 - Explosion on the Street of Silent Sisters

The privy in the Tower of the Hand was well-appointed by castle standards. The stone seat had been polished smooth, and a sloped pipe beneath it fed down into the culvert running outside the city walls.

Tywin Lannister sat on it with his trousers around his ankles, both hands braced on his knees, fine beads of cold sweat at his temples, engaged in a silent and protracted war against several days' worth of accumulated stubbornness in his bowels.

Footsteps approached from down the corridor and stopped outside the door.

He had made the elementary mistake of leaving it open.

At least the person pushing it wide was not the Imp holding a crossbow.

He raised his head. The captain of his guard stood in the doorway.

Tywin drew breath to bark at him.

"My lord." The captain spoke first. "Lancel Lannister and Barristan Selmy led the Faith's armed forces against the Guild of Alchemists' hall. They killed all the guards. They took the pyromancers."

Tywin's mouth closed.

He held the man's gaze for two breaths. Then he reached down, grabbed his trousers, and hauled them up. The buckle clinked against the iron clasp as he fastened it on the move, his boots still not fully on when they hit the floor tiles.

"My lord, you haven't wiped."

"Summon the Westerlands knights," Tywin said. "The Gold Cloaks too. We move now."

"Where to?"

"The Great Sept of Baelor."

He led his men out through the Red Keep's gates at a hard pace. The snow had started again.

Flakes settled on his shoulders and melted into the weave of his wool coat, leaving dark wet patches spreading through the fabric.

Over a thousand men tramped through the streets behind him.

He encircled the Great Sept of Baelor a second time. Iron armor grinding over snow, spearpoints catching the flat gray morning light, every passage and hidden door sealed off.

The pyromancers knew where the wildfire was buried. Whoever held the pyromancers held the secrets of every cache of green flame beneath the city.

He stood at the center of his column, his breath fogging white in the cold, one thought turning over in his mind:

Keep them trapped inside. That was all. No one would get the chance to disrupt what he had planned for King's Landing.

The Warrior's Sons and a scattering of Poor Fellows were already blocked outside the Sept when his men arrived.

But the Faith had prepared for this.

The pyromancers were brought into the rear hall the moment they arrived. A brief, wordless look passed between them and the High Septon. Then they stripped out of their robes and pulled on roughspun commoners' clothes, gray and shapeless, hoods drawn low over their faces.

Poor Fellows closed around them on either side, three or five to a group, baskets over arms and hemp sacks across shoulders, dressed as ordinary folk heading out before dawn to earn a living. They filtered into the crowd and scattered in every direction.

Each group had a pyromancer at its head, threading them through King's Landing's labyrinthine alleys toward the hidden caches where the wildfire lay buried.

A thread of candlelight leaked through the crack of the Sept's doors, nearly invisible against the gray snow-light. Tywin swung down from his horse. His boots punched deep prints into the snow.

He walked forward a few paces and stopped at the center of the square.

The door opened.

The High Septon came out. Barristan Selmy followed, sword at his hip, posture straight.

"Lord Tywin," the High Septon said. "You've come again. To negotiate this time, or to lay siege?"

"You seized the pyromancers. What do you intend to do with them?"

"What do I intend?" The High Septon folded his hands in front of him. "To ensure King's Landing is not burned to ash by wildfire. That was your duty, my lord. But you've been busy fighting wars, and you had no time to look into what your daughter buried beneath this city."

The corner of Tywin's mouth pressed flat. "Hand over the pyromancers. Or else—"

"Or else what? You'll surround the Sept, stand in the square all afternoon as you did last time, and then ride away?"

Tywin watched him. The man was immovable. He was raising his hand to order a direct assault.

The side door opened.

Lancel Lannister stepped out.

He had someone in his grip.

When Cersei was dragged into the open, her clothes were already in ruins. The roughspun dress had been torn from the shoulder all the way down to the waist, bare skin exposed in a wide ragged strip.

She had crossed her arms over her breasts. The septas had stripped her of her own garments and put her in roughspun hemp. The humiliation of wearing it had broken her, and she had torn the dress apart herself. Truly, she had no one to blame.

She must be regretting it very much now.

Lancel shoved her down onto the steps and forced her to her knees. She knelt on the stone, knees pressed into the wet snow, both arms hugged across her chest, lips going purple.

Lancel drew a short sword and laid the blade across her throat.

"Uncle. If you attack, I will kill Cersei."

Cersei lifted her head from where she knelt and looked at Tywin. Her lips were trembling. Her chin was trembling.

"Lancel," she said. "You told me you loved me. You said you would protect me."

"Whore!" A woman's voice from among the Poor Fellows. Women always find the sharpest stones when another woman is already down.

Cersei did not react. There would be more insults. Worse ones. Nothing made these people happier than mocking their betters.

Tywin watched his daughter kneeling in the slush, half-naked, lips blue, a blade at her throat.

"Lancel. You have chosen to walk this road to its end, against your own blood?"

The hand holding the sword was steady.

"Father, mother — neither holds a candle to the High Septon. I gave up the world long ago. I belong to the Seven now."

Tywin turned his head slightly. His voice dropped.

"Then at least give her a blanket."

Lancel did not move.

He pressed the blade a little closer to Cersei's neck.

"Harlot!" Another woman's voice, sharp from somewhere in the crowd.

"Her teats are loose and sagging," a man's voice said. "My wife's are firmer."

Laughter began to spread. A few low sounds at first. Then it swelled.

Cersei bit down on her lower lip. She bit hard. The teeth marks sank into the flesh.

The standoff held.

Snow came down heavier. It settled on the High Septon's gray robes, on Tywin's gold-and-crimson pauldrons, on the flat of Lancel's blade.

Tywin did not move. He did not order the assault, and he did not turn away.

Then a sound came from the direction of the Street of Silent Sisters.

It came from underground first. A low, dense concussion, and then it blew open, and the ground shuddered underfoot.

Everyone in the square turned at once. A column of thick smoke climbed above the rooftops, threaded through with green light.

Tywin's eyes narrowed.

Wildfire.

Someone was setting off the wildfire.

He raised one hand and cut it down.

"Attack."

The Westerlands knights drew in unison. Steel leaving scabbards drowned out the crowd's shouts.

The first rank charged across the snow toward the Sept's main doors.

Lancel's sword hand moved. Cersei squeezed her eyes shut.

The blade did not open her throat.

Lancel pulled the sword back, grabbed Cersei by the shoulder, shoved her through the doorway, and stepped back into the recess himself.

At the same moment, an arrow drove into the High Septon's left shoulder.

He lurched. Blood soaked through the gray wool immediately, spreading into a dark wet bloom.

Barristan Selmy was already there.

He swept his sword across the path of the next arrow. The shaft cracked in two against the blade and dropped into the snow.

His left hand closed around the High Septon's good arm and hauled him back through the doors.

The 2 oak doors swung shut before the knights reached the steps. The bar dropped. A single heavy thud.

Inside, the Sept was much darker than the square.

The High Septon slid down the stone wall and sat on the floor, his left hand pressed over the wound in his right shoulder, blood welling between his fingers.

Barristan crouched beside him and tore a strip from the hem of his robe, pressing it hard against the wound. "Don't move."

"Never mind me." The High Septon's voice was still level, but his face had gone the color of old wax. "Go write the letter. Write to Dragonstone. Tell the Horse Lord to march now."

"You said two days."

"There is no time." He spoke through clenched teeth. "Tywin has begun his assault. The wildfire caches have been found. If your men do not come immediately — once Tywin seals this city, there will never be another chance."

Barristan looked at him for two breaths.

Then he stood, turned, and walked into the study behind the side corridor.

He moved quickly. Ink splattered across the parchment when he dipped the quill and he did not stop to blot it.

He wrote short. The script was rough. Only what mattered: Tywin attacking. Wildfire has exploded. Attack King's Landing. Now.

He rolled the parchment tight and pushed it into the small cylinder fixed to the leg of a gray-feathered raven.

He shoved the window open. Wind and snow drove in and swept the papers off the desk.

Barristan turned his body to shield the bird. The raven struggled against his hands for a moment — then it was gone, wings beating hard, swallowed by the gray-white sky.

➤ Next: The Dog and the Dragon