Qyburn did not stop. When Cersei ignored him in corridors, he pursued her till Gregor Clegane frightened him away. He sent letters when she told him she was too busy. She had avoided the old fool for as long as possible, but after a while, it was time to put petty suspicions aside and give him the time. I wonder when that will happen with Jaime.
As they went deeper into the dungeons, the glint in the Master of Whisperer’s Eye grew brighter. “You will not regret this, Your Grace,” he kept saying in fervent voices.
“You better hope not, Lord Qyburn,” she replied. Her moods were getting increasingly fickle when the Small Council was informed of the Dragon Queen’s capture of the Riverlands. “The Roast of Riverrun, they’re calling it,” Dickon Tarly said in awed voices, clearly not reading the room. Cersei had anticipated that Riverrun would be sacked, but the manner of her victory filled her with rage.
Not fright, rage.
“And where the fuck did the Blackfish come from?” she remembered demanding from her Lord Hand. “I thought you killed him at the Twins!” To which the sneaky worm’s astute reply came, “I apologize, Your Grace, but it was Ser Jaime Lannister who commanded the forces. Mayhaps you can ask him,” he said, full well knowing she would not.
The Roast of Riverrun had kept Cersei Lannister dangerously on edge. Qyburn exhibited fear in every other sentence, while Dickon awe. Littlefinger was always not trustworthy, but he now seemed a lot less useful. Mhaegen harped on about the ethics of war, and it was not until Cersei casually hinted at Ser Gregor did she watch her tongue.
But it was Jaime’s shows of disinterest that worried her. “We shared a womb, came into this world together,” Cersei remembered telling that pious cunt Ned Stark with pride, a memory now poison in her veins. The only words they now exchanged were jabs in Small Councils.
But Cersei would not break first. He dare not leave me. He ought to come back, and apologize on bended knee.
Qyburn’s journey into the Red Keep’s bowels took an abrupt halt. He lit a fire. “This is only one, Your Grace, but I have ten more in the making,” he said, when the darkness fled to reveal the giant crossbow. “If you would stand aside.”
Cersei now saw what the ballista was pointed at. “Balerion?”
Qyburn nodded. “The dragon died around two hundred years ago, and its skull has been weakened by the sands of time, but it is the best measure of the threat we are against.”
When Cersei moved aside, Qyburn worked at the rear of the ballista. While he did, he spoke. “It has been long said that the weakest spot of a dragon is its gullet. I disagree. I have been studying the skulls of dragons whenever possible, and surprisingly, they seem more alike to humans than we would think. As such, if I try to fire arrows into the dragon’s forehead or chest, I am met with little success.”
He pulled down a lever, and among the stale air of the dungeon, a swift wind flew. When Cersei looked, the bow in the ballista had gone, and was deep into the eye of Balerion, stretching to where his brain would have been. “Ten is too less,” she said shortly.
*
Comments