Jaime Lannister wondered if his eyes had betrayed himself. Standing there as cold hail showered on him from the skies, watching Petyr Baelish’s blood run rivers to his feet, the look on Sansa Stark’s face. He could not tell if it was stony or shocked.
They had still not seen him, but he approached them with no signs of stopping. “…meant to slash his throat…” Sansa was telling Brienne, when growls of her bloody direwolf alerted them. Sansa turned and saw Jaime in the eye. She was silent, uncertain how to proceed. Brienne spoke. “It had to be done.”
Jaime looked at the fallen man again. Only the hilt was visible, protruding from his ear like the horns of a bull. The rest of the blade was lodged in his brains. A pool of crimson water filled Littlefinger’s mouth, still open in shock. He wondered if Tyrion had died like this.
“Why?” was all he could say. “This is treason…”
“What he did was treason.” Jaime looked up from Littlefinger’s corpse. Sansa was talking with much more vigor now. “He had to be stopped. A man like him could not be king.”
Jaime caught the glint of gold on the Iron Throne. He saw the crown rested there. The words of Sansa registered next.
King?
Jaime looked at Sansa. The girl had just realized what she had revealed, and quickly broke the glance. “They found her slain with the Clegane brothers,” Brienne said delicately. “Everyone in the Red Keep knows. I’m so sorry.”
For a second Jaime was twenty years back in time, when Aerys Targaryen lay in a pool of his own blood, the day his hell of rash judgments and the sneers of stuck-up men had begun. He had wondered if his sword slayed the Mad Queen, would the bards be kinder. He thought his sister could be the answer to his problems. The sister who made his hell livable, the sister who made it worse, the sister who deserved the best and the worst…
But Jaime had no time to be sorry. He heard quick sets of footsteps approaching the Throne Room. Dickon, Mhaegen and Qyburn, Jaime thought. It had to be. He thought of his lamentations when he saw the corpse of Daenerys. No, a firm voice in him said. His indecision would not ruin the life of another.
As the footsteps neared, Jaime plunged his left hand into Littlefinger’s bloody mouth. “What are you doing?” Sansa exclaimed, but Brienne was silent. She didn’t have to say it, but they both knew what he was doing, what he was about to do.
The direwolf bounded away as they came. It was not only the Small Council, but also Varys, Ellaria Sand and a few Dornishmen. They saw the dead Littlefinger, and then him. Jaime looked at them without flinching. “They tried to stop me,” he said, gesturing at Sansa and Brienne, “but after I learned he hired Sandor Clegane to kill my sister, there was only one way this was going to go.”
Their countenances changed from puzzlement to revulsion, a look he knew well. When a man starts slaying kings, he cannot stop, he could hear them think. It did not matter to him.
“Kill me and be done with it,” he said. Mayhaps he could jape with Tyrion or kill his sweet sister in the seven hells.
But, as the silence increased, Jaime realized no one knew what was to be done next. Slowly, all of their eyes went to the Iron Throne, as if hoping the chair of swords would start speaking and pass judgment on the Kingslayer.
Everyone saw it empty. No one dared seat it. What do you do when the conqueror wins the war, but loses their life? They all turned to her Hand.
Varys spoke, slicing through the cold silence. “If the roof of the Small Council Chamber is still intact, might I suggest we speak there?”
*
Comments