The king's face flushed as he shouted excitedly, "Cut off all their heads! I want-"
"What is going on?" The Imp hurried up onto the Red Keep's battlements too. Because of the earlier riot, he no longer dared stay at a brothel for the time being. He looked down at the wall of people, the sea of bodies. Besides the Imp, Cersei also arrived in a desperate hurry.
Yet the crowd's curses only grew louder. "Whore, the Kingslayer's whore!" "Freak, Halfman!" "The Hand who means to starve King's Landing!"
The Imp looked down at the crowd, his head swimming.
"Who made up these rumors?" Anger flared in his heart. Rosby had been stripped bare? That was vicious.
Stones, dung, and all manner of filth hurtled viciously toward the battlements: pebbles, rotten eggs, ragged clothes. "Give us food!" a woman cried. "Bread!" shouted a man behind her. "We want bread, bastard!" In an instant, a thousand voices shouted together.
"Fuck, how did King's Landing end up like this?" The Imp's head ached.
"Kill them! I want them all killed. Get my dog on his horse. Send in the cavalry!" the king cursed incessantly.
"Shut up." Exhausted in body and mind, the Imp dragged the king somewhere the starving crowd could not see and slapped him. "Every time, you
turn crossbows on them. How can you expect them to behave?"
"They are traitors!" the king roared. "They insulted me! They attacked me!"
"That is because your dog wants to kill people, and your crossbows are killing people too. Don't provoke an angry, starving mob. Do you think they will let you kill them one by one?" Tyrion looked at his nephew, bitterly disappointed in him. Thousands of arms waved among the starving people below, and perhaps more people were burning, killing, and