Ten-year-old Jaime stood at the end of the gallery, his golden hair like melted gold beneath the moonlight, his green eyes reflecting two ugly pig cages and his two younger brothers inside, one beautiful, the other ugly.
To see Prince Rhaegar, whom he idolized, he had deliberately returned early, riding without rest from Dorne.
He had missed them dearly, too, remembering holding his two tiny brothers before he left.
He had never expected...
That this would be the first sight to greet him.
His sword was sheathed, his hand resting on its hilt. He held back his trembling as his gaze passed from Tyrion's wretched, huddled figure to Leon's calmly upturned profile.
Leon read much in his silence: that mass of deep crimson anger and yellow shame, and something that was breaking...
His worship of his father, his faith in justice, or both.
"Jaime." Tyrion's voice was hoarse but delighted. "You're back."
Because of Tywin's rules, Jaime had actually spent more time with Tyrion.
Jaime did not answer. He suddenly turned and strode toward the hunting equipment room.
Before long, low voices came from inside. Then Tywin's voice drifted out, steady and cold:
"If you mean to plead for them, you can hang up there with them."
An unknown stretch of silence followed.
Jaime came out and passed before him, his steps quicker than when he arrived. He no longer looked at them.
Tyrion felt as though someone had clenched a fist around his heart.
But in the neighboring cage, Leon said softly, "He'll come back."
Tyrion buried his face in his knees again.
Not far away, Cersei stood at the other end of the gallery, on the boundary between shadow and moonlight, watching motionlessly for a long time.
Leon felt that gaze, like an icicle, like a needlepoint. He raised his head and met Cersei's green eyes.
For once, she neither gloated nor mocked them, nor did she kick them while they were down.
She looked at Tyrion and Leon in their cages, the two brothers who had cost her her mother, her father's patience, and her own standing.
Then she turned and left.
Tyrion did not understand that look.
But years later, he would see it again in the Red Keep at King's Landing-
When she looked at Margaery Tyrell, when she looked at any woman younger, more beautiful, and more favored than herself.
That look was called fear.
An unknown amount of time passed. Tyrion counted the cracks in the floor tiles three times, then counted the hangnails on his fingers twice.
There was nothing left to count.
"Leon." Tyrion spoke, his voice as hoarse as sandpaper scraping wood.
Leon's eyelashes stirred.
"Why did you make us..." Tyrion asked. "I mean... today, Lannisport."
Leon remained silent so long that Tyrion thought he would not answer.
"Because I wanted us to come," he said.
"You just wanted to come?"
Leon finally turned his head.
Through the gaps in the wicker, moonlight cut long, narrow shadows across his face.
"Tyrion," he said, "do you know why Tywin locked us up?"
Tyrion froze for a moment. "Because we disobeyed orders. Because we appeared before the prince."
"No." Leon's voice was soft, almost lost beneath the night wind. "Because we appeared."
Tyrion did not understand.
Leon turned his face away and looked up at the high window again.
"He could hide us in the deepest corner of Casterly Rock and tell everyone the Lannisters had only two children. As long as we never came out, no one would know we were deformed, ugly, damned..."
He paused. "...beautiful."
Tyrion opened his mouth and found he could not speak.
"But tonight," Leon continued, "there were over twenty people in the tavern. They saw you, saw me, saw Lord Lannister's two dwarf sons sitting across from the dragon prince."
He paused.
"Tomorrow, they'll spread the story throughout Lannisport. The day after, throughout the Westerlands. In another month, all of Westeros will know:
"Tywin Lannister fathered more than just Jaime and Cersei. He had two younger, more deformed dwarfs, hidden away for three years, not daring to show their faces."
Tyrion's breathing quickened.
"You deliberately led me into this the day before yesterday?" His voice trembled. "You deliberately ran to the tavern, deliberately let the prince see us, deliberately..."
"Yes," Leon said.
That single word was like a pebble dropped into a deep well.
Tyrion felt the well water churn. All the hurt, fear, and bewilderment of the past three years surged violently.
"Why?" His voice suddenly rose, shrill as a young beast's cry. "Do you know what could happen to us? Do you know how Father will punish us? Do you know..."
"Of course I know," Leon interrupted.
His voice was still soft, yet like a basin of ice water, it doused Tyrion's anger just before it erupted.
"I know."
He repeated, "But if we're never seen, we'll forever be nothing more than a crack in Casterly Rock's walls. Father can pretend we don't exist, strip us of our inheritance, bury us after we die in graves no one remembers."
He turned his head and looked straight at Tyrion.
"But after tonight, he can't."
Tyrion stared at him, his mismatched pupils contracting sharply in the moonlight.
"All the Westerlands will know we exist," Leon said. "All the Westerlands will know Tywin Lannister fathered two dwarfs.
"He can hate us, punish us, hang us in pig cages for everyone to stare at, but he can no longer pretend we were never born."
He paused. "That's leverage."
Tyrion's lips trembled.
He did not know whether he wanted to cry or laugh, whether he was angry or afraid, whether he wanted to strangle the madman before him... or throw himself forward and hug him.
"Leverage..." he murmured, repeating the word.
"Tyrion." Leon called his name.
Tyrion raised his head.
"We aren't livestock," Leon said, his voice far too steady for a three-year-old. "We're Lannisters. A lion doesn't stop being a lion because its legs are short."
He reached his hand out through a gap in the wicker.
Tyrion stared at that hand, then reached out and took it.
Two small hands, one short and thick, the other long and slender, clasped tightly through the gaps between the two pig cages.
The wicker wove an impassable barrier between them, but at that moment, the barrier seemed not to exist.
"From now on," Tyrion said hoarsely, "I don't want this anymore."
"Don't want what?"
"To wait for someone to save me."
Tyrion spoke as though every word had been gouged from his throat. "To keep hoping Father will love me one day. To hide behind a door, waiting for someone to push food inside."
He tightened his grip on Leon's hand. "I'm going to survive on my own," he said. "With my brain, with my tongue, with this damned, ugly, cursed body."
Leon looked at him.
In the moonlight, something entirely new appeared on three-year-old Tyrion Lannister's face.
He was no longer that pitiful child standing on tiptoe to peer through the gap in the door, hoping someone would come for him.
Anger. Anger tempered in ice.
"Good," Leon said. He gently squeezed Tyrion's fingers and withdrew his hand into his cage.
"Remember tonight," he said.
Tyrion turned toward the high window and gazed at that tiny patch of night sky, cut into fragments by iron bars.
He remembered.
In the latter half of the night, Tyrion began to shiver from the cold.
The sea wind from Lannisport poured in from the end of the gallery, damp and salty, piercing his skin.
His coarse outer garment was too thin, and the pig cage let in wind from every side. His knees and elbows had already turned blue-purple with cold.
He clenched his jaw, refusing to let his teeth chatter audibly.
Leon curled into a ball, yet he did not shiver-or rather, his shivering was faint and restrained, as though conserving every bit of warmth.
Tyrion heard faint footsteps in the distance.
In another four hours, the servants would begin sweeping the gallery. Then daylight would come, followed by another round of stares and humiliation.
He closed his eyes.
Another footstep.
But this one was lighter, very slow, deliberately cautious to keep leather boot soles from scraping against the flagstones.
Tyrion's eyes flew open, his heart pounding.
Was it a guard? Had Father changed his mind?
In the moonlight, a tall, slender figure approached from the end of the gallery, golden-haired and green-eyed.
Jaime Lannister stood between the two pig cages.
In his arms were two rolled woolen blankets, old and frayed at the corners but washed clean, along with a bulging leather waterskin, probably filled with warm water.
He stuffed one blanket into Tyrion's cage and the other into Leon's, then hung the waterskin from the wicker of Tyrion's cage door.
Ten-year-old Jaime crouched between the cages, his elbows resting on his knees, his head tilted upward.
Moonlight fell across his face, with only his golden hair giving off a faint, soft glow.
"Jaime..." Tyrion began, his throat feeling as though it had been scoured with sandpaper.
"Don't speak," Jaime said.
His voice was very low, as though squeezed from his chest. "I was never here, and you never saw me. The wind blew the blankets here."
Tears suddenly spilled from Tyrion's eyes. He frantically wiped them with his sleeve, but the more he wiped, the more came.
Jaime stood, reached out on tiptoe, and touched the back of Tyrion's hand, just once, very lightly.
Then he turned to Leon, who was wrapped in his blanket with only his eyes showing.
Those pale violet eyes were as calm as two deep pools beneath the moonlight. There were no tears, no fear, only something Jaime could not understand.
"Aren't you going to ask why I came?" Jaime said.
"You're already here, aren't you?" Leon said.
Jaime fell silent for a while, then spoke. "I begged him," he said suddenly, his voice so hoarse he sounded like another person. "After Father went back, I went to his study and knelt on the floor to beg him. I said you were still little and didn't know any better. If he had to punish someone, he should punish me."
He did not say how his father had answered, but his knees had trembled when he stood up... perhaps they still hurt.
Leon looked at him, at that flickering golden glow, loyalty leaping within it.
"Jaime," he said, "you'll be a good knight."
Jaime's head jerked up.
His eyes reddened. He rubbed his nose hard, stood, and turned his back on the two pig cages.
"Hide the blankets before morning," he said, his voice steady again. "Don't let Father know I came."
He took three steps, then stopped again.
"There are two of you." He did not turn around. "There's only one of me, so some things... I can't do yet." He paused. "But someday I will."
His figure disappeared at the end of the gallery.
In the moonlight, the filthy white cloak he had commissioned himself looked like a flag not yet raised.
Tyrion buried his face in the woolen blanket. It smelled of sunshine and lavender; it had come from Jaime's own room.
He cried silently for a long time.
In the neighboring cage, Leon pulled his blanket tight and closed his eyes.
His hand still reached outside the cage, gripping the gold dragon hidden in his sleeve.
In the morning sunshine, the Tourney at Lannisport continued in full fervor.
The golden awnings over the royal stand had all been opened. Today was the day of the last semifinals and the final.
Aerys II Targaryen finally emerged from his rest and arrived at the tourney grounds.
It was the first time Cersei had observed the king so closely.
He was far older than in his portraits. At thirty-three, he looked over seventy.
Sparse white hair clung to his grayish-blue scalp, and in his sunken sockets, violet eyes burned with feverish excitement.
He kept smiling, far too often, far too nervously, like some mechanical device that could not stop.
Lord Tywin personally poured the king's wine.
His bearing was flawless, his back straight, his arm steady. Not a drop spilled as the wine flowed into the crystal cup.
Aerys accepted the cup but did not drink. He stared at the golden liquid inside, muttering to himself.
Cersei could not make out what he was saying.
But she saw her father's lowered eyelids.
That was the first time she realized her father could hate, too.
That afternoon, Lord Tywin rose from his seat and walked to the center of the royal stand, facing Aerys and the tens of thousands of nobles and commoners throughout the grounds.
His voice was not loud, yet it carved into the air of the grounds like a chisel:
"Your Grace, the Westerlands have served the royal house for three hundred years. Today, House Lannister wishes to inscribe its loyalty upon the Targaryen bloodline in a deeper way."
He paused briefly.
"I ask that my daughter Cersei be betrothed to Prince Rhaegar."
Everyone held their breath.
Standing behind her father, Cersei felt countless gazes burn against her cheeks like spotlights.
Her back was as straight as her father's sword, her chin raised at a perfect angle.
Ten years of waiting, every fantasy, every scrap hidden beneath her pillow, came together in the poised smile on her lips.
She would become queen.
She would give birth to silver-gold-haired princes.
She would stand beside the most dazzling man in the world and make every other woman burn to ashes with envy.
Then Aerys II laughed again.
The laughter squeezed up from deep in his throat, shrill and broken, like shards of glass scraping over stone slabs.
He rocked back and forth with laughter, tears sliding from his sunken eyes, while the Kingsguard beside him exchanged glances.
"Tywin," the king finally stopped laughing and wiped the corners of his eyes with his sleeve, "you are always so... generous."
He paused, his lips spreading to reveal yellowed teeth.
"You are my most capable servant, Tywin, but there is no reason for a servant's daughter to wed her master's heir."
Cersei's smile froze on her face. She felt the blood drain swiftly from the top of her head, pouring into some cold, empty abyss.
Her ears buzzed, like the last sound a drowning person heard before seawater filled their ears.
A servant's daughter.
Her father said nothing.
Tywin Lannister merely lowered his eyes, like a stone statue weathered by a thousand years of wind and rain.
He returned to his seat and did not speak again.
The entire gathering was as silent as a tomb.
Some tried to change the subject, some whispered among themselves, and others stole glances at Cersei's pale face with sympathy, curiosity, or malicious delight.
Cersei's gaze passed over the crowd, over the lists, over all those lowered or flickering eyes.
She looked at Rhaegar Targaryen.
Rhaegar sat on the other side of the royal stand, speaking quietly with Princess Elia beside him.
His head was slightly tilted, his long silver-gold hair concealing half his face.
He did not look at her.
Not once, from beginning to end.
Cersei did not attend the remaining contests.
She locked herself in a room on the highest floor of the castle in Lannisport, pushed open the window, and watched the Sunset Sea turn from gold to red, then from red to gray.
Her father sent no one to ask after her. Uncle Gerion knocked, but she did not answer.
Uncle Tygett was probably still smarting over the humiliation of that lance, with no time to spare for his niece's girlish concerns.
Uncle Kevan accompanied her father to the Small Council meeting.
Only Jaime remained.
Ten-year-old Jaime stood outside the door, neither speaking nor leaving, like a silent statue.
At last, Cersei opened the door, and the sister and brother sat side by side on the windowsill, gazing at the distant sea.
"He'll regret it," Jaime said.
"Who?"
"That old madman."
Cersei did not ask, "Which old madman?" She merely rested her head on Jaime's shoulder.
That year, Jaime had not yet donned the white cloak.
At that time, he still believed a sword could protect everything.
At that moment, he could still promise his sister, "When I become a Kingsguard, I'll cut down anyone who dares bully you."
Cersei did not point it out.
The Kingsguard protected the king, not a servant's daughter, and the king was that "old madman."
She only said, "All right."
Cersei remembered the sea breeze that day for the rest of her life.
The tourney ended on the seventh day.
Rhaegar Targaryen did not win the championship. He lost to Arthur Dayne in the final.
It was not that he lacked the skill; he yielded of his own accord, telling the judge that Ser Arthur's swordsmanship was more deserving of the champion's honor.
Rhaegar stood beside the winners' dais, applauding calmly. No one knew what he was thinking.
Cersei watched him from afar. The poised smile had returned to her face, and her back remained as straight as her father's sword.
She chewed the words "a servant's daughter" to pieces, swallowed them, and digested them into fresh calcium in her bones.
She no longer waited for Rhaegar's gaze. She learned to wait, to wait for that younger, more beautiful woman to appear.
To wait for the prophecy to come true.
Waiting...
This power would slip from old, cold hands, and she would seize it firmly.
In the carriage back to Casterly Rock, Cersei watched the golden fields flying past the window. "Father, will we take revenge?"
Tywin remained silent for a long time.
Yet the silence itself was an answer.