A Feast for Crows полностью

In that order? Pycelle’s fear was palpable. He is ripe enough. Time to squeeze the fruit and taste the juice. “If you are as leal as you claim, why are you lying to me? Do not trouble to deny it. You began to dance attendance on Maid Margaery before Ser Loras went to Dragonstone, so spare me further fables about how you want only to console our good-daughter in her grief. What brings you to the Maidenvault so often? Not Margaery’s vapid conversation, surely? Are you courting that pox-faced septa of hers? Diddling little Lady Bulwer? Do you play the spy for her, informing on me to serve her plots?”

“I. I obey. A maester takes an oath of service. ”

“A grand maester swears to serve the realm. ”

“Your Grace, she. she is the queen. ”

“I am the queen.”

“I meant. she is the king’s wife, and. ”

“I know who she is. What I want to know is why she has need of you. Is my good-daughter unwell?”

“Unwell?” The old man plucked at the thing he called a beard, that patched growth of thin white hair sprouting from the loose pink wattles under his chin. “N-not unwell, Your Grace, not as such. My oaths forbid me to divulge. ”

“Your oaths will be of small comfort in the black cells,” she warned him. “I’ll hear the truth, or you’ll wear chains.”

Pycelle collapsed to his knees. “I beg you. I was your lord father’s man, and a friend to you in the matter of Lord Arryn. I could not survive the dungeons, not again. ”

“Why does Margaery send for you?”

“She desires. she. she. ”

“Say it!”

He cringed. “Moon tea,” he whispered. “Moon tea, for. ”

“I know what moon tea is for.” There it is. “Very well. Get off those saggy knees and try to remember what it was to be a man.” Pycelle struggled to rise, but took so long about it that she had to tell Osmund Kettleblack to give him another yank. “As to Lord Gyles, no doubt our Father Above will judge him justly. He left no children?”

“No children of his body, but there is a ward. ”

“. not of his blood.” Cersei dismissed that annoyance with a flick of her hand. “Gyles knew of our dire need for gold. No doubt he told you of his wish to leave all his lands and wealth to Tommen.” Rosby’s gold would help refresh their coffers, and Rosby’s lands and castle could be bestowed upon one of her own as a reward for leal service. Lord Waters, perhaps. Aurane had been hinting at his need for a seat; his lordship was only an empty honor without one. He had his eye on Dragonstone, Cersei knew, but there he aimed too high. Rosby would be more suitable to his birth and station.

“Lord Gyles loved His Grace with all his heart,” Pycelle was saying, “but. his ward. ”

“. will doubtless understand, once he hears you speak of Lord Gyles’s dying wish. Go, and see it done.”

“If it please Your Grace.” Grand Maester Pycelle almost tripped over his own robes in his haste to leave.

Lady Merryweather closed the door behind him. “Moon tea,” she said, as she turned back to the queen. “How foolish of her. Why would she do such a thing, take such a risk?”

“The little queen has appetites that Tommen is as yet too young to satisfy.” That was always a danger, when a grown woman was married to a child. Even more so with a widow. She may claim that Renly never touched her, but I will not believe it. Women only drank moon tea for one reason; maidens had no need for it at all. “My son has been betrayed. Margaery has a lover. That is high treason, punishable by death.” She could only hope that Mace Tyrell’s prune-faced harridan of a mother lived long enough to see the trial. By insisting that Tommen and Margaery be wed at once, Lady Olenna had condemned her precious rose to a headsman’s sword. “Jaime made off with Ser Ilyn Payne. I suppose I shall need to find a new King’s Justice to snick her head off.”

“I’ll do it,” offered Osmund Kettleblack, with an easy grin. “Margaery’s got a pretty little neck. A good sharp sword will go right through it.”

“It would,” said Taena, “but there is a Tyrell army at Storm’s End and another at Maidenpool. They have sharp swords as well.”

I am awash in roses. It was vexing. She still had need of Mace Tyrell, if not his daughter. At least until such time as Stannis is defeated. Then I shan’t need any of them. But how could she rid herself of the daughter without losing the father? “Treason is treason,” she said, “but we must have proof, something more substantial than moon tea. If she is proved to be untrue, even her own lord father must condemn her, or her shame becomes his own.”

Kettleblack chewed on one end of his mustache. “We need to catch them during the deed.”