Part 1: The War of the Usurper - Tyrion & Tywin
Tyrion
Tyrion did not care for his new mother. Pruella Greenfield was the daughter of Garth Greenfield, a powerful Lannister bannerman, but Lord Tywin's marriage to her had been altogether unexpected. Tywin had infamously vowed not to marry after Tyrion's mother's death, and Tyrion had always known his father to be a man of his word.
That his father had abandoned that fervent pledge to a woman he had never let Tyrion forget did not bode well in the young boy's mind. It occurred to him that this might have something to do with his erstwhile brother. Jaime's oath to the Kingsguard showed no evidence of weakening, even as the war raged on. They were calling it "the War of the Usurper," now--Tyrion had heard his uncle Kevan say it when the man had visited Casterly Rock a few months after Tywin had made him the Lord of Castamere.
The Kingsguard swore an oath for life, or so the stories went. Perhaps Tywin had resigned himself to this fact, and had married merely to dispossess Tyrion of the Rock. Tyrion would not put it past his father. He would probably have to take the black, he thought, and make way for some bawling infant that had not killed the Lady Pruella in childbirth. Tyrion looked terrible in black. Perhaps the grumkins and snarks would be so offended by his appearance that they would run screaming back into the North. If they could even see him up on the Wall.
"Pay attention or, by the Father, I'll hit you," said Cersei. She was trying to teach him his sums. Tyrion had long since mastered most of them, but Cersei persisted regardless. She and the feckless Maester Gawen both tried to teach him, even though, in his opinion, he had long since exhausted their knowledge. He would have preferred to read his book on dragons, again.
"Do you think father will call the banners?" he asked Cersei. He was
not going to learn about sums today. Not if he could help it.
"What for?" asked Cersei.
"To crush the rebels."
"No," said Cersei.
"How do you know?" asked Tyrion.
"The Mad King himself asked for my hand in marriage. Father turned him down," answered Cersei.
Tyrion stared at her for a moment in awe and confusion.
"Father refused the King?" he asked.
"He did."
"But what does that have to do with not fighting rebels?"
"Well, if he intended to call the banners and march on the Stormlands or the Riverlands, he would have married me to the king. There'd be nothing to gain from making friends with men that are soon to be dead."
The door burst open and Maester Gawen rushed through it.
"Children!" he began, his face a mask of enthusiasm many years his junior.
"I'm not a child," said Cersei. She wasn't. Any fool could see that. Gawen could too, judging from the shade of purple he turned.
"My apologies, Lady Cersei."
"Forgiven, Maester Gawen. Do you have some news about the war?"
"Better than that, my lady," said the Maester. "This is about the winter."
Cersei and Tyrion exchanged a glance. The Maester was always going on about the weather. Supposedly, they had been in a winter for almost two years. And certainly, the months had gotten colder, and some of the crops had withered and a few smallfolk had gone hungry and maybe even died, but for the most part, it had been mild. There hadn't been any snow, at least, none that could be spoken of.
"What about the winter?" asked Tyrion.
"It's over, my lord! It's over!" The Maester looked expectantly from the boy's face to Cersei's and back again. There was a deep silence into which his expectations sank.
"Very good, Maester Gawen," said Cersei, finally, as if the Maester himself were responsible for the season's abatement. This seemed to do the trick. Gawen nodded.
"I came to you two first, my lord and lady, " he said. "These type of things always impress children more than adults. Now I'm off to tell your Lord Father." He turned around and scurried back through the door.
"I'm
not a child," said Cersei into the empty air he had left behind. Tyrion rolled his eyes, but she caught his look. The blow she gave him knocked him from his seat and nearly dislocated his jaw. She harrumphed and strode from the room.
"Perhaps I need some banners of my own," said Tyrion, after he was sure she was gone.
Tywin
Ser Illyn's swing was not what it once was. He was many years Tywin's junior, and yet age seemed to have taken a bite out of the man's stamina. Perhaps it had been last year's winter. Payne had taken ill, but a few weeks later, he had seemed as hale as ever. Tywin frowned as his captain of the guard attempted to land a cumbersome blow. Tywin parried it easily.
"Faster, man," he encouraged. "Fight harder. Do you want me to end up like Ned Stark?" In a battle in the Crownlands, the Lord of Winterfell had been set upon by a superior Tyrell force. The North had lost the battle, but Stark's men had managed to slip him from the field. Not before he'd taken a crushing blow to the head from a morningstar, however. They said he was now a slathering imbecile, led around by the hand by his lady wife and incapable of recognizing his infant son. Tywin had no intention of falling as the rebel had. The rebellion had stretched on for three years now, and the rebels had occupied only a few of the keeps and towns around King's Landing. But Targaryen forces had Storm's End besieged and rumor said that it was Stannis, not Robert, who held it. Where the man who had thrown the realm into chaos for a woman was, no one could say. Again, rumor spoke for truth--he was on the island of Tarth. He was in the Riverlands. He had holed up in the Eyrie with Lord Arryn. He sat by Ned Stark's bedside and cried like a woman for his friend.
Tywin did not care which was the truth. He had considered committing his forces to the war as well. Aerys would certainly welcome the appearance of Lannister forces. But now there was the matter of the expense of the undertaking. And with the rebels largely beaten, it seemed unwise to Tywin to pay to arm men only to send them to die in a war that was all but won.
Pictured: Very slow rebel progress
Now he regretted not marrying Cersei to Aerys. With a Lannister queen, Tywin would have commanded the respect of the other lords. But then he would have been father-in-law to Aerys. The man had insinuated vile things on Tywin and Joanna's wedding night. And in his paranoia he had removed Tywin as hand, replacing him with a series of imbeciles. Merryweather. Connington. It was Rhaegar that everyone knew was pulling the strings. It was Rhaegar to whom this victory would belong. Perhaps he did not regret refusing Aerys after all.
A strangled choking sound interrupted his thoughts and he looked up in time to see Ser Illyn drop his sword and fall to all fours, coughing. Tywin rushed forward and grabbed at Payne's shoulder. But when Payne turned towards him, he saw blood running down the man's chin and staining the chest of his hauberk. Tywin recoiled in shock, loosing his hold on Ser Illyn. The mute knight fell bodily to the ground, where he stayed as a another fit of blood-stained coughing overtook him.
Maester Gawen came to see him in the solar that night. "Ser Illyn sleeps," he said. "But I fear he will never wake again."
"What was it?" asked Tywin.
"A wasting sickness, my lord. They often seem to strike in the year after a winter, when the ground melts and the beasts wake again. He is as comfortable as I can make him, but I do not think he will last the night. Would you like to see him?"
"Is it safe?"
"While he sleeps, it should be. Provided you do not touch him."
"No," said Tywin, after a bit. "I trust your reports."
"Perhaps that is the most prudent thing, my lord," said Maester Gawen.
"It is not safe to touch him?" asked Tywin.
"I would not recommend it, my lord," said Gawen.
"I grabbed him in the courtyard," said Tywin.
The moment that the little Maester took in choosing his words told Tywin all he really cared to know next, but Gawen spoke anyway.
"I should think, that if you were wearing your armor, and touched only Ser Illyn's, you should be unscathed, my lord," he said.
"But you don't know."
"Not for certainty, my lord," the Maester said, staring down at his feet.
"Burn the body," said Tywin. "And don't let Cersei or Pruella anywhere near it or any rooms he's spent time in. I'll not have my daughter or my lady wife exposed to preventable dangers."
"As you command, my lord," said Maester Gawen. He turned and left. That he did not ask about Tyrion pleased Tywin. It showed him that, as much as the little Maester claimed to know, he was learning.
In the morning, the stableboys were burning Ser Illyn's corpse as Maester Gawen looked on. Tywin spent a month sweating every time he coughed, and forbidding Cersei from being in his presence. After two months, Ser Emmon Frey, his brother in-law, died from the same disease and Tywin spent another month with the same fear for his life and his daughter's. Cersei thought it was ridiculous, and she became so defiant that he was forced to put two guards on her, night and day, to keep her from slipping out and crossing a path that Payne or Frey had walked. Pruella was more agreeable. He sent her to stay with her father until Maester Gawen said she could return, which she did without complaint.
Such tragedies always came in threes, and this was no different, save for one detail. The third death did not touch one of Tywin's households. Instead, two months after Ser Emmon's death, a raven appeared from the North. Ned Stark was dead.
Coming up next: Cersei's marriage, Tyrion comes of age, and Rhaegar ends the War