"I'm sorry for your loss as well, Joffrey.

"What loss?"

"Your royal father? A large fierce man with a black beard; you'll recall him if you try. He was king before you."

"He's been taken by the Starks and we've lost Riverrun and now her stupid brother is calling himself a king."

"All sorts of people are calling themselves kings these days."

"Yes. Well. I am pleased you're not dead, Uncle. Did you bring me a gift for my name day?"

"I did. My wits."

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"Is it grief for your lord father that makes you so sad?"

"My father was a traitor. And my brother and lady mother are traitors as well. I am loyal to my beloved Joffrey."

"No doubt. As loyal as a deer surrounded by wolves."

"Crowns do queer things to the heads beneath them."

"Did you think I was as blind as Father? Who you lie with is no matter to me… although it doesn't seem quite just that you should open your legs for one brother and not the other. Be gentle, Cersei, I'm only jesting with you. If truth be told, I'd sooner have a nice whore. I never understood what Jaime saw in you, apart from his own reflection."

"He did that himself. All we did was help. When Lancel saw that Robert was going after boar, he gave him strongwine. His favorite sour red, but fortified, three times as potent as he was used to. The great stinking fool loved it. He could have stopped swilling it down anytime he cared to, but no, he drained one skin and told Lancel to fetch another. The boar did the rest. You should have been at the feast, Tyrion. There has never been a boar so delicious. They cooked it with mushrooms and apples, and it tasted like triumph"

"So what will you do, m'lord, now that you're the Hand of the King?"

"Something Cersei will never expect. I'll do... justice."

"Robert was never the same after he put on that crown. Some men are like swords, made for fighting. Hang them up and they go to rust."

"A lord's one thing, a king's another. They will garb your brother Robb in silks, satins, and velvets of a hundred different colors, while you live and die in black ringmail. He will wed some beautiful princess and father sons on her. You'll have no wife, nor will you ever hold a child of your own blood in your arms. Robb will rule, you will serve. Men will call you a crow. Him they'll call Your Grace. Singers will praise every little thing he does, while your greatest deeds all go unsung. Tell me that none of this troubles you, Jon... and I'll name you a liar, and know I have the truth of it."

"And if it did trouble me, what might I do, bastard as I am?"

"What will you do? Bastard as you are?"

"Be troubled, and keep my vows."

"There are the terms. If she meets them, I'll give her peace. If not, I'll give her another Whispering Woods."

"I wish I had their faith. Crimson is a Lannister color."

"That thing's not crimson. Nor Tully red, the mud red of the river. That's blood up there, child, smeared across the sky."

"Our blood or theirs?"

"Was there ever a war where only one side bled?"

"The king, the priest, the rich man-who lives and who dies? Who will the swordsman obey? It's a riddle without an answer, or rather, too many answers. All depends on the man with the sword."

"And yet he is no one. He has neither crown nor gold nor favor of the gods, only a piece of pointed steel."

"That piece of steel is the power of life and death."

"Just so… yet if it is the swordsmen who rule us in truth, why do we pretend our kings hold the power? Why should a strong man with a sword ever obey a child king like Joffrey, or a wine-sodden oaf like his father?"

"Because these child kings and drunken oafs can call other strong men, with other swords."

"Then these other swordsmen have the true power. Or do they? Whence came their swords? Why do they obey?"

"Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less."

"So power is a mummer's trick?"

"A shadow on the wall, yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow."

"What are you, Varys? A spider, they say."

"Spies and informers are seldom loved, my lord. I am but a loyal servant of the realm."

"And a eunuch. Let us not forget that."

"I seldom do."

"We also have a sudden plague of holy men. The comet has brought forth all manner of queer priests, preachers, and prophets, it would seem. They beg in the winesinks and pot-shops and foretell doom and destruction to anyone who stops to listen."

"We are close on the three hundredth year since Aegon's Landing, I suppose it is only to be expected. Let them rant."

"They are spreading fear, my lord."

"I thought that was your job."

"How goes your recruiting?"

"Well enough. Three new men tonight."

"How do you know which ones to hire?"

"I look them over. I question them, to learn where they've fought and how well they lie. And then I give them a chance to kill me, while I do the same for them."

"Have you killed any?"

"No one we could have used."

"And if one of them kills you?"

"He'll be one you'll want to hire."

"Tell me, Bronn. If I told you to kill a babe . . . an infant girl, say, still at her mother's breast . . . would you do it? Without question?"

"Without question? No. I'd ask how much."

"Make it Ser Jaime the Kingslayer henceforth. Whatever else the man may be, he remains a knight. I don't know that we ought to call Robert my beloved brother either. He loved me no more than he had to, nor I him.

"A harmless courtesy, Your Grace,"

"A lie. Take it out."

If every captain was a king aboard his own ship, as was often said, it was small wonder they named the islands the land of ten thousand kings. And when you have seen your kings shit over the rail and turn green in a storm, it was hard to bend the knee and pretend they were gods.

"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."

"The longer Cersei waits, the angrier she'll become, and anger makes her stupid. I much prefer angry and stupid to composed and cunning."

"We have become swollen, bloated, foul. Brother couples with sister in the bed of kings, and the fruit of their incest capers in his palace to the piping of a twisted little monkey demon. Highborn ladies fornicate with fools and give birth to monsters! Even the High Septon has forgotten the gods! He bathes in scented waters and grows fat on lark and lamprey while his people starve! Pride comes before prayer, maggots rule our castles, and gold is all... but no more! The Rotten Summer is at an end, and the Whoremonger King is brought low! When the boar did open him, a great stench rose to heaven and a thousand snakes slid forth from his belly, hissing and biting!"

"How could Jaime let himself be captured by that boy? And Father, I trusted in him, foold that I am, but where is he now that he's wanted? What is he doing?"

"Making war."

"From behind the walls of Harrenhal? A curious way of fighting. It looks suspiciously like hiding."

"Look again."

"What else would you call it? Father sits in one castle, and Robb Stark sits in another, and no one does anything."

"There is sitting and there is sitting Each one waits for the other to move, but the lion is still, poised, his tail twitching, while the fawn is frozen by fear, bowels turned to jelly. No matter which way he bounds, the lion will have him, and he knows it."

"And you're quite certain that Father is the lion?"

"It's on all our banners."

"Harrenhal is strong and well situated."

"And King's Landing is not, as we both know perfectly well. While Father plays lion and fawn with the Stark boy, Renly marches up the roseroad. He could be at our gates any day now!"

"The city will not fall in a day. From Harrenhal it is a straight, swift march down the kingsroad. Renly will scarce have unlimbered his siege engines before Father takes him in the rear. His host will be the hammer, the city walls the anvil. it makes a lovely picture."

"And if Robb Stark marches?"

"Harrenhal is close enough to the fords of the Trident so that Roose Bolton cannot bring the northern foot across to join with the Young Wolf's horse. Stark cannot march on King's Landing without taking Harrenhal first, and even with Bolton he is not strong enough to do that. Meanwhile Father lives off smile. "Meanwhile Father lives off the fat of the riverlands, while our uncle Stafford gathers fresh levies at the Rock."

"How could you know all this? Did Father tell you his intentions when he sent you here?"

"No. I glanced at a map."

"Sweet sister, I ask you, if we weren't winning, would the Starks have sued for peace? The Young Wolf has sent us terms, you see. Unacceptable terms, to be sure, but still, a beginning. Would you care to see them?"

"Yes. How do you come to have them? They should have come to me."

"What else is a Hand for, if not to hand you things?"

"I pity them."

"Why? Look at them. They’re young and strong, full of life and laughter. And lust, aye, more lust than they know what to do with. There will be many a bastard bred this night, I promise you. Why pity?"

"Because it will not last. Because they are the knights of summer, and winter is coming."

"My father once told me that some men are not worth having. A bannerman who is brutal or unjust dishonors his liege lord as well as himself."

"Craster is his own man. He has sworn us no vows. Nor is he subject to our laws. Your heart is noble, Jon, but learn a lesson here. We cannot set the world to rights. That is not our purpose. The Night’s Watch has other wars to fight."

"Do you truly mean to send away all your guards, Lannister?"

"No, I mean to send away all mysister’s guards."

"The queen will never allow that."

"Oh, I think she may. I am her brother, and when you’ve known me longer, you’ll learn that I mean everything I say."

"Even the lies?"

"Especially the lies. Lord Petyr"

"It was Brienne. Ser Emmon Cuy swore as much before he died. You have my oath on that, Ser Cortnay."

"And what is that worth? You wear your cloak of many colors, I see. The one Renly gave you when you swore your oath to protect him. If he is dead, how is it you are not?"

"True or false, the Wall must be warned. And the king."

"Which king?"

"All of them. The true and the false alike. If they would claim the realm, let them defend it."

"Storm's End is fallen and Stannis is coming with fire and steel and the gods alone know what dark powers, and the good folks don't have Jaime to protect them, nor Robert nor Renly not Rhaegar nor their precious Knight of Flowers. Only me, the one they hate. The dwarf, the evil counselor, the twisted little monkey demon. I'm all that stands between them and chaos."

"Lord Bolton, he used to say a naked man has few secrets, but a flayed man's got none."

The flayed man was the sigil of House Bolton...

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