Grand Maester Pycelle had been old for as long as she had known him, but he seemed to have aged another hundred years in the past three nights. It took him an eternity to bend his creaky knee before her, and once he had he could not rise again until Ser Osmund jerked him to his feet.

Cersei studied him with displeasure. “Lord Qyburn informs me that Lord Gyles has coughed his last.”

“Yes, Your Grace. I did my best to ease his passing.”

“Did you?” The queen turned to Lady Merryweather. “I did say I wanted Rosby alive, did I not?”

“You did, Your Grace.”

“Ser Osmund, what is your recollection of the conversation?”

“You commanded Grand Maester Pycelle to save the man, Your Grace. We all heard.”

Pycelle’s mouth opened and closed. “Your Grace must know, I did all that could be done for the poor man.”

“As you did for Joffrey? And his father, my own beloved husband? Robert was as strong as any man in the Seven Kingdoms, yet you lost him to a boar. Oh, and let us not forget Jon Arryn. No doubt you would have killed Ned Stark as well, if I had let you keep him longer. Tell me, maester, was it at the Citadel that you learned to wring your hands and make excuses?”

Her voice made the old man flinch. “No man could have done more, Your Grace. I . . . I have always given leal service.”

“When you counseled King Aerys to open his gates as my father’s host approached, was that your notion of leal service?”

“That . . . I misjudged the . . .”

“Was that good counsel?”

“Your Grace must surely know . . .”

“What I know is that when my son was poisoned you proved to be of less use than Moon Boy. What I know is that the crown has desperate need of gold, and our lord treasurer is dead.”

The old fool seized upon that. “I . . . I shall draw up a list of men suitable to take Lord Gyles’s place upon the council.”

“A list.” Cersei was amused by his presumption. “I can well imagine the sort of list you would provide me. Greybeards and grasping fools and Garth the Gross.” Her lips tightened. “You have been much in Lady Margaery’s company of late.”

“Yes. Yes, I . . . Queen Margaery has been most distraught about Ser Loras. I provide Her Grace with sleeping draughts and . . . other sorts of potions.”

“No doubt. Tell me, was it our little queen who commanded you to kill Lord Gyles?”

“K-kill?” Grand Maester Pycelle’s eyes grew as big as boiled eggs. “Your Grace cannot believe . . . it was his cough, by all the gods, I . . . Her Grace would not . . . she bore Lord Gyles no ill will, why would Queen Margaery want him . . .”

“. . . dead? Why, to plant another rose on Tommen’s council. Are you blind or bought? Rosby stood in her way, so she put him in his grave. With your connivance.”

“Your Grace, I swear to you, Lord Gyles perished from his cough.” His mouth was quivering. “My loyalty has always been to the crown, to the realm . . . t-to House Lannister.”

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.”

“How? Qyburn has eyes on her day and night. Her serving men take my coin, but bring us only trifles. Yet no one has seen this lover. The ears outside her door hear singing, laughter, gossip, nothing of any use.”

“Margaery is too shrewd to be caught so easily,” said Lady Merryweather. “Her women are her castle walls. They sleep with her, dress her, pray with her, read with her, sew with her. When she is not hawking or riding she is playing come-into-my-castle with little Alysanne Bulwer. Whenever men are about, her septa will be with her, or her cousins.”

“She must rid herself of her hens sometime,” the queen insisted. A thought struck her. “Unless her ladies are part of it as well . . . not all of them, perhaps, but some.”

“The cousins?” Even Taena sounded doubtful. “All three are younger than the little queen, and more innocent.”

“Wantons clad in maiden’s white. That only makes their sins more shocking. Their names will live in shame.” Suddenly the queen could almost taste it. “Taena, your lord husband is my justiciar. The two of you must sup with me, this very night.” She wanted this done quickly, before Margaery took it in her little head to return to Highgarden, or sail to Dragonstone to be with her wounded brother at death’s door. “I shall command the cooks to roast a boar for us. And of course we must have some music, to help with our digestion.”

Taena was very quick. “Music. Just so.”

“Go and tell your lord husband and make arrangements for the singer,” Cersei urged. “Ser Osmund, you may remain. We have much and more to discuss. I shall have need of Qyburn too.”

Sad to say, the kitchens proved to have no wild boar on hand, and there was not time enough to send out hunters. Instead, the cooks butchered one of the castle sows, and served them ham studded with cloves and basted with honey and dried cherries. It was not what Cersei wanted, but she made do. Afterward they had baked apples with a sharp white cheese. Lady Taena savored every bite. Not so Orton Merryweather, whose round face remained blotched and pale from broth to cheese. He drank heavily and kept stealing glances at the singer.

“A great pity about Lord Gyles,” Cersei said at last. “I daresay none of us will miss his coughing, though.”

“No. No, I’d think not.”

“We shall have need of a new lord treasurer. If the Vale were not so unsettled, I would bring back Petyr Baelish, but . . . I am minded to try Ser Harys in the office. He can do no worse than Gyles, and at least he does not cough.”

“Ser Harys is the King’s Hand,” said Taena.

Ser Harys is a hostage, and feeble even at that. “It is time that Tommen had a more forceful Hand.”

Lord Orton lifted his gaze from his wine cup. “Forceful. To be sure.” He hesitated. “Who . . . ?”

“You, my lord. It is in your blood. Your grandsire took my own father’s place as Hand to Aerys.” Replacing Tywin Lannister with Owen Merryweather had proved to be akin to replacing a destrier with a donkey, to be sure, but Owen had been an old done man when Aerys raised him, amiable if ineffectual. His grandson was younger, and . . . Well, he has a strong wife. It was a pity Taena could not serve as Hand. She was thrice the man her husband was, and far more amusing. She was also Myrish-born and female, however, so Orton must needs suffice. “I have no doubt that you are more able than Ser Harys.” The contents of my chamber pot are more able than Ser Harys. “Will you consent to serve?”

“I . . . yes, of course. Your Grace does me great honor.”

A greater one than you deserve. “You have served me ably as justiciar, my lord. And will continue to do so through these . . . trying times ahead.” When she saw that Merryweather had grasped her meaning, the queen turned to smile at the singer. “And you must be rewarded as well, for all the sweet songs you have played for us whilst we ate. The gods have given you a gift.”

The singer bowed. “Your Grace is kind to say so.”

“Not kind,” said Cersei, “merely truthful. Taena tells me that you are called the Blue Bard.”

“I am, Your Grace.” The singer’s boots were supple blue calfskin, his breeches fine blue wool. The tunic he wore was pale blue silk slashed with shiny blue satin. He had even gone so far as to dye his hair blue, in the Tyroshi fashion. Long and curly, it fell to his shoulders and smelled as if it had been washed in rosewater. From blue roses, no doubt. At least his teeth are white. They were good teeth, not the least bit crooked.

“You have no other name?”

A hint of pink suffused his cheeks. “As a boy, I was called Wat. A fine name for a plowboy, less fitting for a singer.”

The Blue Bard’s eyes were the same color as Robert’s. For that alone, she hated him. “It is easy to see why you are Lady Margaery’s favorite.”

“Her Grace is kind. She says I give her pleasure.”

“Oh, I’m certain of it. Might I see your lute?”

“If it please Your Grace.” Beneath the courtesy, there was a faint hint of unease, but he handed her the lute all the same. One does not refuse the queen’s request.

Cersei plucked a string and smiled at the sound. “Sweet and sad as love. Tell me, Wat . . . the first time you took Margaery to bed, was that before she wed my son, or after?”

For a moment he did not seem to understand. When he did, his eyes grew large. “Your Grace has been misinformed. I swear to you, I never—”

“Liar!” Cersei smashed the lute across the singer’s face so hard the painted wood exploded into shards and splinters. “Lord Orton, summon my guards and take this creature to the dungeons.”

Orton Merryweather’s face was damp with fear. “This . . . oh, infamy . . . he dared seduce the queen?”

“I fear it was the other way around, but he is a traitor all the same. Let him sing for Lord Qyburn.”

The Blue Bard went white. “No.” Blood dripped from his lip where the lute had torn it. “I never . . .” When Merryweather seized him by the arm, he screamed, “Mother have mercy, no.”

“I am not your mother,” Cersei told him.

Even in the black cells, all they got from him were denials, prayers, and pleas for mercy. Before long, blood was streaming down his chin from all his broken teeth, and he wet his dark blue breeches three times over, yet still the man persisted in his lies. “Is it possible we have the wrong singer?” Cersei asked.

“All things are possible, Your Grace. Have no fear. The man will confess before the night is done.” Down here in the dungeons, Qyburn wore roughspun wool and a blacksmith’s leather apron. To the Blue Bard he said, “I am sorry if the guards were rough with you. Their courtesies are sadly lacking.” His voice was kind, solicitous. “All we want from you is the truth.”

“I’ve told you the truth,” the singer sobbed. Iron shackles held him hard against the cold stone wall.

“We know better.” Qyburn had a razor in his hand, its edge gleaming faintly in the torchlight. He cut away the Blue Bard’s clothing, until the man was naked but for his high blue boots. The hair between his legs was brown, Cersei was amused to see. “Tell us how you pleasured the ............