“And for that gift we honor him in our prayers,” the High Septon said, “but the poor need food in their bellies more than we need gold and crystal on our head. That crown has been sold. So have the others in our vaults, and all our rings, and our robes of cloth-of-gold and cloth-of-silver. Wool will keep a man as warm. That is why the Seven gave us sheep.”
He is utterly mad. The Most Devout must have been mad as well, to elevate this creature. mad, or terrified of the beggars at their doors. Qyburn’s whisperers claimed that Septon Luceon had been nine votes from elevation when those doors had given way, and the sparrows came pouring into the Great Sept with their leader on their shoulders and their axes in their hands.
She fixed the small man with an icy stare. “Is there someplace where we may speak more privily, Your Holiness?”
The High Septon surrendered his scrub brush to one of the Most Devout. “If Your Grace will follow us?”
He led her through the inner doors, into the sept proper. Their footsteps echoed off the marble floor. Dust motes swam in the beams of colored light slanting down through the leaded glass of the great dome. Incense sweetened the air, and beside the seven altars candles shone like stars. A thousand twinkled for the Mother and near as many for the Maid, but you could count the Stranger’s candles on two hands and still have fingers left.
Even here the sparrows had invaded. A dozen scruffy hedge knights were kneeling before the Warrior, beseeching him to bless the swords they had piled at his feet. At the Mother’s altar, a septon was leading a hundred sparrows in prayer, their voices as distant as waves upon the shore. The High Septon led Cersei to where the Crone raised her lantern. When he knelt before the altar, she had no choice but to kneel beside him. Mercifully, this High Septon was not as long-winded as the fat one had been. I should be grateful for that much, I suppose.
His High Holiness made no move to rise when his prayer was done. It would seem they must confer upon their knees. A small man’s ploy, she thought, amused. “High Holiness,” she said, “these sparrows are frightening the city. I want them gone.”
“Where should they go, Your Grace?”
There are seven hells, any one of them will serve. “Back where they came from, I would imagine.”
“They came from everywhere. As the sparrow is the humblest and most common of the birds, they are the humblest and most common of men.”
They are common, we agree on that much. “Have you seen what they have done to Blessed Baelor’s statue? They befoul the plaza with their pigs and goats and night soil.”
“Night soil can be washed away more easily than blood, Your Grace. If the plaza was befouled, it was befouled by the execution that was done here.”
He dares throw Ned Stark in my face? “We all regret that. Joffrey was young, and not as wise as he might have been. Lord Stark should have been beheaded elsewhere, out of respect for Blessed Baelor. but the man was a traitor, let us not forget.”
“King Baelor forgave those who conspired against him.”
King Baelor imprisoned his own sisters, whose only crime was being beautiful. The first time Cersei heard that tale, she had gone to Tyrion’s nursery and pinched the little monster till he cried. I should have pinched his nose shut and stuffed my sock into his mouth. She forced herself to smile. “King Tommen will forgive the sparrows too, once they have returned to their homes.”
“Most have lost their homes. Suffering is everywhere. and grief, and death. Before coming to King’s Landing, I tended to half a hundred little villages too small to have a septon of their own. I walked from each one to the next, performing marriages, absolving sinners of their sins, naming newborn children. Those villages are no more, Your Grace. Weeds and thorns grow where gardens once flourished, and bones litter the roadsides.”
“War is a dreadful thing. These atrocities are the work of the northmen, and of Lord Stannis and his demon-worshipers.”
“Some of my sparrows speak of bands of lions who despoiled them. and of the Hound, who was your own sworn man. At Saltpans he slew an aged septon and despoiled a girl of twelve, an innocent child promised to the Faith. He wore his armor as he raped her and her tender flesh was torn and crushed by his iron mail. When he was done he gave her to his men, who cut off her nose and nipples.”
“His Grace cannot be held responsible for the crimes of every man who ever served House Lannister. Sandor Clegane is a traitor and a brute. Why do you think I dismissed him from our service? He fights for the outlaw Beric Dondarrion now, not for King Tommen.”
“As you say. Yet it must be asked—where were the king’s knights when these things were being done? Did not Jaehaerys the Conciliator once swear upon the Iron Throne itself that the crown would always protect and defend the Faith?”
Cersei had no idea what Jaehaerys the Conciliator might have sworn. “He did,” she agreed, “and the High Septon blessed him and anointed him as king. It is traditional for every new High Septon to give the king his blessing. and yet you have refused to bless King Tommen.”
“Your Grace is mistaken. We have not refused.”
“You have not come.”
“The hour is not yet ripe.”
Are you a priest or a greengrocer? “And what might I do to make it. riper?” If he dares mention gold, I will deal with this one as I did the last and find a pious eight-year-old to wear the crystal crown.
“The realm is full of kings. For the Faith to exalt one above the rest we must be certain. Three hundred years ago, when Aegon the Dragon landed beneath this very hill, the High Septon locked himself within the Starry Sept of Oldtown and prayed for seven days and seven nights, taking no nourishment but bread and water. When he emerged he announced that the Faith would not oppose Aegon and his sisters, for the Crone had lifted up her lamp to show him what lay ahead. If Oldtown took up arms against the Dragon, Oldtown would burn, and the Hightower and the Citadel and the Starry Sept would be cast down and destroyed. Lord Hightower was a godly man. When he heard the prophecy, he kept his strength at home and opened the city gates to Aegon when he came. And His High Holiness anointed the Conqueror with the seven oils. I must do as he did, three hundred years ago. I must pray, and fast.”
“For seven days and seven nights?”
“For as long as need be.”
Cersei itched to slap his solemn, pious face. I could help you fast, she thought. I could shut you up in some tower and see that no one brings you food until the gods have spoken. “These false kings espouse false gods,” she reminded him. “Only King Tommen defends the Holy Faith.”
“Yet everywhere septs are burned and looted. Even silent sisters have been raped, crying their anguish to the sky. Your Grace has seen the bones and skulls of our holy dead?”
“I have,” she had to say. “Give Tommen your blessing, and he shall put an end to these outrages.”
“And how shall he do that, Your Grace? Will he send a knight to walk the roads with every begging brother? Will he give us men to guard our septas against the wolves and lions?”
I will pretend you did not mention lions. “The realm is at war. His Grace has need of every man.” Cersei did not intend to squander Tommen’s strength playing wet nurse to sparrows, or guarding the wrinkled cunts of a thousand sour septas. Half of them are probably praying for a good raping. “Your sparrows have clubs and axes. Let them defend themselves.”
“King Maegor’s laws prohibit that, as Your Grace must know. It was by his decree that the Faith laid down its swords.”
“Tommen is king now, not Maegor.” What did she care what Maegor the Cruel had decreed three hundred years ago? Instead of taking the swords out of the hands of the faithful, he should have used them for his own ends. She pointed to where the Warrior stood above his altar of red marble. “What is that he holds?”