CERSEI
After a long and grueling month's journey, they finally arrived at King's Landing. The cramped, swaying carriage finally came to a halt, and for the first time in weeks, Cersei felt a silence that wasn't accompanied by the creaking of wheels or the whinnying of horses. What first came to Cersei's mind, as she peeked through the small window, was how magnificent the buildings were.
Oh, Casterly Rock was a marvel, certainly. Lannisport was a rich and bustling port city. But the Capital had a uniqueness all its own. The towers of the Red Keep soared into the sky like the petrified fingers of a dragon, the Targaryen banners fluttering majestically in the wind. Even from a distance, she could feel the pulse of this city's power, a wild and untamed energy that the orderly Westerlands lacked.
Perfect. This suited her. This was a stage worthy of a queen. A stage where she would one day rule alongside her prince.
As the carriage door opened and she stepped out, a wave of warmth greeted her. It was a different air from the cool sea breeze of Casterly Rock. This air was thicker, filled with a thousand different scents—spices from other parts of the world, the smell of woodsmoke from a thousand hearths, and beneath it all, the faint, unpleasant odor of too many people living in close quarters. But Cersei did not care. She breathed it in deeply, tasting her new world.
Then, she felt Jaime's gaze on her. She turned and immediately met it with a flat look. She would not show her excitement to Jaime. Not now. She walked towards him, her gown swishing over the stones of the courtyard. There, beside Jaime, stood Addam Marbrand, looking a little overwhelmed by the scale of the place, and the ever-present sworn sword, Jon.
"Don't wander off anywhere. We need to go see Father," Cersei said flatly, her tone sharp and commanding. She deliberately spoke to him as if he were a three-year-old, not her twin brother.
Jaime didn't retort sharply. Instead, there was a weary expression on his face, as if Cersei were just another annoyance on his long journey. "Yes, boss," he said quietly.
Boss? That strange word sounded foreign to Cersei's ears. What did it mean? It sounded like a word a dockworker would use. She wanted to hit him for using strange words she didn't understand, for having changed into someone she no longer recognized.
They were led by a captain of her father's guard, a man with a hard face whose name was unimportant to Cersei. They walked through corridors that felt darker and older than those in Casterly Rock, past tapestries depicting fighting dragons. After a while, they finally arrived at the door to the Tower of the Hand. The captain knocked.
Lord Tywin's deep and unmistakable voice, which always managed to make the hairs on Cersei's neck stand up, echoed from within. "Enter."
Their father was sitting behind a massive desk, looking like a king himself. The room was the embodiment of power: silent, orderly, and intimidating. Cersei and Jaime sat in the chairs before the desk, their backs straight and erect.
Tywin looked at them in a long silence, his pale green eyes assessing every detail of their appearance. Finally, he broke the silence.
"You arrived later than expected."
It was not a question. It was a statement, an accusation.
"The roads were rough and full of disruptions, Father," Cersei frowned, letting a note of complaint enter her voice. "The mud slowed the carriage wheels. I still remember when one of the horses neighed loudly in the blind heat of the day. The atmosphere felt like it wanted to kill me."
Father looked into her eyes for a few moments, then he turned to Jaime, as if Cersei's complaints were unimportant.
Jaime opened his mouth. "It was indeed like that," he agreed, which surprised Cersei. "But it was something interesting, because along the way I could see each village and its inhabitants more clearly."
Cersei almost snorted. Typical Jaime. Of course he would find something "interesting" in suffering. Of course he cared about the "villagers."
"You know why I summoned you here, don't you?" Tywin's tone was flat, ignoring their comments about the journey.
'To meet Prince Rhaegar,' Cersei thought instantly, her heart beating a little faster. She nodded gracefully. "Of course, Father. To learn. To socialize and make connections."
"To see how you lead," Jaime added, his tone calm.
"You are both correct," Tywin confirmed, and Cersei felt a wave of satisfaction. She had given the right answer. "All that you have mentioned is useful for a ruler. A solitary ruler will not be respected by their followers, even when they are from a prominent family. They still have to socialize and make connections to keep the sheep in the pasture."
Yes, Cersei thought, pleased. The sheep will continue to eat grass until the lions come and eat them. They exist only for us.
Tywin then did something unexpected. He opened a drawer in his large desk. Cersei leaned forward slightly, thinking he would take out a scroll or perhaps a piece of jewelry. Instead, he took out a stack of sheets of… that thing.
The thin white thing that Jaime had proudly shown off at dinner a month ago, before they left.
Paper!
Cersei's heart sank. The air seemed to be sucked out of her lungs. She knew now. She knew exactly where this conversation was going. Her moment, the discussion of her future, of Prince Rhaegar, had been hijacked. Again, this was all about Jaime and his stupid, dirty invention.
"You made this well."
The words were directed entirely at Jaime. Father didn't even glance at Cersei. It was as if she were just another piece of furniture in the room, a gilded ornament with no purpose other than to be sat upon and be silent. A cold, familiar anger began to creep into her stomach. This was supposed to be her moment, their moment. The moment when Father would see his daughter, his future queen, and begin to lay the plans for her destiny.
Jaime, of course, accepted the praise as if it were his birthright. He nodded, completely unfazed by Father's sharp gaze that could usually make even the most powerful Lords tremble. "After years of theorizing and planning various things, it was finally worth it."
Years? Cersei almost snorted. A few weeks ago you were still playing with a wooden sword and stealing cakes from the kitchen. Don't act like you're the Grand Maester.
"You said you could make tens of thousands in a few weeks?" Father's voice came again, still completely ignoring Cersei. And this time, there was a different note in his voice. Not just approval, but genuine interest.
Cersei hated it.
"Yes. Uncle Kevan has taken care of everything I asked for, Father. The waterwheel is being built. If everything is done correctly, it's not impossible," Jaime said, the calmness in his voice making Cersei even more sick. He spoke as if he were discussing a wheat harvest, not an impossible invention.
"With the price of parchment these days," Father tapped a long, well-manicured finger on the polished wooden desk. It was a sharp, calculating sound. "If we start selling this for just half the price, it will disrupt the market."
Jaime smiled, a small, sly smile that reminded Cersei of a fox. "Not just that, Father. A lot of paper means there will be a lot of useful writings. There we can make people read more. When many people are literate, a kingdom will be more prosperous. Administration more structured, information easier to obtain." He leaned forward, his green eyes sparkling with a strange enthusiasm. "And most importantly, as Lannisters who hold all that, information can be spun solely for our own benefit. Then, Lannisport will get many visitors from many places to get this 'paper.' There, money will flow like the tide."
Cersei listened, and though she hated every word that came out of Jaime's mouth, a small part of her, the cold, calculating Lannister part, understood. Power. This was about power. Not the grand power of a crown or a sword, but a creeping, unseen kind of power, that controlled what people thought and knew. It was a powerful idea. And it was Jaime's idea, not hers.
"You would need many scribes to copy a book," Father said, his voice flat. It was not a refutation, but a test. He was testing the depth of his son's thinking.
Jaime was ready for it. "What if we don't need to copy it by hand?" he asked, as if the answer were the most obvious thing in the world. "As I mentioned before, there are the small metal blocks I have hidden in the workshop. The ones with the reversed letters carved on them. Imagine if we arranged those letters to form a page, coated them with ink, and pressed them onto the paper."
He paused, letting the image form. "We could create a printing press, not a worn-out wooden one. This is different, this could make hundreds of copies of the same page in a single day. Thousands in a week. A book that would normally take a maester a year to copy could be finished in a few days."
Cersei stared at him, truly stunned for a moment. The concept was so large, so… impossible.
Father just nodded slowly, his expression unreadable. "A printing press," he said. "An ambitious concept. But there are many details to be perfected."
"Of course," Jaime said, not at all intimidated. "And I have already found the next biggest problem. It's not the machine, Father. That's just mechanical, levers and screws, we can handle that. The real problem is the ink."
Cersei saw Father raise an eyebrow slightly, a silent invitation for Jaime to continue.
"The ink we use for quills won't work," Jaime explained, now completely lost in his own explanation. "I've tried it on a small scale. It's too watery. It won't adhere well to the smooth metal surface, and when pressed, it will bleed into the paper fibers, creating an unreadable smudge and ruining the sheet. We need something completely different."
He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "Something thicker, stickier. Something oil-based, perhaps, that will adhere to the metal in a thin layer and transfer cleanly to the paper when pressed. I have already asked Maester Creylen to look for information, to be able to make the ink adhere. That is the next problem to be solved before the printing press can become a reality."
Cersei sat there, trapped in silence, as Father and Jaime continued to talk. No, Jaime talked and Father listened. She saw the way Father looked at her twin brother, and it was a look Cersei had never seen before directed at anyone, not even Uncle Kevan. It was not cold approval or reluctant praise. It was respect. The genuine respect of one strategist for another.
After what felt like an eternity, during which Cersei could only sit in silence while Father and Jaime spoke in a language of invention and profit that she did not understand, the conversation finally ended.
"That is all. You had better go to your respective chambers first." Father's voice came, cutting off the discussion about ink as if it had never happened. His tone was back to being flat, cold, and final. The audience was over. "The guard who brought you here will show you the way. You are dismissed."
"Yes, Father," Cersei said, the words tasting bitter on her tongue.
She rose gracefully, every movement controlled, hiding the storm of anger and humiliation churning within her. This was shameful. Absolutely shameful. She had traveled for a month, enduring the discomfort of muddy roads and mediocre inns, all with one image in her mind: arriving at King's Landing, facing her father, and taking the first step towards her destiny as Queen. She had come here to talk about Prince Rhaegar, about her future at court, about her role at the center of power.
And all she got was to be a mute spectator to her twin brother's endless rambling about paper and other infuriating things. She had been ignored, dismissed, in front of Father.
As she turned, she glared at Jaime, a sharp look full of a rage that promised retribution. Jaime, who was also rising from his chair, caught her gaze for a moment before subtly looking away, his eyes shifting to the floor as if there were something interesting there.
Good, Cersei thought cruelly. At least he is aware that he has ruined my day. That small awareness gave her a sliver of bitter satisfaction.
The same hard-faced guard was waiting for them outside the door and escorted them in silence through the corridors of the Red Keep. Cersei walked with her head held high, refusing to show how disturbed she was. She didn't glance at Jaime once. The silence between them was heavy and tense. Every step that took them further from Father's solar felt like a step that took them further from each other.
Finally, the guard stopped at a junction in the corridor, pointing in one direction for Jaime and another for her. Their chambers were adjacent, but not connected. A small detail that felt very significant to Cersei at that moment.
She was glad to be separated from the book-eater. The moment she was inside her own chambers and the door was closed behind her, she could finally let out a breath. She was alone. At least she could breathe peacefully, away from Jaime's annoying presence and Father's judging gaze.
Her chambers were luxurious, of course. A large four-poster bed dominated the room, with deep red velvet curtains. A thick carpet covered the floor, and the furniture was made of polished dark wood. But Cersei didn't notice any of it.
She walked straight to the large, arched window that overlooked the city. From this height, the view was magnificent. She could see the red rooftops of King's Landing stretching out to the bay. She could see the grand domes of the Great Sept of Baelor glittering in the afternoon sun. She could see the ships that looked like toys entering and leaving the harbor.
This would all be hers.
A smile slowly returned to Cersei's lips as she gazed at the view. Her anger and humiliation began to recede, replaced by the cold, hard ambition that had always been her core. Father might be distracted by Jaime's little inventions for now, but that was just a diversion. The real game was a marathon, not a sprint. And in that game, she held the trump card.
She turned from the window and looked into the large, gold-framed mirror that leaned against the wall, a mirror that showed her full-length from head to toe.
The girl who looked back at her was stunning. Her hair was molten gold, purer and brighter than any coin ever minted. Her eyes were glittering emeralds, filled with intelligence and fire. Her skin was as smooth as porcelain, and her figure, even at nine, already showed the promise of a beauty that would make men kneel.
This was her power. Not some dirty contraption or strange ideas about paper. This was pure, real, and undeniable gold. This was the asset that would win her a crown.
She lifted her chin, looking at her own reflection with cold satisfaction. Father would soon realize his mistake. He would see that true power did not lie in spreading information to the smallfolk, but in uniting the most powerful bloodlines. He would see that his daughter, not his strange son, was the true key to the eternal legacy of House Lannister.
It would all pay off. Her current frustration, the humiliation of being ignored, all of it was just a small obstacle on her path. In the end, she would get what she wanted. She would be Queen. And from upon the Iron Throne, she would look down on everyone, including Jaime.
...
Thank you for reading! You can read chapters 17-37 at Patreon.com/Daario_W
Oh, don't forget to give Power Stones :'p, if we reach 50 this week, I will upload an extra chapter.