— Margaery —

The maidservant came to Margaery's chamber an hour after sunset.

Margaery was alone at the time — Joffrey had been put to bed early after a small tantrum about his pudding — and she was sitting by the hearth in a robe of pale yellow silk, reading a book of Reach poetry with the particular slow attention she gave to the things she did when she was secretly thinking about something else. Her ladies had been dismissed. The fire was low. The maidservant — Cersei's woman, a thin sharp-eyed creature called Senelle whom Margaery had marked as Cersei's instrument within a week of her arrival in the keep — slipped in through the side door, bowed, and held out a sealed letter.

Margaery took it. She did not open it in front of Senelle. She nodded the woman out, broke the seal once she was alone, and read.

Then she read it again, slower.

Then she sat for a long time, with the letter in her lap and the firelight on her face, and she thought.

Cersei was asking her to come. Tonight. To the Tower of the Hand. Privately. Without announcement.

Cersei never asked. Cersei summoned. Cersei demanded. Cersei commanded. In a year of working alliance the two of them had never once met privately on Cersei's invitation; their alliance had been built in shared rooms, public moments, careful glances over Joffrey's head at dinner. The fact that Cersei was asking told Margaery, more clearly than the letter itself, that something had happened today that had broken Cersei.

Margaery had a good guess what.

She rose from her chair. She rang the small silver bell that summoned her ladies. She told them she had a megrim and was retiring early, and was not to be disturbed by anyone short of the king — and not by him either, she added, with a small smile, unless his hair has actually caught fire, and her ladies laughed dutifully. They were good girls, Margaery's ladies. None of them were spies. (She had screened them.) Two of them, she suspected, were a little in love with her. She allowed it; it made them loyal.

She dressed in plain dark grey wool, no jewels, and she put a hooded cloak over it, and she slipped out the servants' passage that led from the queen's chambers down through the kitchens and around to the foot of the Tower of the Hand. She had walked the route once, in daylight, three moons ago, for exactly this kind of contingency. Her grandmother had taught her to walk routes once before she needed them. Dear, you would be astonished how often a route is needed at night. Always walk it once in daylight first.

The route held. She reached the side door of the tower. She tapped, twice and twice, the pattern Cersei's letter had specified. Senelle opened the door, looked her up and down once, and stood aside.

Margaery climbed.

Cersei was in her solar. She was in a plain dark dress, with no crown, with her hair loose down her back, and there was a flagon of Arbor red on the table between two cups, and only one candle was lit. The room felt — Margaery noted with the small careful attention she brought to all rooms — staged. Cersei had wanted this to look like a private intimate conversation, not an interrogation, and Cersei had succeeded.

Margaery slipped her hood back. She let the cloak fall.

"Goodmother."

"Goodaughter."

"You wrote."

"I did. Sit. Drink. We are going to be honest with each other for the first time in a year, and it is going to require wine."

Margaery sat. She did not, immediately, drink.

Cersei poured into both cups. She slid one across.

"My father has surrendered," she said. Without preamble.

Margaery had been preparing for this. She had been preparing for it since Senelle had handed her the letter. She did not show surprise. She did not show satisfaction. She allowed her face to show the precise calibrated expression she had decided on in the corridor: a small careful sympathy, I am sorry to hear this, and I had suspected, without any of the and good, and at last, and now we can plan what comes next that she was also feeling.

"I had heard rumours," she said quietly. "I did not know they were true."

"They are true. He has sent Tyrion to the Targaryen camp with terms. The terms include his own retirement. Daenerys will accept them. Tyrion will return to King's Landing in perhaps five weeks with the formal articles, which I will be expected to sign, as regent. Joffrey will be deposed within six moons. I will be sent to Darry under my uncle's eye. My children will be — variously placed. Tommen will be married off. Myrcella too. Joffrey —"

She stopped.

She drank.

"Joffrey," she resumed, in a voice that had gone deliberately level, "is the variable. My father has informed me that his behaviour in the next six moons will determine his fate. If he behaves, he is sent somewhere quiet. If he does not, he is sent somewhere worse. Or he meets with an accident on the way."

Margaery said, very gently: "Goodmother. Can he behave?"

"No."

The word came out without hesitation. Cersei looked at her over the rim of her cup, and her green eyes were very tired, and there was in them a thing Margaery had never seen there before: honesty.

"No, he cannot," Cersei said. "I have spent fourteen years trying to make him a king. I have failed. I have known I have failed for at least four years, and I have not admitted it because admitting it has not been a thing I could afford. I am admitting it now. He cannot behave for six moons. He cannot behave for six days, Margaery, and we both know it, and I have watched you manage him better than I have managed him for a year, and I have not thanked you for it because thanking you would have required acknowledging it, and I could not. I am acknowledging it now."

Margaery was, despite all her preparation, slightly off-balance.

She drank. It bought her a moment.

"Goodmother," she said. "Why are you telling me this."

Cersei laughed. It was a short, ugly, honest laugh.

"Because I have nowhere else to take it, goodaughter. I have no friends. I have no allies. My brother is in a Northern dungeon. My other brother has just bent the knee to a Targaryen. My father has surrendered. My uncle Kevan is loyal but he is at Darry, and I cannot write to him about this without my letters being read by people who will tell people who will tell the new queen. You are in the same building as me. You are clever. You have been managing my son better than I have. You have, almost certainly, been writing to your grandmother about all of this for moons. Your grandmother is a woman I have always despised and have always known to be the cleverest person in the realm. You are her instrument. I would rather work with her instrument knowingly than be worked by her instrument unknowingly. So I am telling you. I am telling you because I am out of moves and you have moves and we are both — Margaery — both of us — about to lose our titles, and the only difference is whether our heads stay on our shoulders, and I think you can help me with mine."

Margaery set her cup down.

This was a moment. She felt it. Her grandmother had taught her to recognise moments. There are days, dear, when nothing matters. And there are five-minute windows on certain other days when everything does. Train yourself to feel the difference.

This was a five-minute window.

"Goodmother," Margaery said. "I will help you. Under terms."

"Name them."

"My terms are these. We work together for the next six moons. Openly. You do not lie to me; I do not lie to you. We get Joffrey through this without him doing the irrevocable thing. We deliver King's Landing to Daenerys Targaryen intact — no riots, no fires, no last-minute butchery. We hand her a calm city. In exchange, I write to my grandmother tonight, who is in turn writing to the Targaryen queen through channels neither of us need discuss, and I tell her to advocate for the full original terms your father has offered. Your life, your children's lives, your uncle Kevan's estate. No accidents on the road. No quiet exiles to harsh islands. The full terms, granted in full, in writing, sealed, public. I can probably get her that. My grandmother's voice carries with the new queen now in a way Mace Tyrell's never will. The Tyrells have spent a year being neutral and useful. We have banked with her. I will spend the bank. For you. In exchange for the next six moons of your full cooperation."

Cersei stared at her.

"You can do that."

"I think so. I cannot promise. But I think so."

"Why."

"Why what?"

"Why offer it. Margaery. I have spent a year being your goodmother. I have not been kind to you. I have, on at least three occasions, considered having you killed. We are not friends. Why are you offering this to me."

Margaery thought about lying.

She thought about the polite pretty version of the answer — because we are family, goodmother, because I am a woman of mercy, because no one deserves to die who can be spared — and she rejected it. Cersei had asked for honesty. Cersei would smell a lie. And Margaery had learned, over a year, that Cersei did not respond well to lies, and that Cersei did respond — sometimes, surprisingly — to truth.

"Three reasons," she said. "First, because the new queen is going to remember who handed her King's Landing peacefully, and she is going to reward the people who did it, and I would like to be one of those people, and I would like you to be one of those people, because your inclusion in that group makes the story better. The two queens who gave her the city is a more powerful story than the boy-bride who gave her the city. Second, because I have spent a year watching you, goodmother, and I have come to understand a thing about you, which is that you have a great deal of capacity for good that has never been used, because every situation you have been placed in since you were sixteen has required you to use the other capacities. I am curious, frankly, what you would do with a quiet life. I would like to see. Third —"

She stopped. She had not, until this moment, been sure she was going to say the third one. She decided, in a fast small private decision, that she would.

"Third, because my grandmother would kill me if she knew I was about to say this, but I have liked you, in a strange way, for some moons now. You are a terrible person, goodmother, in many demonstrable ways. You are also the only person in this castle who has ever told me the truth about anything, even when the truth was I am considering having you killed, dear. I have appreciated it. I would prefer not to see you executed by a Targaryen. I would prefer to see you live. That is the third reason. Take it or leave it."

There was a long silence.

Cersei looked at her over the candle.

Then Cersei did a thing Margaery had not expected. She laughed. Properly. A real laugh, for the first time in Margaery's memory, with her head tilted back, and the laugh had in it a thing Margaery thought might be relief, which was a thing Cersei was not supposed to have access to.

"Margaery Tyrell," Cersei said, when she had her breath back, "you are a piece of work."

"Yes, goodmother. I have been told."

"Your grandmother trained you well."

"She did, goodmother."

"She would have eaten my mother for breakfast."

"She would, goodmother."

"All right." Cersei lifted her cup. "All right. Terms accepted. Six moons. Full cooperation. King's Landing intact. You write to your grandmother tonight. I will not lie to you and I will not have you killed. You will, in turn, not lie to me and not have me killed. We will get my son through this. We will deliver this city. We will live."

"We will live."

They touched cups. The clink was small, dry, and final.

Margaery drank, properly, for the first time that evening.

It was good wine.

— Author's note woven in —

(A small note for the reader, here, about why this particular conversation is happening at all. In the canon timeline, by this point in events, Joffrey would already be dead — poisoned at his own wedding to Margaery by a conspiracy between Olenna Tyrell and Petyr Baelish. That conspiracy did not happen here. Two reasons. First: the war Olenna was reading is a different war. With six dragons en route from Essos and the Targaryens visibly returning, Olenna's calculation shifted from "remove Joffrey to protect Margaery" to "manage Joffrey while Margaery banks goodwill with the incoming dynasty." Second: Petyr Baelish, whose plot relied on Sansa Stark fleeing through the Vale at exactly the right moment, has been finding this realm a much harder place to scheme in than the canon one — Aelya's spies are real, Dorne's spies are real, and the silver queens have been reading mail for years. The plot shape that worked in the books does not work here. Joffrey lives. Margaery and Cersei manage him. The reader may, justly, feel that this is what should have happened in the books anyway.)

— Sansa, the same night —

Sansa Stark woke in the small hours of the morning to a sound she did not at first recognise.

She lay in the dark and listened. Her chamber was, as always, locked; her one barred window faced the inner courtyard; her door was guarded by two men of the City Watch, one of whom was occasionally, when he had drunk enough, willing to be charmed into looking the other way for a small favour she was always careful not to need.

The sound was — voices. In the corridor outside her door. Low voices, hurried, not the ordinary murmur of guards.

Then footsteps. Stopping at her door.

A key in the lock.

Sansa sat up in bed and pulled the coverlet up to her chin and said, in the small frightened voice she had been wearing for a year, "Who is it? What do you want?"

The door opened.

Margaery Tyrell stood in the doorway in a dark grey cloak with her hood thrown back, and behind her, very quietly, was Senelle, Cersei's maidservant, holding a small lantern shielded with one hand. Margaery's face was pale and composed and her eyes were wide-awake, and she stepped into the chamber, closed the door behind her, and turned the key.

"Sansa," she said, very quietly. "I am sorry to wake you. I have ten minutes. I need to tell you several things. Will you listen?"

Sansa stared at her.

Margaery had visited her, in this chamber, perhaps four times in the past year. Always in daytime. Always with chaperones. Always with the careful brittle pleasantness of a queen-consort visiting a high-born hostage about whom she could afford no real warmth. Never like this. Never with the cloak and the hood and the lantern, never at three in the morning, never with that look on her face.

Sansa nodded slowly.

"I will listen," she whispered.

"Good." Margaery sat down on the edge of the bed. She took Sansa's hand. Her hand was cold. "Sansa. Listen carefully. The Targaryens are coming. They are coming within three moons. The Lannisters have surrendered. Cersei has surrendered. I have made an arrangement with Cersei, tonight, that will hold this city together until they arrive. The new queen is — Daenerys Targaryen. She is not what we have been told she is. She is — kind. Or kind enough. She has freed three cities. She has spared every house that has surrendered to her. She has asked, in particular — in the letters my grandmother has been receiving — about you. She has asked about Eddard Stark's daughter. She wants to know that you are safe and that you are here. I am telling you so you know. So you are not surprised. So when they come — and they are coming, Sansa, I swear to you — you are ready."

Sansa was, she realised distantly, crying. Without meaning to. Tears were coming down her face in the quiet way of tears that had been waiting a very long time.

"They are coming," she whispered.

"They are coming."

"My brother — Robb —"

Margaery's face did a small thing. Just a flicker. Sansa caught it.

"Margaery."

"Sansa. I am going to tell you something that is going to hurt. Are you ready?"

"No."

"I am sorry. There is no way to tell it that does not hurt. The riverlands news reached us yesterday by raven from Riverrun. There was a — a parley two moons past, at a place called the Twins, where the Freys were to host King Robb and his mother for a wedding. It was — a betrayal. Lord Walder Frey turned on his guests. King Robb, your lady mother, your sister-in-law Talisa — they were murdered at the table. Most of the Northern lords with them died too. The North is broken. Roose Bolton has taken Winterfell in the Lannisters' name. I — I am sorry, Sansa. I would not tell you in this way and at this hour if I had any other choice."

Sansa stopped breathing for a moment.

She had — she had known something was wrong. She had heard fragments through the wall, weeks ago, of trouble at Riverrun and a wedding and Frey, and she had pressed her ear and heard nothing more, and she had spent the weeks not letting herself construct what the fragments meant. Now Margaery was constructing it for her. In ten minutes. In the dark.

She made a small sound she did not recognise.

Margaery pulled her in. Just held her. Without speaking. Sansa wept, hard, into the shoulder of Margaery Tyrell's grey wool cloak — Margaery, of all people, Margaery whom she had not entirely trusted for a year — and Margaery did not say anything wise or soft or political, and Margaery did not pull back, and after a while the worst of it had passed and Sansa was just shaking, and Margaery said, very quietly, into her hair:

"Bran and Rickon are alive. We think. There has been word out of the Reach — from a singer who was at Winterfell — that they escaped the burning of the castle. I do not know where they are. The new queen will look for them. She has already promised, in writing, that her first act on taking King's Landing will be to send riders north to find any Stark child still living. Sansa. Listen to me. You are not alone. Your sister Arya is unaccounted for, but she is also not confirmed dead, and the Targaryen queen is going to look for her too. Your brothers Bran and Rickon are probably alive. You are alive, and you are about to be free, and I am going to walk out of this chamber in five minutes and not be able to see you alone again until they come, and I needed you to know — I needed you to know so you could hold on, Sansa. So you knew what you were holding on for. Do you understand me?"

Sansa pressed her wet face against Margaery's shoulder and nodded.

"I understand," she whispered.

"Hold on, Sansa Stark. Three moons. I swear it on my grandmother's life, which is the only oath I take seriously. Three moons."

"Three moons."

Margaery rose. She brushed Sansa's hair back from her forehead, once, with the gesture of an older sister rather than a queen. She crossed to the door. She paused at it.

"Sansa," she said, without turning. "When they come. The Targaryen who comes for you first will be the older sister. The cold one. Her name is Aelya. Do not be afraid of her face. She has — a certain look, I am told. Her sister is the warm one. The cold one is the one who will get you out. Trust her. Yes?"

"Yes, Margaery."

"Good."

The door closed.

Sansa Stark sat in the dark with her arms around her knees and her wet face on her arms, and she wept for her brother and her mother and her sister and her brothers, and she wept for her father whom she had not been allowed to weep for properly in a year, and the candle on her bedside table burned itself slowly out, and somewhere in another tower of the same castle Margaery Tyrell was already sitting at her writing-desk drafting the longest letter of her young life to her grandmother, and somewhere a thousand miles to the south Daenerys Targaryen was finishing her seventh re-reading of her sister's letter, and somewhere a thousand miles to the north Aelya Targaryen was asleep with her hand resting on the warm flank of a black-and-red dragon, and the realm — the whole realm — was breathing in.

Three moons. The breath would hold three moons.

Then it would let out.