“He accuses my brother and sister of incest. I wonder how he came by that suspicion.”
“Perhaps he read a book and looked at the color of a bastard’s hair, as Ned Stark did, and Jon Arryn before him. Or perhaps someone whispered it in his ear.” The eunuch’s laugh was not his usual giggle, but deeper and more throaty.
“Someone like you, perchance?”
“Am I suspected? It was not me.”
“If it had been, would you admit it?”
“No. But why should I betray a secret I have kept so long? It is one thing to deceive a king, and quite another to hide from the cricket in the rushes and the little bird in the chimney. Besides, the bastards were there for all to see.”
“Robert’s bastards? What of them?”
“He fathered eight, to the best of my knowing,” Varys said as he wrestled with the saddle. “Their mothers were copper and honey, chestnut and butter, yet the babes were all black as ravens … and as ill-omened, it would seem. So when Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen slid out between your sister’s thighs, each as golden as the sun, the truth was not hard to glimpse.”
Tyrion shook his head. If she had borne only one child for her husband, it would have been enough to disarm suspicion … but then she would not have been Cersei. “If you were not this whisperer, who was?”
“Some traitor, doubtless.” Varys tightened the cinch.
“Littlefinger?”
“I named no name.”
