Jon Arryn POV
Red Keep, 289
Jon Arryn sighed heavily and set the parchment down on top of the Customs' stack. There were many such stacks of records currently spread out upon the head table in the Small Hall of the Tower of the Hand. This was not his typical place for doing business, but while he could not bring himself to work as normal of a morning in his salon; neither did he care to be so far away from Lysa as the Small Council Hall or Maegor's Holdfast.
Setting himself to duty and distraction, the normally steely eyed lord picked up the bill of lading for the cog that was to leave at first light on the morrow for the long journey to the Sunset Sea and the Iron Isles. Perhaps the last supply ship. He doubted the damnable Greyjoys could last much longer based on the last raven. Especially with Lord Paxter having already taken Great Wyk and Ser Lomas Estermont Old Wyk. The ironborn were essentially broken. But at a cost measured not just in blood.
Cheaper to buy and ship goods out of Lannisport for the campaign, if there was a functioning harbor and an unburned city. Or out of Oldtown, if it somehow didn't sit in the Targaryen loving Reach. Getting Robert to agree to using the Redwyne fleet had been difficult enough. Sunspear? 'Ha!' Jon snorted to himself. No, important materials must take the long expensive voyage from the only 'trusted' port south of Gulltown: King's Landing.
With his other hand he began sorting through another pile; this one provided by Ser Ormund Wylde, a dependable and loyal lord. Just not one terribly well fit, aside from loyalty, for being the Master of Coin. Even with Robert's profligacy at dipping into the well stuffed coffers frugal Aerys had left them, his only gift to the realm; there thankfully was enough silver and gold to pay for the war.
'Ah, there,' the Hand thought, and pulled out the necessary receipts for the burgeoning load of replacement weapons, armor, leather goods, wines, medicinal supplies, et al. that should match with the lading.
Check .. check .. check .. check .. check .. check .. check …. and … check, his strained eyes ticked off going back forth between the records.
That tedious exercise ended, Jon dared to look at the total cost and sighed wearily again. More money out of the treasury. If he squinted, the Hand could foresee a time when the Iron Throne might need to start borrowing money. But from whom, he wondered as he spilled a bit of wax on the bottom corner of the bill of lading and pressed his signet ring into it.
He gestured for a page to come refill his glass of wine.
"No one, that's whom," he muttered to himself unhappily. Jon Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie would be damned if he ever went begging for coin from the Faithful or the Iron Bank or worst of all that wily scoundrel Tywin Lannister.
"My Lord Hand?" the server asked.
In irritation at having his thoughts interrupted, he crossly waved the man away unanswered. Looking down yet again at the records Ser Ormund had left him yester morn, Jon could practically feel the needed Dragons, Moons, and Stags slipping unaccounted for through his fingers.
Business at the docks was booming. True it was Summer, which always increased commerce. But there were benefits to the Krakens' stupidity. Shipping and sea trade up and down the coast of the Sunset Sea had come to a standstill. And the Arbor's huge fleet was off supporting Lord Paxter. Ship captains and merchants from both Westeros and Essos needed different outlets for theirs goods – and a fair share were coming to King's Landing according to the rise in paid docking fees.
Yet where was the correlated increase in custom fees to expect? Not all the new ships could be unloading straight from one into the other. Perhaps … perhaps he could snatch two birds with one swoop.
His cousin Osgood Aryn and Lord Maekor Grafton still sang the praises of young Baelish whom Jon had recommended to them for Gulltown's Customs' Inspector simply as a favor to poor Lysa. A posting that the eager, young Fingers' lordling had apparently taken to with gusto.
A beloved childhood face might offer up the cheer to raise Lysa out of her birthing doldrums. She was young. She would recover. And he? Jon Arryn simply felt old and resigned to what the Seven would grant him in his remaining days. After two miscarriages, this pregnancy had gone full term. Only to end in a stillbirth.
'A son. I had a son,' his mind cried for the thousandth time. Lysa's cries of birthing pain had ended in silence with no baby's wail of first breath. The silence only broken by his lady wife's hysterical shrieks. 'My beautiful boy,' he lamented. Blonde hair. The Arryn beaked nose surprisingly prominent for a new born. A fully formed son of his flesh delivered in his sixty eighth year straight to the Stranger. A lifetime of hopes, long repressed dreams … shattered. He did not know if Lysa had the strength within her to try again.
And worse, his personal curse seemed to have spread to the son of his heart as well. No seed took soil in Cersei's womb either. While Robert held this fact angrily over the Queen; not once, to his knowledge, did the King ever suggest the politically difficult but most likely necessary course of putting Tywin Lannister's daughter aside in favor of some lass more fecund than her.
Sigh. He continued to muse, 'At least dear Ned had children; with a third on the way – alas no chance of sweet Catelyn visiting my Lysa with comfort any time soon. Thankfully Stannis has heirs, if no longer a wife. Poor, poor Shyra never did recovere from the twins: Lyonel and Cassana who joined doughty Steffon.'
He stopped remembering the pain with the bittersweet and reached for a blank sheet and his quill. The letter would leave by raven for Gulltown before dark.
Scratch, scratch, scratch. Sigh. Scratch, scratch, scratch …
"My Lord Hand?"
"Grand Maester. Is all well with my lady wife?" he responded with concern, looking up from the half finished letter.
Pycelle smiled kindly down at him through that downy white beard. "I did not come from dear Lady Lysa's side, but from the Rookery. A missive for you, my Lord Hand," he said sleepily.
"And it says …?" Jon inquired; knowing very well that the two faced old man had most likely already read the note.
A shrug of those narrow shoulders hidden within his over large velvet red robe. "I know not, my Lord Hand. It came from Pyke. Or rather, from the Master of Ships, I should properly say," the Grand Maester stated indifferently.
At the mention of "Pyke," Jon's age spotted hand shot out expectantly.
Chains jingled ever so lightly as Pycelle reached into a voluminous sleeve to extract the small, rolled up scroll in order to pass it over.
The seal held the indentation of House Manderly's merman sigil. A thumb nail broke the wax.
Lord Hand, glorious King Robert is dead; slain leading the assault into that den of treacherous Krakens called Pyke.
Jon Arryn's heart skipped a beat as he sucked in a gasp of air that rattled right back out in a spasm of pain and agony. The parchment crumpled in his hand. His body slumped over the table.
"My Lord Hand, are you alright?" a distant voice called out through the fog.
He felt hands pulling him upright. Propping him up.
"Drink this, my lord."
The brim of a deathly cold goblet touched his lips and wine, tasting like ashes, slid down his quavering throat.
"Oh my. This is horrible. Tragic. Whatever shall we do?" the Grand Maester warbled sympathetically.
Through glazed eyes Jon looked up in a daze at the doddering Lannister lackey. The aged man now held the letter in his own brown spotted, trembling old hands. He did not remember anyone taking it out of his own.
"And worse, I fear," Pycelle continued in that officious concerned tone of his. "Lord Stark was also struck down leading a charge to rescue the King."
"No," Jon croaked in utter desolation. "My sons. Both my sons. My dear sweet boys."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Not a Kingsguard left alive either. Brave, honorable Ser Barristan, you shall be missed. And doomed young Ser Jaime … why, the Queen shall be doubly tortured," Pycelle droned on. "We must go tell her Grace, right away. And send word to Lord Tywin," he added with rare vigor.
"No. No, I say!" The Hand of the King commanded, pulling himself back from the precipice of despair. "Guards! Guards!" he shouted. A pair were always near him and they were already hovering about at his distress though he had failed to notice them during his swoon. "Escort the Grand Maester back to the Rookery. See that he immediately sends ravens, several ravens, to Storm's End. Lord Stannis must be told he is now the King. He must come to King's Landing to ascend the Iron Throne," he panted. "Afterward, do what you will, write to Lord Lannister … get the High Septon to ring the Great Sept's bells in mourning, I care not."
"But what of her Grace? Who shall tell the sweet girl of this … this catastrophe?" Pycelle prattled.
"I shall. That is my terrible duty, for I am the Hand and she is the Queen. Now give me back Lord Wyman's message. I would read the whole of it first."
Jon Arryn did not have far to go. Her Grace was not in Maegor's Holdfast or roaming about the castle; nor down Aegon's Hill in the city. Robert's jealousy for Cersei was renowned; whenever he was without the Red Keep, for even a solitary knight, her Grace was commanded to reside within the Maidenvault. An ironic twist on Baelor's original intent made by a King as lusty as Robert.
The heart breaking refrain of 'My son, my son, my son,' kept beating through his head as his heavy feet trod slowly across the Middle Bailey.
However, even as his pain dominated both his thoughts and his beaten body, Jon Arryn never stopped being the Hand. Ideas or political considerations randomly crossed his mind.
Would Stannis wish to keep him on as Hand?
What would happen to Pyke with every man-child ten or older massacred across the whole of the isle in vengeance?
Had Manderly sent a separate raven off to Lady Catelyn in Winterfell?
Will the Reach or Dorne now try to cause trouble for the new King?
Retiring to the Eyrie with Lysa for the remainder of his dotage looked appealing.
Was it worth the gold to send the royal fleet after those remnants of the Iron Fleet that had escaped with Euron Greyjoy?
King's Landing and the Iron Throne brought nothing but woe to those around it.
He would tell the King 'no' if asked to be his Hand; Stannis, a good man, was not his beloved Robert.
Should he command Lord Tywin to send Asha Greyjoy down the Goldroad if Lord Wyman held to his word to drop the chit off at Lannisport as he returned with Robert's bones?
Maybe he and Lysa could visit Winterfell; he owed it to Ned to see his other son's bones interned with his kin in those sarcophagi that young Ned had so oft described about his house's crypt during his fosterage at the Eyrie.
"Lord Hand?" that beaten voice inquired politely. "Is everything alright? You look pale."
Jon shook his head to remove the cob-webs; he didn't remember entering the Maidenvault nor climbing the stairs to the Queen's travel apartment.
He bowed, as was proper and respectful. "Your Grace."
"Yes? Please rise Lord Jon. Would you care for wine?"
"No, your Grace. I bear grim news. Terrible, terrible news," he repeated himself.
A raspy, anticipation laden, "What?" issued from her mouth.
"His Grace," and Jon's own voice began choking up. "Your … your royal Husband was … was killed at Pyke."
Bright green eyes stared back at him in astonishment. The beautiful face she had inherited from her delightfully charming mother, Joanna, could not have appeared more stunned than if Robert had smacked her himself with his warhammer.
"I am … sorry," he whispered in the silence.
That lovely throat that Robert enjoyed touching so much bobbed up once, twice. The strong yet delicate nose twitched. A solitary sob escaped ruby red lips. And then her whole body began to shake as a torrent of tears started to flow down those perfect cheekbones which Robert had so adored stroking and pinching between his large, strong hands.
His "son's" marriage was not love filled. No one who knew the King and Queen would ever claim that. Theirs was a political marriage that the couple made work acceptably because they must; the lack of an heir aside. Much like his own with Lysa. Still, how clearly Robert's death moved her, touched something deep within the tired, pain filled old man; hurting him a fresh.
He let her go on at least a full minute and more before he dared speak again over her the low sounds of her grieving. "I fear, your Grace, there is more … more dire news."
The last of her stoic façade tore away. "Jaime?" she gurgled.
"While defending his Grace to his last breath," said as proudly as he ever before had praised the Kingslayer.
"NNNOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" the Queen screamed, at last giving full vent to the same pain and rage Jon himself had felt.
The Lioness crumpled to the floor and futilely beat the flagstone floor with what strength remained her.
