Jon had been at court many a time before Robert and Ned had ever been born.
He had liked to think that he knew the Red Keep relatively well as far as a noble servant of the crown could.
As he had discovered very early into his tenure as Robert's hand, however, in reality, he didn't know this castle well at all.
A point well illustrated by the passageway before him.
"And you just… Stumbled onto this thing?"
The men the question was directed at, a couple of the laborers that were currently helping renovate the part of the castle that had once been known as "The Sunken Court'' shuffled nervously on their feet.
"Yes me lord hand-I-I mean your grace, sire! We just were tapping away at this beam here, and next thing you know the entire wall to the side collapsed. Queerest thing that."
He pinched his brow with his leather-covered hand. He was doing that a lot more lately than he once had.
"How many bloody tunnels did Maegor build in these walls?"
"This would be the 73'rd so far." Lord Gyles Rosby commented as he stepped forward, to take a look at the interiors of the tunnels.
"This one also seems completely unconnected to any of the other tunnels we've discovered so far. Which would make it the 13th such passageway."
The old lord of Rosby spoke with a chipper and enthusiastic tone as if this was just some exciting new development and not a potential risk to the crown.
Gods, he hated these tunnels.
The entire point of a castle was that it afforded it's occupants a sense of safety, of being protected by its fortifications. And yet here was the very seat of power in Westeros, absolutely filled to the brim with holes, and tunnels, and hidden, secret entrances.
Any one of whom could allow assassins, spies, and attackers an easy way in and out of the castle if they knew the tunnels.
And to make it worse they knew precious few of them.
Robert had given him the entrances to 2 through that strange informer he refused to name, but though a good starting point, it hadn't even been close to enough to aid their mapping of all of these tunnels.
It had been rather disconcerting to learn that anyone could infiltrate the castle all the way up to the Hand's bedchamber through a simple brothel outside the keep's walls.
Closing it without drawing massive attention to said brothel had also not only been a pain in his backside but also been expensive, given the amount of mortar and gravel he'd been forced to use to remove the tunnel in its entirety.
Tywin's lust for whores had cost the realm a pretty penny when he'd had this tunnel constructed during his tenure as hand. Though at least it had yielded one good thing. As it turned out Tywin had left a bastard named Marei behind, that Robert planned to keep on hand to legitimize in case something unfortunate happened to Cercei before she and Benjen could produce an offspring.
Still, it was a lot of work, time, and effort for a single tunnel.
And that was just one.
As Rosby so cheerfully noted, there were dozens and dozens of them.
And they still probably had a dozen more to find. Leaving but a single tunnel unclosed represented a weak spot through which an attacker could use to stab deep, deep into the very heart of the Royal family.
And to top the entire thing off, like a hole-ridden and near collapsing cake topped with some awful fruit, they still had yet to find the bloody tunnel that went from Maegor's holdfast.
Jon's musings on were cut short by Rosby, who wandered a bit further in.
"Hmmm…. This right one seems to just continue alongside the battlements, but this left one… it turns sharply outwards towards the sea."
His voice got a bit weaker as he wandered further in, and the glow of the torch faded just a bit.
Jon sighed.
The Lord Administrator of the Red Keep was a strange fellow.
Competent, and good at his job though he might be, he was also an oddball. He seemingly did not fear death, as proven by his eagerness to personally join the lads exploring the hidden tunnels, which was rather brave of him, given so far 6 of them had gotten their necks broken in the darkness, and one had suffered a mysterious case of being stabbed in the shadows.
However, Jon had met many a brave old man in his day. Hells, he was one himself. But usually, when one old soldier did not fear death, they knew that they had someone to take over for them when they finally went to the Gods.
Not so with Gyles Rosby, who was not only childless but without any form of an heir, distant or not.
When he finally died, the ancient house of Rosby would go with him, and all his lands, titles, and incomes would revert to the Crown, to be given to another house.
And yet, amazingly enough, he seemed not to care much about that, having no desire to seek a wife before it was too late. Jon could not imagine himself reaction similarly if he truly had been the last of the Arryns.
He had gone to great lengths to make certain that even were he to perish, the Vale would be inherited by an Arryn. And even if all else failed, there were still the merchants of Gulltown.
He shuddered at the prospect of the Eyrie being ruled by one such, but if it came to that, he would rather that the family would continue through such than die out completely as the Gardeners had.
"And here there is a window in the wall to the outside. And the hole here is meant to channel out water in case of rain or… or... Huh, would you look at that?"
"What?" His voice echoed down the tunnel.
"Seems the Dragon queen is finally deigning us with her presence after all."
I
The rest of the day passed in a blur, as Jon Arryn quickly and hastily went through everything unnecessary to get it out of the way while the former queen of the land was making her entrance into the bay.
Gods, there was so much crap he hadn't realized he still hadn't done.
The Iron Thone had been on it's last legs, and he'd meant to have finished removing it on the morrow. Instead, it became priority number 1 to get out the last dozen couple of swords, as to not have a trace of the Iron Throne left by the time the Queen arrived.
Tywin's bastard Marei who he'd inducted alongside her whore mother into the Red Keep, had to be brought out as per Robert's orders. And so had his skeleton, dressed up in motley and propped on a wooden pedestal.
The man who had hated laughter above all in life, would forever be mocked and belittled, as everything had been stripped from him after it. His dignity, his image as a man above whores, and his final rest in a sept.
To hammer in that point, alongside him, their skeleton arms draped across each others necks as if they were brothers, was the skeleton of Aerys Targaryen, also dressed in a fool's motley, though with his crown hammered into his skull with nails made from the dismantled Iron Throne, instead of a jesters cap.
Robert had given Rhaegar the dignity of warrior's pyre. Such dignity was not afforded to the Mad King and the foolish Lion of Lannister.
Then there was one hastily called meeting where he got out of the way every single piece of business for the moment, big and small alike.
There were admittingly a lot of big things. There was the estimation of how long the armies could remain in the field before the winter harvests finally ran out(7 more months or so), there were the questions of which cities would get charters, Robert's hunting licenses for Smallfolk in the Kingswood, The remaking of the Red Keep, the education of Stewards for Robert's Castles in the Reach.
And that wasn't even the half of it.
There was always something more to do.
Today, one of those things was to welcome the submission of the last Dragon Queen of Westeros.
I
"It would seem your mother was right. We really should just have gone the land route."
His father's tone was resigned.
He'd been in that mood ever since they'd encountered the other ships after rounding Massey's hook.
"We might as well have taken the slow but comfortable route, rather than waste our time with an entrance that's just gonna be overshadowed anyway."
For his own part, Galladon did not care much about being overshadowed as they came to the capital.
In fact, he was rather glad about it. All their knights were talking about what an honor it was to be selected as the King's personal page, with the promise of becoming his squire.
Maybe it was, but to Galldon, all it meant was that he'd be going away from home to live in the scary castle of the dragon lords.
He was happy everyone's eyes wouldn't be glued to him during their entrance.
That was not something he would say to his father though.
His father had been so proud that his own son would squire for King Robert. Not to mention he did not want to look craven and worse, like a little baby.
Still, as he looked up at the approaching City, all that Galladon Tarth saw brought him fear and dark foreboding, as his mother would call it.
The city was huge. Enormous. Much, much larger than any of the villages on Tarth. Even only being able to see the city harbor, and one side of the walls, he understood just how large it was.
And above it, on the mighty hill overlooking the bay, it's towers rising high, high into the sky, was a castle that seemed, to him, to be as big as Storm's End.
But whereas the sight of Durran Godsgriefs old home had always filled Galladon with awe, all he could think off looking up at that massive, Red Keep, was every single story he had ever heard about the dragon lords.
And he had heard a lot of those, be it from his father, his mother, the servants, bards, or the knights and men at arms of House Tarth.
Stories of how the castle had once been home to terrible dragons that feasted on human sacrifice from the city, of Maegor the Cruel who had committed the most heinous of all crimes, butchering hundreds and hundreds of his own guest and workers after they finished the castle, thus dyeing it in their blood.
How the gods had then punished him by murdering him with the monstrous Iron Throne.
He also recalled how his father had once noted how the castle had once fallen to a mob of tyrannical smallfolk, who had sought to make men subservient to women and had hoisted a little bastard boy up on the Iron Throne as king to do her bidding as they brought misery and suffering to all the poor people in the city.
How children and women had thrown themselves on the spiky moat rather than being forced to marry into the mad Targaryen family, and how the terrible and cruel Lord Stark had come to the keep to deliver his own unyielding and merciless "Justice" at the end of the Dance of the Dragons.
There was more too. So much more.
In particular, the stories of the horrors that had happened to the Starks and their friends that came to try and have Lyanna Stark freed and returned from the Knave Prince Rhaegar.
He shuddered.
"Yeah, they were all dragged out before the throne" Ser Tommard had told him, no more than two weeks ago now.
"Lord Stark, he demanded a trial by combat, so the mad king roasted him alive, and then fed his meat to his dogs. But the rest of the Northmen, they were all strangled slowly, and brutually and Aenys watched and laughed."
That had happened about a year ago.
He remembered hearing about it when Robert called his banners, and his father sailed to war.
Today, he would enter that hall himself.
It was a terrifying thought.
His father though did not focus much on the approaching city.
Instead, he focused on the ships beside and behind them.
The massive navy, whose ships either bore the great, three-headed, fire-breathing dragon of the Targaryens, or that strange flag that symbolized the city of Braavos.
There were A LOT of both kinds.
Several hundreds of each.
Had he not been so preoccupied with thoughts of the Red Keep, and the imminent, year-long separation from his family, the bog might have marveled at just what an armada had come to escort the dragon Queen to court.
I
Galldon had not known what to expect when he saw the queen.
His image of King Aerys had been of a madman, a demon in the flesh, who killed and maimed as he pleased.
Surely such a man would have a wicked, and evil wife, to egg him on from the sides.
Yet the queen as she stepped down from her war galley was nothing like that. In fact, he didn't think he'd seen a more pitiful sight in his life.
For one thing, she was pregnant. Nearing the end of it too, if the size was anything to go by.
He remembered how his own mother had been when she was with Brienne. She had seemed so alive, as large and boisterous as ever.
The former queen was nothing like that.
Despite her large belly, she was thin all elsewhere, with spindly arms, contrasting sharply with her large stomach.
Her gown was finely made, but it looked too large on her everywhere else than her stomach.
But the biggest contrast with his expectations was her face.
The queen had long, thin scars across her entire face. A dozen of them. It could have made her look tough(Though surely a woman would prefer to be beautiful above anything else.), but instead, it just reinforced his view that she looked fragile.
Those horrible scars only added to a face that looked sadder, and more empty than any he had ever seen.
She looked frail, sad, yet also resigned.
"What happened to her face?" He whispered to his father, as the Queen stepped off of the gangplank, and headed to a walled carriage, surrounded by Royal Knights.
"Don't know. It looks like she's been attacked by some beast. A Shadowcat mayhaps. Though gods know how that happened. She didn't look like that last time I saw her two years ago, so it must have been recent."
As they looked at the Queen vanishing inside of the carriage, followed by a couple of retainers and knights, Lord Tarth clapped his son gently on the shoulder.
"Don't worry about the queen lad. She's come to swear her fealty, and bend her knee, so no harm will come to her. We should get moving. There is no way we'll get an audience with the Hand before the big ceremony, but we still want to get into the castle before her so we can witness it."
Galladon supposed that made sense, but as they mounted up, and he kicked his pony's sides, Galladon's thoughts still went out to the queen.
What had happened to her? Shouldn't her knights have protected her from it? Was that not their duty? That was the point of knights, wasn't it? To protect.
"Evenstar! So, you finally decided to show up, have you?"
Galladon was quickly pulled out of his musings by an unfamiliar voice, that didn't quite sound friendly.
Both Tarth's turned their heads, as another man trotted up to them on a beautiful grey Gelding.
"Lord Velaryon." His father said politely, if not warmly.
The man was stall, and stocky, dressed in an immaculate set of plated steel that had been colored a bright Sea Green, and with a mystical Seahorse engraved into it with what looked like diamonds.
It was a far, far cry from his father's own plate armor, though the older Tarth did not wear that today, instead having dressed in dyed wool, with their sun and moon embroidered on it, topped with a pink and blue hat crowning the outfit.
Lord Velaryon though, did not wear anything to crown his head, instead letting a mane of Valyrian Silver Gold spill about his snow-white face, and his steel-covered shoulders.
The man looked to be in a good, good mood as his horse trotted up to them, and their guard parted to let him pass.
Behind him, his own entourage began their trip to the Red Keep, seemingly content to leave their lord behind.
"You seem in a pretty good mood."
His father noted.
"You're usually dour as the Winter rains."
"Well, there are times when even the most dour man will celebrate. Becoming the new ruler of the Bay for one is such an occasion. I imagine you felt something similar when you got that new sword of yours."
Monford nodded at father's belt, where a longsword with a red hilt with a pattern like cracked glass poked out of a scabbard.
"The Battle of Storm's end?"
"Yes. I took it from a Reacher Knight. Like most of us did. you should have seen the collection the King procured."
"No doubt he'll show them off to us all later. If I know Robert Baratheon well enough, he'll probably have every single one showcased by his Kingsguard on every feast he ever throws."
"He likes showing off our new King does."
He narrowed his eyes at the Valyrian.
"But enough about him, what's this about you becoming overlord of the Bay? I thought the Targaryens would remain the overlords over the islands of the bay?"
"No, they will remain the lords of Dragonstone. As in, the Island. The overlordship over the islands of Blackwater Bay, however, now belongs to the Velaryons of Driftmark."
Judging by his father's look, Galladon could tell this was important news, though he wasn't quite sure why.
"We've been given orders to rebuild Spicetown as well, this time as a proper city, alongside the newly chartered Hull."
The lord of the Tides looked at his father with a smile.
"The world is changing my friend. All thanks to our beloved King Robert."
"All thanks to Robert aye."
"I've heard you also got a couple of cities to your domains."
"Yes. Evenfall, and Morne. What of them?"
"Well, I thought you and I might make some… Arrangements. An alliance would serve the strongest lords on the East coast well… After all, Robert is planning on claiming the Stepstones after all. Riches unlike any will flow to and from the capital… And what islands will dominate that trade from Yi Ti? Why, Driftmark and Tarth."
The Evenstar sighed.
"I am not opposed to such an alliance my Lord… But I am fully aware you have no blood relations to bargain with for such a pact… Unless you mean to offer me that brother of yours."
He sneered.
"If so, I will decline. I know enough about that one to know he will not touch my Brienne's hand so long as I live."
"Eh, I am still young. I'll have a son, eventually, and if not…"
His eyes turned to Galladon.
"I do have female relations."
"No. I have already been offered a hand for Galladon. By Robert himself."
This actually managed to take the lord of the Tides aback.
"Truly? Who?"
I
Listening to his father and lord Velaryon talk politics all the way to the castle had almost made Gallafon forget why he didn't want to go to said castle.
That had lasted until he saw the gates in the distance, and all his fears awoke anew.
The giant red walls loomed up over the city, like a blood-covered mountain.
Then, as they got closer, he saw a different sight.
Skulls. Thousands and thousands of skulls lined the top of the walls on spikes, from one end of the wall to the other.
His thoughts immediately went to the poor masons that Maegor had killed, but that was stupid.
That had happened centuries ago, and these heads still had a few that were black and bloody.
They were fresh with that kind of blood still there.
He felt small as they rode in under the gateway into the castle.
Just a couple of lords and their retinues, among hundreds of others. Knights, lords, ladies, servants. All in a thousand colors, and with sigils of a hundred different variations.
It had never really occurred to him just how many lords there actually were in Westeros. Sure, his father always forced him to learn heraldry, but to actually see so many in one place… and this wasn't even the majority of them.
Had it been at his home, or Storms End, he might even have welcomed the sight of so many people, but not here. Here it all filled him with an underlying sense that something was wrong.
As they trotted towards the stables, his head turned back towards the countless line of skulls.
As he did so, he realized something else. There was one other man whose attention was directed towards the skulls.
A tall man, dressed in mail, inlaid with steel plates. Though Galladon could only see him from the side, he could tell he was a handsome man, with a strong beard, and the one eye he could see was blue as the sky itself.
He had one hand under his chin, as he looked up at the heads, a wicked smile on his lips.
Unlike almost everyone else around him, he wore no sigil or coat of arms, to tell who he was, though the men at his sides did, being dressed in long, black cloaks that showcased a creature Galladon Tarth had only seen in books.
A golden Kraken of the depths.
This was a Greyjoy of Pyke. An Ironborn.
Then, suddenly, and without any warning, as if he could tell that someone was looking at him, the man suddenly turned around, and found Galladon's gaze.
He froze. Completely.
Suddenly, his entire being was filled, not with an underlying dread, but a fear. A fear of this man.
The blue eye caught him, like a fish being impaled and dragged to it's doom by a barbed hook. He could not look away, as the eye, blue as Death itself looked at him. Saw through, skin, bones, and down to his soul.
The man, as it turned out, had only one eye, the other being hidden by an eyepatch. But the blue one was more than enough to make Galladon Tarth pause, as the Ironborn man studied him.
Then he laughed and said something Galladon could not hear.
His companions did not answer, but they quickly left, heading for a truly massive hall of red stone.
As they did, Galldon began breathing again.
When had he stopped?
"Greyjoys?"
His father, who had just dismounted, and handed his horse over to a groom had turned around to look at what Galladon was gazing after.
"So the Iron Islands have bent the knee then. That's good. Means we don't have to go out to the Islands to put them down."
Right. The man was a subject of the crown.
Their ally and fellow lord.
It was easier to tell himself that, than it was to stop the shaking of his own body as he was forced to follow him, to walk into the great Throne Room.
I
There were few things Torro Delthoro wished less than being an official diplomat to the King of Westeros.
Westeros was a horrible place, full of awful, annoying people, whose King was so obsessed with war, that he had an official position in his government to rule for him, just so that he could continue warring, rather than actually ruling the realm.
He hated the stink of the city, he hated the way it made him sweat constantly, he hated the fact that the power of the realm was so tied up into the Hand, that when he wanted something done, he had to seek an audience and wait half a week just to talk to him, he hated that every single one of the Westerosi lords was madmen obsessed with war and fighting, he hated being surrounded by bloody children assistants, and he missed his bidet.
He truly, totally, hated this place.
But someone had to be the official go-to between Braavos and Westeros, and so he had been sent.
At least the war seemed to be dying down.
Maybe he would be going home soon. Or maybe he would stay here until every single one of the damn sieges was over, just to prolong his suffering.
As he walked down the way to the big throne room, he passed the sight of a tall man in armor laughing his ass off at the sight of what had become of Aerys II.
It would have been a great, and sensible move in Torro's opinion, completely humiliating the very memory of the Valyrian Dragonlords… If it wasn't for the fact Robert wasn't willing to go all the way.
He should have killed Aerys wife, alongside the child in her belly, and the brat currently still at Dragonstone.
So long as but one dragon lived, someone could get it into their heads that mayhaps the dragons should still rule.
Then again, Westeros was full of this kind of insanity.
The Starks of the North had allowed both the Boltons and the Dustins to live as subjects, instead of cutting their heads off.
The Brackens had allowed the… what were they called? The Bird house, they had allowed the bird house people to settle into their land, who had then betrayed them, and because neither had managed to wipe the other out, they had been killing each other without end for millennia.
And then there was Dorne.
Nymeria should have exterminated every single of the local dornish, and taken their lands for her own followers. Instead, she had allowed most of them to remain to this day.
Madness. Westeros was full of madness.
Instead of wiping out their enemies' roots and stem, they instead helped them to their feet once they were beaten.
No wonder the land was so cursed and full of war.
It was a paradox.
The Westerosi were absolutely, completely obsessed with war… But they were also utter shit at decisively ending them, and wiping out the threats they faced forever.
When you had a crew of traitors, you dealt with them by hanging every single man and then giving the ship to a new crew.
You didn't take the traitor's sons, and tell him to behave this time, or else.
At least the Storm King understood that much if no one else did.
As he strutted forward, to get as close to the throne as he could, while still being able to see, he mused at all the men, women, and children in the room.
For them, this was a historical moment. The day that the Dragons finally bent the knee, and it signaled the final end of the dominion of the Dragonlords.
That was how the history books would remember it, he had no doubt.
But as a man not invested in any of that, all he saw as the woman stepped forth, was a scarred, tired, sickly, spindly woman heavy with child that needed one of her knights to safely kneel.
This, was what the last of the Dragonlords had been reduced to? This mismatch of weakness and an unborn child?
Pathetic.
On the opposite end of the board was Jon Arryn.
Nearly 6 and a half feet tall, and with the largest, and broadest set of shoulders Torro had ever seen, the old man excuded power, and strength, as he sat, a silvery crown upon his head, as he looked down on the kneeling woman with a calm, imperial face.
Yes, Jon Arryn certainly looked every bit of a wise, older, experienced king.
Adding to that, was the throne he sat on.
Torro had never seen the Iron Throne in it's full glory, but he had seen enough of it to understand just how ugly, impractical, and oversized the giant chair made up of thousands and thousands of swords had been.
The new throne was a much, much better twist on the concept.
Like the Iron Throne, it looked like a throne made up of swords, but whereas it's predecessor had been absolutely enormous, this one was much, much more practically sized.
It was a throne that looked like it had been made by mayhaps two hundred black swords, but looks could be deceiving.
For instead of steel, every single "sword", even the ones that had the appearance of having been "hammered", was actually carved from Dragonbone, of which the Baratheon Dynasty currently was the largest holder of in all the world.
It was exquisitely well made, so that it was impossible to see the screws that underneath the surface was holding the entire thing together as one.
It certainly wowed every newcomer who came to gawk at it.
For example at the moment, as the queen knelt, and said some silly words of allegiance, the same black-haired youth that had laughed at Aerys fate, was now ignoring his wife, in favor of looking at the throne with a hungry grin on his face.
Clearly, he wasn't the only man bored by these stupid theatrics.
It took a while, but finally, the woman finished, Jon Arryn finished his words, and the ex-queen was helped to her feet, leaving her crown on the ground, as she turned and walked out the door, escorted by knights.
If it was up to him, he would have forcibly sent her to the room where her grandson had gotten his head smashed in, just to make the valyrian suffer, but alas, Jon Arryn was not as ruthless, spiteful, and decisive as his master.