A/N: Splitting this into pieces because I'm tired of super-long chapters.
"-. THE FATHER .-"
(I)
Looking forward to peace and quiet after years of not getting any peace and quiet made life so much brighter! After the first cold of his life joined hands with indigestion to ruin the tourney for him, Steffon Baratheon was quite glad to finally have something to buoy the spirits that Rhaegar and Toyne rode into the ground. It didn't compare to thumb-wrestling Renly, or having Viserys on hand to hug and toss up and down, but he had to be mindful that he'd soon need to manage without his comfort dragon. Besides, maybe he and Cassana could finally get that fourth baby that kept eluding them, that wasn't too much to hope for, right?
Sure, looking forward to a holiday didn't compare to actually being on holiday, but it was only a matter of time! In fact, it would be just enough time to get past this blasted heartburn, because of course that had to happen at some point in his life too. Good thing he didn't catch it during the actual feast, that would have been mighty annoying and then some. Not that a Lords' Council was a much better place to be one lurch away from puking all over the table, but he'd done better with worse.
Now if everyone and their mother-in-law could kindly not take the last shine away by trying to ram their oh so grandiose projects down his throat in the eleventh hour, that would be just grand. Unfortunately, misfortune just refused to take a break from courting Steffon's increasingly smug pessimism. Which is to say, someone squealed again. About important need-to-know information. Namely the still vaguely defined idea for a Royal Bank of Westeros that Steffon could have sworn he hadn't discussed with anyone but Aerys in private.
So now the Great Lords were all falling over each other arguing how they knew just the place to put the damn thing, because of course they did! After all, why would high lords not act on their gods-misbegotten egos during such an auspicious time? They simply had to put their best foot forward, after all it was a wedding, wasn't that right? Besides, it wasn't every day that the King held council with his lords directly. Steffon was sorely regretting not holding the Small Council meeting before this gathering instead of after. He was also wondering where the high nobility's complete disgust for coin counting had disappeared to. And he couldn't even give them the stern talking to they deserved because they were grown-arse men he couldn't just take into hand like the misbehaving children they acted like.
It would have been easy enough to send them off with empty platitudes if they hadn't all come armed with bucketloads of ever so brilliant ideas that it was literally impossible for the crown to not give them due consideration without giving insult. It wasn't like the Royal Bank would have to naturally be located in the capital or anything!
Hoster Tully wanted to base the Royal Bank in a second Riverrun he wanted built at the confluence of the Blue and Red Forks (complete with a moat to wall off the third side). And to provide adequate defense, he proposed a writ to establish riverrine navy. Tully acted like it would be a token gesture from the 'decisively proactive Iron Throne we are blessed to serve under in our time' but he wasn't fooling anyone. Or, well, not everyone if Mace Tyrell's attempt to look like he was on to him was any indication, poor lad. It would give Hoster the ideal place to stash a second branch of his House, and allow him to dominate traffic on all three Forks by giving House Tully the upper hand on the lords of the Trident, especially the more easterly parts of their dominion. It would also be a major source of revenue from increased tax collection and tariffs, while offsetting the geographical disadvantage of Riverrun being so far away from the centre of their land.
Tywin wanted the Royal Bank based in Casterly Rock, naturally, ostensibly for more streamlined investment for whatever future great works the Seven Kingdoms had planned. Steffon wondered if Tywin really expected everyone to be blind to how this would allow him to fuck with the value of gold even more than he already did. Tywin also wanted a license to keep a permanent fleet at Lannisport of at least 300 ships. As if naval expertise and tariff exemptions grew like shrooms in mine warrens! And that was without mentioning all the shady shit Tywin had already suggested to Steffon in confidence, as if it was all hunky-dory to spy on their allies and torture secrets out of kidnapped Qohori smiths!
Mace Tyrell followed up with wanting the Bank in Highgarden because of course he did. Then he did one better and proposed a sub-treasury system for farmers to sell their crops to a public warehouse at a guaranteed minimum rate in exchange for an official letter of credit, which they could then redeem for their crops again if prices rose. Of all the plans proposed, this one was most obviously developed by a poor maester desperate to rehabilitate his order's image because Mace did a terrible job of explaining it. Which was a very mixed blessing because it was a really, truly, dangerously good plan that Mace would have been better off carrying out at home with his own funds without warning anyone. The wealth mobility would increase and stabilize farmer's incomes and their access to credit, while massively expanding Highgarden's wealth reserves by a huge factor, maybe enough to make Highgarden richer than House Lannister. Tywin was sure regretting letting Tyrell speak after him, just look at his ever so stony face!
Steffon felt a little guilty when Quellon Greyjoy gave him a reprieve from splashy ambitions. The man was clearly blindsided by everyone else's projects, and he didn't even pretend the Iron Islands would ever be in the running for something like this. He did a really good job of looking down on his peers without looking down on them for their, ahem, 'bold' proposals. He even pulled some ideas out of his arse about freeing thralls, forbidding most reaving, discouraging salt wives and bringing more maesters to the Iron Islands. When it came out that he needed outside support for all of it, though, there was much empty encouragement offered because that was the sort of thing you needed marriages with the mainland for, and his leverage on that front was very small indeed after Euron's literal treason. It wasn't fair to expect the same treachery from the man's other sons, but it was difficult to imagine a worse failure as a father and as a man. How could you not worry that his other children were cut from the same cloth?
Jon Arryn mercifully had nothing to posture about, so he was officially Steffon's new favorite not-friend.
Then Loreza Martell 'kindly' distracted everyone from Greyjoy's plight by 'not tainting the proceedings with her own personal ambitions' and instead offered Dorne as the 'proving ground' for the 'understandably young and untested institution to cut its teeth on.' Which is to say, she brought up Aerys' old abandoned ideas for Dorne. In fact, she 'graciously' reassured everyone that Dorne could 'easily' just 'settle' for 'merely' diverting the Torrentine river eastward, what the fuck, woman? And nobody except Tywin seemed to realise she was just tossing it out there for the hell of it, because really? Did they not realise this would literally dispossess House Dayne and destroy an established fertile valley in exchange for a sandy swamp that would take decades to become a tenth as fertile, if that? Aerys of yesteryear might have been completely insane to suggest digging a tunnel from one side of the Red Mountains to the other, but at least he only wanted part of the water diverted eastwards, not the whole damn river!
"And what about you, Lord Hand?" Lady Daft Dame ever so graciously aimed her spear at the roiling stormcloud. "Surely the Stormlands have not let their best minds stay idle? Please, tell us your own plans."
Steffon looked at her incredulously. "Any plans I have for my homeland are just that: my plans. Which I will carry out when and how it suits me." Without begging for handouts from the Iron Throne would've rung like a death bell in the ensuing quiet if self-awareness was not, in fact, a myth.
The Daft Dame tittered.
Steffon glowered her, but the damage was already done. Everyone was all a tizzy now because of course Dorne couldn't be allowed to have right of first refusal, especially for something that would benefit the Seven Kingdoms as a whole if only built elsewhere. A link from Blue Fork to Ironman's Bay would hugely increase trade in the Riverlands, Tywin naturally needed a canal linking Hornvale to the Red Fork (it would cut the time from the Westerlands to King's Landing from over three months to five days, don't you know!), and Mace Tyrell suddenly needed two canals of his own too, from the Mander to the Blackwater and from the Mander to Honeywine because of course he did, he was sitting in Hightower's Hightower while Hightower wasn't allowed to sit on a meeting held in his own tower by his most begrudged guest with his mother-in-law, another slight that Aerys insisted on,great optics there!
Speaking of Aerys, this was around the time where the King should step in and remind everyone it was still House Targaryen that ruled the Seven Kingdoms. Alas, His Grace had chosen to ever so gracefully sulk over Steffon's entirely reasonable vacation plans, and wasn't that just perfect? Why shouldn't both of his friends decide to be absolutely terrible to him when he needed them?
Steffon took a deep breath and willed his heartrate to drop back to normal. Unfortunately, he'd gone from excitement at his upcoming vacation to whatever-excitement-wasn't. His knee started bouncing up and down.
What should he even do here? Refuse, delay, defer, or make a judgment call and hope the parties slighted didn't spend his vacation nursing the motherlode of all resentments like children mad over having their toys taken away? Cancel the Royal Bank plans entirely? Pretend to cancel them? Maybe he could beg off on account of his malaise, it was the weather, you know, the harbour air was just too clean compared to King's Landing and it blew in the opposite direction, his constitution just couldn't adjust, that was the sort of dogshit people could actually pretend made some sense, right? More than faking his own suicide at least, though it would get him out of this right quick.
Steffon eyed the railing speculatively. Aerys had chosen to hold his meetings on the terrace because it left a single, windowed wall to eavesdrop through, and their voices were otherwise lost in the wind. If he jumped off, not only would Steffon be dead the moment he hit the ground, he'd have long enough for life to flash before his eyes and rethink all his life's decisions, thus reaching the other side wise and enlightened. He would escape this torment and the eternal torment of the Seven Hells by becoming a martyr. Sure, Aerys would be crushed and Rhaella would be doubly crushed without closure for her unrequited love, but he wasn't about to apologise for being the ideal man, that would be crazy!
But then Cassana would have to raise Renly without a father, Stannis would grind his teeth to sand, and Robert would break the Seven Kingdoms to pieces in his rage and piss on the remains. Steffon couldn't do that to them, he still had so much to teach them, so many shortcomings of his own to make up for one bellowing hug at a time, he couldn't die, he just couldn't die, he didn't want to die yet, he just couldn't!
Wait, what was he thinking, he was in a good mood today, no way was he going to let simple stupidity bring his spirits down! Now, granted, this was rather more complicated stupidity, but still!
"What say you, Lord Baratheon?" Hoster Tully asked before Mace Tyrell could gird his loins for yet another failure to pick up where Daft Dame left off. "What does the Hand of the King think about all this?"
"I think you're all arseholes." Would you look at that, it was so quiet all of a sudden. Bliss! "I am, in fact, well aware that I've failed to secure the Iron Throne from unwanted ears. I don't quite appreciate that you all chose not to inform the Crown of this intelligence breach instead of trying to profit from it via this unsightly display. I especially don't appreciate that you've chosen to throw it in my face two measly hours before I have to go secure the premises where our King has to preside over the first Starry Synod in over a thousand years. Tomorrow. Because the Most Devout are seriously scared of a schism that will paint this city red with the blood of priests for the second time in less than five years. There's this word I've been teaching Viserys, see, his r's still sound like a strangled duck but he made a better attempt at 'restraint' than-"
"What my Hand is trying to say," Aerys suddenly interjected, and fuck, what kind of day was this when Aerys Targaryen was the one soothing ruffled feathers, ugh. "Is that your contributions to this meeting are rather greater in scope than this informal setting was intended to accommodate at this time. As you know, the Crown has barely finished its last great work. All of you know there are more urgent short-term issues that take priority now. The Iron Throne cannot be distracted at this sensitive juncture, especially since there are outlaws aplenty to do so in your stead, you were all there for Toyne's brazen display."
Yes, Your Grace, go ahead and compare the Great Lords to bandits, that's surely better than calling them out for acting like entitled brats worse than a two-year-old, don't mention how the Iron Throne has to either grant something to every one of them now (thus wasting gold and favour on things that would likely go nowhere alone), refuse all of them (thus inflicting flagrant insult on everybody), or choose just one or two of the lot (thus inflicting a really big flagrant insult on everyone left out). And don't think Steffon didn't notice how Aerys didn't say anything about the holiday he had planned, sound the bells, Jon Con, there's an all-new battle coming up and nope, never mind. Jon Con was a knight now, Steffon didn't even have his squire anymore to grouse invectives at, wonderful.
Did it not occur to any of these people they could make their own banks? Then they could fund all their pet projects and then some. Then again, that would open a whole other can of worms, because who even knew where the authority of the Iron Throne ended and the Lords' began then?
"We do apologise, Your Grace," Mace Tyrell simpered – no, Steffon shouldn't be scathing towards the only one with stones enough to talk back to the King in spite of having the worst harridan in the realms for a mother. "It's just… we assumed you wanted to hear our proposals as soon as possible given all the… disruptive elements afflicting the Realm's stability in recent years."
"Elements that continue to insist on playing coy," Tywin coldly agreed, and now Steffon was seriously wondering if someone had finally managed to poison him for Tywin Lannister to agree with Mace Tyrell on anything. "Let's not pretend we don't know who and why is absent from this council."
Oh right, that's why. The can of worms was right open already, thank you kindly for the reminder, Tywin.
You cunt.
"We shall adjourn here." Aerys' voice was two shades colder than before. His eyes were locked on Tywin's, because why shouldn't Steffon's friends insist on being the most troublesome friends to ever have? "My Hand and I need prepare for the Small Council meeting. The matter of the Royal Bank is tabled until further notice. Please enjoy the rest of the festivities."
The men – and Daft Dame – made a good show of pretending to leave without any hard feelings.
Not that it made much difference. The Small Council had nothing else to talk about either, so much so that Aerys adjourned that early too. Alas for the blissful ignorance of transparent arguments! The Realm's chronic lack of subtlety was alive and kicking him in the balls with the same enthusiasm that got four Masters of Whisperers fired within his first year on the job. Soon to be five, it seemed. Looked like Darklyn and his woman were finally getting the other half of what they wanted. Good luck to them, they'll need it with this bunch. Worse than Viserys, the lot of them. At least the little dragon had the courtesy of being adorable and cute!
But that was the rub, wasn't it? Mace Tyrell was right. There were very good reasons to do something as soon as possible about those 'disruptive elements' that had everyone south of the Neck freaking the fuck out.
The North no longer imported food, they'd introduced new crops never before seen, their sugar beets had practically crippled the Reach's cane sugar exports, and their crop rotation freely offered could throw the Reach into complete disarray within the year. The Northern Citadel hadn't failed, the Sleeves had upended everything previously known about sickness and defeated the plague. The north was no longer struggling with raids and rebellions, they were outpacing all other realms in metalworking to equip their professional war force unlike all but Casterly Rock had managed to afford before. The Company of the Rose and Wolf Pack mercenary companies were now Rickard Stark's standing army deployed around the Bay of Ice and the Dreadfort.
House Stark sold booze in clear glass bottles and sails to Braavos. The Crown of Winter Institute of Learning was called the Crown of Winter Institute of Learning. And now Tywin Lannister was furious and worried enough to make common cause with Mace Tyrell, of all people, because he was disturbed enough to think the North was mining gold.
His holiday couldn't come fast enough.
"I forbid it," Aerys said out of the blue when it was just the two of them left.
Well, the two of them and the raven that continued to badger Steffon for snacks even though he'd been feeding the Fat Foul since he first sat his arse on that chair that morning. "Forbid what, Your Grace?"
"I do not give you leave to abandon your responsibilities."
"I'm not a slave, Aerys. I do what I want."
Aerys actually gaped in shock at him.
Steffon got up from his chair and promptly had to grab onto the edge of the table when a dizzy spell came over him. When it passed, Aerys was standing as well, his look of alarm not hidden quite fast enough. "You are unwell."
"I'm well enough," Steffon grunted. "It's the air, too much gall getting passed around all at once."
"This is no joking matter!"
The shout sent Fat Foul flying off to watch from the safe distance above the door. Steffon harrumphed and walked over to stand in front of the other man. "Aerys, look at my face." Steffon waited for Aerys to comply. "Now tell me, how different is it from when I took this job?"
Aerys retreated from him with a scoff. "We are all different now."
"Aerys, I just got dizzy. Me. And it's not even the first time. I got dizzy in the yard too, way back when we got here. I was sparring with Rhaegar and it just came over me. Brat got a good hit in too, we weren't using live steel but it still broke skin, that's how unused to this I am. I felt like shit taking the lift today too, like all the heatstroke I avoided since leaving King's Landing caught up to me all at once. I got over it fast because I'm, reasonably speaking, the strongest man in the world. But I'll be outright amazing after a good break."
"Do not pretend you are leaving for my benefit."
"Well then, seeing as you're so worried, I hope I don't need to keel over and die before you stop holding my limits against me."
Aerys shoved back his chair and strode over to the edge of the terrace, robes swirling as he grabbed the railing and leaned over to glare at the city below. "You dare call me a slaver?"
"I think you're starting to forget the difference."
"Am I?" Aerys asked disdainfully. "Do enlighten me, then. How do I treat you like a slave?"
"You haven't. Yet." Steffon shrugged, considering the drinks on the table before choosing a cup of mead. "You treat plenty others like that, though, and you take me for granted."
"Others? Like who?"
"Your petitioners, your servants, you son-"
"Is he?"
"Oh please, Rhaegar is not a bastard and you know it." This was the perfect occasion for Steffon to test his ideas for remote bird feeding. Fat Foul proved quite adept at snatching puffcorn out of the air. "The only thing he got from Rhaella is how pretty he is. Everything else is you, all the way to his ever so lofty designs for a realm he hasn't inherited yet. The only difference is that he started off on the bad side of pessimism, mister 'I'll bring the Titan to its knees right after I build an underwater canal to make the desert bloom.'"
"You have some cheek to speak to me like this."
You can no more prove Rhaegar isn't yours than Tywin can prove that about Tyrion, but Aerys hated being compared to him even when the shoe fit, which was all the time. "No. I have faith that you'll take it in the intended spirit."
"Perhaps I will not."
"Won't you?" Flick – gobble. Fat Foul wasn't missing the mark at all, even when Steffon flicked wide. "The only way you'll prove me wrong is if you choose to do it out of spite. You're not a bad enough man for that." Anymore.
"I am your king."
"And the only reason that peasant last week didn't tell you to go fuck yourself when you ruled in favour of the merchant is because he chose the course that spared him further cruelty. It wasn't because you control what he wants and does. Whoever told you the King commands the hearts and minds of his people was a fat oily liar."
Aerys' grip on the railing went white-knuckled. "You would compare my treatment of you to that of the smallfolk?"
"The life of commoners sucks, but at least they can live it without being driven to murder."
Aerys clearly had no idea what to say to that. Kingship had made him a master of deflection though. The man averted his eyes and glared instead at the terrace garden three levels below, where Rhaella and her women's court were having brunch with the other High Ladies in residence. "Look at them. Look at her, all prim and proper in that garden, as if it's a point of pride for her and not our House's greatest enemies. What great banquets and lavish social affairs were hosted there under the stars, do you think? Did Hightower ever live up to its claims of propriety, or did they mock us like they mocked the stoic melancholy of the moss-covered fountains and angelic statues, their salacious trysts half-hidden in the hedgerows, their morality slipping ever deeper into the mud."
"Oh Aerys," Steffon said sadly. "Do you truly think Hightower will rub off on her that easily? Rhaella's as much a Targaryen as you. She's your wife."
"She neither loves nor respects me." The King spat bitterly, looking at Steffon over his shoulder with death in his eye. "She only has eyes for you."
"Of course she does," Steffon said mildly, shocking the man into turning around. "I'm the only man she has regular access to that's good and strong and honest and more handsome than you." Really, how was this not obvious? Honestly. "Also, you treat her like shit for things she never did even though you're the worse adulterer in your matrimony by a thousand leagues."
Aerys was gaping at him with an affront so close to apoplectic that Steffon seriously worried he'd be finishing the day one head shorter.
Finally, finally though, Aerys grit his teeth and turned his back on him again, his silence heavy ad damning between them.
Oh well. Not like that ever stopped Steffon before. "My mother was a Targaryen too, remember that? She told me something once. Life is a balance between two extremes. The noble man devotes his material wealth to lofty ends, the advancement of science, or art, or some such true ideal. The base man does the opposite by concentrating all his abilities on the amassing of wealth and power. This is the real distinction between the true noble and the common blue-blood, or, if you prefer it, between the gentleman and the cad."
It was fifteen puffcorn tosses later than Aerys finally unclenched his jaw enough to respond. "That is a most depressing way of thinking."
"But it's not wrong, or The King's Landing wouldn't be the summit of entertainment."
"You remain far too optimistic for your own good."
"Only because you can't be bothered to muster any of your own. I only do what I do for you."
"Me and everyone else."
"You and everyone else I love, yes." Also the realm, but work ethic was the one front Aerys had absolutely no problems on.
Once again, Aerys shut up uncomfortably. This time, though, he couldn't hold himself back. "She lusts for you."
"Yes she does, I'm pretty good looking and well-endowed after all."
"… She's in love with you."
Steffon sighed and sat against the table. "Yes," he said lowly. "She is. And she deserves a man as good as I am, but I'm faithful and happily married. I'm sorry neither of you two will ever have that. I don't know what to do about that. I'm sorry."
The silence this time was raw and grief-stricken, the king's heart bleeding heartbreak in the wind.
"You deserve better too, Aerys, but you'll never have it if you go on like this."
"I never will, will I?" Aerys murmured bleakly. "It was impossible the moment our father forced us to marry on the word of some crackpot witch."
"That's right," Steffon sighed, looking over to him. "So why, Aerys? Why put so much effort into making things even more painful for yourself? Why, Aerys?"
Aerys didn't reply.
Steffon lost count of how much corn Fat Foul badgered out of him by the time Aerys talked to him again.
"Handship was never a trial for you before."
"Not in the beginning, because I was fresh and enthusiastic." Like the forest fire from a lightning strike, forever doomed to go out eventually. "Now I'm burned out." Steffon threw the bird one last kernel and went over to lean his hip against the railing. "Aerys, I need a vacation or I'll start ripping heads off with my bare fingers. Or did you not notice me having a shorter temper than yours? If you won't give me leave, I'll use your great warrant to do it myself. Unless you plan to withdraw that?"
Aerys glared at him, and his eyes had never before spewed such venom. The King pulled away from the railing and turned to face him, challenge written bare over his face. "And if I do deny you?"
"I'll resign and not come back at all."
Aerys drew back, shocked. Hurt.
Steffon had never given Aerys an ultimatum, but he had his own lines never to be crossed, and the king's oath to 'never bring you into dishonor' was one of the big ones. Besides, it was about time something shocked Aerys into thinking. That was just how his mind worked. This dragon had not given the matter due thought yet. Since Steffon had a very full day planned on his behalf, he really didn't need the added stress any more than he could afford to wait the rest of this latest full week for the man to catch up to the right conclusion.
Hear oh gods my desperate plea, to understand why Targaryens are so terrible at being human.
Oh, who was he kidding? He didn't need to beg answers from gods he didn't believe in, he knew the answer already. It's because House Targaryen was made up of dramatic shits.
"Aerys," Steffon called softly, barely concealing the brief vertigo that made him glad he wasn't close enough to tip over the railing. "Have I not done my part?"
"Oh, stop being facetious."
"Then why are you punishing me?" It was an honest question, but no answer came. "I did my part and even managed to bring matters to a good enough point where there aren't any fires burning for once. Are the months and years of working myself to exhaustion and barely getting enough sleep not enough?"
"Don't presume to hold that against me when you showed not a sign!"
"Of course I didn't let you see it, you need me to be strong."
Aerys' face twisted between guilty shame and offended outrage at the very idea that he needed emotional support of any kind.
Steffon snorted, pushed from the railing and gave Aerys his belated hug of the day. "You can handle things without me just fine. I believe in you." Then he left without waiting for his King's dismissal because his friend deserved that and worse for being a jackass.
To his delight, Stannis was waiting for him inside.
"Son!"
"Father." Stannis rose from his armchair. "How are you feeling?"
"Cressen put you up to this?" Steffon eyed the book that Stannis had been reading. Poison or Sickness? A record of Common Commonalities. "You think I'm being poisoned?"
Stannis put the tome under his arm and walked beside him while staring straight ahead. "I believe this place has put you in greater danger than you've ever been in."
"I appreciate your concern, my boy." And he did. "But I'm pretty sure it's just a cold."
"You've never been sick in your life," Stannis said flatly. "Also, a cold only accounts for the congestion and fever, not everything else."
"And general unwellness, which does cover everything else."
"Nevertheless, as you are too busy to take proper care of yourself, I will stay vigilant."
"I'm such a shit father these days," Steffon sighed gustily, prompting Stannis to look back in disbelief. "I need to replenish my dad energy!"
"Robert will be over the moon, I'm sure."
"And you won't because you never are, yes, I know."
"… We'll just have to see."
"Oh my dear Stanny Boy, you don't see shit." Steffon sighed. "Except poison, apparently. Although I guess someone would have gotten to my milk and honey eventually."
"Cressen did not rule it out," his boy said loftily. Steffon would have laughed if Stannis wasn't completely incapable of putting on airs. "… But if it bothers you, I will try to be more discreet."
"No. If it's you, I don't mind. Do what you need for your peace of mind." They entered the lift and Steffon quickly amended his statement. "Except for my trip out to the Mansions. You're not coming. I don't want you within a mile of the place." Steffon didn't believe for a second there wasn't still rot there. "Line continuation, you understand."
"Robert will rejoice at his new place in succession, I'm sure."
"Cheeky brat." Steffon was so proud that he felt like he could defeat all the sicknesses in the world at once. Stannis said a joke! Finally, after so many years his toil was paying off! "I'm telling on you to your mother." She'll be so glad!
"Will that be before or after your thankless errand on our king's behalf?"
"Don't cast aspersions on His Grace, there's only one great warrant in this realm and I'm not ready for you to inherit that yet." Hopefully never, though whether Rhaegar would be any easier to handle remained unlikely. Still better than both at once though. "But to answer your question, it depends on whether she plans to ambush me on the way to the North's assigned quarterage."
"Ah."
'Ah' indeed. Steffon had hoped that meeting directly with the Wardens and Paramounts would make for a fresh change of pace from the Small Council's rote arse kissing, even if Aerys had only agreed to it because of the snub to Leyton Hightower and his get. Unfortunately, it was looking like all it managed to do was insult the Northern delegation for nothing. Not that punishing Rickard's absence wasn't a shit decision to begin with, but Aerys had a point that the Lord of the North had put off his public commendation several years too many and needed a slap on the wrist to get on with it. But snubbing Wyman Manderly while allowing Greyjoy in was a bit too much. Euron Greyjoy may have revealed that the North was building shipyards in secret, but it wasn't like anyone had bothered asking if they were, and at the end of the day it was still treason.
You didn't reward treason. Especially when it took away your access to the only viable source of information on the most cagey of the Seven Kingdoms now that even Branda Rogers nee Stark had proven to be completely useless.
"Come on, Stannis," Steffon said when the lift finally stopped at the right floor. "Let's see about hooking a merman."
He should have brought a net instead, it turned out. The sitting room was wide, spacious, airy, and populated by the single fattest man Steffon Baratheon had ever seen in his life, big, wide and his pale hair glinting silver in the sun where he stood at the window, leaning into the sea breeze with Fat Foul perched on his shoulder begging for corn.