Chapter Thirty Seven: Never Leave Home Without Guards.
Thirteenth Day of the Eleventh Month, 114 AC.
…And finally, I am forced to once more express my dissatisfaction with your penmanship. You must see to the curvature of your letters as I have seen more distinct lines from a small child's finger painting, do see to it in your next letter.
I shall expect said missive to arrive with the same promptness that you have come to demand of me.
See you that do not develop a fondness for drink and most due in the Arbor,
Rhea Royce, Lady of Runestone.
P.S. I am told that Lady Arryn has also been drawn into your circulation. Be sure to neglect her views on etiquette.
I cracked a grin as I finished the letter and laid back in my seat and scanned the painfully neat script again.
Rhea Royce was an amusing pen pal once one got past her whole 'my tongue gives Bolton's knife-envy' thing, quick-witted and shrewd in her views. She was also enough of a polymath that she was as comfortable speaking of history, architecture, trade and administration as she with politics. It had taken months of begrudging responses before her letters grew more material but nearly a year after, our correspondence had become a comfortable part of my routine. I liked to think that it was because I constantly tried to make her feel a touch included to her nominal kin by marriage and deferred to her on matters of rulership (which she genuinely had a talent for) but it was probably due to the use of a tie to the royal house.
Which only marginally reduced my shame that there was an ulterior motive for my engaging with the Lady of Runestone.
Her death marked Daemon's return, her extremely suspicious and definitely none-accidental death.
Rhea was in many ways a canary in the dragon-mine.
But I found myself liking my 'aunt' and had come to hope that she might be saved if Daemon tried something Cole.
I was in general surprised by how much I enjoyed reading letters, it was like having a conversation wherein one did not have to concern themselves with being imminently stabbed, flawed, eaten, etc. Sure, there was the worry of poisoned paper, but I knew that Arral had a rather pronounced and varied understanding of such matters and could patch me up fairly quickly.
I was also relatively certain that no one I corresponded with was so dimwitted as to try and kill me with a method that would leave them so red-handed.
While cracking my knuckles, I surveyed my other letters.
Mother was obvious, there was scarcely a day that she did not write asking after my health and reassuring me of her own health in the wake of her recent birth to Daeron the Bit-Player. I worried that I had annoyed her a bit much given her survival in another world, but I had a bad feeling that I would take it out on my newest brother if he cost me our mother.
…Vocalizing as much when she missed a day of writing was probably a bad idea in retrospect, but I like to think that I was in my rights, even if she eventually opts to have me fed to a dragon.
Speaking of dragons, my siblings seemed to have a much more defined interest in Clearsky's well-being than my own and Aemond had even started hinting that it was only fair that I helped him find a dragon since I was his older brother.
That I was considering the idea was troubling. Sure, it would be better if none of them had dragons to attack me with but on the other hand it made my guts tighten to think about Aeg, Aem or Hela going anywhere near something so dangerous as a wild dragon.
What was more troubling was their passing mentions of Cristen Cole, the bastard had become a steadily more notable figure in the minds of my siblings which combined with Mushroom's own reports and the word of my King's Landing Pendants painted a troubling image.
The 'Lord Commander' had not had an unfortunate slip into the Dragonmount, fallen out of a window into the dry moat or suffered from a spontaneous need to test the buoyancy of his armor in a storm.
Instead he had rooted himself firmly at my mother's side like an infuriating parasite and doing seemingly everything he could to slight Rhaenyra and to turn my siblings against her.
Not that my Rhae was any better as of late. Whoever she had chosen as her stud was either sterile, a eunuch or had a fear of genitals because I had yet to hear a single mention of a pregnancy in her letters.
She could go at length about her administrative lessons by the surprisingly-able Joffrey, the weather, fashions, Dragonstone's severe mismanagement and the dynastic problems of some of her new vassals but I did not even get the name of the idiot we were all staking a great deal on.
Laenor only ever seemed to write of dragons and Joffrey seemed worked half to death between Dragonstone, Laenor and the Velaryons deciding to get a use out of their son's mistress by giving him management of Spicetown. One I would not get anything on the stud from due to disinterest and the other man seemed dangerously close to lighting himself on fire and running off the nearest Minas Tirith if I added anything to his plate.
I shook my head at it all and turned to my final letter, one sealed in blue and stamped by a hawk.
At least Jeyne was proving to gravitate towards the purely enjoyable among my acquaintances.
In three letters, she had given me a breath history of desserts in the Vale, seven stories of her trolling suitors and her own personal list of 'the Seven Most Phallic Castles of Westeros'.
So, I was actually quite pleased to cut open the funniest part of my night before I had to begin my long list of replies.
It certainly beat the hell that was sleep.
…
The next morning began the way many mornings did.
Hello floor, I greeted my old friend as Ebermen knocked me off my feet. How are you today?
I had largely given up on really getting a grasp on combat, I practiced every morning with my shield, but nothing ever-seemed to come of it.
"You are still slow to react," Ebermen observed as he rested the dull blade on his shoulder and scanned me with his dark green eyes.
"Footwork, I know," I grumbled as I dragged myself back into practice stance.
We had been able to find a relatively quiet courtyard in the monstrosity otherwise known as the Vine Keep for our morning rituals, but it seemed to make little difference in my performance.
"You are improving," Ebermen offered as I managed to move out of the way from a small cut to the right.
"I can barely last half of a minute!" I protested while parrying to redirect a blow to the side, Ebermen was too strong to actually parry dramatically but I understood that the point of the lesson was efficiency over flair.
"Which is better," Ebermen confirmed as he redirected the momentum to sweep me off my feet with the flat of is blade.
It was not the first time that I was grateful to wear heavy padding in training.
While it did nothing for the bruising, I was at least not at risk of breaking anything important.
Although the weighted bags tied to my limbs did not do much to help my mobility.
Once Ebermen had decided that he had kicked my rear sufficiently for the day we sat to drink the sweet juice of the Golden Isle.
"How do you find it?" I asked the Bull as we sat with Lambert and Edric.
"Insecure," The Bull sighed. "At best."
"The Redwynes are no help," Hubert the elder shook his head as he looked up from a small book on Arbor Wines. "Their servants took the bait entirely too easier, if you do not mind my saying."
It had been his notion to send Edric ahead of the others, ostensibly to finalize his marriage to the daughter of a Redwyne vassal knight but in practice to lay the bait for the Redwyne servants. It was a story that would not stick long and in practice he had just spit out what was already in circulation in the Arbor, but it allowed my pendants temporary leeway to gather information.
Their loyalty might not be certain, but my pendants were far less loose-lipped than the servants of most houses. They needed to use fear and rumor to get their proverbial foot in the door before there was time to piece together their true nature.
"I assumed you would be pleased that your notion worked?" I asked the elder knight.
"More disappointed, my prince," Hubert sighed and scratched his heavy beard. "The house is old in honor, one likes to believe that people will live up to it, if you do not mind my saying."
Lambert shrugged, "It changes little, the Redwynes were always going to be a problem."
"As you say," Ebermen nodded.
I grimaced at their words.
Lord Manfred seemed like a reasonable if somewhat sniveling lord, but I could all but taste the hostility being aimed at Laena. The ire alone made me immensely weary of our hosts.
Nessa had made it clear to me that the Redwynes were a potential problem the day before and Edric's report had only confirmed it.
The Redwynes had for whatever reason assumed that Ormund and even Garth were theirs for the taking and the pacts with House Velaryon had disrupted those assumptions.
Which meant that my beach-trip had turned into a lovely reminder of how bad my luck was.
"We might need more men moving forwards," I admitted. Omeld, Morgan, Hubert the Younger and even Harper were trailing after Laena like baby ducks just to ensure that no one tried something.
It should be obvious that harming a dragonrider was horrible idea when her scaly-friend was nearby but whoever accused a Westerosi of being intelligent? Especially when their delicate egos took a bruise.
The others fell silent and I raised a brow at the three men.
"What is it?" I sighed.
"He actually admitted it," Lambert said blankly.
"As you say," Ebermen nodded.
I narrowed my eyes defensively, "It is not as if we are not preparing others."
"Men who you have been testing for almost a year, my prince," Hubert nodded slowly. "We had given up on you admitting them, if you do not mind me saying."
My smile was dry, "Then I assume that you all approve."
It was an obvious conclusion; my household would keep growing and so would the amount of people whom I needed to protect. My nine guards and their captain already worked unnatural hours and were stretched thinner than a liquified Criston Cole over a ten-league radius after I stuffed him full of dynamite.
Overworked guards meant cranky guard meant treacherous guards.
Or too tired to actually be of use.
"I will discuss it with Lady Nessa this evening," Ebermen nodded.
"Good!" I mock-clapped. "We just need to survive a fortnight without scandal, making an enemy of one of the strongest houses in the Reach or any other such negative outcome!"
Almost as if on cue, Frederick came running into the courtyard in his full plate and panting as if he had run across half of the castle.
"Oh," I sighed before looking up. "Why did I even bother?"
"My Prince!" Frederick coughed and collected himself. "We have a problem."
"Who was the mental giant who tried to harm Lady Laena?" I asked with a thin-lipped smile. Whose intestines are we hanging from the nearest Weirwood?
The cheeriest of my White Jaws (damn it, the name is sticking) shook his helmet, "Not Lady Laena. It is Ormund- Ser Ormund. You must hurry, my prince."
Oh, what the actual hell?
…
The Redwynes had a very pretty seat.
The stone that composed the floors, walls and ceilings was a warm red-brown in color and the omnipresent vines gave it quite a nice effect.
The walls were lined with tapestries of all sorts and a few portraits here and there, interspersed with all the kinds of statuary and ornamentation one would expect from an old and wealthy house.
I might have paid it more notice if I was not in the process of stomping angrily down the halls with my guards at my back and the distant fuds of Clearsky scaling nearby.
Of all the stupid- I tried to keep a smile on my face but it was stiffer than a mummified tree.
I came upon the great hall to find the doors closed and more than a few nervous courtiers waiting outside.
I noticed my uncle Gwayne wave at me, but I found that I did not have the patience in me at that moment to speak with the man beyond a polite nod and a friendly smile.
He was not a bad sort, but he had a habit of tripping with his pant's down so to speak and had made one too many comments about my female pendants. I did not mean to be a tyrant, but I doubted it would go well for any of my staff to be involved with him.
Laena rejoined me as I ignored my mother's youngest brother and focused on my nervous-looking fiancé. The girl looked out of place for her dress as much as for the glares she was getting from the Redwynes, I was glad to see that my guard surrounded her at least.
"M-my prince," She nodded, trying to look ladylike despite the riding leathers that hugged her frame and the tail she had bound her locks into to oversee Vhagar's meal. "Do you know what is ha-happening? I heard that there was a commotion and-"
She seemed awkward but Omeld cleared his throat, "The Lady feared for your health, my prince."
Understandable, I nodded my thanks. Perhaps it means that she is more willing to fear the loss of her children's potential benefactor now.
"There was no need, Laena," I smiled up at her momentarily. "It just seems that someone chose to be very foolish."
And to potentially ruin my plans. I added mentally.
"F-foolish?" She asked, and I found myself immediately backpedaling.
"Not foolish really," I said while plastering a smile onto my face. "Just a small confusion that I mean to resolve."
We moved towards the gate stamped with a fresco of the Redwyne grapes while Laena stayed close to my side and our guard around us.
"Apologies, Your Grace," One of the Redwyne guard that was not reading my mood properly stopped us at the gates. "I've orders to not let others into the hall."
"Oh?" I smiled while trying not to grind my teeth. "I do not see Lord Lymon, my dear cousin nor dear Garth out here, even my dear grandfather."
"They are within," One of the other guards, a rather pretty one, spoke up. "It is a family affair. We've been ordered to let it be private."
I met his blue eyes and held them.
Private? I was actually holding back an incredulous laugh. You would be using a solar if privacy had anything to do with this.
"It is fortunate that I am family then," I nodded with a toothy smile.
"Close kin. Your Grace, we mean no disrespect, but we've orders," One of the smarter guards spoke up with a decidedly more deferential tone.
Whether it was respect for my rank or an awareness that I had six large and heavily armored men around me (I doubted they had noticed Harper loitering a few steps away) and doing the math.
"Then let me in," I said sweetly. Let me in now before your master screws up my plans and I shove your bodies into Criston Cole and make myself a metal Haggis. "I do not think Clearsky likes to be lonely."
"Clearsky?" The first guard asked almost perfectly in time with the sounds of screams within, the guards turned their heads towards the gates while I heard Ormund's voice thunder.
"Gaemon!" My cousin shouted in frustration that I was not certain he deserved. "Call her off!"
"I do believe that I have been called now," I smiled at the guards which seemed freshly reminded of the fact that there was a multi-ton mass of murder-cat at my bidding in addition to men considerably better-equipped men.
The guards were much quicker to coordinate now.
Not that I was especially pleased once my part entered the long hall of the Redwynes.
Sure enough, Clearsky was poking her head inquisitively through one of the wide windows of the high-structure.
The hall was lined with similar windows which gave way to long tree-limbs and vines carefully maintained and trimmed.
Rich murals, suits of armor and a tall throne of metal wrought into the shape of a mass of vines.
It was sort of plain actually given what I had grown to expect in Westeros.
There might have been more to it, but I was much more interested in the actors.
Lord Redwyne huffing on his fancy chair, Lymon with his arms crossed and uncharacteristic anger alive on his features.
Otto with a carefully neutral expression and not being dead.
Garth was there with his caretakers.
Redwyne's sons and daughters.
I felt my eyes narrow on the sixteen-year-old girl with an almost theatrically disheveled outfit and then flicked back to Ormund.
My cousin stood there in nothing but a pair of trousers, a freshly buttoned-up shirt and a look of frustrated anger on his face.
"Cousin Lymon," I smiled to the Lord of the Hightower and made a notable point of ignoring the Redwyne.
"It is proper to first greet the lord of the hall," Lymon said absent-mindedly.
"Of course," I turned to Lord Manfred. "I have heard that there is some trouble?"
"Ser Ormund has dishonored my daughter," The Redwyne growled. "And I will have justice."
You are a fucking liar, I kept my smile. "Oh, is that so?"