The Dance is not over Chapter 36: Game of Headaches, an a song of ice and fire fanfic

Chapter 36

Game of Headaches

Ser Endrew Selmy

The first thought which came to Endrew's mind as he slowly walked to join the 'western' part of the melee was that the number of lion decorations on every participant's shield was quite likely outnumbering the Lannister banners floating in the wind.

There were several Lannisters of Lannisport, who had donned their old armours in the hope to win the gold which would help them rebuild some of their past prestige burned away by the many defeats suffered against the Ironborn. Their shields and colours were those of the silver lion. There were many Lannetts, Lannys and Lantells, many bastards too, who had rivalled of imagination to make their personal colours unique. As a consequence, there were blue, green, yellow, red and black felines, all on different fields and in different numbers. Some had even added flowers and weapons to go with the lions. There was a young man dressed with a tabard where two black lions roared to each other on a blue field and only an axe separating them.

This would have been bad enough if you wanted to remember who was who in the clash of swords and other weapons to come, but the 'lion problem' didn't stop there. On the other side of the melee grounds, Tywald Reyne awaited, and like every Reyne knight who had decided to have some dangerous 'fun' today, the red lion on an argent field could hardly be missed for something else. Then there were the knights of Casterly Rock and the commanders of the red cloaks, the true lions of the Westerlands. They had all acclaimed Lady Johanna Lannister as their Queen of Beauty, and her son Loreon as their future Master – which was still several years away, the boy's eleventh name day had been celebrated recently, and majority was rarely declared before sixteen by law and custom.

That ensured there were plenty of shields of gold lions on red on every side – since the Lord of Casterly Rock had no brothers or uncles in age to lead men, the knights of Casterly Rock were not united behind a single 'melee army'.

And after that there were the 'mystery knights'. Men of high and low birth who for some reason had decided not to fight under their own colours and House words – assuming they had one or the other – but take the field in grey or black armours, the only way to tell them apart was...guess it...their leonine or feline emblems chosen for the tourney.

At least they had been a bit more original than many scions of Noble Houses. Several participants had decided to imitate the Volantene sellswords and painted their plastrons and their shields with jumping tigers and other animals like leopards rarely seen on Westerosi shores. Endrew could also mention a few lynxes and discreet big cats.

And then the time of contemplation ended as Lady Johanna descended two steps from the wooden stands and graciously agitated a red handkerchief before letting it fall.

"HEAR ME ROAR!"

If they called it the Lion's melee in two days, the knight doubling as a spy would not be surprised.

"HEAR ME ROAR!"

"FOR THE ROCK!

"FOR LANNISPORT!"

And like a wave which grew progressively too strong for the sea walls to handle, more than one hundred men on each side charged each other with blunted weapons.

And all the plans he had made, as he knew very well, were not worth a copper coin now. The melee was less dangerous than a real battlefield, but it was as disorderly as a real one. Blades danced under the sun, the sun was too warm upon your hellishly-hot armour, and you were glad the armour was there when steel came too close;

Endrew spent the first turn of hourglass trying to disarm a Brax – not the one who had humiliated him in the joust, he was too small in height to be him – before finally winning the duel and before he had the time to catch his breath, the agent of the Master of Whisperers duelled a Lanny with a blue lion-themed shield. Fortunately, the youngster's grip on his warhammer was completely wrong, and the exchange didn't last long, ending in his triumph.

"HEAR ME ROAR!"

Another Lannister knight charged him, this time one with a big double-handed axe.

"Overcompensating much, boy?" The Selmy knight tried to provoke his new opponent.

"Go back licking the boots of the Clubfoot, bastard!" the Westerner snarled, as his axe tried to pass the defence of his sword.

Endrew didn't lose his composure, but he was very glad his helmet was covering his face and thus hiding his consternation. They knew. The fear of every spy to be discovered had been made real for him, and that Lannisters and the agents of the Council were on the same side...in theory...wasn't very reassuring.

Worse, there were several reasons for someone to send a message like the one just uttered in the middle of a melee, and most of those, Endrew didn't find them attractive for his continued existence.

"I prefer meeting you sword in hand, if you don't mind!" Sword and axe crossed again, and the Marcher-born man tried to hammer repeatedly the Lannister sworn sword, but after the first blow, his enemy tried to widen the gap between them.

Only be to be attacked by a knight of House Falwell who didn't waste any time striking him in the back and sending him sprawling into the ground.

Endrew nodded and thanked his 'saviour', before joining him in the hunt for more targets. He had to win more victories to refill his purse and remove the neat gold loss of the joust, and with a 'message' like the one he had received, the spy in him knew that the moment this melee was officially over and the rewards distributed, it was best if he ran back to the capital or any land not owned by the Warden of the West. A spy who was discovered was a spy in danger of death. All his orders pertaining to the West were useless now.

The fortune of arms, praise the Warrior and the Smith Above, were in his favour as he defeated a duo of Serrett men and the champion of House Payne.

"A good day for Lannisport!" the knight of House Hamell exclaimed, he had never been far from him since his 'victory' over the Lannister axe-wielder.

"A good day for-"

Endrew never finished his sentence. Not as his eyes fell upon a scene he wasn't going to forget. His steps had led him to the centre of the melee, and therefore given him a princely view of the blood which had begun to flow.

The crimson liquid was coming from the throat of Tywald Reyne, and the Selmy knight needed no maester or healer to tell him this was a fatal wound if there'd ever been one. And so was the Reyne sword impaled in the belly of the grey-armoured 'mystery knight' who was responsible for the deed.

"In hindsight, it's not going to be called the lions' melee..."

Lord Royce Caron

Royce Caron was the Master of Laws and this title implied a title in the Council of King's Landing. House Lannister of Casterly Rock had reigned for millennia from their inviolable citadel before the arrival of the Targaryens and their dragons.

Combined together, the truth was the golden-haired Wardens of the West knew the value of proper and polite diplomacy, and rarely made mistakes, even in the darkest hours of their history.

Therefore it could be concluded with a relative certainty, that leaving him in a cold antechamber with seven candles and the cold gusts of the Rock, alone, with no servants to attend his needs, was an insult of the highest order.

Yet the ageing Lord had not protested as he was forced to ride from Lannisport to the most heavily defended citadel of the Westerlands to be allowed this audience.

Not after the massive problem the melee of the Lannisport tourney had created.

At last, he heard footsteps in the distance. They were loud, regular, and setting a hard pace. Royce awaited them, standing. It wasn't like there was any other option when you hadn't been provided a seat or any object to rest your poor backside upon.

The light of the candles was soon increased by more, and after a few blinks, his eyes began to acclimate to conditions far closer to the daylight illumination waiting for him outside.

"Lady Johanna," Royce bowed curtly, respectfully but without exaggeration. His treatment was not worthy of praises, and he wasn't going to give compliments when none were deserved.

"Lord Caron," the Regent of the Westerlands answered, only pausing for a moment before waving to indicate he was to follow. A journey into the Lannister tunnels wasn't what he had imagined, but he didn't voice his displeasure. The Master of Laws had a feeling it would not contribute to makings things less difficult.

For many steps, there was no sound but those of their boots against the hard stone polished by generations of Lannister Lords, their families, and servants.

"I was aware Larys Strong was a poor Master of Whisperers these last years," the Lady of the Rock began. "I wasn't aware he was also a Lord unable to control his own blood."

Royce would have grimaced, but his duties were too important to allow for such a lapse.

"The last knights sworn to House Strong and their children, be they legitimate or illegitimate, dispersed after the Peace signed with the Blacks. None stayed on the Black lands save those who were kept temporarily prisoners, but they didn't swear themselves to Lord Larys either. It wasn't a secret they blamed him for the loss of the Lordship."

It had been common knowledge before the tourney of Lannisport, of course. Both for Lady Johanna and himself, the rest of the Small Council, and everyone who mattered; the Lordship of Harrenhal was important, there had been catastrophic losses as Green and Black dragonlords had killed many troops coming from there, and the destruction of Harren's Folly had not decreased the whispers.

"I don't care," Lady Johanna rudely snapped. "Tywald Reyne was killed in front of his brother, and now Lord Walder is screaming bloody murder."

As tempting as it was to blame many things on the Lord of Castamere, this time the Lord of Nightsong knew it couldn't be voiced in public.

"It is highly possible Ser Tywald and the 'mystery knight' feuded against each other for reasons which had nothing to do with the Game of Thrones."

Royce didn't really believe it, but it had to be said.

"Where would the bastard of a cadet line of House Strong find the reason to feud with one of the wealthiest Houses of the Westerlands?" Lady Johanna spat. "Tywald Reyne didn't participate into the campaign for the Riverlands, and he rarely stepped outside his lands except for tourneys and hunting bandits. The Strong bastard who killed him before he returned the favour had arrived by the Ocean Road a fortnight ago. They may have had the time to become enemies at the tourney, yes. But no one saw them together!"

The eyes which stared at him could have been described as gemstones if he was feeling poetic, but at the moment, Royce was very well aware of the fury burning in their depths.

"And then there is the gold and the silver we found in his tent."

Royce licked his lips. This conversation, exchanged in the semi-darkness of the tunnels, was not going in the direction he wanted.

"You think this former Riverlander blade was a killer who came deliberately to kill Tywald Reyne."

"Don't you?" retorted the Regent. "Casting aside the pretensions, everyone knows House Strong has no longer a holdfast and its surviving knights who once served Lord Harwyn are now forced to escort merchants or pledge their services to Masterly Houses. None of their members, least of all a bastard, should have that much gold and silver to celebrate or enter a tourney. Then there's also the fact over two scores of participants swore they saw the bastard's blade deliberately go after Ser Tywald's throat with a weapon which wasn't blunted. This is assassin's work, Lord Caron. Only the poor skill of the hired dagger and the reflexes of Ser Tywald broke the plan."

The widow of the previous Lord Paramount of the Westerlands bared her teeth.

"Now I want to know who spent three or four hundred gold dragons to kill the brother of the Lord of Castamere."

"It is...going to be difficult, my Lady." The Master of Laws said as diplomatically as he could. "The assassin, as you said yourself, is dead, by his intended victim's own weapon. This former Riverlander wasn't one of my men, and I don't even think I heard his name be mentioned during Council sessions. I will send ravens, but I believe none of the King's Masters had any reason to think Lord Reyne and his brother an urgent danger to the realm."

There were ugly rumours about Lord Reyne, yes. But so far, that was all the Iron Throne had: rumours and whispers. Obviously, it was possible the shadowy deeds of House Reyne had made them plenty of enemies, and that this melee-slaying was just the last act of a private war no one knew anything about.

"We will investigate, but I can't promise anything will come out of it. We had no clue this was going to happen, and no one knows where the search must go."

"Not good enough," Lady Johanna insisted, "the death of Tywald Reyne has brought together many Houses of the West which are unhappy with my policies."

The words didn't come out, but Royce had listened to the whispers behind the scenes. Many Lords were unhappy with the gold loans they would spend the next decade repaying – assuming it didn't last longer. And while many were content to let the Westerlands be rebuilt stone after stone, granary after granary, and castle after castle, there were knights and soldiers unhappy to be ruled by a woman in the first place.

"The Iron Throne will do its utmost," Royce promised. Given the mountain of Lannister gold his King and himself, among many others, had used to stabilise the South, it wasn't the moment to allow dissentions to come to the fore. This was true for every realm sworn to His Grace, but in the case of the Westerlands it was best to avoid open violence at all costs. The frontier with the Black Kingdom was too close from Casterly Rock and Lannisport to be taken lightly. "And if Lord Reyne tries to use privileges which aren't his to use, he will rue the day before long."

The Master of Laws didn't expect a long sentence of appreciation, but there wasn't even a word uttered in thanks, and this...this didn't give him a pleasant feeling into his chest. For years the Council's relationship with Casterly Rock had been friendly, but it looked like this time of affairs had truly come to an end.

"Now let's discuss the subject of the replacement of the Master of Whisperers and his agents walking on my lands..."

Queen Baela Targaryen

Being pregnant, Baela had discovered, was not only exhausting, but also deprived her of one of her favourite activities, which was dragon-riding. Impossible after all to climb on Moondancer and go chasing after the clouds and the sun when the first hard change of course was enough to give her the deep urge to vomit.

Replacing most of her outside activities by Council sessions had seemed reasonable at first. Now she just wanted to sally out and enjoy the summer. Alas, her belly had so inflated she looked very much like a cow by then, and she had to think in advance if the effort was worth tiring herself so much.

Baela really, really couldn't wait for her pregnancy to be over. Unfortunately, there were still a few moons to wait before her child – or children, if like her sister she was lucky to carry a new generation of twins into this world – and the year of one hundred and thirty-eight after the Conquest promised to be warm and summer-like. It was excellent news for the realm, of course, but far less for her personal comfort.

And as her mother-in-law and Master of Whisperers finished her report on the information her spies in the Westerlands had acquired, the Black Queen could only wish people were going to stop their attempts to make the situation of Westeros more instable and exciting.

"So if I understand correctly, the ambitious Lord Robert Reyne has used the rising outrage of his brother's murder to rally his supporters and obtain the hand of a Serrett woman of the main line in marriage."

"Yes," Lady Sabitha confirmed. "He has also been very active with Lords of lands who have suffered heavily from the Iron Fever or not yet recovered from the destruction of their forces in the Riverlands campaign during the Dance. The new Lord Crakehall, for example, is very loud and prompt to protest every law and privilege proclaimed by the Regent of the Rock. I fear House Swyft of Cornfield and House Greenhill of Greenhill have also listened to too many hard-lining septons and decided a man ruling the Westerlands is far preferable to a woman."

"Imbeciles," Baela whispered, adjusting the pillows she had began using for her seats. To be fair – not that she particularly wanted to, really – these venomous whispers of men always being preferable to women when it came to rule were propagated from sore losers of the Reach and the Stormlands. Lord Borros Baratheon and most of the Hightowers implicated in the Dance were skeletons in unmarked graves or ashes in the winds, but their treachery had been sufficiently successful for new idiots to follow their lead. "But given what I know about the West, it seems Lady Johanna retains a large numerical superiority, not to mention the wealth and the quality of her sworn swords."

The Rock was not just a large mountain serving as the chief citadel of the Westerlands and its treasury by holding millions of golden coins, in the end. Immediately north, west, and south of Lannisport, there were fertile and bountiful small hills. There, immense harvests grew before being transported to the city or the other holdings of Lady Johanna's allies.

With these resources of food, House Lannister could afford to feed and supply thousands of men at any time – the damage caused by the Ironborn was not completely erased, but give it a couple of years, and it surely would. Add to this their close ties with House Lefford, Marbrand, Westerling, Brax, and Banefort, the red lions of Reyne would have to be morons to challenge them.

"Yes," the widow of the Twins' voice remained one of prudence. "I have ears who murmured about possible envoys sent to Deep Den and House Lydden."

Baela's eyes narrowed in thought. The fortress of Deep Den was one of the chief castles of the Westerlands, since by its key position it controlled who could pass the Golden Road and enter – or leave – the Westerlands in this direction. Only the Golden Tooth was a fortress as important on the borders, and unlike the home of House Lefford, it wasn't vulnerable to dragons: most of the 'castle' was built inside a mountain.

"That doesn't change anything," the young sovereign declared after a long moment of silence, "assuming Lord Reyne would be able to convince House Lydden to turn its cloak, House Lannister remains too strong. It would prevent reinforcements from the Crownlands to easily reinforce the Lannister supporters, yes, but the forces already sworn to the golden lions are more than strong enough to crush them on their own. And I have noticed most of these new friends the red lions are trying to bring on their side are in the southern Westerlands. Castamere, on the other hand, is north of Casterly Rock and can be assaulted from three different directions without hope of reinforcements. Any rebellion will begin with Westerling, Marbrand, and Banefort infantry storming the walls of Castamere."

The Lannisters were golden-haired, loved gold, and had a deplorable tendency to invade the Riverlands when they thought they could get away with it, but there was a reason all the attempted treacheries of House Reyne had resulted in disasters before the Conquest.

"Yes but I think we have to really consider the possibility of a civil war in the Westerlands."

Baela raised an eyebrow at her advisor.

"You think that Walder Reyne is going to try to usurp House Lannister anyway." A point of view which had not been shared at all by Lord Cregan Stark and Lord Eon Grafton during the last Council.

"Yes. The man is ambitious, and I think we have only seen a finger or two of the hands of treacherous plots he keep ready in the shadows."

"My cousin would incinerate him for putting his control of the West in jeopardy."

Daeron was many things, but the Green King simply couldn't afford the loss of Casterly Rock and the wealthiest kingdom of his realm.

It would be like her realm losing...well, there was no real equivalent. The Vale maybe? No, the lands and the mountains of House Arryn were nowhere near as prosperous or rich to be an accurate comparison. The Reach and the Riverlands were comparable as they were both granaries of the highest importance. The West and the East were very different kingdoms.

"Your cousin has only a single dragon, and if Deep Den is blocked, he will have to fly alone to rally his supporters."

"I don't know...Crakehall was crippled by the Iron Fever," when the Lord and four of his sons died within the same year along with thousands of smallfolk. "The Reach forces shouldn't have too many issues breaking them. But I suppose you want to suggest something...just in case?"

"Yes," her mother-in-law gave her a thin smile, "complete the next sections of your roads between Fairmarket, Stone Hedge, and Riverrun."

"We have more gold these days," thanks to the Northern mines, and no longer being forced to buy food on the other side of the Narrow Sea. "But the treasury is not unlimited. As it stood, the works on the road north of the Neck had been paid by Lord Manderly and Lord Stark for the next couple of years, and Lord Glover and Lord Dustin would support them once it was done. In the Vale itself, a new road was going to be built in the heart of the Vale itself, liking the Gates of the Moon to Longbow Hall. And the Riverlands had plenty of ambitious projects, like the junction of the roads going from the Twins to the Bloody Gate. I want to improve trade, but we don't have enough dragons."

Rhaena and Morning plus Nettles and Moondancer were staying in the north for the year about to begin, therefore making the fast construction of the Northern road possible. But these were the only two dragons available right now. Moondancer was the only other mature dragon, and Baela was many moons away from riding it and leaving Stone Hedge.

"I will take it into consideration," the silver-haired Queen promised. Still, pushing the roads westwards would rouse the Greens' suspicions and increase the possibility of war which...well, she would prefer to avoid. There was not enough silver into their chests to pay for a short war, and the prospect of a long one was horrifying for more reasons than golden dragons and silver wolves.

"Next problem."

"Ser Gyles is on his way back to inform you that his attempts to convince the different factions of maesters to make common cause following the 'Library Incident' are...well, a lost cause."

"There's really no hope?"

As the maesters of the 'Old Citadel' had seemingly mended their differences at Oldtown, Baela had thought creating a 'Black Citadel' wouldn't be too difficult.

On this, she and most of her Council had been terribly wrong.

An influential maester had smashed the face of his one dissenters while they vigorously debated into one of the Gulltown Libraries – thus the name of the event - and it had all spiralled out of control from there.

"No hope at all. The three factions of maesters have all significant support among the scores of apprentices they were training, and none are willing to back down."

Baela felt a headache coming, and not a minor one.

"I haven't the gold to build three different Citadels." One would have already gritted some teeth; two was too many, but three? No, no way she was going to accept. Was it too difficult for these 'men of wisdom' to make common cause?

"The 'Dogmatists', according to the latest raven, have the intention to stay at Gulltown."

"They are the ones who want to reform as little as possible, right?"

It had already been a victory worthy of Balerion to make sure they accepted boys and girls in their ranks, along with Crown overseers.

"They are. And while they have the largest number of pre-Dance maesters, they have far fewer apprentices. They are seen as...the old guard, a bit more reasonable than the grey beards of Oldtown. The 'Librarians' are far more radical, I'm afraid. They insist every loyalist can access the knowledge they are the guardians of..."

"Ah yes, the 'Dogmatists' called them like this because they wanted to build large libraries in every castle of importance," something Baela had no problems with, certainly. It certainly prevented the loss of precious knowledge when one place went down in flames and people realised in the aftermath that unique books had gone up in smoke and ashes.

"They want to establish themselves at Fairmarket."

"An interesting choice," the once tiny village of House Paege had grown far pass its original modest origins and thousands of families lived there, with more thousands coming to sell off the products of their labour. That it was in the heart of the Riverlands and not far from Stone Hedge...it wasn't likely to be a mere coincidence.

"And the Freeholders? They have decided to install themselves in the North?"

"No, your Grace," Sabitha shook her head. "They have gone to Maidenpool. Lord Mooton has already given them his personal protection."

That...that was going to be a problem, Baela mused. If one kingdom hadn't his own order of 'maesters' – she wouldn't be surprised if the name went extinct north of the Blackwater Rush – she could have given concessions to the two others, but this sort of imbalance was really, really not to her taste.

"And then there's going to be the headache of figuring who will be represented in the Council..."

"They will demand one seat each." Sabitha warned her.

"Over my dead body," Baela replied seriously.

King Daeron Targaryen

The Targaryen King was conflicted when Larys Strong bowed before leaving the Council room.

On the one hand, there was shame. The man who should have been the Lord of Harrenhal had given everything to his line, beginning with his castle and his lands and ending with his reputation and his honour. All Lords and knights in the Reach, the Stormlands and the Westerlands swore oaths to him, but how many truly obeyed half of what they should do? His bannersmen may give him nicknames 'Clubfoot' and 'Black-Hearted Schemer' the moment his back was turned, but the now disgraced Riverlander had gone above and beyond what was asked of him.

By all rights, Larys Strong should have been given the prestigious ceremony his long years of service, his deeds saving many members of the Royal family, and his accomplishments deserved. There were certainly Lordships who had been handed out to far less deserving candidates. Daeron was more than slimly ashamed he could barely offer an old manor in the Crownlands for his now former Master of Whisperers. Loyalty should be recognised and rewarded proportionally. It was what the Seven and the laws of chivalry demanded of them.

But there was no fairness, and as such one of the longest-serving councillors was leaving, not with instruments of music and a long parade, but in complete anonymity and a long silence.

On the other hand, there was some relief in his heart. Larys Strong had been involved in some noble actions to save his family; but the last Strong Lord had also plunged his hands deeper in the seas of blood of the Dance. The man who should have been Lord of Harrenhal had not killed as many people as Daeron's brothers or Criston Cole, by steel or voice, but there could be no hiding the fact that as a spy-master, Larys had seen the civil war coming, and had done nothing to avoid the butchery. Seven Hells, for all his rhetoric, he had made the lists Criston Cole had used to purge Black sympathisers in the capital!

The Targaryen Dynasty, his dynasty, had not emerged aggrandised or popular from these bloodbaths and treacheries.

Ironically, past the mistakes, it was something Larys wasn't able to control which had led to his prompt retirement. Brad Rivers, bastard of a cadet line of House Strong, had been the bloody dagger chosen to end the life of Ser Tywald Reyne, and the enemies of the Master of Whisperers had not needed more to jump into the political waters, teeth bared, attracted by the smell of blood.

And no, Larys had not paid his distant great-nephew or second cousin or whatever Brad Rivers was to dispatch a possible threat. As the bald Lord had told him, Larys had never lost his sense of priorities: if there was one man to assassinate, this man was Walder Reyne, not his blunt and hard-headed brother.

But the Master of Whisperers had to go. Servants and cousins, butlers and knights once sworn to House Strong no longer answered to him, but Larys had too many enemies, and the peace between his great bannersmen demanded that he removed him from his Council seat.

Truthfully, Larys was not asked to retire because this mistake had been bad; it was ones made before, from the cases of several of his agents attributing themselves privileges he had never consented to, to numerous scandals and provocations which should have been avoided at all costs.

"Take your seat, Lord Joffrey," Daeron said as he posed the brooch which had been Larys' until today on the Council table. "I wish to hear your thoughts on the assassination of Ser Tywald Reyne."

"Yes, my King," the brown-haired young man obeyed and clasped his hands upon a large pile of parchments. "In my opinion, the affair was very meticulously planned by someone aware of the particularities of Lannisport tourney. Brad Rivers was told to pass himself as a wealthy 'mystery knight', when it was evident several knights were already doing the same thing, animating the taverns and spreading the word of their exploits from the Golden Tooth to Highgarden."

"You think it was someone on the Lannister's side?" the Green King asked.

"I think," Lord Joffrey Cuy said grimly, "that the one who gave the order had an excellent group of agents on the ground to divert attention from the coming assassination, while at the same time making sure the assassin would not survive to talk. The bastard was very loud in his proclamations of valour the day before, and his purse was too large for a line pursued by Essossi usurers. Given how many agents of Lord Larys were present at Lannisport, and how nothing out of the ordinary stuck out, I think we have either a superb assassination, or the blunder of a drunk fool who killed the man in the wrong melee."

If it was the latter, there wasn't much Daeron or anyone in this world could do. If it was the former...

"Practically speaking, which are the parties having an interest to kill the brother of Lord Reyne?"

"Anyone who thinks inflaming the defiance between House Reyne and House Lannister, your Grace," the Reacher answered. "The Lannisters themselves are suspect, if at the bottom of the list. They could have paid the bastard to kill one of their opponents, betting on the rage of the Lord of Castamere to launch a rebellion that they would have crushed in short order."

Unfortunately, Daeron wasn't going to say it was impossible. After all, if he remembered his books correctly, a King of the Rock had done this in ages past...though the rebellious Lord had been a Brax, if his memory wasn't failing him.

"It also could be the Blacks," the new Master of Whisperers continued, "but if it's them, they really had nothing to exploit their success if it went to rebellion. There isn't a single company out of position west of Riverrun, and of course the Black Queen is pregnant and hasn't been seen riding her dragon in the last couple of moons."

"We will be careful, but in this instance, I don't think the Blacks are guilty of this crime," the Lord of the Iron Throne nodded. "Continue your investigations, Lord Cuy. And send the appropriate ravens on time when you want your agents to walk into the Westerlands. After such a fiasco, mending the relations with Lady Johanna Lannister is a priority."

"Yes, your Grace."

With hope, when the young Lord Loreon Lannister would come of age, his mother wouldn't have soured him too much against his rule. One could always pray for the best...

"Other news of importance where the Blacks are concerned?"

"Several pirate ships of the Shivering Sea tried a raid against Oldcastle's coast, but were ultimately repelled after a bloody quagmire. At least a squadron of Gulltown galleys is going to be sent north to help House Manderly discourage any pirate trying to emulate the idea. The Order of Freeholders which has taken its headquarters at Maidenpool has refused to plea for the royal support, after their rivals of the Librarian Order have made this very demand. According to the rumour, the Freeholders intend to propose a 'journeyman travel' which will see them 'acquire and spread knowledge until the borders of the Lands of Men'. They seem to see themselves very much as a guild of knowledge, your Grace."

Daeron rolled his eyes. One more weird thing to come out from the partition of the realm and the weakening hold the maesters had on books, lore, traditions, and how to use them.

"In the villages east of the Green Fork, there have been quite a few violent 'debates' between supporters of the Old and New Gods..."

Lord Cregan Stark

There were many things Cregan had never expected to do while King Viserys the First of His Name was breathing and that the battles of the Dance had made reality. On the positive side, he had become the Hand of the Queen. True, he was the Hand of only three kingdoms, three and a half to three and three-quarters if one was generous, and it was not the Queen he had originally went to war for, but he was a Hand.

On the negative side, he had to talk regularly with septons.

"I wonder," Gyles Royce said by his side as they took their horses and began to leave the little village one day away from the Green Fork that they had spent most of the day into, "who is the most disappointed by this conversation. You or the septon."

"Oh, the septon," Cregan replied, feigning not to feel the headache of repeating too many times the same royal orders over and over again. "After all, I, unlike him, have everything I want."

It was a great overstatement to say that, but there was religious tolerance between his Northerners and the men, women, and children who had chosen to pray to these absurd 'Seven-Who-Are-One'.

The Lord of Winterfell could understand somewhat the attractiveness of Gods like those, though he would never say it where he might be at risk of being listened to. Everything is part of the Seven's plan, help yourself, the Gods will help you.

Everything was so well-thought and the Faith so deeply entrenched that in several parts of the Riverlands, the septons had collected taxes in anything but name before Queen Rhaenyra and her half-brother decided there could only be a single sovereign for the Seven Kingdoms.

Needless to say, the civil war had ruined a lot of these assumptions, the secular like the religious ones.

"He must regret the regular donations of his supporters far more than having three Northern-born families building houses in 'his village', I think," the Master of Laws said conversationally, unknowingly echoing Cregan's thoughts.

"Yes," the Lord Paramount of the North approved, "but I made my position clear: the Faith won't become the new tax collectors of the Riverlands...or any other kingdom, for that matter. If the smallfolk or someone else wants to donate some money or the fruit of his efforts to the sept, it's their choice. But it has to remain voluntary, and there certainly isn't going to be any sort of 'foreigner's tax' because someone follows another religion than the Faith."

"I have a feeling he wanted to say 'heretic's tax'."

"You're not the only one," Cregan grunted.

"Taxes and greedy septons aside," the scion of House Royce spoke more seriously, "I am a tiny bit worried at the apparent disunion of the Faith's hierarchy in the region. This is the fifth one who thinks he must answer to the Great Sept of Gulltown, despite being situated scores of leagues west of the Bloody Gate. I know the lack of a High Septon was going to make things different, but I didn't expect a situation like this happening with the average septon."

Cregan had to recognise his colleague wasn't completely wrong.

"And yet the hierarchy approved by the Queen wasn't that different, no?" the Hand of the Queen asked rhetorically. "We replaced the office of the High Septon by the one of 'First Septon', but we didn't touch or modify in any manner the prerogatives and the limits of religious influence of the Arch-Septons in each realm."

Stony Sept had been kept for the Riverlands, Gulltown was still the religious heart of the Vale – or so it proclaimed, and White Harbour was playing this role for the North, though the city of the Manderlys was the lungs, the head, the arms and the legs, courtesy of the Northerners being very unwilling to convert.

"But no new religious capital was kept, and I have a feeling many septons in some villages were...hedging their bets towards a Green victory, shall we say?"

"I have the same feeling," Cregan admitted. "Of course, this...discontent is only present in the areas which were too far to watch the devastation caused by Vhagar." The men, women and children who had been terrorised as the Kinslayer fell upon defenceless villages and towns in the middle of the night and burned everything and everyone unable to flee in time had a tendency not to listen very much to their septons.

Cregan thought they were good and principled smallfolk. The Faith had pretended that if they were good and faithful sheep, the dragons wouldn't be able to harm them. The Old Gods had never commanded their worshippers to proclaim such idiocies, be it in a book or in a series of bardic tales, and the Lord of Winterfell would have thrown a few good fists at the skull of anyone dim-witted enough to shout it.

If you wanted to survive a dragon, you had to be smart and rely on yourself. The Gods were generally not descending in a tempest of rainbows and light to help you.

"As for a new seat of the Faith, I don't think any project is intended to see the light of day in the next decade."

The last septon who had managed to ask this question in front of the Queen had received a short and negative answer. Rebuilding the septs who had been destroyed was something the Crown had no problem with, but creating entirely new Great Septs was simply not a priority.

"It would increase the support for the 'First Septon' and the doctrine of tolerance."

Cregan on this point disagreed. Those men and women who wanted to be tolerant hadn't any difficulties meeting the challenges ahead: the Twins and Seagard, to quote the most obvious examples, had become two of the principal markets and meeting grounds between Riverlanders and Northerners.

"People can certainly be tolerant without a great religious figure telling the smallfolk and the Lords how to think." The Hand of the Black kingdom declared calmly. "But if you really want to support the construction of a new Great Sept, I am not the one who needs to be convinced."

Queen Baela Targaryen wasn't a religious person, and it wasn't exactly a secret. She wasn't disrespectful where the Old and New Gods were concerned, but no courtier or advisor was exactly doubtful that it was a field where she was content to keep her attention away from. Whether it was her father's influence, the rude proclamations of the two previous High Septons southwards, or the fact the centre of the Faith had been associated with Oldtown and the Hightowers for so long, the Black Queen preferred to make her judgement known in things which didn't include religious issues.

"I know," the sigh of the Master of Laws was at least half-sincere, he estimated. "I know."

Prince Viserys Rogare

When asked where the wealth of Lys and the other Merchant-Princes of the Free Cities was coming from, Viserys supposed that for a thousand men and women interrogated on Westerosi shores, he would receive a thousand different answers. The most ignorant souls would speak of the goods transported by Essossi hulls: lace and silk, rubies and emeralds, silverware and Yi Ti vases, to name some of the most expensive things it was possible to purchase. Those a bit cleverer would say the source of prosperity enjoyed by Myr, Tyrosh and their allies and rivals lay in their maritime supremacy, both in trade and non-trade. It was better, but still incomplete.

In reality, a large part of what made Lysene, Myrish, and Tyroshi so formidable compared to the Iron Throne and the kingdoms more or less subordinated to it was information. Whether it rained or snowed, whether the Magister was a man or a woman, the uncrowned figures of Lysene society and those of the other Free Cities fought and died by it.

Before a single ship coming from the distant Jade Gates had bypassed the island's lighthouses, its owners were already receiving messages relating a rough estimate of the profits, the damage to the crew and the ship itself, and the time it thought to stay at anchor among many other things.

And it didn't even touch one of the key strengths of the Lysene which was for mysterious reasons completely ignored by the Targaryens and their dynasty: mapmaking.

In Viserys' opinion, it was even more incomprehensible when Aegon the Conqueror himself had built the Painted Table at the top of Dragonstone's dungeon.

Of course, when one compared the maps of House Rogare and the Painted Table, the latter was coming as a pathetic attempt of humiliation. Every year, House Rogare created between fifteen and thirty new maps, all of which were of a quality and a precision having no equal anywhere on Westeros.

They were so precious that when a captain returned to Lys, the first thing a ship's captain was asked to return was the copy of said maps, and woe to the man or the woman who failed in this endeavour. The fines and the debts when you failed to heed this order were absolutely ruinous.

The only exemption to this rule was when a merchant ship's crew knew it was going to be taken prisoner – or massacred – by pirates. Right then, it was a standard order for the officers to burn the maps and most of the papers. Things like silk and gold were very valuable, of course, but it was a crime of the highest order for any man to let fall the secrets of the House into enemy's hands. When it happened, it was a black day for all.

Today may very well be considered this.

"Lysaro," Larra spoke the name of her brother like it was poison.

"I thought," Viserys tried his best to not sound afraid when his wife was in a murderous mood like this one as she examined one by one the large library of maps afforded to the Heir of the Rogare Magister. "He was on his way back from Ibben."

"I thought that too," his wife grumbled, "but several of our agents saw him in the streets of Myr while they were investigating the work of Dornish assassins. Worse, he wasn't alone. He was with Sarrosso Saan."

Viserys may not be aware of everything happening on the Stepstones and the known seas, his mercantile education had enormous holes of knowledge, but even he had heard of the man.

"Silverbeard."

Much like several of his ancestors, this Valyrian sailor had quickly disdained the 'normal' way of becoming rich, abandoning convoy duties before his twentieth name day to become a pirate.

And no, there wasn't the smallest pretence of being a sellsail in that case.

"Yes, Silverbeard." If Larra's eyes could have thrown thunder, they would have at this moment. "Father is going to kill him."

Lysaro, it was strongly implied, though the Saan pirate was certainly going to receive an increase on the bounty placed upon his head.

"What is he trying to do?" Viserys wondered out loud. "I mean, he's not the Heir anymore, you are, but I think a life in Lys is far better than anything the pirates may enjoy in their time. Silverbeard has what? Four ships and two thousand men?"

"Maybe even less than that," the Rogare Heiress murmured, "one of his ships ran aground onto a reef last moon."

And the Saan captain wasn't a young man anymore. Oh he still could cause plenty of fear for merchants navigating alone, but Silverbeard had no support left in Lys, and the only place which was more vehement about sending him to the gallows was Tyrosh.

Two thousand men were not much when there were easily three or four scores of warships and tens of thousands of men eager to make themselves a name by ending the too-famous pirate.

"I don't know what Lysaro is trying to do," Larra admitted. "But all my maps are here, and since I know he was utterly useless at copying my works, that leaves only copies of copies he may have bribed some of the Kereso officers he was seen with before his disinheritance."

On the good side, House Rogare hadn't lost precious maps or deep trade secrets. On the negative side, there was still a former Rogare Heir consorting with pirates.

"Father is going to kill him." Larra repeated.

And much like Westeros in hard times, there were many excruciating executing methods 'reserved' for the vilest of traitors.

"Kereso...they are trading with Tyrosh."

"Yes, but the Archon and the main fleets have better maps than what Lysaro can give them. And two thousand men and three ships, or even a dozen, would never be able to seriously threaten Tyrosh." Larra breathed out, evidently trying to calm herself. "And since I doubt any Kereso is hardly stupid enough to give out their best maps for a few ovalines, that leaves a lot of possible things in the air. They are always sending one or two ships to Lorath, their main seasonal fleet to Volantis, there is a regular trickle to the Sunset Coast..."

"Oldtown and Casterly Rock, yes?" Viserys had suddenly a bad feeling about this. "Silverbeard...could he have been hired by a Westerosi to play the role of corsair by a Westerosi Lord?"

Larra stared at him for several long heartbeats before returning at her verification of the map 'treasury'.

"Only the stupid and the arrogant hire Silverbeard. He is known to betray his 'masters' the moment it is convenient, and sometimes the treachery arrives fortnights before. Why? Do you think a Lord of the Sunset Coast could have proposed him something valuable?"

"The Iron Islands have some new settlements, but they remain weak and divided," Viserys said as he looked at an excellent map of Pyke and the neighbouring islands. If someone is feeling ambitious, they may very well try to use pirates as their agents and sell them the former castles of the Ironborn in the bargain."

"This would be very risky," Larra said seriously. "The Sunset fleets are not the equals of ours, but they have been rebuilt since the last civil war. One wrong move, and Silverbeard and Lysaro will end as food for the fishes."

And if Larra revealed a disappointed expression at the end, Viserys was sure that it was because his wife wanted her eldest brother to be dragged back in chains and suffer the full consequences of his betrayal...

Author's note: So the year of one hundred and thirty-seven after the Conquest ends. One might imagine that the year of one hundred and thirty-eight promises to be...explosive.