Chapter 30
ROBERT BARATHEON
Robert had little patience for the counting of coppers, and as he sat in the Council Chambers, he was reminded of just why he had loathed it all. He watched his so-called counsellors bicker and fight over meaningless things.
"Enough!" his voice tore through the chamber as they all turned towards him as their King. He wished to drown himself in wine yet halted himself enough not to let it cloud his mind.
"The Targaryens, I came here to exact retribution for the murder of my son, not to see you all bicker over counting coppers," he ordered. They would be free to do so in his absence, but this. He had come to this meeting for only purpose, to exact revenge on the Dragonspawn who had had taken his son from him.
"Tell me, Spider," he turned towards his bald Master of Whisperers.
"Do you have the name of the man who hired those bandits?" he asked, and the man grew smaller under his gaze but shook his head, much to Robert's frustration as he hit the table.
"I am afraid not, your gra...."
THUNK!
"Then why do I keep you here?" Robert asked, enraged at the incompetence of all of these fools before turning towards the rest of the Councillors.
"Does anyone here have an idea about who it was that paid those bandits?" he asked, nearly screaming in rage, yet none of them had an answer for him.
None of them.
"Fools. Useless fools the lot of you!" he raged.
"It has been more than a month. A month! And yet you have nothing. Not a single name!" he questioned in rage as he thought of their uselessness.
"The attack happened in the North, brother," Renly had the audacity cut in as his gaze landed on his younger brother, who pointed towards Ned.
And he turned towards his Hand with a questioning gaze, expecting an answer, however he was but disappointed once more.
The attack had happened in the North, yet for some reason Robert smelt that the plot for it did not come from the North. No, it came from here, from this treacherous capital.
It was nothing but instinct, yet he could smell it. Feel it. The enemy was here, in this city, he just did not know where.
"Do you have anything?" he asked his old friend, who shook his head.
"Not yet, the North is vast..." and he moved on, having expected this.
"Answers! I need answers!" he asked, shaking his head, before another voice cut in.
"Perhaps the only reason we have found no one is because there is no one to find your grace," and it was his Master of Coin who spoke, his words making him frown as he looked at that thin and insignificant copper counter.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked, and the man preened up as he continued.
"Our Master of Whisperers thinks that the Targaryens must have used an intermediary to carry out this heinous task, but what if there was no intermediary? What if they attacked you directly," but that was unlikely.
"It is highly unlikely, your grace," the bald man added in his perfumed sing-song voice.
"I wonder, Lord Varys," and it was Ned who cut in this time.
"What makes you so certain that it was the Targaryens who orchestrated this attack," indeed, he had not thought about it as everyone turned to look at the man from Myr.
"Well, one can hardly be certain when it comes to these things, my lord Hand. But I was told that Price Viserys drank and danced when he heard of the Prince's demise," and Robert's fists balled in rage at that.
"And how do you know that?" Ned asked.
"Through an informant of mine, a man you would be quite familiar with," and at that moment, Robert's mind raced as Eddard continued.
"Who?" he asked, as the eunch answered.
"Ser Jorah Mormont," and Ned's face thinned at the mention of that name, and it was one he found familiar as well.
"That slaver," Ned thundered.
"You are trusting the words of a slaver," Ned asked as Varys shrugged.
"The man is loyal to us for the price of a pardon. He has embedded himself in the court of Prince Viserys and would be..."
"I want them dead!" he decided as he turned to face the bald man.
"Both of them! I want them dead!" he confirmed as the man nodded.
"It will be done..."
"They are children yet, Robert," and the only dissenting voice came from Ned, who sat opposite to him.
"Dragonspawn! They are all dragonspawn! I would have been rid of them all those years ago if only you and Jon had not talked me out of it," and he had paid for it with a son.
"They are no older than our own child...."
"MY SON!" and his fist hit the wood so hard it cracked as he jumped to his feet.
"They killed my son. My child and tried to murder your own, and yet you sit here and defend them!" he could not believe his old friend.
"I do not speak in their defence. I speak for justice," Eddard cut in, even as he rolled his eyes.
"We have nothing to link them to these murders, nothing except the words of a man who betrayed his own family," and he could not believe it.
"He danced!" he screamed, pointing towards the bald eunuch.
"You heard it yourself! That dragonspawn danced as my child died! This is justice, a justice that I should have given them both years ago...."
"No," and Eddard was on his feet as all of his counselors frowned and watched in awe.
"This is not justice. This is rage, and I will not let you kill innocents because of it," and he shook his head.
"You are my Hand! I am your king! You will do as I command," he shouted, his breaths grew deeper and heavier because of rage and shouting, as Eddard's lips thinned, the friendship between them getting strained by this all.
He saw Ned's fists ball up and for a second the room was drowned in silence as they both stared into each other's eyes, and he saw a storm brewing in those grey eyes.
He had thought that he would scream and cry and walk out, yet Ned seemed to narrow his eyes for a second before he suddenly took a deep breath and opened his mouth.
"A week," he began, making him frown.
"A week?" he asked, trying to make sense of what he was speaking of.
"Give me one more week to determine the truth, and if I fail in that time, then you are free to do as you wish," and Robert ground his teeth at his friend's words, at his bullheadedness, and yet he was his hand.
He wanted to deny him, wanted to scream and shout at him, to call him a foolish, self-righteous fool, but he decided against it as he gave him a stiff nod, for he had already what was one more week to let that fool do as he wished to.
"You have your seven days, but not a second more..." and he turned to look at Varys after that.
"Seven days, after that, I want them both dead...." and with that, he stormed out of the room in his frustrations, hoping that wine and women would rid him of these frustrations.
.
.
.
As the meeting room emptied out, only two people sat there, two people with different loyalties, but filled at that moment with the same surprise.
"I must say," the Spider began as he leaned back in his chair, thinking of all that had transpired in the meeting room just minutes ago.
"I never quite thought that Lord Stark would be so well versed in politics," and he smirked at the clearly shaken Master of Coin whose gaze still lingered towards the door.
"Indeed, it seems as if we have underestimated the man," and Varys nodded, for he was guilty of this crime as well.
King Robert Baratheon was a stubborn man. To stay his hand for even seven days as the Lord of the North had was a true achievement, and then there was the bigger problem of just why the man had done so.
Eddard Stark had been fairly neutral since his arrival at court, preferring to make no friends as he joined the council, and initially, Varys had thought it to be a mistake, a naivety born from years of isolation.
But the man was showing his true colors, or rather yet not showing them at all.
"I do wonder, though," and now he was looking directly at the thin Master of Coin, who was clearly upset over today's affairs.
"Just what exactly will our Lord Hand find in these seven days..."
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CERSEI LANNISTER
Her feet pushed her across the Hall as Cersei walked on the unfamiliar path to the King Solar after learning about what had transpired in the Council Meeting today. She had spent weeks mourning her son, her precious child, and as had Robert, who had promised her revenge in that journey. Painful and terrible revenge.
And yet, if Pycelle's was to be believed, she had been denied it once more, and she could wait no more as she pushed open the doors to the King's Solar without any care.
"You are saying you did nothing!" she raged at her husband as he thundered into his solar, and saw him sitting there on a sofa drowning away his sorrows like a fickle and useless man
"Nothing!" she raged again, and as he turned to face her, she saw his face and realsied quickly that his mood was sour. Very sour. She could tell rather easily after years of living together as he put down his glass.
"Do not pester me, woman. Not today," he warned, but Cersei was a lion, and she had waited enough. She continued to walk forward and pointed her finger at him.
"Our son was killed! KILLED!" she raged as she saw Robert's lips thin, and though her words were lies, he did not know them to be.
"Killed by those Targaryens who had the audacity to drink and dance at his funeral! And yet you sit here doing nothing!" she scoffed, unimpressed by it all.
"If only I were in your place, I would have sent an army to kill and peel the skin of their bo..."
"I have no love for those Dragonspawn! Not me!" Robert's voice boomed through the room as he jumped to his feet and turned to face her again, his face now inches away from her own, his bear pricking the skin of her face as his sweetened breath filled the air between them.
"If it were up to me, I would be sailing on a ship with my Warhammer right now to crush them both just as I did to their brother." The mention of Rhaegar always made his face flush in rage, and his nostrils flared, and for a second, she feared that he would slap her again, yet the pain never came as he found his teeth and backed away.
"I have not forgotten, woman! I have not. Nor have I forgiven!" he added before plopping down in his chair again.
"A week," he said as he poured himself another cup of wine. And that was what Pycelle had told her as well, and how this was Stark's doing.
"That is all I have given them. A week more in their miserable lives is all the mercy they will have from me. No more," he said, and she had heard as much.
"And why even that?" she asked, still trying to reason out what the new Hand wished to do in these days, that he had not done so yet.
"Because of your friend," she challenged as his face shifted.
"A friend who does not even understand our pain. Our suffering?" she asked, and Robert's lips thinned as he drowned that cup of wine.
"He is a righteous fool, that one," and she doubted those words, for Eddard Stark was many things, but the man was no fool. He had stayed Robert's hand, even if for only seven days, but it was a feat few could boast of.
Yet for what purpose, she wondered with baited breath?
"A fool. He thinks them innocent. But he is naive, and the years have made him forget," Robert scoffed, and with every large sip, his voice grew thinner and thinner as Cersei sat herself down in the chair opposite to him.
"But I remember," and he drank more wine, and she knew that it was not the Dragonspawns he remembered. No, it was someone else. Someone whose shadow had hung over their marriage since the start—Lyanna Stark.
"No dragonspawn is truly innocent! None! I should have killed them all just as I had killed Rhaegar, but Jon had stopped me then." She gulped as she remembered that day, the day when she had heard of what had transpired during the sack and the fate that Elia and her children had suffered.
The horrors of that day had shaken even her as she remembered those words of crushed babes clad in red cloaks, of how Jamie had cried in her embrace for days, away from everyone's gaze.
And yet he had laughed. Robert had smiled, had felt no remorse for the actions of her father's bannermen, who had killed the Martell Princess and her two babes with abject cruelty.
"In the end, it is but a week," he began slowly looking into her eyes.
"He can have it to try and scour the truth in this wretched place," and that was what worried her more, for she wondered just which truth he was trying to uncover in these seven days.
Was it really just the truth about the assassination of her son, or was it another truth that he was searching her—her own truth perhaps?
"My father would not have denied you this revenge," she added, still enraged at his in action.
"He would have understood its necessity," she continued, advocating that he had made the wrong choice in making Eddard Stark his hand, hoping that he would see sense now, and replace him with Lord Tywin, her father.
He was not drunk enough to miss her intentions as he scoffed.
"I already have enough Lannisters at court." he dismissed her idea quickly as she bit her lip.
"Joffrey was his grandson. If it were him, he would not have given those responsible for his death even a single second," she challenged.
"And neither will I!" Robert cut in sharply as he put down his cup to look into her eyes.
"And as for Lord Tywin, if he really loved his grandson, why did he not even come to attend the funeral of his grandchild?" It made her grind her teeth, for that was indeed true.
She had written to him, pleading to him to attend, but her father had ignored her letters.
"And what of your own brother?" she challenged as Robert shook his hand in dismissal.
"The whole realm knows that Stannis has no love for anyone, irons and duty run through his veins, not blood, but iron," and that did not mean one ignored the passing of their nephew while being but a few days of sail away.
The man's absence was conspicuous, nearly as conspicuous as Stark's actions.
"Let the fool waste this week. I have ordered the Spider to keep his men ready. And when the weekends, they will strike, and revenge will be had!" he took another sip of his wine before he raised the glass in the air.
"And the world will be rid of all dragon spawns once and for all!" and she sighed at that, knowing that his mind was made, and there was little else she could do now.
"So be it," she said as she looked into his eyes. She had waited enough days to have the Maesters confirm it, and now she was certain.
"But I do have something to tell you," she began with some hesitation, as she looked into his eyes, knowing that this was it. If she uttered the next words, there would be no way back.
But she had no choice, and as her fists balled up, she cursed Stark and the rest for forcing her onto this path once more, forcing her to put her life in jeopardy once more to protect her just so she could muddy the waters.
"Speak away, woman," he spoke, and she bit her lip, considering for one last moment whether she should utter those next words or not.
"What is it!" Robert's patience grew thin as he asked her again, but she hesitated, yet in the end she had no choice.
In the end, the choice was already made.
This was her gamble, one necessary to protect herself and her children.
"I am with child...."
.
.
.
And much to their dismay, miles and miles away, a young Daenerys Targaryen stood in front of an old Dothraki woman who held her hand before speaking the very words to the Khal Drogo.
"I am with child...."
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