Chapter 58: Alliance by Marriage
The Red Keep had been closed for three days.
The iron gates stayed shut. The guards at every entrance had been doubled and given orders that apparently included not explaining themselves to anyone. The usual traffic of petitioners and merchants and castle servants moving in and out had simply stopped. People noticed. In a castle where information was currency, three days of silence from the King's chambers had the court moving through the corridors in careful, watchful ways, speaking quietly and listening harder than usual.
On the morning of the fourth day, a herald made the rounds: the King would hold a small audience in the throne room. Lord Mace Tyrell was summoned to attend.
Henry was walking the corridor toward the throne room when a hand closed on his arm.
Jaime Lannister had been standing guard at the main entrance in his white Kingsguard cloak, and he had stepped away from his post to do it — which told Henry something about the state of Jaime's composure. The grip was firm. The green eyes were doing several things at once: anger, worry, something that had been sitting on him for days and was now pushing its way out regardless of the setting.
"Lord Reyne." Jaime's voice was low and controlled with visible effort. "My brother went north with your party. You're back. He isn't. Where is Tyrion?"
Henry looked at the hand on his arm, then at Jaime's face.
"Tyrion Lannister did not sail back with us," he said. "He chose to travel south by his own route, with his own guards. He was alive and well when we parted ways, and the choice was entirely his." He paused. "That is everything I know."
He removed Jaime's hand from his arm with the measured firmness of a man who is not angry but is also not going to leave the hand there.
"Ser Jaime." He glanced at the white cloak, the golden lion on the clasp. "Your oath is to the King. His Grace is in that room waiting. I'd suggest that's where your attention belongs."
He left Jaime standing at the door and walked into the throne room.
The hall was nearly empty.
That was the first thing that struck him — the throne room was built for ceremony and crowds, and the absence of both made the space feel larger and colder than usual. The Iron Throne sat on its platform at the far end, the mass of fused and twisted swords rising above it like something that had grown there rather than been made. No torches had been lit along the walls. The morning light came in through the high windows in pale columns and illuminated the dust in the air and not much else.
Four people stood below the dais: Eddard, already holding a writing tablet and stylus; Joffrey, who was standing very still in a way that suggested he had been told to and was obeying; and Mace Tyrell, who was looking around the empty hall with the expression of a man recalibrating his expectations.
Two knights of the Kingsguard stood at their posts — Ser Barristan Selmy near the throne steps, Ser Arys Oakheart at the side door. Every other guard had been dismissed.
Robert was on the throne.
Henry had been watching Robert decline by increments for months, cataloguing it the way he catalogued most things — methodically, without sentiment, because useful information was useful information regardless of how it made you feel. He had noted the increasing weight, the color of the skin, the swollen ankles, the shortness of breath climbing stairs. He had noted the way Robert sometimes paused mid-sentence as though the sentence had become unexpectedly heavy.
None of that was visible right now.
Robert sat upright on the Iron Throne with his hands on the armrests and his back straight, the ruby-set crown level on his head, the brocade robe arranged around him with some care. He looked like a king. He looked, specifically, like the king he had been fifteen years ago — the one who had been worth following, the one whose name had meant something on a battlefield. Whatever it had cost him to assemble this version of himself this morning, he had paid it, and the result was present in the room with them.
Eddard was staring at him from below the steps with the expression of a man who had not seen this in a long time and was not entirely sure what to do with it.
Robert let the silence sit for a moment, then spoke.
"Gentlemen." His voice was rougher than it had been, the illness present in it, but the authority underneath was intact. "I've called you here this morning to discuss marriages."
The word landed in the quiet room and settled.
"I understand," Robert continued, "that Willas Tyrell — Lord Mace's eldest son and heir — is unmarried. I also understand that Lady Arya Stark has not yet been betrothed."
Eddard stepped forward immediately. "Your Grace — Sansa is already promised to Prince Joffrey—"
"I know that, Ned." Something almost warm moved through Robert's expression. "I'm not talking about Sansa. Arya is eleven years old and unspoken for. Willas Tyrell is a good man from a great house with an injury that makes him no less worthy of an honorable match."
Eddard looked at Robert on the throne. His jaw worked slightly. He thought about Arya — her wooden sword, her direwolf, her absolute inability to remain in a chair for more than four consecutive minutes. He thought about Willas Tyrell, whom he had never met, whose injury had come from a tournament lance wielded by Oberyn Martell, and who by all accounts managed Highgarden's affairs with more genuine competence than his father managed anything.
Robert held his gaze with the quiet appeal of an old friend asking something he knows he has no right to ask.
Eddard looked down. He said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
Mace Tyrell had been processing since the word marriages had entered the air. His expression had moved through surprise, calculation, and arrived at something effusive. "Your Majesty is most gracious — most wise — my son would be — yes, absolutely, I speak for Willas entirely—"
"Good," Robert said. He turned his eyes to Henry. "Lord Reyne. Lady Margaery Tyrell. I believe you're acquainted with her arrival in the city."
Henry looked at Robert's face — the deliberate posture, the careful arrangement of dignity — and understood what this morning was.
Robert was not conducting an audience.
Robert was settling his accounts.
"I would be honored, Your Grace," Henry said.
Mace's enthusiasm stuttered briefly as he parsed this second arrangement arriving on top of the first. A match for his daughter with a member of the Small Council, a rising lord with a fleet and a fighting reputation and the King's evident confidence — it was not what he'd come to King's Landing expecting, but it was not a thing a sensible man refused. "Your Majesty does my daughter great honor. House Tyrell is — yes. Yes, of course."
"After the tournament," Robert said, "I will witness both betrothals formally. Let the Seven Kingdoms see it done."
He looked at Joffrey.
Joffrey had been standing very still throughout all of this, and his eyes were already red at the rims, and he was doing the effortful work of keeping his face composed that children do when they have been told that composure is required and have not yet mastered why.
"Joffrey." Robert's voice changed register — not softer exactly, but different. The king voice setting aside for a moment to let something else through. "My son."
"Father." The word came out slightly unsteady.
"Write to Lord Hoster Tully at Riverrun. In your own hand. Tell him that when your sister Myrcella comes of age, she will be given in marriage to Edmure Tully. Tell him you look forward to welcoming his son into the family." Robert held his son's gaze. "Tell him you will witness the wedding yourself, in King's Landing, and that you will offer them your blessing."
Joffrey swallowed. "Yes, Father. I will." A pause. "I'll — I'll hold the wedding for them myself."
Robert looked at him for a long moment with an expression that was difficult to read and probably not meant to be read by anyone else in the room. Then he nodded. "Good boy."
He turned back to the room.
"Lord Mace." His voice returned to the formal register. "After the tournament, I am appointing you to the Small Council as Lord Justice. Renly will be returning to Storm's End — the Stormlands need their lord present. You'll take his seat."
Mace Tyrell made a sound that was not quite words, which was unusual for Mace Tyrell. He bowed very deeply. He appeared to be constructing a sentence about devotion and honor and dying in service, and it was coming together slowly.
"Ned." Robert cut across whatever Mace was about to produce. "Take this down."
Eddard raised the stylus.
Robert straightened on the throne. His voice took on the particular cadence of formal declaration — the language of law and record, the kind of words meant to outlast the man speaking them.
"I, Robert of House Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm — do hereby establish, by royal decree, that upon my death, a Regency Council shall govern this realm in the name of my son Joffrey until he comes of age and assumes full authority. The Regency Council shall consist of three members: Eddard Stark, Hand of the King; Mace Tyrell, Lord Justice; and Henry Reyne, Master of Laws. Their authority shall be equal and collective, and their charge shall be the protection of the realm and the crown until my son is ready to hold both."
The words fell into the silence of the empty hall and sat there.
Eddard finished transcribing. He held the parchment for a moment, looking at it, before carrying it up the steps to the throne. Robert took it and read it through — actually read it, which Henry noted — then picked up the seal, heated the wax, and pressed it firmly into place.
He handed it back to Barristan, who received it with both hands and the expression of a man who has served long enough to know what he is holding.
Mace Tyrell had gone quiet. The enthusiasm had drained out of him as the meaning of the document assembled itself in his mind. He looked at the sealed parchment in Barristan's hands and then at Robert on the throne, and his face did the slow, uncomfortable work of understanding.
"Your Majesty." Mace's voice had lost its previous buoyancy. He bowed low and kept his head down. "I — I am honored beyond all measure to serve the crown in any capacity — I will give everything I have — every resource of Highgarden—"
"Lord Mace." Robert's tone had the patience of a man who has decided not to be irritated. "I'm not dead yet. I have enough time to watch the tournament, at least." A pause, with something dry and private in it. "I intend to enjoy it."
His gaze moved to Eddard and stayed there. The formal register fell away entirely.
"Ned." The name came out the way it had come out thirty years ago, in a different life. "One more thing. Bring Robert Arryn to King's Landing." He paused. "Take him as your ward. He's Jon's son, and Jon was the best man I ever knew, and that boy has nobody to look after him properly." He stopped again. The throne room was very quiet. "He was named for me. That means something."
Eddard looked up at Robert on the Iron Throne — at the crown, at the straight back, at the hands resting on the armrests of a chair made of a thousand swords, at the face of his oldest friend — and something moved across his expression that he did not try to manage or contain.
"I'll bring him," Eddard said. "You have my word. I'll protect him."
Robert held his gaze for a moment longer than necessary. Then he looked away, out toward the high windows, toward the pale morning light coming through the glass.
"Good," he said quietly. "That's good, Ned."
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