Chapter 65: Two Thousand Gold Dragons
The tourney had been over for three days, and King's Landing still hadn't exhaled.
The crowds that had poured into the city for the jousting were in no particular hurry to leave — the inns were still full, the taverns were doing the kind of trade that only happens when a city has more visitors than usual and all of them have money burning in their purses, and the Gold Cloaks were stretched thin keeping the inevitable friction of too many people in too small a space from becoming something that required swords rather than just firm words.
Henry had, for the first time in a fortnight, an afternoon with nothing formally required of him.
He was sitting in the window seat of the City Watch headquarters with a cat in his lap.
The cat was old — one ear bitten off at some point in a history that it had no intention of sharing — and entirely black except for a patch of white on its chest that looked like someone had spilled something. It had arrived in his life several weeks ago when he'd found it cornered in a Red Keep corridor by three palace servants armed with a sack, acting on orders from Cersei, who had taken exception to having her hand scratched. Henry had wrapped it in his cloak and walked it out of the Keep on the reasonable grounds that a cat capable of scratching Cersei Lannister was the kind of cat worth knowing.
There were stories about it in the Keep. That it had once leaped onto Robert's table during a formal dinner and snatched a roasted quail directly off the plate in front of Tywin Lannister, and that Tywin had watched it go without expression while Robert laughed until the table shook.
Henry ran his thumb behind the bitten ear. The cat pushed into the pressure and purred with the self-satisfied rumble of an animal that has made its peace with its circumstances.
"You and I have similar feelings about that family," Henry told it.
The cat's tail moved once in what could generously be interpreted as agreement.
The knock at the door came in the particular pattern Henry had learned to associate with Thoros of Myr — three knocks, a pause, then one more, which was less a knock than a prod to see if anyone was going to tell him to go away.
The cat left Henry's lap and installed itself on the windowsill without being asked.
Thoros pushed the door open with his shoulder, both hands occupied — one with the door handle, one with a bottle held by the neck. He looked around the room with the satisfied expression of a man who has arrived somewhere he was planning to arrive.
"I brought wine," he said.
"You brought wine." Henry was already reaching for cups. "And here I thought you'd come to drink mine."
"That's next." Thoros settled into the chair across the desk with the ease of a man who has sat in it before. He set the bottle down and looked at it with something approaching affection. "But I have news, and news deserves ceremony."
Henry uncorked the bottle. The smell that came off it was strong in the way that Thoros's wine tended to be strong — not fine, not subtle, but honest about what it was. He poured both cups.
"You're leaving," Henry said.
Thoros looked at him. "How did you—"
"You said you have news. You brought your own wine instead of drinking mine. And you have the look of a man who has decided something and wants a drink before he explains it." Henry raised his cup. "Where are you going?"
Thoros smiled — the broad, unguarded smile that was his default expression when he wasn't performing piety or performing roguishness, the one that was simply Thoros. "Tyrion Lannister is missing. You've heard."
"I've heard."
"His uncle Kevan has put out a bounty. Two thousand gold dragons, alive and returned to Lannister custody." Thoros took a long drink. "Every hedge knight and sellsword who came to the tourney and went home light in the purse is now asking the same question — which road did he take, and how fast can I get there first." He set the cup down. "The Kings Road north, most likely. He was traveling south from Castle Black when he disappeared."
Henry turned his cup slowly. He had a general shape in his memory of how this had gone — Catelyn Stark, a chance encounter on the road, an accusation and a kidnapping that had started a chain of events with consequences that had reshaped the entire realm. The details were hazy in the way that sixteen years of living in the world had made most of his prior knowledge hazy. But the shape was there.
"I thought your interests ran toward fighting, drinking, and women," Henry said. "In that order, usually simultaneously."
"They do." Thoros spread his hands. "And all three require gold, which I currently lack. The tourney was unkind to me financially." A pause. "In the first round of the joust I put a knight in a black surcoat with a purple lightning bolt in the dirt, which felt promising. Then I drew Loras Tyrell in the second round."
"He let you keep your horse and armor."
"Out of respect for your future brother-in-law relationship, I believe." Thoros refilled his cup without being asked. "Which I was grateful for, because I currently need both the horse and the armor if I'm going to find a missing Lannister on the Kings Road."
"You said 'we,'" Henry said.
Thoros paused. "Did I?"
"When you described the search. You said 'we plan to head north.'"
"Ah." Thoros had the expression of a man deciding whether to be evasive and concluding it isn't worth the effort. "Three others. Bronn — a sellsword, good with a blade, very few opinions about who he uses it on. A man called Chiggen who works in the same general trade. And Anguy."
"The archer." Henry looked at him. "The one who won the archery prize."
"The same. A remarkable eye. He put three arrows into a mark at a hundred yards that Ser Balon Swann of the Kingsguard had missed twice." Thoros said it with genuine appreciation. "Country lad, never worked as a sellsword, but a man who can do that with a bow is useful in most situations."
"Eddard wanted him for the Hand's guard. I heard the approach didn't go well."
"Anguy has just won ten thousand gold dragons for the first time in his life," Thoros said, with the sympathetic understanding of someone who has been in adjacent situations. "He was in a brothel when Lord Stark's men found him. He declined the offer." A pause. "Apparently with some enthusiasm, which the guards took personally."
"He'll spend it all in a month and spend the next year regretting it."
"Almost certainly. But that's next month's problem and this is this month's money." Thoros stood, stretched, and looked at Henry with the expression that Henry had come to recognize as the expression preceding a request. "I came to say farewell. And also."
"Also."
"I need swords. Tobho Mott won't sell to me anymore — I burned one of his blades at the melee when the wildfire spread further than I intended, and he has opinions about that. I can't exactly approach him directly." Thoros had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed. "If you were to send someone on my behalf, with payment — I'll settle the debt when I'm back in King's Landing with Lannister gold in hand."
Henry looked at him for a moment. "I'll send someone."
"You're a good man, Henry."
"And the wine," Henry said.
Thoros blinked. "What wine?"
"The wine you came here planning to ask me for. The Dornish Red from the Blackwater River Guard's stores that you somehow know about." Henry refilled the cup in front of Thoros. "For you and your three companions on the road. I assume you've already worked out how many wineskins you want."
Thoros stared at him. Then he grinned — the full grin, nothing held back. "Eight wineskins. But since you're offering—"
"Eight wineskins." Henry stood. "I'll have them sent to you with the swords. Don't tell anyone where the wine came from."
"Henry." Thoros picked up his cup, held it toward him. "When I get back I'll drink to your wedding properly. But in the meantime — to House Reyne. Long may the red lion run."
Henry touched his cup to Thoros's.
They drank.
Thoros set his cup down, gathered himself, moved toward the door. At the threshold he stopped and turned back, and something in his expression had shifted — the performer and the rogue set aside for a moment, something simpler underneath.
"For what it's worth," he said, "I hope they don't find him. Tyrion, I mean." He paused. "He's better company than most Lannisters deserve to be."
He went out.
Henry turned back to the window. The cat had relocated to the corner of the desk at some point during the conversation and was watching him with the ancient, unimpressed attention that old cats bring to most human activity.
Henry scratched it behind the bitten ear.
"Don't tell anyone about the wine either," he said.
The cat blinked once, which was as close to a promise as it was going to offer.
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