Chapter 69: The Murder Meeting
Robert Baratheon had not personally attended a Small Council meeting in some time. That he was here now, seated at the head of the Chamber of the Painted Table with his hands flat on the oak and his eyes carrying the particular weight of a man who has made up his mind about something unpleasant, told everyone present that this was not an ordinary session.
The chamber held its usual complement — Varys, Littlefinger, Grand Maester Pycelle, Mace Tyrell in the seat recently vacated by Renly. Barristan Selmy stood at his post near the door. Henry sat in his chair with the unhurried attention of a man who has learned to listen carefully before he speaks. Joffrey had been permitted to observe from a chair set slightly back from the table — not a council seat, a student's position — and he was making a visible effort to look like someone who belonged there.
Renly was gone. He had ridden for Storm's End three days after the tournament ended, and the Stormlands had their lord back.
Robert looked at Varys. "You speak first."
Varys folded his soft hands in his lap with the particular composure of a man delivering news he has been carefully packaging for the right moment. "Your Grace. My informants across the Narrow Sea have confirmed what we suspected. Daenerys Targaryen has wed a Dothraki khal. A man called Drogo — lord of a khalasar numbering in the tens of thousands." A pause, calibrated for effect. "She is with child."
The information settled over the table.
Henry kept his expression neutral. The shape of this had been visible to him for some time — the conversation Arya had overheard in the dragon vault, the foreign accent speaking of a princess with child, an army that wouldn't move until the baby was born. He had known it was coming. He had not known it would arrive in this room today, presented by the very man he suspected of arranging it.
So the voices in the tunnel. He filed the thought away and attended to the room.
"We must eliminate the threat," Robert said.
"I was not aware Lord Varys maintained informants in Essos," Eddard said. The words were polite. The tone was not.
"The information comes through Ser Jorah Mormont," Varys said, with the smooth courtesy of a man who expected the question. "He is currently in service to the Targaryens. He was kind enough to share what he has seen."
Eddard's expression hardened. "Jorah Mormont is a convicted slaver who fled the North to escape justice. He holds no title. He deserves no courtesy."
"He was knighted by my own hand," Robert said, with the impatience of a man who has had this argument before. "And your sentence was too harsh for a man who was your own vassal."
"He sold his own smallfolk into chains," Eddard said. "He forfeited the right to my consideration when he did that."
"Say what you will. If this business is concluded, I'll sign a King's pardon for him." Robert cut the air with his hand — the gesture that meant the subject was closed. "The point is what he's told us. The Targaryen girl is pregnant, and I want the matter dealt with."
"Robert." Eddard set his hands on the table. "You are talking about murdering a child."
"I am talking about preventing a war that will kill ten thousand children!" Robert's voice rose to the register that had silenced rooms since his war-fighting days, though it cost him more now — Henry could see the effort in his face, the way the volume depleted something. "That woman carries Targaryen blood, and the moment her son is old enough to ride, every exile and dreamer in the Free Cities will call him the rightful heir and fund whatever army he can scrape together. I will not leave that for Joffrey to inherit."
Mace Tyrell had found something compelling to examine on the surface of the table.
"Your Grace," Henry said. "Harming a woman with child will invite judgment from every lord in the Seven Kingdoms. The Faith will have something to say about it as well."
"Then let them say it to my face," Robert said. "I'll carry the infamy. Joffrey won't have to."
"Your Grace." Henry kept his voice level. "The Dothraki consider the ocean poison water. Their horses don't swim. There is no army that can move from the Dothraki Sea to the shores of Westeros without ships, and the exiles in Pentos and Braavos don't have a fleet worth the name." He paused. "The threat is real in principle. In practice, it is years away at minimum, and circumstances change considerably over years."
"My Master of Laws tells me to wait," Robert said, with the dry edge of a man translating an argument into its most unflattering form. "Wait until I am dead, and then let my son face it."
"Your Grace, Lord Henry is thinking of the throne's reputation," Mace offered, with the eager helpfulness of a man trying to be useful while actively avoiding the center of the argument.
"I know what he's thinking." Robert looked at Henry directly. "And I've heard it. But my mind is made up." He looked around the table. "I want a vote. All those in favor of removing the threat."
Robert raised his own hand.
Varys raised his, with an expression of gentle regret that Henry found particularly unconvincing. "Sometimes preventing great suffering requires difficult acts. The death of one prevents the suffering of thousands."
Littlefinger's hand went up with the ease of a man who had already decided this was someone else's moral problem. "The treasury cannot fund another war. The cost of a single competent assassin is considerably less."
Pycelle raised a hand so slowly it seemed to arrive by separate journey from the rest of him. "The truly merciful act, my lords, is to prevent the fires of war from touching the innocent again."
"Four," Robert said. "And those opposed."
Eddard raised his hand without hesitation. Henry raised his. Barristan, after a moment that cost him something, raised his.
"Abstaining," Mace said quietly, to the table.
"Four to three," Robert said. He looked at Joffrey. "You're here to observe, not to vote. You're not yet King, and you're not a council member."
Joffrey had straightened in his seat during the count, his jaw set in a way that Henry recognized — the expression Joffrey wore when he had decided to say something regardless of consequences. "Father. I object as well. If the Targaryens ever return, I'll deal with them myself. You killed Rhaegar at the Trident with your own warhammer. I'm your son. If they dare land on Westerosi shores, I'll raise your hammer and answer them myself."
Robert's expression shifted — something complicated moving through it, the anger softening around the edges without quite disappearing. "You're here to observe," he said again, but the edge was gone from it.
"Who will carry this out?" Robert continued.
Pycelle cleared his throat, which took several seconds. "Lord Henry has a great many capable men. Perhaps he would be willing to be of service."
Henry looked at Pycelle with the flat attention of a man deciding whether the offense is worth responding to. Pycelle found the table surface interesting again.
"Your Grace." Henry turned to Robert. He had weighed whether to speak and decided that a final effort was owed, regardless of where it landed. "I swore an oath to you at Pyke. I said: I, Henry of House Reyne, swear by the Old Gods and the New, to give the loyalty of my house to you and your lawful heirs. My sword and my service are yours. I will answer your summons, uphold your rule, keep your counsel, and defend your honor."
"You've kept that oath," Robert said. "I'm asking you to keep it now."
Henry continued, his voice even. "The oath continued: I will protect the weak, deal justly with every man who stands before me, and I will not betray your trust." He paused. "And you swore to me in turn. You said: your service will be honored, not diminished."
Robert's expression had gone very still.
"Is this how you honor it?" Henry asked.
The armrest of Robert's chair snapped under his fist — the wood split clean — and he hurled the broken piece across the table. It struck the floor at Henry's feet. "Get out! You as well — go back to Iron Fist Keep and stay there!"
Henry stood. He bowed slightly — the formal bow of a council member before his king, nothing more and nothing less — and unfastened the chain of office at his collar. He set it on the table with the careful deliberateness of a man putting something down that he intends to pick up again.
He walked out.
Behind him, Robert's voice continued for a moment — hoarse, spent — and then went quiet.
In the corridor outside the Chamber of the Painted Table, Henry stood still for a moment.
Eddard was already there, his back against the stone, his eyes on the middle distance. He looked up when Henry emerged.
Neither of them said anything immediately.
"He'll call for us tomorrow," Eddard said, after a while. It wasn't quite a question.
"He will," Henry said. "He always does."
He looked down the corridor toward the Tower of the Hand and thought of Arya's account — the voice from below the vault, the Westerosi accent, the measured refusal to let kings be murdered. A king who comes to power over dead predecessors cannot hold the throne.
He thought of what Varys had just done in that room. The careful presentation. The timing. The information packaged to produce exactly the outcome that had occurred — Eddard's resignation, Henry's removal, the council stripped of the men most likely to constrain whatever came next.
"Ned," he said. "Don't go far. Whatever happens next happens quickly."
Eddard looked at him. "You think this isn't finished."
"I think it's just started," Henry said. "Stay close to your daughters."
He picked up his cloak from where he'd left it over a page's arm and walked toward the yard, the morning light coming through the high windows cold and flat, the way it always came through windows in the Red Keep — as if the stone itself was deciding how much warmth to allow.
In the Chamber of the Painted Table, after the others had filed out, Robert called Joffrey back.
"Sit." He gestured to the chair beside him. His voice had lost the volume and the fury both, the way a storm loses itself after the worst has passed. He put his hand on Joffrey's head — on the golden hair, Lannister-gold, the thing that had always sat between them without either of them having the words for it — and held it there.
"I haven't been a good father," Robert said. "I know that. I took you hunting in the Kingswood a handful of times. Henry did more of the work than I did."
"I liked those hunts, Father." Joffrey looked at him. "Henry too. He taught me things."
"I know what he taught you." Robert's voice was tired in a way that had nothing to do with the shouting. "I went too far today. Tomorrow I'll ask Ned to come back." He paused. "Henry — he'll need more time. He takes things harder than he lets you see." He moved his hand from Joffrey's hair to his shoulder. "But after I'm gone, you call him back. My will doesn't change. He sits on the Regency Council. That stands."
Joffrey was quiet.
"He's a man who keeps faith with the people he's chosen," Robert said. "That's rarer than it sounds. You'll understand it better when you're older." He tightened his grip on Joffrey's shoulder briefly, the grip of a big man who has been careful not to use his full strength on this particular person for years. "Ned was right about you. You're better than me. You'll be a good king."
The Chamber of the Painted Table was quiet around them.
Outside, King's Landing went about its business in the grey morning, indifferent to what had just ended and what was about to begin.
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