Chapter 105 102

King's Landing. The Red Keep. The Small Council Chamber. 298 AC.

Lord Tywin Lannister.

Fifteen years had passed since he last sat in the Small Council chamber. The final time had been in 283 AC, in the immediate aftermath of the sack of King's Landing. In those moments, Tywin had given little thought to the thousands of corpses or the tens of thousands of maimed smallfolk. He had done what needed to be done. Something had drawn him to the Small Council chambers then, some impulse he never cared to examine. Beyond the walls, chaos had reigned, but the hall of session had remained untouched, as though time itself had stopped within it.

The room could not help but stir something in him. He had given nineteen years of his life to the service of the realm and his House. Within these walls, history had been made: alliances forged, wars set in motion, the fates of millions decided. Aerys the Mad, in the early days of his reign, had been a dreaming boy with fire in his eyes, hungry to be remembered through the ages, and he had chosen his friends with the same hunger. The young king had dissolved the old council and filled its seats with men as young and ambitious as himself. That was how Tywin had become the youngest Hand in living memory.

He could admit to himself that in the beginning he had not thought to use his new position for favoritism. He had followed his ambitious friend in earnest, genuinely wanting to make Westeros great, to be spoken of through the centuries with awe and admiration. Years passed, the friendship dissolved into the past, Tywin hardened, and he came to understand that the good of House Lannister did not always align with the good of Westeros. He stopped being a naive idealist and began using everything in service of House Lannister.

Thirty-six years had elapsed since his first council, and now the Old Lion looked upon this... Council... with open contempt. The young idealists and wise elders were long gone. In their place: a eunuch, an upstart, a dwarf, an old maester , a sellsword, and a hysterical queen. The situation would have made an excellent jest, the sort that the lustful little wretch so enjoyed, but Tywin had no patience for it. There were more pressing matters.

"A Targaryen is on the continent, and with an army, she is dangerous. We should have sent assassins long ago and strangled the problem in its cradle," Cersei said, panicking, and speaking the obvious.

"I'm afraid, my dear sister, that such a course would accomplish nothing," the dwarf replied, in rather high spirits by contrast. "Our beloved father has a habit of finishing his enemies. If Rhaenys Targaryen has lived these fifteen years, then she has been very well protected indeed."

"Tyrion is right. Even so, we will send assassins." He held no real expectation of success. "Now, let us turn to another matter."

"That is all?" Cersei stared at him in disbelief. "A Targaryen is gathering her strength with twenty thousand swords and an entire region behind her, and you give her two sentences?!"

His daughter's stupidity would be the death of him.

"What would you have us do?" he said, his patience for treating Cersei like a small child long exhausted.

"I... I... I don't know. We could court the Dornish lords, promise them lands and titles, raise up a house loyal to us as the lords paramount of Dorne." Cersei continued to prove, with every word, that she had no connection to reality. Otherwise she would have understood she was hoping for the impossible.

"No, we cannot. Allow me to remind you: we are besieged by forty thousand men under Renly. Food will run short before long, and no reinforcements are coming. The Targaryen girl in the south is our smallest problem."

"I would suggest we do nothing about Rhaenys at all," Tyrion interjected. "Dorne borders the Reach and the Stormlands, both our enemies. If what has been written is true, the Dornish will march on King's Landing. To do so, they must pass through the lands of Reachmen and stormlanders, and given the history and the... mutual affection between those peoples, what follows will be a bloodbath of considerable proportion. It serves us well if our enemies slaughter one another."

For once, Tyrion had said something worth hearing.

"Then that is what we shall do." Tywin shifted his attention to the others sitting quietly in the room. "Lord Baelish, how much gold remains in the treasury?"

A bead of sweat rolling down Littlefinger's brow said more than any words could.

"Lord Tywin, the treasury currently holds approximately forty thousand gold dragons," the upstart began, clearly angling for a way out, then thought better of it. "But the crown owes two million."

"How fitting. Arryn drove the crown into debt with his incompetent governance," Cersei could not help but observe.

"Lord Baelish, I reviewed the accounts of the previous Hand of the King, and the figures there were... considerably more modest," Tywin said. He was in agreement with the dwarf on this, though he had only managed a brief glance through the ledgers.

"Before the rebellion, the figure stood at eight hundred thousand. But with the outbreak of war, many costly projects were shuttered before they could recoup their investment. Production volumes fell. Disruptions to the economic balance between output and consumption followed. Merchants found it increasingly difficult to move their goods with the capital under blockade. Mass dismissals of workers compounded the situation, along with several other contributing factors."

Tywin looked at those several other contributing factors now.

His daughter and grandson had done nothing of use since the coronation. They had held feasts, tournaments, and staged spectacles at court. While the war was kindling, Cersei had been redecorating the castle, with the result that lions now adorned every corridor at every turn. He would have to concede, however reluctantly, that his daughter was incompetent.

"A substantial portion of the funds was invested in repairing the city, constructing the royal fleet, and reorganizing the Gold Cloaks," Tyrion added. "Except Arryn took the Gold Cloaks with him when he left, Stannis has the royal fleet, and what remains to us are the walls, courtesy of which we have not yet been taken."

"That does not concern me." It concerned him enormously, that his gold had been used to supply his enemies. "Lord Varys, be so good as to explain why the Northerners learn of our plans before our own commanders do."

"My lord Hand, twenty men were hanged in the past week alone on suspicion of espionage. My little birds sweep every corner, yet the informant remains unfound."

The only reason the Spider still breathed was his competence, but the recent failures had cast even that into serious doubt.

"Hang a hundred for all I care, but the traitor must be found. Otherwise I will find myself questioning your professional qualifications." The Master of Whisperers bowed in silence. "Let us continue. Stannis has moved against the Westerlands. Stafford Lannister is holding him at the Golden Tooth. Jaime will regroup and strike them on the flank with a mounted force. If it succeeds, Stannis is out of the game, and we can concentrate our attention on Renly..."