Chapter 121 118

The Vale. The Eyrie. 298 AC.

Lord Axel Arryn.

Ser Robar Royce, my cousin, had seen all manner of ugliness in his twenty-one years. The Greyjoy Rebellion, Essos, King's Landing, the Fish Rebellion: not one of my campaigns had gone forward without him. Through all of it he had revealed genuine gifts as a commander and earned the reputation he deserved. And now the young captain of the Vale looked, to put it plainly, terrible: skin the color of old wax, labored breathing, fever, and the curled posture of a man whose stomach was trying to kill him.

"How are you feeling?" I could see well enough, but one has to start somewhere.

"Go to hell, Axel," Robar managed, and immediately paid for the effort with a fresh wave of pain. "Never again. Never again will I have any part in your schemes. Not in this life."

Robar the Red was my most loyal man, had saved my skin more than once, and knew nearly everything about my plans. Whatever mad ideas I came up with, my cousin had always stood behind them, and I was deeply grateful for it. His well-earned complaints I could survive.

"Ha," I said. One should not laugh at another's misfortune, especially misfortune of one's own making, but there was something irresistibly comic about the fierce commander curled up like a shrimp. "You were the one who said you'd follow me into the seven hells."

"Killing the wild clans, gladly. Striking down your enemies, just say the word. Taking a sword meant for you, done it more than once. But voluntarily swallowing poison for the sake of some scheme? Spare me," he said. Whatever else he had been through, Robar was a knight, and acts of that particular variety sat poorly with him. "Did it work at least?"

"Yes. Everything went smoothly. The Dornish will leave us tomorrow."

What does one do when secret negotiations are no longer secret, and every faction in a civil war is alarmed by one's dealings with the Martells and the Targaryens? Morgan was a capable man, and when I had expanded his responsibilities, he had done an enormous amount of work. Through his efforts, more than a dozen spies had been caught, five poisoning attempts thwarted, three arson and assassination plots broken up, along with several smaller matters that fell within the domain of a Master of Whisperers.

To my regret, the real leaders of the opposing factions were not fools. When word reached the relevant parties that Oberyn had arrived at the Eyrie, it required no great intelligence to deduce the Red Viper's purpose. Naturally, the prospect did not please them, and they threw everything available at disrupting the negotiations, which meant Morgan's workload increased to the point where he began making his frustration abundantly clear.

Whatever Morgan's talents, the opposition would eventually get what it wanted. I understood that. Oberyn did too. His solution was to accelerate everything, sign the documents quickly, make the announcement, and be done with it. I disagreed. If you cannot stop something, take charge of it yourself, and so I decided to handle matters personally and give the interested parties the quiet they were looking for. They would only settle down if the negotiations appeared to have failed. The simplest solution was to sabotage them myself, without doing any actual damage.

My own poisoning was not an option. It would have created immediate tension, and a number of idiots would have decided to exploit my apparent weakness. Tempting as it was to thin the ranks of the hidden opposition, the Vale did not need that kind of upheaval right now. Robar was chosen as the target instead. He carried real authority, came from a powerful house, and was one of my most prominent supporters: the ideal victim. Robar, for all he had lived through, remained a true knight, and was not enthusiastic about the plan. But once he grasped the necessity of it, he agreed to play his part.

If a figure of that significance is poisoned during a feast, then regardless of circumstances or evidence, the first suspicion will fall on the Dornish, who have long been renowned for their skill with poisons. The people of that southern region had become synonymous with the practice, and the most famous poisoner of all was Oberyn Martell himself. Even intelligent men would unconsciously assume Dornish guilt, and had I not organized it myself, I would have thought exactly the same.

Our little performance went off without a hitch. I poured the poison into my own cup. Robar "quite by accident" drank from it and "saved my life." What followed was my "righteous fury," the detention of everyone in the vicinity, interrogations, and the dispatch of men in pursuit of the "culprits."

The feast was ruined. Shaken guests sat in their assigned rooms and tried to make sense of my actions. The guards ran about, rounded up a dozen suspicious individuals, and I pinned Royce's poisoning on four of them who happened to be actual spies. They were removed from the castle through the Moon Door. The impartial force of gravity converted the troublesome spies into something considerably flatter.

The negotiations with Oberyn had been concluded long before: every document signed, every plan discussed, every responsibility assigned. All that remained for me was to be seen having a few distant and inconclusive conversations with the delegation in public, and then to show the Dornish politely out.

Had the only concern been the alarm of the outside world, I would not have staged such an elaborate performance. There were two real reasons for it: the ambiguous position of that rat Doran, and the need to preserve the ability to disavow Rhaenys cleanly if necessary. The ruler of Dorne was, for reasons of his own, inclined toward Viserys rather than his niece.

If Doran knew the full extent of our alliance, one could expect sabotage from him at the worst possible moment, which in the middle of a civil war would be catastrophic. An ally you cannot trust puts the entire campaign at risk, especially when we are geographically separated and dependent on precise coordination. I had no doubt that in the decisive moment, the Dornish forces would somehow fail to arrive or be unable to reach us in time.

The Red Viper had tried to be evasive during negotiations, though not with much success. My old friend was no diplomat, and I understood the broader picture on the continent well enough that his maneuvering was transparent. I laid out simple, reasonable conditions: resolve the matter of Doran and demonstrate some concrete military contributions. Oberyn had to accept them.

Whatever Oberyn promised about dealing with Doran's uncertainty, I had prepared fallback positions regardless. The logic was straightforward: papers are papers, and as long as I had not openly declared for Rhaenys, I could talk my way out of any accusation. A secret agreement can say anything it likes, but without confirming actions it amounts to nothing. To prevent exactly that kind of escape, important agreements are normally proclaimed to the world with great ceremony and fanfare, because once it is public, one can no longer say "that was not me at all."

The Dornish delegation slipped away quietly the following day, and I turned my attention to more interesting matters.

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