Everyone wanted a closer look at the dragon egg, but they all showed remarkable restraint. After leaning in for a glance or two, they would turn and leave, making room for those behind them, even yielding to one another with polite gestures.
Queen Selyse was almost the first to be ushered forward to admire it. Though she tried to be subtle, Jon could tell she desperately wanted to take this dragon egg back to King's Landing and present it to Stannis.
And perhaps Melisandre had a way to hatch a fossilized dragon egg.
Or at least a way she believed was worth trying.
If Stannis managed to hatch a dragon, House Baratheon would truly become the "Chosen One." They had overthrown the Targaryens, inherited the Iron Throne, and if they now possessed dragons, launching another three-hundred-year dynasty would be no problem at all.
After Selyse came Catelyn, bringing Sansa, Arya, and Rickon, with Myrcella following closely behind pushing Bran's wheelchair.
Sure enough, seizing this gap, a pair of "wind-catching ears" approached Jon. It was Colin Florent.
"Congratulations to the Lord Duke and Lady Margaery on your wedding."
"Many thanks, Ser."
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Colin couldn't wait to state his true purpose. Looking in the direction of the dragon egg, he said very obscurely, "If His Grace could also obtain such a dragon egg, I think he would be very happy."
"If His Grace likes it, I can present it to him," Margaery said quite naturally.
In her view, although the dragon egg was beautiful, if it could be exchanged for truly useful political chips, it would be even better.
"Really, Lady Margaery?" Colin exclaimed in surprise.
Colin hadn't expected this matter to go so unexpectedly smoothly. He thought Jon would nod and the Tyrells would refuse. Now that Margaery was so cooperative, Jon naturally wouldn't be a problem.
"No!" Jon said in a deep voice, refusing coldly.
"Lord Duke?" Colin's face was full of confusion.
"I earned His Grace's favor with the two swords in my hands, with the heads and blood of my enemies, not by fawning over him with my new wife's dowry."
"Jon! You!" Colin was clearly angry, thinking the guy in front of him really didn't know what was good for him. "Don't forget how your Dukedom came to be!"
"It was exchanged for the heads of Joffrey and Tywin. Is there a problem?" Jon retorted unceremoniously.
Margaery watched the unyielding Jon out of the corner of her eye, her body unconsciously leaning closer to him.
"Good, good, good. I will report this matter truthfully to His Grace," Colin threatened, but Jon ignored him directly. It was their turn to view the dragon egg.
However, one of the two had seen it long ago, and the other not only had seen one but owned more than one, so they just took a symbolic look and stepped aside.
This caused the crowd's focus to temporarily shift away from them.
Margaery and Jon separated for the moment, and she returned to her mother and grandmother's side.
Looking at the crowd around him, Jon certainly knew what "merit overshadowing the master" meant. Even if his character and performance in King's Landing had been impeccable before, Stannis wouldn't spare him when it was time to be suspicious.
After all, no matter how close he was to Stannis, he couldn't compare to Renly's closeness.
It was just that before taking the Iron Islands and completely solving his worries from the rear, Jon didn't want to break with Stannis. Especially Euron—this guy was truly evil.
Jon summoned Sandor and whispered to him, "Sandor, have your men keep a close eye on that adventurer's ship. Ideally, find a few ships to surround his vessel!"
"As you command, my Lord." After receiving the order, Sandor left as unobtrusively as possible, but his huge stature still caught Margaery's attention.
She was intentionally or unintentionally keeping her family away from Euron.
Jon walked toward Euron, and Euron immediately noticed Jon approaching him, putting a smile on his face.
"Ser Euron."
"Lord Duke."
Jon looked at Euron's purple lips and said, "Ser Euron, it is truly admirable that you were able to retreat from Valyria unscathed."
"You flatter me, Lord Duke. My adventure cannot compare to your brilliant military exploits. You may not know, but even in the Free Cities, countless people are talking about you. You are a living legend."
The two flattered each other for a bit, and Jon asked him some questions about the Dragon Mother, but Euron seemed to have limited knowledge.
It couldn't be ruled out that this guy was hiding something.
During the conversation, he didn't mention the Unsullied army or Slaver's Bay. However, judging by the timeline, Jon estimated it would be soon. Maybe the Dragon Mother had already started her war of conquest in Slaver's Bay.
Of course, learning about the Dragon Mother's current situation was just incidental; Jon was merely observing his reaction through conversation.
The two talked about Valyria again. Facing Jon's questions, Euron answered flawlessly with the rhetoric he had rehearsed countless times.
But Jon hadn't intended to learn his purpose for coming to Highgarden through conversation anyway. Now that his ship was being watched by Sandor and the person was inside the castle, it was like catching a turtle in a jar.
However, he soon encountered an unforeseen situation—Jon had originally planned to identify all of Euron's mute sailor puppets in Highgarden within the next two days, but as the groom, this ordinary task took a lot of effort.
First, Selyse called Jon over again to question why he ignored her question.
A bunch of Florents attacked Jon together, but Jon didn't indulge them at all. First of all, he had the right to distribute the spoils.
And he stated that his distribution was fair, just, and reasonable.
But Selyse obviously didn't think so. In her view, all of Jon's legitimacy in the West came from Stannis, so he should give whatever was asked.
As the saying goes, when words are incompatible, half a sentence is too much. Jon directly dropped a sentence that he would personally go to King's Landing to apologize after the wedding and left.
Leaving her and a group of Florents in impotent rage.
Then there was Mace. The father-in-law dragging the son-in-law to drink heavily was simply a reserved program from commoners to nobles.
He kept saying how much he loved Margaery, how hard it was to raise her from a little bit to this big, and hoped Jon wouldn't let Margaery down.
He even accidentally let it slip that he never expected Jon to conquer Casterly Rock; he just hoped he could dogfight with the Lannisters.
Jon didn't mind this. Mace was the kind of person who had absolutely no scheming, which could be seen from his act of ordering armor to be sent to him.
Of course, regarding his worries, Jon kept nodding and promising that he would treat Margaery well. At the same time, he kept pouring wine, and only managed to escape after getting Mace drunk.
Besides Mace, Oberyn was also quite enthusiastic. Because he was extremely adventurous and had formed a mercenary group in the Free Cities, he launched into a long analysis with Jon about the previous Battle of the Green Fork and the Battle of King's Landing.
"Jon, did you really use wildfire to stop the rain that should have fallen on Casterly Rock? How exactly did that work?"
"I always wondered why I got diarrhea after drinking rainwater when I was a kid. Turns out there's dirty stuff in it."
"Condensation nuclei? Why is such a tiny thing called a 'nucleus'? I think it should be called condensation... condensation—okay, let's just call it condensation nuclei."
"When I get back to Dorne, I must try it too. If it works, then large areas of desert in Dorne can also grow crops!"
Jon never expected Oberyn to be such a chatterbox.
But this guy's brain was indeed sharp. He understood Jon's explanations of novel concepts immediately. He was worthy of being someone who could get four or five links at the Citadel.
Ideally, a link from the Citadel was like a "degree certificate." Oberyn was equivalent to a person who had studied four or five almost unrelated disciplines.
However, after all this tossing and turning, it was basically dark. Jon could only search for the mute puppets Euron had planted while there were few people around at night.
On the first night alone, he found nearly twenty. These mute puppets were basically distributed near the stables and kitchens. Their intention was also obvious: either to poison or to set fire.
Although they couldn't enter the kitchen, with Euron's command, intercepting halfway and tampering a little could still be done.
And this guy Euron had arrived about a month earlier than Jon. In this month, he had already allowed his mute puppets to infiltrate every corner of Highgarden.
There were his people among the musicians. Euron used some method to make a certain person in the musician team sick, and then replaced him with his own mute puppet.
There were his people around the guards. Although these guys couldn't speak, they were good at acting like fools and soon mingled with the guards.
Compared to the retinues who followed the noble lords all day, those mutes who followed Euron on adventures had seen more things and could always take out some novel gadgets.
And Jon discovered that the group of maids around Margaery actually became interested in Euron's people, and even he himself had hooked up with that bastard daughter named Falia.
But Euron did it very covertly. Because almost the entire castle's attention was on Jon and Margaery, and Euron was the most popular adventurer in the entire castle at the moment, no one cared if he hooked up with one or two maids.
Jon also observed all this through the ravens, thinking that his goal could absolutely not be one or two maids. If that were the case, he wouldn't need to take out a dragon egg to please Mace.
And even less need to risk himself by entering Highgarden.
He could have stayed near Highgarden first, and then slowly hooked up with his eloquence and sweet words, so he wouldn't have to take such a big risk.
Besides hooking up with maids, Euron also ran to Selyse from time to time. It had to be said that this guy's lip service was indeed good; the usually icy Selyse was made to tremble with laughter by him.
This made Jon suspect that Euron might be plotting something like "King's Blood"—"Queen's Blood."
Just like this, Jon had to deal with guests while searching for the mute puppets Euron had ambushed. After two days of this, Jon found a total of thirty-seven mute puppets in the castle!
If I kill just one, Euron will definitely notice, and the others will definitely riot to let this guy escape. It's best to control all these puppets at the same time.
But this requires enough manpower. Sandor took more than thirty people to the port, and now I only have about sixty people left here, and half of them are old fogies.
These mountain clan veterans Jon brought were representatives of fierce fighters. Originally, bringing them here was to "eat the banquet" to show his reward to them.
Perhaps they performed well on the battlefield, but if they were to deal with the tricky Euron, their reaction ability and adaptability were simply not enough.
People who lived in the mountains all their lives, just seeing a castle like Highgarden was almost like primitive people breaking into a concrete high-rise.
After thinking about it, Jon went to Willas. Although he hadn't become the Duke of Highgarden yet, nor was he the acting castellan, he handled more than half of Highgarden's affairs.
"You're saying there's something wrong with that adventurer?"
"Yes, I can almost guarantee it with my father's honor, Ser Willas!"
Seeing Jon so serious, and trusting the intuition of a military genius, Willas stared at Jon with those brown eyes for a few seconds, then nodded: "Speak, what do you need me to do?"