Chapter 55: House Tyrell
Word spread through the Red Keep within the hour: a rider in green livery bearing a golden rose had arrived at the city gates. The message he carried confirmed what half the court had already been speculating about for a fortnight.
Lord Mace Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden, Warden of the South, would be coming to the capital with his family for the Master of Ships' tournament. His eldest son Willas would remain at Highgarden to manage the seat. His second son Garlan and youngest son Loras would both ride as competitors.
By the time the news had made one full circuit of the castle, King's Landing already knew that the golden rose of the Reach was coming to bloom at the heart of the realm.
King Robert, as it happened, had developed a sudden and debilitating stomach ailment at approximately this same moment and could not be expected to leave his chambers to receive anyone.
His only instruction, delivered through a page who looked like he'd been told not to make eye contact: Eddard Stark, Hand of the King, was to lead the formal welcome, accompanied by Renly Baratheon as Lord Justice and Henry Reyes as Master of Laws.
The welcoming party assembled at the Red Lion Bridge, south of the King's Gate, where the King's Road crossed the Blackwater.
The bridge was Henry's work — a wide stone and timber crossing with a central span that could be raised, drawbridge-fashion, to let the deep-keeled grain ships through. He'd had it built six years ago to move goods between the Bay of Crabs and the city without running everything through the docks. The Reyne sigil, a red lion on white, was carved into the keystones of both towers. Merchants from three regions used it daily without knowing or caring about its origins, which suited Henry fine.
Three hundred gold cloaks in parade formation stood behind the welcoming party at the bridgehead. Henry sat his horse at Eddard's right and watched the dust rising on the road to the south.
The procession that emerged from it was sized to impress. More than a dozen green banners with gold roses rippled in the river wind. Fifty Highgarden knights led the column, their plate polished silver-bright, each breastplate bearing a raised rose in gold. Behind them stretched three hundred heavy-laden carts, escorted by close to a thousand Reach soldiers with spears and round shields.
It took some time for the head of the column to cross the bridge.
Mace Tyrell was easier to recognize than Henry had expected. He was broad and had gone soft in the middle, but there was still something of the younger man visible in the bones of his face — the jaw, the brow. His curly brown hair had gone mostly to grey and his beard was fully white. His horse was draped in green velvet embroidered with roses, and the scabbard at his hip was set with emeralds at regular intervals. He wore his wealth the way some men wore armor, as deliberate protection.
A knight spurred forward from the column before the parties had fully closed, his shoulder armor carrying a rose emblem more elaborate than the standard Tyrell device — silver edging on the petals, two blooms intertwined rather than one.
He pulled up sharp in front of the welcoming party and pitched his voice to carry: "My lords — before you stands Lord Mace of House Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden, Warden of the South, Defender of the Marches, High Lord of the Reach."
That was Garlan — Garlan the Valiant, the second son, the one they said was actually the better fighter of the two brothers. The double rose on his shield was his personal device, marking his place in the birth order as plainly as a nameplate.
Henry filed the detail away.
Loras Tyrell hung back in the column, but he was not difficult to find. The bards had done their work well enough that most of the court knew what to look for: the brown curls, the eyes that were almost amber, the carved and gilded armor that made other men's tournament kit look like practice gear. He was younger than Henry had pictured from the songs — still carrying some of a boy's angularity in his face, though the shoulders were filling out. The Knight of Flowers rode with the particular ease of someone who has been told since childhood that he was exceptional and has come to find it more comfortable than uncomfortable.
Loras's gaze traveled along the welcoming party and stopped.
Loras was staring at Lancel Lannister, who was riding one of Henry's escort positions to his left. The amber eyes were very direct. Lancel appeared to become extremely interested in the stonework of the bridge towers.
Henry noted this with the detached professional interest of a man cataloguing information he expects to find useful eventually.
Eddard's household knight stepped his horse forward and gave the party's names and titles in the formal style. Renly's man followed. For Henry, the task fell to Jon Snow, currently the only member of what could charitably be called his household staff — a situation Henry had not yet decided to remedy.
The formal introductions completed, both parties dismounted.
Mace Tyrell moved through the pleasantries with the practiced ease of a man who had been doing this for thirty years. He smiled at Eddard as though they were old friends at a reunion rather than a former besieging commander greeting the man whose army had ended his siege by arriving to relieve the other side.
Henry found himself thinking, not for the first time, about Storm's End.
Mace had commanded the Reach's forces through that siege — nominally commanded, in the way that large men sometimes stand in front of things to suggest they are responsible for them. The real work had been Redwyne's fleet blockading the bay. For the better part of a year, Stannis's garrison had eaten the horses, then the dogs, then the cats, then things that didn't bear thinking about. They'd survived on onions and salt fish smuggled through the fleet blockade by a onion-boat captain from Flea Bottom, and on stubbornness, and on the particular quality of desperation that sets in when surrender means dying anyway.
Mace, during this period, had maintained a comfortable camp with regular supply shipments from the Reach and had apparently hosted quite a number of hunting parties.
When Eddard's army arrived from the north and the Targaryen cause collapsed, Mace had sent his banners down and his men home before anyone could finish counting them.
"Lord Stark." Mace's smile was wide and uncomplicated. "It's been some years since Storm's End."
"It has," Eddard said, in the tone of a man confirming a fact about the weather.
"I've brought a small token for His Majesty." Mace gestured expansively toward the column of carts. "I understand the crown has been purchasing grain from the Reach in increasing quantities — it seemed only right to contribute something toward the royal household. Five hundred cartloads of prime Reach grain. Consider it a gift."
Henry did the arithmetic quickly. Five hundred carts of prime grain, transported from Highgarden to King's Landing with a military escort, represented a substantial investment even for the wealthiest lord in the realm. Gifts of that scale were not gestures. They were opening bids.
"Lord Tyrell is welcome in King's Landing," Eddard said. He appeared to briefly consider adding something further and decided against it.
The welcoming ceremony, such as it was, concluded. Both parties turned their horses toward the city.
Renly Baratheon eased his horse alongside Henry's and pitched his voice low.
"Lord Reyes." There was something in Renly's expression that sat between amusement and something more considered. "Do you know why Mace Tyrell made this journey personally?"
Henry's gaze drifted toward Loras, who was riding with a cluster of Highgarden knights and making them all look slightly less interesting by comparison. "I suspect, Lord Renly, that your friend hasn't shared his family's plans with you?"
Renly absorbed the pointed phrasing without visible discomfort. "He came because of you, in part."
Henry looked at him.
"'Master of Laws' is a title His Majesty invented," Renly said. "If Robert invents one, he can invent another. Lord Mace has apparently decided that the Small Council has room for another seat, and that a trip to King's Landing to make himself agreeable was worth the cost of five hundred carts of grain." He gave a small, precise shrug. "I thought you might want to know. We could be useful to each other."
"Lord Renly," Henry said, with the mild attentiveness of a man listening to something he found instructive rather than immediately persuasive, "why tell me this?"
"Because I am friendly by nature." Renly kept his expression pleasant. "And because — does Lord Reyes not want to eventually return west? To the Westerlands? There are certain situations in which—"
"Stop there, my lord." Henry said it without edge, almost gently. "If you continue down that road, you'll say something that neither of us will be able to pretend you didn't say."
Renly closed his mouth. The amusement in his expression shifted into something more careful.
Henry had not forgotten that Renly, in his capacity as Lord Justice, had spent the better part of two years throwing bureaucratic obstacles in front of every proposal Henry brought to the council regarding the capital garrison. The olive branch had appeared very suddenly and from an unexpected direction.
Sudden generosity from Renly Baratheon, Henry reflected, was probably worth the same analytical attention as five hundred carts of grain from Mace Tyrell. Both men were buying something. The question was what, exactly, each of them thought they were purchasing.
He'd find out eventually. He always did.
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