Chapter 22 — "What the Capital Says"
The Small Council met ,Jon Arryn had decided seventeen years ago that the council needed a fixed rhythm.Seventeen years had given the meeting a particular texture — the same room, the same table, the same faces in approximately the same positions, the same quality of light through the same windows depending on the season.
Today was autumn light. Thin and gold and slightly tired.
Robert Baratheon was attending the meeting. It was rare as Lord Tywin Lannister laughing
This was unusual. Robert was not typically present at council meetings at all if he could find a reason to be elsewhere. He was sitting at the head of the table with a cup in his hand and the particular quality of relaxation that came from a man who had been drinking since before the meeting started and intended to continue regardless of what the meeting contained.
He looked up when Jon Arryn entered.
"Jon," he said. "Tell me something good."
"As it happens," Jon Arryn said. "I have something good."
He sat down.
The others filed in behind him.
Grand Maester Pycelle settled into his chair with the careful movements of a very old man arranging himself for a long sit. Lord Stannis Baratheon — Master of Ships — took his seat with the economical precision of someone who considered the act of sitting down a task to be completed efficiently.
Littlefinger sliding into his chair with the easy manner of a man arriving at a social occasion rather than a governmental one, his eyes moving around the room once with the speed and completeness of a very good inventory.
Varys was already there.
He was always already there. Jon Arryn had never determined how.
He laid out the numbers.
The Vale mountain passes. The trade routes. The campaign results — four major clans and three minor clans settled or pacified in a single season. The Redwater Fork up forty three percent. Merchant complaints down to near nothing. Former clan fighters now patrolling the passes under Vale authority.
He read through it steadily. The way he presented things — without drama, with the full weight of the facts — was something he had learned from his own years of service and never seen the need to change.
Robert listened with the unfocused attention of a man following something at one remove from his full interest. His cup moved to his mouth at regular intervals. His eyes stayed on Jon Arryn.
Stannis had gone still in the way Stannis went still when something was engaging him — a particular quality of stillness, like a man listening to something he intends to remember.
Littlefinger's fingers were doing the quiet tapping pattern they did when he was running arithmetic. His expression was interested in the way a cat was interested — present, calculating, giving nothing away about what the calculation was producing.
Pycelle nodded at regular intervals. Whether he was following the substance or simply nodding was impossible to determine and had been impossible to determine for years.
Varys sat with his hands folded in his sleeves and watched Jon Arryn the way he watched everything — completely, without appearing to.
When Jon Arryn finished the room was quiet for a moment.
Stannis spoke first.
"The former clan fighters," he said. "The patrol obligation. How is that being enforced."
"Service terms written into the settlement agreements," Jon Arryn said. "Gate commanders have authority to call the obligation. The Blackfish oversees compliance."
"And if they default on the obligation."
" Default on service means they are dead. They can form a defence on mountain not on plains"
Stannis considered this. "Efficient," he said. The word carried the specific weight it always carried from Stannis — not enthusiasm, not warmth, just the precise acknowledgment of a thing that had been done correctly.
"Profitable too," Littlefinger said pleasantly. He had stopped tapping his fingers. "The Riverlands merchant traffic implications alone — the northern Vale routes feed into the Trident forks, which feed into the capital's supply lines. If those routes stay open through winter we are looking at a reduction in import costs for—"
"The financial implications are noted," Jon Arryn said.
"I'm sure they are," Littlefinger said. Still pleasant. "I'm simply observing that whoever planned this understood the trade geometry as well as the military one. That's an unusual combination."
He left it there.
Robert had been refilling his cup.
"How many men did it take," he said.
"A thousand for the campaign Your Grace," Jon Arryn said.
Robert grunted. "Thousand men to pacify a mountain range. I cleared the Kingswood in a season with less. But still a good campaign. After a long time I heard a man doing something excited" He drank. "Who commanded it."
"A man named Alaric Snow," Jon Arryn said.
The room absorbed this differently than Jon Arryn had expected.
Pycelle's eyebrows moved slightly upward. The grand maester had specific feelings about bastards in positions of authority that he had never needed to articulate because they were the same feelings most people in his position held and articulating them had never seemed necessary.
"A bastard," Pycelle said.
"A bastard, Natural son of Brandon Stark" Jon Arryn confirmed. "Ward of Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell. Fostered in the Vale under Lord Edwyn Starke."
"How old," Stannis said.
"Sixteen."
Stannis looked at the trade figures in front of him. Then at Jon Arryn. Back at the figures.
"Age is not a qualification," he said. "Results are." He paused. "The settlement programme was his design."
"It was."
Stannis nodded once. Done with the subject. It had been assessed and found satisfactory and that was the end of it.
Robert had put his cup down.
He was looking at Jon Arryn with an expression that had shifted from the comfortable unfocus of a man drinking through a council meeting to something more present. More like the Robert that Jon Arryn remembered from before the throne had done what thrones did to men.
"Ned's ward," Robert said.
"Yes."
"Brandon's bastard." Robert said it like a man placing a piece on a board rather than stating a fact. "Brandon had a bastard."
"He did," Jon Arryn said carefully. "Alaric Snow. Raised at Winterfell."
Robert sat with that for a moment.
"Brandon," he said. "Gods. Brandon Stark." He picked up his cup. "If he was anything like Brandon he's either the best fighter in the Vale or he's dead."
"The former," Jon Arryn said.
Robert almost smiled. "Of course." He drank. "Good. Someone should be." He set the cup down. "Send him a letter from me Arryn. Tell him I says well done. Tell him Brandon would have been proud." He paused. "Tell him to come visit if he's ever in King's Landing. I want to meet the boy."
Jon Arryn looked at him.
In seventeen years Robert had never asked to meet anyone who had come up in a council report.
"I'll write to him," Jon Arryn said.
Robert nodded and refilled his cup and leaned back in his chair and the present Robert came back over the brief Robert that had surfaced and settled back into the comfortable blur of a man drinking through a Tuesday.
Littlefinger had been watching the king during all of this with the specific attention he gave to unplanned moments — the moments that revealed things people hadn't intended to reveal.
He said nothing.
Varys said nothing either.
But his eyes moved from Robert to Jon Arryn to the empty space in the conversation where a name had just been placed — Alaric Snow, bastard, ward of Eddard Stark, sixteen years old, cleared the Vale mountain passes — and something behind his eyes filed it carefully.
Jon Arryn gathered his papers.
"The Vale mountain passes are clear for the first time in living memory," he said. "I thought the council should know."
He sat down.
The meeting moved on to other business.
Afterward walking back through the corridor Jon Arryn allowed himself the small private satisfaction of a man whose investment had returned considerably beyond projection.
He thought about the Blackfish's letter.
About what it said and what it didn't say.
About the knighthood refusal and the specific reasoning behind it that the Blackfish had included without comment.
A knight is someone the South made. I'm not what that is.
He thought about Ned Stark standing in this same corridor twenty years ago. Young. Serious. The same quality of certainty about what he was and what he wasn't.
He smiled to himself.
Just slightly.
He had a letter to write.
To Alaric Snow first.
Then to Ned.
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