The island rose from the morning mist like something half-remembered from a dream, and Renly Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End and Master of Laws to His Grace Robert Baratheon, First of His Name, found himself gripping the rail of the Sea Stag with rather more force than dignity strictly required.
He had been to Tarth before, of course. Three times, in fact, over the years since Robert had claimed the throne and parcelled out the realm's responsibilities to brothers who had not entirely wanted them. Renly remembered a pleasant island of sapphire waters and modest ambitions, ruled by a lord of impeccable honour and middling imagination, the sort of vassal who paid his taxes on time, answered his ravens promptly, and never caused the kind of trouble that required anyone in King's Landing to learn the location of his holdfast on a map.
That island, apparently, no longer existed.
What greeted him now, as the morning sun burned away the last of the sea fog and revealed the western coast in its full, impossible glory, was something else entirely. The harbour at Evenfall had tripled in size since his last visit, its wooden quays replaced by dressed stone piers that jutted into the deep water like the fingers of a giant reaching for the horizon. Ships crowded the anchorage in numbers that would have been respectable for a minor Free City: fat-bellied cogs from the Reach and the Vale, sleek galleys flying the merman of White Harbor, Braavosi traders with their distinctive striped sails, and a handful of vessels Renly did not recognise at all, their hulls painted in colours that suggested origins considerably further east than the Narrow Sea typically delivered.
And above the harbour, climbing the cliffs in terraces and switchbacks and cascading gardens that caught the light like spilled jewels, rose Evenfall Town.
"Seven hells," said Ser Cortnay Penrose, who had come to stand beside him at the rail. Cortnay was castellan of Storm's End and had accompanied Renly on this journey as both bodyguard and, Renly suspected, as a reliable witness whose word Robert would trust when the inevitable reports of impossibility reached the capital. "What have they done to the place?"
"That," Renly said slowly, "is precisely what I intend to find out."
He had received the invitation two months prior, delivered by a rider who had made the journey from Tarth to King's Landing in a time that suggested either excellent horses or a casual disregard for the limitations of the flesh. The letter itself had been a masterpiece of courteous understatement. Lord Selwyn Tarth requested the honour of Lord Renly's presence at the inauguration of the Sapphire Lodge Resort, a modest establishment that House Tarth had constructed for the comfort of visitors to their island. The occasion would feature a small exhibition of local crafts, a tour of recent improvements to the town, and a celebration befitting the friendship between their houses.
Modest, Lord Selwyn had written. A small exhibition. Recent improvements.
Renly was beginning to suspect that Lord Selwyn's definition of modesty had undergone significant revision since the last time they had corresponded.
The Sea Stag glided toward the harbour with the easy grace of a ship that had been built for exactly this kind of approach: not too large to navigate the channel, not too small to impress the watchers on the quay. Renly had chosen the vessel with care, aware that first impressions mattered and that arriving at a vassal's celebration in an undersized fishing boat would send precisely the wrong message. Now, looking at the forest of masts that surrounded them, he wondered whether he had miscalculated in the opposite direction. His ship, which had seemed perfectly adequate when it left King's Landing, suddenly felt like a country knight arriving at a tourney to discover that everyone else had brought their warhorse.
They were not alone, of course. The invitation had been extended to the lords of the Stormlands as well as to Renly himself, and a respectable number of them had accepted. Lord Estermont was aboard his own vessel somewhere in the convoy behind them. Lord Buckler had arrived the previous day, according to the harbour signals. Lord Cafferen, Lord Grandison, and a scattering of lesser houses had all made the crossing, drawn by curiosity or courtesy or the simple fact that an invitation from House Tarth, in these strange new times, was not something a prudent lord ignored.
Five years, Renly thought. Five years since he had last set foot on this island, and in that time, everything had changed. The question was how, and the more pressing question was why.
* * *
The welcoming party that awaited them on the quay was considerably more impressive than the modest affair Renly had expected.
Lord Selwyn Tarth stood at the head of it, of course, his great bulk draped in a doublet of sapphire blue that had been cut with considerably more skill than anything Renly had seen him wear before. But it was the figure beside him that drew the eye, a boy of perhaps eleven who stood with the composed stillness of a statue and watched the approaching ship with eyes that were, even at this distance, distinctly and unsettlingly violet.
Alexander Tarth. The one they were calling the Genius of Tarth in the taverns of King's Landing, when they spoke of him at all. Renly had heard the stories, naturally. One could not serve on the small council without developing an ear for rumour, and the rumours about Lord Selwyn's younger child had been circulating with increasing frequency over the past two years. A boy who had reorganised his father's agricultural holdings at the age of six. A boy who had persuaded his father to restore a ruined castle for his sister at the age of eight. A boy who spoke of trade policy and military logistics with the casual authority of a man who had spent decades studying both.
Renly had dismissed most of it, naturally. Rumours about prodigy children were as common as rumours about miraculous cures and hidden treasure, and they tended to dissolve under scrutiny with approximately the same regularity. Lord Selwyn was a good man, an honest man, but not a particularly imaginative one, and the notion that he had somehow produced a child-genius seemed, on the face of it, unlikely.
Looking at the harbour, at the town, at the transformation that had overtaken an island he had known as a pleasant backwater, Renly was beginning to revise that assessment.
The gangplank was lowered, and Renly descended with the measured dignity that his position required, Ser Cortnay a half-step behind him and the rest of his small retinue following in appropriately subordinate formation. Lord Selwyn came forward to meet him, and for a moment, the ritual of greeting occupied their attention: the clasped hands, the formal words, the exchange of courtesies that lubricant the machinery of lordly interaction throughout the Seven Kingdoms.
"Lord Renly," Selwyn said, his deep voice warm with genuine pleasure. "You honour us with your presence. The journey was not too arduous, I hope?"
"The sea was kind, my lord. Though I confess the destination has surprised me more than the voyage." Renly gestured at the harbour, the town, the whole transformed vista that surrounded them. "I had expected to find Tarth much as I left it. I find instead that I have arrived in a different country entirely."
Selwyn's weathered face creased with something that was not quite a smile but was certainly in the same family. "My son has been busy."
"So I perceive."
The boy in question had remained where he stood during the greeting, observing rather than participating, but now Lord Selwyn beckoned him forward with a gesture that combined paternal pride with something that looked, to Renly's practiced eye, remarkably like deference.
"Lord Renly, may I present my son, Alexander."
The boy stepped forward and executed a bow that was correct in every particular, neither too deep nor too shallow, neither too long nor too brief. When he straightened, Renly found himself looking into those strange violet eyes and feeling, for the first time in longer than he cared to remember, that he was the one being evaluated rather than the one doing the evaluating.
"Lord Renly," Alexander said. His voice was calm, composed, entirely inappropriate for a child of eleven. "Welcome to Tarth. I hope you will find your stay with us both comfortable and illuminating."
"Illuminating," Renly repeated. "An interesting choice of word."
"I chose it deliberately, my lord. You have come to see what we have built. I intend to show you everything." Something flickered in those violet eyes, something that might have been amusement or might have been challenge. "I suspect you will have questions."
"I suspect," Renly said slowly, "that I already do."
* * *
The tour began in the harbour district, where Alexander led them through streets that Renly remembered as muddy tracks between wooden buildings and found transformed into broad avenues paved with pale stone, lined with shops and warehouses whose architecture spoke of ambitions considerably grander than the fishing village that had occupied this ground five years prior.
"The paving stones are local marble and granite," Alexander explained, as they walked. He had assumed the role of guide with a naturalness that suggested he had done this many times before, and perhaps he had. "The quarries in the southern highlands produce three grades. The white marble is exported; it commands premium prices from builders across the Stormlands and increasingly from the Reach as well. The grey marble, which is more common and equally durable, we use for infrastructure. The veined blue, which is rarest, we reserve for decorative work."
"You export marble," Renly said. It was not a question, but Alexander treated it as one.
"We export marble, iron goods, whiskey, perfume, and tea. We import ironwood from the North, certain spices from the Free Cities, and skilled craftsmen from wherever we can find them." The boy glanced back at Renly with an expression that was almost, but not quite, innocent. "The balance of trade is currently in our favour. Significantly."
Ser Cortnay made a noise that might have been surprise or might have been scepticism. Alexander heard it and turned his attention briefly to the knight, acknowledging his presence for the first time.
"You are sceptical, Ser Cortnay. That is reasonable. Words are easy; anyone can make claims about trade surpluses and economic transformation. But we are not asking you to take our word for anything. We are asking you to look." He gestured at the street around them, at the buildings and the people and the purposeful activity that filled the morning air. "Look at what has been built. Look at who is building it. Draw your own conclusions."
Renly did look. He looked at the harbour workers unloading cargo with the efficiency of men who knew their business and were paid well enough to care about doing it properly. He looked at the merchants conducting their transactions in the open air, their voices carrying the particular confident timbre of people who expected to be heard and heeded. He looked at the women, and there were many women, moving through the streets with purposes of their own, dressed not in the drab homespun of peasant wives but in the practical, well-made clothing of people who had money and knew how to spend it.
And he looked at the buildings themselves. The architecture was not Westerosi, or not entirely. The proportions were different, the decorative elements unfamiliar, the whole aesthetic suggesting influences that had been imported from somewhere considerably further than the usual sources. There was elegance in it, a coherence of vision that spoke of planning rather than accumulation, and Renly found himself wondering, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, exactly what kind of mind could conceive of such a transformation and then actually execute it.
"The artisans' district is this way," Alexander said, leading them up a gentle slope toward the heart of the town. "I think you will find it interesting."
* * *