Chapter 59: The Bastard Guard
"Yesterday, during the council session, His Grace ordered all Crownlands lords to swear fealty to Crown Prince Joffrey."
Renly tapped his fingers idly against the long oak table, his tone carrying the particular lightness of a man who found other people's problems mildly entertaining.
"Which means even more people will be descending on the capital. Word of the tourney has spread to every corner of the Seven Kingdoms — the inns in King's Landing are already packed to the rafters. The lords and knights arriving later will likely find themselves camped outside the walls entirely." He smiled. "They can't wait to prove themselves before my nephew."
"Lord Renly." Eddard's voice was measured. "I'll remind you again — His Grace has not called it a Hand's Tourney. It is the King's Tourney." He turned his gaze down the table. "Lord Henry. Can the City Watch maintain order outside the walls as well as within them?"
"The expansion only began a fortnight ago. We've taken on five hundred new men, and they're still in training — useless in the field for now." Henry leaned back in his chair. "Tomorrow I'll pull a detachment from the Blackwater River Guard and bring them into the city. House Tyrell's escort has twenty knights and three hundred men-at-arms currently quartered in King's Landing. I expect Lord Mace will be willing to put them to use."
"As Master of Laws," Renly said, sitting straighter and giving his title deliberate weight, "I'm prepared to take the City Watch's expansion in hand personally."
Henry declined without hesitation. "I appreciate the offer, Lord Renly, but the expansion and recruit training are being overseen directly by Prince Joffrey. It wouldn't do to pull that responsibility out from under him."
Renly's easy expression cooled. His fingers pressed harder against the table. He managed a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "A heavy responsibility indeed. Though I'd heard the Prince has been occupied drilling his bastard brothers. Perhaps that leaves him somewhat stretched."
"Mind your tongue, Lord Renly," Littlefinger said pleasantly. "Those are your nephews you're speaking of."
"You needn't concern yourself with the details," Henry said, his smile considerably warmer than Renly's. "Lord Eddard's own bastard has already been assigned to assist the Prince in that work."
Eddard glanced at Henry and said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
"I understand you've helped the Prince locate six of his natural brothers," Varys said, folding his hands in his lap.
"That's right." Henry nodded. "Lord Varys's network remains impressively well-informed."
"Lord Henry's methods are better still." The Master of Whisperers tilted his head, his voice carrying the smooth warmth he applied to everything. "My little birds located eight of the King's natural children in total — two at Storm's End, one at Moongate Keep, and a few others scattered across the realm. Lord Henry found six in Flea Bottom alone. I confess I find myself curious how."
"It seems Lord Varys takes a particular interest in the King's offspring," Littlefinger observed, with the tone of a man finding something privately amusing. "One might wonder if his birds have been flying a touch slowly of late."
"My little birds may lack Lord Petyr's particular connections," Varys said, with a faint note of reproach, "but they serve the realm faithfully in their way." He raised one soft hand and dabbed at the corner of his eye with his sleeve. "I ask only that Lord Henry show some mercy and stop putting them in the dungeons. They are children trying to survive."
"That puts me in an uncomfortable position, Lord Varys." Henry spread his hands. "The Watch has a duty to apprehend thieves. If your little birds are caught stealing, my men can't simply look the other way."
"And yet the good people of King's Landing are rarely moved to serve the realm out of pure civic virtue," Varys sighed. "In their experience, it tends to be dirty work."
"Enough." Eddard set his hands flat on the table. "Lord Varys, reorganize your network. Lord Petyr — release funds for it. Recruit people who aren't picking pockets for their wages."
Littlefinger tilted his head, glancing between Eddard and Henry. "Will I?"
"You raised the prize money for this tourney without difficulty," Eddard said. "Finding coin for a few honest informants shouldn't strain the treasury."
"With respect, Lord Eddard, a tourney is not a trivial thing," Grand Maester Pycelle said, rousing himself from what had appeared to be a light doze. His voice carried the measured gravity of a man who had been making the same observation for forty years. "For knights and lords, it is an opportunity for honor. For the common folk, it is a day's relief from harder things."
"And for merchants, innkeepers, and every man with something to sell, it's a week's profit," Littlefinger added cheerfully. "The inns are full. The pleasure houses are doing twice their usual trade. A stable boy who can find a noble a decent stall for his horse can earn more in a fortnight than he'd see in two months otherwise. The gold flows."
"Thank the gods Stannis isn't here," Renly said, with a laugh that came easily and lasted too long. "Do you remember? He proposed closing every brothel in the city. Robert told him he might as well ban eating, sleeping, and breathing and be done with it." He shook his head. "I genuinely wonder sometimes how Stannis managed to produce a daughter at all. The man approaches the marriage bed the way he approaches a siege — grimly, methodically, as though it were an obligation to be discharged."
"Lord Stannis has always had firm views about commerce," Littlefinger said innocently.
Eddard looked at him and didn't laugh. "I've also been wondering when Lord Stannis intends to end his stay at Dragonstone and return to King's Landing to perform his duties as Master of Ships."
"Simple enough," Littlefinger said. "Throw every whore in the city into the Blackwater Rush and I'd give him a fortnight before he rides through the gate."
"I think we've covered enough ground on that subject." Eddard pushed back his chair and stood. "Lord Henry. Walk with me — I want to inspect the new recruits."
The training ground outside the barracks was loud with the sound of drills — dust rising from trampled earth, a company of nearly a hundred men moving through sword forms in rough unison, following the count called out by a voice Henry recognized as Joffrey's. The Prince had taken to the work with more genuine investment than Henry had expected.
Eddard stood at the edge of the yard and looked at the six young men at the front of the formation. His brow was tight.
"These six," he said. "You're telling me they're all Robert's."
"Yes, my lord."
Three of the six had the black hair that the Baratheons stamped on their children like a seal. One had gold. Two had brown. They were different ages, different builds — the things that came from different mothers — but the Baratheon blood was there in all of them if you knew how to look for it.
"Which one is Gendry?" Eddard asked.
Henry pointed him out — the broadest of the black-haired three, built along lines that suggested he would be a large man when he finished growing.
Eddard studied the boy in silence for a long moment. "He looks more like Robert than any of the others."
Henry said nothing. He had been careful in his selection — careful about which boys he brought forward and how — and he felt no need to draw attention to the care he'd taken. He was aware, not for the first time, that the work of the past months had involved a certain amount of quiet maneuvering that would be difficult to explain to a man like Eddard Stark without the explanation sounding worse than the thing itself.
"Jon Arryn came looking for this boy," Eddard said, after a while. "And Stannis as well. Before Jon died."
"Gendry mentioned it." Henry kept his voice neutral. "Neither lord told him what they were after."
Eddard turned to look at him directly. "And you. Do you know what they were investigating?"
"They didn't see fit to tell me," Henry said.
When Joffrey called a rest and the young men collapsed onto the ground in the particular boneless sprawl of people who have been pushed hard in the heat, Eddard walked out onto the field and moved from boy to boy, crouching beside each one in turn. Henry watched from the edge of the yard. Whatever Eddard was asking, he was asking it quietly — Henry could see the boys' expressions shift, watchful and uncertain, the way children look when a man of obvious authority asks them careful questions about their lives.
When Eddard came back, his personal guard Jory fell into step beside him and kept his voice low. "My lord? Did you find what you were looking for?"
Eddard was quiet for a moment.
"The mothers of all six are dead," he said. "Under circumstances that don't add up cleanly." He paused. "Someone has been watching over these children, which is the only reason they're still alive." His jaw set slightly. "I think the Queen sent men to kill their mothers."
He had made up his mind about it. That much was clear from his voice.
Henry walked behind them and said nothing. There were things Eddard Stark was going to have to find his own way to, and arriving at them too quickly, with too much help, would only make a man like him dig in his heels.
The training ground noise continued behind them as Joffrey called the formation back into order, and six young men with Baratheon blood pushed themselves back to their feet in the dust.
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