“All it takes is one simple thrust of the blade,” Olenna scoffed loudly, drawing attention from the ladies sitting at the tables around them. “Any fool can stab another. It takes a true man to rise above the rest.”
Laughter rang out around her, but Margaery knew that it was all fake. These ladies were more nervous than the knights preparing for battle down below. The hedge knights and those without a house to fully support them were battling today. Tomorrow, Harry and the other noble knights would join the melee. King Robert had organised things far more fairly than any king normally would. Noble knights would meet their poor counterparts, and blood would be spilt.
But that was the men’s focus. Margaery knew her role and how she could best aid her husband-to-be. He was searching for the culprit behind the attacks upon the crown, and she needed to do her best to help him in his search.
Lady Jeyne Swann laughed loudly, clutching at her glass of wine. “Too true,” she said. “And it is folly that we have so many fools battling today.”
Margaery faked a smile as the other ladies looked to her for guidance. It was a necessary but tedious matter that, due to the station of her birth, she would forever be seen as the pioneer of opinions and trends. A large part of her enjoyed this, but she still couldn’t feel that it would be so much easier to accomplish her tasks were she not burdened with this.
Lady Ryker, touching her pregnant belly, smiled at the talk around her. Out of everyone here, she truly seemed out of her depth. Smiles and gentle faces seemed to remind her of simpler times where she needn’t worry about what she said or how she said it.
“I’d rather be home,” Lady Ryker admitted. “But my lord husband insisted we attend.”
Margaery was not alone in feeling annoyance and pain and Lady Ryker’s attendance here among them. What was the purpose of being here if not to politic and try to improve one’s own house’s position?
Thankfully, Lady Delylah Langward cut into the conversation and shifted everyone’s focus away from the annoyance. “My husband has been quite pleased these past few months. Our taxation has been healthy, and we’ve been able to pay the way of several hedge knights to join this tourney.”
“Oh?” Margaery spoke up excitedly. “What has driven this boon?”
“I don’t know,” Lady Delylah admitted easily. “But my lord husband says that more coins are flowing into our coffers than before. Mayhaps it is due to all of the travel to the capitol?”
Lady Delylah had been one of the earliest arrivals, and her husband still remained within his castle. This information was bound to be out of date, and thus didn’t account for the travellers through her family’s lands. Margaery hid a frown by glancing away and focusing on the calm scents of the flowers around her. Lady Delylah’s words weren’t quite right, but Margaery wasn’t prepared to call her out on them. Better to preserve this hidden knowledge and wait for a time that it would become useful.
“My lord husband said the same thing,” Lady Celia Morrigen added eagerly. Her face was full of happiness and none of subtlety. “Cape Wrath has been laden with coin these past few months. Inns and taverns have given us higher taxes than normal.”
This time, Margaery couldn’t hide her frown, so she buried her face in her hands, feigning a pain in her head. But that pain felt all-too real as she tried to understand the situation. Noble ladies from both the Stormlands and the Crownlands had seen recent economic boons, but it wasn’t as though either of them were able to accurately track where the coin was coming from.
Still, this could be enough information to aid Harry. He and his father were looking for any sort of information that could lead to the person or persons behind the attack against Stannis and the crown.
Perking her ears, Margaery listened carefully.
“Isn’t it strange?” Lady Delylah commented innocently. “It’s odd for so much to be paid to our family, even in good times.”
“I know,” Lady Celia agreed, leaning in conspiratorially. “And haven’t you found that the other guilds haven’t been paying their taxes accordingly?”
Lady Delylah nodded her head emphatically. “It’s like they’re hiding their dues. I told my husband to send his knights to investigate the matter, but most of them came here for the tourney.”
“No wonder we’re falling to shame,” Lady Celia sighed. “The smallfolk keep pocketing coin that belong to their lords and ladies, and we’re left trying to keep our lands safe without the coin to ensure it. In the end, the smallfolk will turn around again and blame us for all their ails. It’s intolerable.”
Several other ladies quickly joined in with sounds of sympathy and support, but Margaery held back. She whisked over a servant for a glass of honeyed wine and went back to pretending as though she were suffering some momentary pain.
“My apologies,” she smiled weakly at the ladies around her. “I fear that I need a moment of fresh air to relieve the pain in my head.”
They were all so courteous and gentle in seeing her off. Margaery knew that none of them would ever dare speak ill of her while her grandmother was still around, but once they were elsewhere, they’d begin spreading rumours that Margaery was somehow ill and unfit for the nephew of the king.
Everyone was an enemy here, Margaery had to remind herself. Even those allied to her family were not to be trusted entirely. Only Harry could truly be seen as her wholehearted ally, and his father too.
Stepping out of the tent, two knights fell in flank to Margaery as she walked across the soft grass towards the stands that overlooked the melee grounds. This area had been built separately from the jousting grounds—a sign from King Robert that his tourney would be grander than any other before it. The ground here had been fresh as of this morning, but now it was mostly laid trampled by feet and stained with blood within the large arena.
Climbing to the area reserved for ladies of her station, Margaery saw just how empty the area was. Most ladies were waiting until tomorrow when the noble knights would join the fray. However, the queen, king, and their three children were all in attendance.
While the king seemed utterly enthralled by the battles taking place before him, the queen was more interested in her cups than anything else. Their eldest son, Prince Joffrey, appeared bored, and their two younger children were more content to play fight with one another than to watch any of the actual battles.
As interesting as it could be to watch them more, Margaery continued to scan the crowd, finding more and more figures of interest to her.
Lord Stark stood across the way, dressed in drab grey and wearing an expression that was somehow less cheerful than his outfit. If anything about the plot against the crown was bothering him, it didn’t show. In fact, he seemed utterly bored and completely stoic over the battles taking place before him.
Margaery did her best to not let her gaze linger on him. Her grandmother had taught her better than to allow her focus to narrow on a single subject, and now that she was preparing to marry, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to rely on anyone else’s advice any longer. All she’d have were the teachings delivered to her and the wisdom that came from them.
There was always information to be found at gatherings like this. Some useful, some not so much. Margaery needed to help find something key to what was going on with the attacks against Stannis and the lords and ladies who’d travelled here.
A gaggle of Freys were clumped together beneath the banner of their house, cheering on some young man with an unfamiliar sigil as he stepped up to show his skills against a much smaller opponent. He made a fair shot, laying in with a strong strike to the opponent’s right side with a war hammer, and the match was swiftly ended.
Margaery kept her eyes moving, but despite her earlier reminder to herself, she saw someone who she was rapidly growing to despise.
Arianne Martell stood surrounded by her cousins, Ser Oberyn’s many bastard children. Like the Freys, their banner stood tall and proud above their heads, a golden spear piercing a red sun on a bed of orange. It was a striking banner, and one that reminded all who saw it that not only were the Martells a dangerous foe to have, their blood also ran hot under the red sun.
Perhaps too hot.
Margaery did not pretend to understand exactly what Harry and Arianne’s magical abilities entailed—even they didn’t seem to have the full measure of it—but she knew that Harry loved Margaery with all of her heart, so she could only put the blame of that terrible incident a few days ago upon Arianne herself. Harry had been vague with her, unwilling to entirely put the blame on Arianne due to her inexperience with magic, but Margaery could read between the lines.
If it weren’t for Harry’s interest in Arianne’s magical abilities, Margaery could’ve dealt with this pest long before now. As it stood, going against her would be going against her husband-to-be’s wishes. Of course, there were workarounds to that. She could stymie her closeness with Harry, cause tedious distractions in her family life, or even have her sent back home with a well-placed rumour designed to inflame the king’s fury towards anything related to the Targaryens.
But all of this would anger Harry, and he was a clever man. It wouldn’t be hard for him to piece together what she’d been up to.
No, the best method of dealing with Arianne was working through Harry directly. She had to remind him of the threat that she could pose to their unity and happiness.
“A threat? Or an opportunity?”
Her grandmother came up to her side, leaning heavily on her cane. Margaery quickly helped her to sit down on one of the plush chairs that’d been left for them before she too sat down next to her.
“More the former than the latter,” Margaery replied.
“Those Martells can be a tricky sort,” Olenna told her. “Their passions rule most of them, and they never forget a slight. Their history makes them proud and foolish. Once angered, they can be as wild as a raging bull; it takes a deft hand to guide them towards the right target.”
“I fear that this situation is even trickier than that,” Margaery admitted. And so she told her grandmother everything. Almost everything. She left out the parts about magic and instead reinforced the point of Arianne’s blatant interest in Harry and his refusal to ignore her completely.
Olenna listened perfectly in silence until Margaery finally finished, her cheeks flushed from anger and enthusiasm.
“Men can be such great fools,” Olenna began. “Flash a pair of tits in their direction and they’ll forget about everything else in the world. She’s a beauty, but so are you. I take it that he’s keeping her around in order to attempt to form an alliance with her family?”
“Yes,” Margaery answered. At least, that’s what she imagined the end goal to be. If Harry were to train Arianne in the use of her magic, then they would be tightly bonded.
Olenna clicked her tongue. “You have three ways of going about it as I see things. The first is that you could go to Lord Stannis and express concern—”
“Not that,” Margaery interjected quickly.
“Don’t interrupt. It’s rude,” Olenna said, lightly smacking the back of Margaery’s hand. “The second is that you speak to Harry and impress upon him how terrible her continued presence is making you feel. A little coercion between husband and wife is normal. The third is that you undermine her integrity so that either her father is forced to remove her from the capital, she is shamed into leaving, or is somehow arrested.”
All of which were ideas that she’d already had. Her grandmother had instilled her lessons well into her. Sometimes in a tough situation, Margaery would ask herself what her grandmother would do, and the ideas would simply flow into her mind.
“Were it all so simple as to do any of those things,” Margaery mused.
“Well, until you’re certain of yourself again, let’s talk about other matters,” Olenna said with some disdain in her tone. Evidently, she expected Margaery to have already made a decision on the matter. The fact that she hadn’t seemed irksome to her. Of course, she was lacking the full context of the situation. “Were you paying attention to the babbling birds back in the tent?”
“What Lady Delylah and Lady Celia were going on about?” Margaery asked rhetorically. “Of course I did. Every Maester in Westeros says that we’re nearing the end of the long summer, and so you’d expect the smallfolk and minor knights and lords to begin to horde for the winter. The fact that so much coin is spreading throughout their lands is unusual to say the least. While there’s no direct connection yet, the bandits who’ve attacked the travelling lords and ladies only did so in the Stormlands and Crownlands. Someone is paying them very well to cause disruptions.”
“And how many people in the realm could afford such a cost?” Olenna asked. “I managed to suss out some of the details from them. Altogether, they’ve amassed nearly three-thousand additional gold dragons alone! In taxation no less! How many could afford such a price?”
Few in Westeros. The Lannisters were the first family that came to mind. Then there was her own family, the Tyrells, the Velaryons, the Hightowers, the Manderlys, the Graftons, the Redwynes, the Tullys, the Starks, the Greyjoys, the Martells, the Freys, and several other smaller houses might be able to afford the cost, but to what end? Which one of them truly wished ill upon Stannis and wanted rampant chaos amongst the houses of Westeros?
The funds could’ve come from the eastern continent of Essos as well. It was said that two of the Targaryen children still lived there. There were others, like the Iron Bank of Braavos, the Triarch of Volantis, several magisters in Pentos, or even the slavers in Slaver’s Bay who could afford such a payment. Again though, their motivations were still a mystery.
Margaery paused in thought. Those from Essos would only want chaos if they were trying to instill a new ruler. Their only other gain would be through trade, and attacking noble families at random seemed like a poor way to go about increasing trade. It could be someone trying to install one of the Targaryen children as the new ruler, similar to how the historic Blackfyre Rebellions began, but Margaery doubted it. Surely there would’ve been more information coming into Westeros about them amassing an army or key supporters.
“It has to be someone here in Westeros,” Margaery finally said. “Someone rich and in a position to somehow take advantage of this chaos. It’s likely that they’re either already in the capital or nearby to take advantage of any of this. Anyone who remained home would be too far away to act upon any news they heard.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Olenna nodded. “And if it were to be someone here, then who could it be?”
“Too many families to name,” Margaery answered. “Three-thousand gold dragons is quite a sum to be paid in taxation, but it’s not unheard of. Between tolls and customs and general payments, we can assume that the payment to the brigands had to be at least thirty-thousand gold dragons.”
“And how many families have such funds available to them?”
Again, the answer was too many. From all of the trade that happened along the coast to the silver and gold mines in the Westerlands, there were several families who could afford such a cost. Margaery was forced into recalling the recent history of several of the houses she thought of.
The Velaryons, while wealthy, had been falling on hard times due to increased piracy along the Stepstones. This additional expense would be quite taxing on them. The northern houses would all be too busy preparing for the winter unless they could reasonably expect some short-term financial gains from these actions, but Margaery couldn’t imagine what gains they could see. The other houses… she struggled to remove them completely from her mental list.
Olenna saw the slight grimace come across Margaery’s face. “We’ll keep searching. Try to speak to any of the young ladies of the important houses here and uncover their family’s finances. One might accidentally give away that they’ve recently sent out quite a sum.”
“I will,” Margaery promised her grandmother. She just hoped that she’d be in time to help Harry before the tourney was over.
“Good, then let’s take a moment and relax away from those dithering birds,” Olenna sighed as she leaned back in her chair.
The melee competition proved to be terribly boring. Most of the fighters were fine… just fine. There were many in her family’s household guard who could fight just as well, if not better, than them. The few standout performances were padded with mediocrity on either side of them. The crowd began to wane as the sun reached high in the sky. Many were bound to return to the Red Keep or find other entertainment within the city itself.
Margaery found the king and queen’s places again, but they were both empty. The two princes were both there under the watchful gaze of two members of the Kingsguard, but otherwise there was little to be found of interest there.
Further on down the line were the seats reserved for the small council. Lord Stark still sat and watched every fighter as though it were a dire test of skills. Lord Varys, the Spider, was nowhere to be seen, nor was Grand Maester Pycelle. Lord Renly was likely off somewhere entertaining a tent full of lords and ladies, but Lord Stannis was seated in a place away from the others, watching with a severity that made the servants shrink whenever they walked near him. Lord Baelish was seated halfway in between Lord Stannis and Lord Stark, delivering coins to a servant after what must’ve been a poorly-placed bet.
Just as she went to look off at someone else, a disruption emerged. Some poor messenger, sweaty and panting, burst into the stands of the small council members. The young boy hurried over to Lord Baelish immediately and whispered something into his ear. Lord Baelish’s face screwed up in confusion, and he grabbed the poor messenger by the collar and yanked him in close, presumably asking him to repeat the message.
Once the boy did, Lord Baelish released him and immediately stood up from his seat with a thunderous expression on his face. He went over first to Lord Stark and said something to him before the two of them went over to talk to Lord Stannis.
Then, curiously, the three of them immediately left the stands together.
“I think I just noticed something,” Margaery said to her grandmother, standing up just as quickly. She’d have to hurry if she wanted to intercept them. “Something’s wrong.”
“Take Ser Erryk or Ser Arryk with you,” Olenna told her, already looking around for her two personal guards.
“There’s no time,” Margaery replied quickly, lifting her skirts a bit to make it easier to move. “Lord Stannis will be there. I’ll be safe.”
And so she took off quickly down the staircase back to the tourney grounds in search of the three men.