Chapter 78: The Plan
The three bastards lived in different parts of the city.
Varys took Eddard to each of them in turn — a boy working in a tanner's yard near the Gate of the Gods, a girl being raised by her mother above a chandler's shop in the Street of Flour, a young man apprenticed to a mason near the River Gate. Different ages, different mothers, different circumstances. The same black hair, thick and dark, unmistakably Baratheon in the way that the Baratheon line had always bred — the way the book said it bred, without exception, going back generations.
Their mothers confirmed Robert's visits. Two of them had clearly been expecting someone to come asking eventually. One of them wept. All three had the resigned dignity of women who had made their peace with a difficult situation a long time ago and had no interest in having it disturbed further.
Eddard thanked each of them and said nothing about what came next, because he didn't know yet what came next.
He rode back through the city beside Varys in silence.
"Do you need to wait for Lord Stannis's reply?" Varys asked, when they had gone a few blocks.
"No," Eddard said. He had been turning the evidence over in his mind — the book, the bastards, the black hair, the impossible golden heads of three children who called Robert father — and he had arrived somewhere that had the cold, unwelcome quality of certainty. "I've seen enough."
"Lord Eddard—"
"I should not have doubted you," Eddard said. The words came out with the particular difficulty of a man who means them and finds them hard to say. "You brought me evidence and I treated you with suspicion. I was wrong."
Varys bowed his head. "We are both working toward the same end, my lord. That is what matters."
They rode past the entrance to the Street of Steel, past a water carrier arguing with a merchant over a dropped barrel, past the ordinary afternoon noise of a city that didn't yet know its king was dead.
"Henry," Eddard said.
"Yes," Varys said. "That is the difficulty."
Eddard's jaw tightened. He had been circling it since the second bastard — since the moment he'd seen the black hair and felt the last piece fall into place and thought immediately, instinctively, of the six boys in Joffrey's guard. Six boys that Henry had found, Henry had selected, Henry had placed.
And the book. The burned book.
"He may not know," Eddard said. The words felt thin even as he said them.
"He may not," Varys agreed, with the careful neutrality of someone who has a strong opinion they have decided not to share. "Or he may have known from the beginning and made a choice about what to do with that knowledge. Or he may have suspected and chosen not to investigate closely enough to be certain." A pause. "Any of those possibilities leads to the same practical problem, my lord. Henry Reyne commands considerable loyalty in this city. The Gold Cloaks were expanded under his direction. The officers he appointed are still in their posts. Jestyn Polver runs the Watch, and Polver is Henry's man."
"The Watch swears to the King," Eddard said.
"The Watch swore to King Robert," Varys said, gently. "Who is dead. They will be asked to arrest their former commander and the Crown Prince they have been guarding for the past year." He let that settle. "Whether Joffrey has a legal claim or not, the men with swords don't determine that by reading lineage records. They determine it by deciding who they're willing to bleed for."
Eddard said nothing.
"How many men do you have?" Varys asked.
"A hundred and ten. The fifty riders I brought from Winterfell, and the men I've added since arriving." He thought about it. "Loyal men. I'd trust every one of them."
"I have fifty," Varys said. "Assembled quietly over the past months at King Robert's instruction — the same men prepared for the Targaryen mission, repurposed. They answer to me." He paused. "A hundred and sixty men, total."
"That's nowhere near enough to take the Red Keep by force," Eddard said.
"We don't take the Red Keep by force," Varys said. "That would be a catastrophe regardless of whether we won. We need to intercept them before they reach it." He looked at Eddard sideways. "Joffrey went to the wedding at Iron Fist Keep with twenty men from the Prince's Guard. The rest of the wedding guests will be dispersing today and tomorrow — the road back to King's Landing runs across the Red Lion Bridge, and they enter the city through the King's Gate." He paused. "If we control the King's Gate when Joffrey arrives, we control the moment. His guard of twenty, plus whatever traveling knights happen to be riding with them — that's manageable. Once he is in custody and the succession question is before the council, the law does the rest."
"The Gold Cloaks at the gate," Eddard said.
"Don't yet know the King is dead," Varys said. "In your capacity as Hand — which you still hold, the badge is still on your chest — you can order Jestyn Polver to temporarily hand over the gate's defense for an inspection. A customs matter, merchant caravan taxes, whatever pretext is least suspicious. He'll comply because he has no reason not to. Robert's death hasn't leaked." He spread his hands. "It may be the only window we have, my lord. Once the news spreads, every calculation in the city changes."
Eddard rode in silence for a block.
"Send the ravens to Iron Fist Keep," he said. "And to Dragonstone. Stannis needs to know his brother is dead."
"Already arranged," Varys said.
Eddard looked at him. "You sent them before I asked."
"I sent them the moment Robert stopped breathing," Varys said simply. "I serve the realm, my lord. The realm needs Stannis informed. I did not think you would object."
The King's Gate was one of the seven gates in the city wall, sitting on the road that ran south toward the Rush. It was a working gate — merchant traffic, travelers, the daily business of a city that needed to eat and sell and move. The guards on it knew their commander's face and his authority, and when Eddard arrived with his warrant and a story about customs irregularities in the southern merchant lanes, Jestyn Polver handed over the gate's defense for two days with the slightly aggrieved compliance of a man who objects to being suspected of corruption but understands that the Hand's authority is the Hand's authority.
"I'll want a full accounting when this is done," Jestyn said, with the tone of a man noting his displeasure for the record.
"You'll have it," Eddard said.
Jestyn's Gold Cloaks were replaced at the gate with Eddard's Winterfell riders, posted in rotation, with orders that no one was to know about the change in command.
Varys arrived an hour later with his fifty men.
Eddard looked at them in the gatehouse yard.
They were not what he'd expected. They were armed — adequately, not impressively — and equipped with mismatched gear that had the look of men assembled from different sources and outfitted quickly. Some of them were clearly Essosi. Several had the wary, economical posture of men who had spent time in situations where being conspicuous had been bad for their health.
"These are the men you prepared for the Daenerys mission," Eddard said.
"The same." Varys folded his hands. "What they lack in presentation they make up for in willingness. A man who has agreed to cross the Narrow Sea and kill a Dothraki Khaleesi is not a man who frightens easily."
"Can they hold a gate?"
"They can hold a gate," Varys said. "Against twenty men and a handful of traveling knights? Yes."
Eddard nodded. It would have to be enough.
He looked at the road south and thought of Joffrey riding back from Iron Fist Keep not knowing what was waiting for him. Thought of Henry riding beside him, also not knowing — or perhaps knowing everything, which was worse.
He thought of Robert's hand going still in his.
Serve my son well, Ned.
He pressed his lips together and turned back to the gatehouse.
On the other side of the city, in the townhouse Renly had kept in King's Landing after surrendering his council seat, a different kind of meeting was underway.
The room held perhaps a dozen men — knights mostly, young ones, the kind that attached themselves to lords whose company they preferred to their own fathers'. They had the bright, slightly feverish energy of people who have talked themselves into something and are waiting for someone to say the word.
Renly stood at the window with his back to the room, looking out at the late afternoon light on the rooftops.
"My brother is dead," he said. "And the Hand intends to crown Joffrey."
"A regency," said one of the young knights immediately — a lean man with a northern Crownlands accent and more confidence than experience in his voice. "A boy king managed by a council. How is that a king? You're Robert's own blood, my lord. You look like him, sound like him — people would follow you."
"Joffrey looks like a Lannister," said another, bearded, with the tone of a man who has been saving this observation. "Sharp features, golden hair. Where's the Baratheon in him? You look at Renly and you see Robert. You look at Joffrey and you see Cersei's family."
"The realm loved Robert," said a third. "The realm will love you. You're everything he was without the drinking and the — the rest of it."
Loras Tyrell stood at the back of the room, arms crossed, his expression cooler than the rest of the chamber. He had ridden back from the Iron Islands after his defeat at the tournament with something changed in his bearing — not the brightness gone exactly, but something more focused and less decorative in its place.
"Eighty men," Renly said, still looking at the window. "That's what I have. Eighty men."
"Then we use eighty men." Loras's voice cut across the room. "We don't need an army. We need one road and one hour."
The room went quiet.
"Joffrey and his siblings haven't returned from the wedding yet," Loras said. He unfolded his arms and moved away from the wall. "They're on the road between Iron Fist Keep and King's Landing. The escort that rode with them was twenty men — household guard, not knights. Before they reach the city, while they're still on the road — that's the moment." He looked at Renly. "If Joffrey and his siblings don't reach King's Landing, the succession question falls to the council. And no one on any council in the Seven Kingdoms will choose Stannis over you if the choice is presented cleanly."
An older knight — grey-bearded, with the look of a man who had been around long enough to know what things cost — stepped forward. "You're talking about killing the King's children. Robert's children. That's kinslaying, Loras. The gods don't forgive that. The realm doesn't forgive that."
"Then the realm forgives me." Loras drew his sword — not as a threat, just the action of a man who thinks better with steel in his hand — and looked around the room with the cool clarity of someone who has made a decision he intends to stand behind. "Lord Renly gives the order to capture them alive. I carry it out. Whatever happens after — whatever the gods say about it, whatever the histories write — that falls on my account, not his." He held Renly's eyes. "You walk into King's Landing with clean hands. I carry the rest."
"Loras—" Renly began.
"Someone has to," Loras said, simply. "The question is whether you want the throne badly enough to let me."
The room was very quiet.
Outside, King's Landing moved through its late afternoon rhythms — the Watch changing shifts, the harbor quieting, the cookfires starting in the alleyways of Flea Bottom — indifferent to the conversation happening in the townhouse on the Street of Sisters, unaware of the road south where three children were riding back from a wedding, and of the men in this room deciding what to do about it.
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