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"Good. If the grey plague is so terrible, make certain that whore is dealt with cleanly. I do not want the same thing happening in King's Landing."
Tywin nodded as he answered, then picked up his quill again and returned to his writing.
"You may rest assured, Lord Hand. I handled it with great care. I have no wish to turn into such a wretched thing myself."
Hearing Tywin's warning, Pycelle answered at once with proper deference. Then his eyes moved, and he spoke again in a softer voice.
"By the way, Ser Jaime came to me two days ago and took a bottle of medicine meant to suppress a man's desire in that regard."
"Mm. I know. If there is nothing else, you may go."
"Yes. I take my leave."
Seeing that Tywin showed no reaction to the news, Pycelle bowed respectfully and turned toward the doors of the audience chamber.
"Pycelle," Tywin said behind him, just as the old man reached the threshold. "I know you are a man who only chooses the winning side. Robb Stark now has the advantage. Why are you still loyal to me?"
"Lord Tywin, I do not choose the winning side. I choose the right man.
"You were the one who made House Lannister the strongest house in Westeros. You were also the one who saved King's Landing during the Mad King's reign.
"You may be at a disadvantage for now, but I believe you will be the final victor."
Pycelle did not turn back. With his back still to Tywin, he answered in a firm tone.
"I understand. From now on, no matter who asks you for a potion that harms the body, it must pass through me first."
"Yes, Lord Hand."
After answering Tywin, Pycelle opened the doors and left the audience chamber.
The instant he stepped outside, his straightened back bent again, and he returned to his usual ancient, tottering appearance.
After Pycelle left, Tywin placed the letter he had finished writing into an envelope. He sealed it with wax, then pressed his private seal heavily into it.
Once that was done, Tywin left the Red Keep with his household guards and rode straight for the River Gate.
The docks on the Blackwater churned with waves. Bessaro, impossibly fat, was being helped by two servants toward a small oared boat moored along the shore.
Out in the deeper water, a large oared merchant ship waited quietly. Its hull had been painted entirely purple, and purple sails hung above it.
Its appearance alone made its destination clear. The purple merchant ships had become one of Braavos's marks.
Footsteps sounded behind them.
"Bessaro, wait a moment."
Tywin, arriving at precisely the right time, called out toward Bessaro, who was about to board.
"Ah, Lord Tywin. Are you stopping me now because you wish to discuss another piece of business?"
Bessaro had come to King's Landing under the excuse of trade. Hearing Tywin, he turned and answered him.
"In a way.
"You mentioned before that an old friend of mine happens to be in Braavos at present. I would trouble you to deliver this letter to him."
Tywin did not waste words. He stated his purpose directly.
"So that is all. No problem. I will see the letter delivered into your old friend's hands."
Bessaro paused for a moment. When his mind caught up, a strange look crossed his face. He accepted the letter and nodded.
"Thank you. Bessaro, I wish you a smooth return to Braavos."
"Thank you, Lord Tywin."
With the help of his two servants, Bessaro climbed into the small oared boat. Sitting inside, he seemed to remember something and spoke to Tywin again.
"By the way, about the goods you promised to deliver to us, please prepare them ahead of time. It would be unfortunate if unnecessary disorder arose on your side when the time comes."
"Once your loan arrives, I will naturally begin the preparations. When the time comes, the goods will be delivered to you under a reasonable pretext."
After answering Bessaro, Tywin turned and left.
Bessaro watched Tywin's departing back. A faint smile tugged at his fat face as he ordered, "Set out. We return to Braavos."
Outside Highgarden's northern wall, at the refugee encampment.
Boots scraped over earth.
Horses neighed.
After the report came that greyscale had appeared in the thirteenth men's settlement area, the response came quickly.
Within a short time, tens of thousands of northern infantry in fine equipment and Tyrell cavalry marching in orderly ranks arrived from Highgarden's west and east.
With a massive show of force, they surrounded the entire refugee encampment. Once the ring was formed, large numbers of soldiers stepped out from their neat formations.
Some began drawing deep lines across the blackened earth. Others carried makeshift wooden speaking tubes and shouted instructions to the refugees.
The message was simple: the noble lords of Highgarden had discovered that House Lannister had planted many spies among the refugees, and a large-scale screening would now begin.
During this screening, any ordinary person with a clean background was to stay where they were and obey the rules. No one was allowed to step beyond the lines drawn on the ground.
Those who obeyed would not be harmed. They would even receive a full portion of food as a reward.
Anyone who ignored the arrangements, moved about at will, or deliberately damaged order would be treated as a Lannister spy and killed without mercy.
Finally, the soldiers encouraged any Lannister spies to confess on their own. The noble lords of Highgarden could swear before the Seven that no harm would come to them.
At first, seeing themselves surrounded by tens of thousands of elite soldiers, the refugees had begun to stir. Order had nearly collapsed. Yet after hearing the soldiers' shouts, they gradually calmed down.
To most refugees, this search for noblemen's spies had nothing to do with true refugees like them.
If they listened to the noble lords and stayed quietly in place, they would receive food. That was a blessing from the heavens.
After all, why had they come all the way from King's Landing to Highgarden? Was it not to find food and survive?
"Your Grace, it seems our army has already brought the refugees under control.
"But is such a large display truly necessary?
"We all know greyscale usually spreads among children. Strong adults are mostly safe as long as they do not touch it themselves."
On Highgarden's northern wall, Willas watched the figures moving below and turned to Robb, whose expression was grave.
"No. With so many refugees gathered here, any contagious disease must be treated with the greatest caution. And I have been wondering why Tywin drove these refugees to Highgarden.
"Perhaps this disease is the reason."
Robb had experienced a plague in his previous life that spread across the whole world. Privately, he regarded any disease capable of mass transmission with the utmost seriousness.
If a large plague erupted in Highgarden, Robb could not simply abandon the house that had just sworn fealty to him and march on King's Landing.
In his mind, he had already begun to suspect that this might be the effect Tywin wanted.
"Your Grace is wise. If you had not told me not to distribute food to the refugees for the time being, I might already have come into contact with many of them."
When Robb finished, Margaery spoke from beside him, lingering fear still plain on her face.
"Heh. I have always been used to judging enemies by assuming the worst of them. Crey, from now on, divide the refugee settlement into three zones.
"The thirteenth men's settlement area is the high-risk zone. No one is to enter or leave.
"Then put everyone who has had contact with the infected man, as well as anyone showing signs of illness, into the neighboring areas. Those will be the middle-risk zone.
"The size of that zone will depend on the number of people involved.
"Finally, all remaining settlement areas and refugee gathering places are low-risk zones. They must be monitored at all times."
"As you command, Your Grace."
After carefully memorizing Robb's instructions, Crey nodded with a serious expression.
"One more thing. From now on, all soldiers guarding the middle- and high-risk zones must wrap themselves fully and wear face cloths at all times.
"As a rule, avoid contact with the refugees as much as possible.
"If contact is truly necessary, let the surrendered prisoners do it."
"Yes."
After giving Crey his orders, Robb turned his gaze to Lord Mace.
In truth, he did not want to entrust something as serious as a plague to the unreliable Lord Mace.
But he and Crey were the men Robb had personally appointed to manage refugee affairs. If Robb replaced Mace the moment the plague appeared, it would easily provoke discussion among the other nobles.
After thinking carefully, Robb said, "Lord Mace, I originally wanted you to oversee the cleaning of the high-risk zone.
"But considering your noble status, I do not think such a dangerous task should fall to you personally.
"Instead, please gather supplies for us in Highgarden: lime, strong spirits, clean clothing of every sort, and so on.
"I will write a list shortly. Gather according to it. The more, the better."
"Good, good. Your Grace, I will gather enough supplies."
After hearing Robb's words, Lord Mace, who had been nervous all along, secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
In fact, he had long since prepared several excuses in his mind in case Robb ordered him to do something dangerous.
Now it seemed those excuses would not be needed.
"Mm. The outside world has always praised Lord Mace's outstanding ability. With your assistance, I trust this plague can be properly contained.
"Ah, only now we urgently need grain to calm the refugees. If unrest breaks out, Highgarden will be in danger. Yet the grain promised by the lords has not arrived..."
Robb first nodded and fed Lord Mace a small dose of flattery. Then he began sighing over the current difficulty.
"Your Grace, you need not worry over this. The problem is easy to solve. Before the grain donated by the other nobles arrives, these refugees can be fed by House Tyrell.
"It is only coarse grain."
Having just been flattered by Robb, Lord Mace immediately thumped his chest and answered.
"Ha, that is excellent. Your merciful name will spread among these hundreds of thousands of refugees."
"Ha ha!"
Watching his father laugh happily, Willas could not help rubbing his forehead with one hand. Such a simple snare, and perhaps only his father would step into it smiling.
Margaery, beside them, pressed her lips together and smiled without speaking. Her father had been taken in by Robb's small scheme, but she knew that the more House Tyrell helped Robb, the easier her own future would be.
Under Robb's firm orders, the containment effort in Highgarden's refugee camp began to move in an orderly fashion.
To stabilize the hearts of the hundreds of thousands of refugees, large amounts of coarse grain provided by House Tyrell were distributed by prisoner soldiers that very afternoon.
Seeing that food was truly given out as long as they did not run about, the refugees no longer resented the army surrounding them. Some even wished the spies would be found more slowly, so the encirclement might last a few more days.
As for the small gang among the refugees, Crey's intelligence men followed their trail and found them.
The prisoner soldiers then escorted them through the refugee settlement, searching for people Rick had contacted over the past two days or those who had stood in line with him at the time.
Of course, they could not clearly remember all the faces of the refugees who had queued there. Crey, however, used food very cleverly.
He had the prisoner soldiers spread word that the gang were Lannister spies. Anyone who had contact with them, or had spoken to them, could receive extra food by coming forward to denounce them.
Once the news spread, large numbers of refugees voluntarily came to denounce the gang. Crey did not care how much of it was true.
He kept his word and had the prisoner soldiers distribute food to all of them. Then he ordered the soldiers to gather them together and send them into the middle-risk zone.
This caused a wave of opposition among those refugees' relatives, but before the elite army surrounding them, that small disturbance was easily suppressed.
That night, the tens of thousands of soldiers guarding the low-risk zones were divided into several groups and took shifts. The soldiers guarding the middle- and high-risk zones remained on duty through the night until they could be relieved the next morning.
The next morning, with Lady Olenna's full support, Lord Mace proudly directed his family soldiers in sending the first gathered supplies into the settlement.
More than a thousand prisoner soldiers who had received temporary instruction wrapped themselves in clean clothing. Some entered the middle- and high-risk zones to inspect the refugees.
Others carried lime, strong spirits, and other materials and began disinfecting the area around those zones.
Once the checks began, they immediately discovered a large number of infected people whose bodies had started growing grey-black scales.
Because of the special nature of the grey plague, there was almost no abnormal reaction at the beginning. The infected did not realize anything was wrong. Not until the disease began spreading widely, as it had with Rick, would itching, stiffness, and strange sensations appear.
In the end, more than two hundred and twenty infected people were found in the middle- and high-risk zones. Far more were found in the middle-risk zone than the high-risk one.
The uninfected refugees from the high-risk zone were moved into the middle-risk zone, and all confirmed infected were moved into the high-risk zone. Only then were most of the sources of infection brought under control.
Over the following days, infected people continued appearing in the middle-risk zone. Once confirmed, they were sent straight into the high-risk zone.
At the same time, individual infected people were also found during the general checks in the low-risk zones. The prisoner soldiers arrested them along with the surrounding refugees and sent them into the middle- or high-risk zones respectively.
On the fifth day of the outbreak, Robb, wrapped tightly from head to foot, came to the high-risk zone with Bloodwind, who had been reduced to the size of an ordinary gray wolf and wrapped just as tightly.
Inside the high-risk zone, surrounded by spears and short swords, Rick, the first infected man, sat like a stone statue.
His body had been almost entirely covered by horrifying grey-black scales, as if he wore a dark suit of scale armor. The sight alone was enough to raise gooseflesh.
"Tywin Lannister did this to me. Kill me quickly!"
Perhaps because the soldiers around him all saluted Robb at once, Rick, who had not spoken for a long time and whose original skin remained only on the upper half of his head, suddenly called weakly toward Robb outside the wooden fence.
Robb had already suspected as much, so Rick's words merely confirmed it.
He nodded to the soldiers nearby. They opened the gate to the high-risk zone.
Bloodwind's paws, also wrapped in thick cloth, made soft sounds as he stepped over the ground. After entering the high-risk zone, he opened his mouth toward Rick and breathed out a spiral of icy mist.
Crack.
Rick, who sought release, was instantly frozen into an ice statue and died without pain. At the same time, a thread of red mist only half as thick as usual rose from the statue and entered Robb's body.
Robb immediately checked Bloodwind's blood pact data. As expected, the blood pact points had increased by only one.
'Hm? Do people with severe illness provide only half the usual red mist?'
'It seems this harvest will yield fewer blood pact points than expected.'
'But it does not matter. There are so many of them.'
Yes. Robb had personally come to the high-risk zone today to harvest blood pact points.
Ever since the battle for Highgarden had raised Bloodwind's Magic attribute to ninety-nine points, a familiar scene had appeared again.
After dozens more blood pact points were invested, it was like dropping water into the sea. There was not the slightest reaction.
With experience behind him, Robb knew this meant Bloodwind had reached a crucial bottleneck and would require a large investment of blood pact points.
At Lannisport, aside from the enemies killed in battle, he had also executed several hundred soldiers who violated military discipline before meeting the requirement.
Now that Bloodwind had grown to this level, the number of blood pact points required would likely be far greater than before.
It had arrived at the right time, in a way. This great number of infected people caught in Tywin's scheme could provide him with many blood pact points.
Robb had once set a line for himself: he would not slaughter recklessly merely to increase blood pact points.
But these refugees infected with the grey plague were certain to die in agony within a short time. Rather than that, he might as well grant them release early. It was a mercy for them, and useful to him.
Yes. Robb knew this was the grey plague.
A few days earlier, after hearing the soldiers monitoring Rick report how quickly his greyscale had erupted, Robb had been shocked.
He did not understand greyscale deeply, but through Jorah Mormont from his previous life, he knew it was a slow, fatal contagious disease.
So Robb had used ravens to consult Malora in Oldtown and obtained the correct answer matching Highgarden's outbreak.
Most infected people in the high-risk zone were already weak. Even if some still had strength, they were helpless before Bloodwind.
It took a long time, but the thousand infected people contributed more than a thousand blood pact points toward Bloodwind's bottleneck.
Yet after so many blood pact points were invested, the Magic attribute still remained firmly at ninety-nine.
Robb was not anxious. Although Highgarden's grey plague had barely been brought under control through his forceful response, the refugee population was enormous. New infected people were still appearing every day.
He knew Bloodwind was not far from breaking through the hundred-point threshold in Magic.
After the soldiers guarding the high-risk zone carried the thousand-plus ice statues away, Robb had Bloodwind release the ice crystals from the bodies.
Then a great fire rose, and the bodies of those poor people were swallowed by flame.
Robb bowed in thanks toward the corpses burning in the fire, then turned and left.
He was not especially worried about Highgarden's plague. What worried him more was the sudden, large-scale uprising in the Riverlands reported by his great-uncle Brynden.
A plain several miles south of the crossroads in the Riverlands.
"Kill! Kill all these watchdogs raised by the nobles, and the Riverlands will be ours!"
"Sacrifice them! Sacrifice them!"
"For the Lord of Light!"
The vanguard of the Brotherhood uprising army, eighty thousand strong, roared as they charged toward the allied northern and riverlander army in the distance, whose numbers were no more than eight thousand.
They did not know why the allied army had not held inside a town but had instead come out for open battle.
Yet the commander of this vanguard believed that in the face of such an absolute difference in numbers, even a small trick could not affect the outcome.
Looking at the many enemies in the distance, faces crazed and limbs clawing forward, Lord Tytos ordered his herald to blow the horn for a change of formation.
Dense footsteps sounded.
The allied army, specially trained in advance, shifted from a square formation suited for both attack and defense into a purely defensive circular formation.
Apart from their numbers, the vanguard of the uprising army had inferior weapons and equipment. The moment they approached the allied army's defensive circle head-on, countless spears thrust into their flesh like a hedgehog's spines.
Screams rose, and fresh blood painted the battlefield in lurid strokes.
"Send the order. Use our advantage in numbers to surround them first, then attack any gaps in their formation."
The vanguard commander was no fool. Seeing that his men could not break through the allied formation directly, he immediately gave his herald the order.
The command passed quickly. The dark mass of the uprising army closed around the allied formation like a tightening noose.
The vanguard commander was certain they would win this battle.
Even if the vanguard could not tear open the defensive circle, behind them, the main force of more than a hundred thousand uprising soldiers was still steadily approaching.
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