Rewriting Targaryen History

Chapter 116: Chapter 116: What Men Remember

Highgarden returned to King’s Landing before I did.

Not in flesh, of course. Lord Tyrell had remained in his beautiful castle, Lord Redwyne had gone back to counting ships and insults, and Ser Gwayne Hightower was still somewhere on the road with his cousins and retainers. Yet the story had already arrived by the time Jace and I landed at sunset.

That was the nature of courts. A raven could cross distance faster than a dragon when the message was useful enough.

The first version I heard was simple: Prince Othorion had won the melee at Highgarden. The second was more decorated: Prince Othorion had defeated half the Reach with blunted steel and taken fifteen thousand gold dragons from Lord Tyrell’s hand.

The third had already begun lying with confidence, claiming Dravvaxx had circled the tourney field while men fought beneath him, which would have been memorable if it had happened.

By the next morning, the story had split into smaller ones.

Jace had arrived on Vermax looking every inch a Targaryen prince. Lord Tyrell had welcomed him warmly. Ser Donnel Crane had fought well in the final. Lord Tarly had spoken approvingly of discipline. Lord Redwyne had smiled as if the gesture pained him. Ser Jon Roxton had left the field with his pride dragging behind him.

And Ser Gwayne Hightower had fallen to me in the semi-final. That last part travelled farther than I liked.

It was not the most important bout. It was not the hardest. Ser Donnel had pressed me more carefully in the final, and Jon Roxton’s defeat had carried more visible bitterness. Yet Gwayne’s loss had the advantage of meaning what men wanted it to mean.

A Hightower knight defeated by Rhaenyra’s husband beneath the eyes of the Reach. A courteous bout turned into a quiet omen by men who preferred omens to honesty. I had wanted the Reach to speak of my skill, Jace’s bearing, and our dragons. They did. Unfortunately, men rarely repeated only the useful part of a story.

Rhaenyra heard it all before breakfast.

She stood near the window of our chamber, reading the latest note from one of her ladies, while Aemma sat on the carpet with Aeggel curled beside her like a little pink flame. The hatchling watched the room with bright suspicion, as if every servant carried personal insult in their sleeves.

"Ser Gwayne’s defeat is being repeated too eagerly," Rhaenyra said.

"I know."

"It is not only our supporters repeating it."

"No. That is what makes it troublesome."

She lowered the note and looked at me. "Some men are saying Highgarden showed the shape of things to come. Rhaenyra’s prince standing over a Hightower, the Reach made to cheer, Oldtown forced to swallow courtesy."

"That is a foolish way to describe a clean tourney bout."

"It is also an effective way."

I could not deny that.

Gwayne had fought honourably and lost honourably. That should have been enough. But politics was fond of taking clean things and dragging them through mud until they resembled prophecy. I had struck back against Larys’s first whispers with a public display too large to ignore. Now the display had produced its own shadow.

"Larys will encourage that version," I said.

Rhaenyra’s mouth tightened. "Even though it makes the Hightowers look weaker?"

"Especially because it does. A bruised Hightower pride can be useful to him. It keeps them angry. It makes them believe every courtesy we gain is an attack they must answer."

Rhaenyra folded the note carefully. "So if we are praised, he turns the praise into provocation."

"That is the game."

"No," she said, her voice cooler. "That is his game. We are not required to admire it simply because he plays it well."

Aemma clapped her hands at something Aeggel did. A little thread of smoke curled from the hatchling’s nose. For a moment, the sound softened the room. Then Rhaenyra looked back to me, and the queen returned to her face.

"What will you do?"

"Not what he wants."

"And what does he want?"

"He wants me to correct the story too loudly. If I defend Gwayne in every hall, men will wonder why I care so much. If I denounce the rumour, I give it shape. If I ignore it entirely, it grows without resistance."

Rhaenyra studied me. "Then you need a fourth answer."

"Yes."

The fourth answer came later that day, though not by my choosing.

The king held court in the afternoon, mostly to receive petitions dull enough that even ambitious men struggled to use them. A dispute over river tolls. A complaint from a merchant guild. A request involving damaged granaries outside Rosby. Viserys listened with the weary patience of a man who still believed rulership could be made gentle if everyone simply behaved better.

Otto stood near his usual place, composed and watchful.

Lord Larys Strong remained quieter still.

He had settled into his role as Master of Whisperers with unsettling ease. Some men changed after gaining office. Larys seemed only to become more clearly what he already was. A mild smile, a lowered gaze, a cane placed just so, and the habit of speaking as if each sentence had wandered into the room by accident.

When court ended, he approached me in the gallery outside the hall. Not directly enough to seem planned. Too directly to be anything else.

"My prince," Larys said, bowing with careful discomfort. "Welcome back to King’s Landing. Highgarden appears to have found you memorable."

"That is generous of Highgarden."

"Generous, perhaps. Though memory is not always governed by generosity. Sometimes men remember what troubles them more easily than what pleases them."

I looked at him for a moment. His face remained mild. "I have noticed that men also remember what they are encouraged to repeat," I said.

"A fair observation. A tale told once is a tale. A tale told often becomes something more durable."

"And a tale selected carefully becomes a tool."

Larys’s smile did not change, but his eyes sharpened by the smallest degree. "Most things may become tools in the right hands, my prince. Even victories. Even courtesies. Even a knight losing cleanly beneath the eyes of his peers."

There it was. Softly placed. No accusation. No threat. Just the knife shown briefly enough to prove he had one. "Ser Gwayne fought well," I said. "Anyone using his defeat as an insult to his house either did not watch the bout or does not understand honour."

"That is a noble defence of a man whose kin are not always counted among your warmest friends."

"I do not require a man to be my friend before I can speak truth of him."

"How refreshing," Larys said. "Court often teaches the opposite lesson."

"Court teaches many lessons. Few are worth keeping."

He lowered his gaze as if amused by the floor. "Then perhaps your time away from court has preserved you from its worst habits."

"Or left me less patient with them."

"That too can be useful, though patience has a way of winning contests that strength believes already settled."

I almost smiled. "Strength and patience are not enemies, Lord Larys. Men who rely on one because they lack the other tend to make that mistake."

For the first time, the silence between us held something sharper than courtesy.

Then Larys inclined his head. "I will remember that, my prince."

"I am sure you remember many things."

"One tries to serve."

"One does."

He bowed again and moved on, cane tapping lightly against the stone. No confrontation. No raised voices. Nothing that any witness could honestly call hostile. That was the trouble with him. Larys did not need open hostility. He left suggestions behind him like burrs caught in cloth, small enough to ignore until they had travelled farther than expected.

I watched him go.

He had struck first after Ser Arlan’s appointment, whispering that I had placed my own influence around Rhaenyra’s sons. Highgarden had been my answer. Not a denial, but a spectacle. Dragons over the Reach. Jace seen and welcomed. Lords made to speak with us in public. My victories repeated in halls where Larys’s first poison had not yet settled.

It had worked. Not completely. Nothing did. But enough that Larys had changed the fight. He was no longer trying to stop the story of Highgarden. He was shaping which pieces men should sharpen.

By supper, I knew what my fourth answer would be. I did not make a speech. I did not defend myself. Instead, I praised Gwayne.

Not loudly. Not constantly. Not in a way that begged men to notice. When asked about the tournament, I spoke first of Lord Tyrell’s hospitality, of Donnel Crane’s discipline, and of Gwayne Hightower’s conduct. I said he had fought cleanly, accepted defeat with honour, and later won the joust against Ser Ormund with skill worthy of Oldtown.

That mattered because it denied the rumour its easiest food.

A man trying to use Gwayne’s loss as proof of Hightower humiliation had less room to do so if I treated him publicly as a worthy knight. If I mocked him, the story hardened. If I feared mentioning him, the story thickened. If I praised him fairly, men had to choose between honouring the truth or revealing that they preferred the insult.

Jace noticed some of it that evening. He found me after supper in one of the quieter corridors, where the torches burned low, and the noise of the hall softened behind stone.

"You spoke well of Ser Gwayne again," he said.

"I did."

"Because he deserves it?"

"Yes. And because deserving it is useful."

Jace considered that with the serious frown he wore when trying to place a new lesson beside an old one. "So you are not only being kind."

"No. Kindness is not less real because it also serves a purpose. Your mother knows that better than anyone at court."

He walked beside me for several steps before speaking again. "Some men wanted his defeat to mean more than it did."

"They wanted it to mean what helped them. That is not always the same as more."

"Lord Larys?"

I glanced down at him. "You noticed him?"

"Not everything. But he watches people as if he is waiting for them to say something they did not mean to give him."

That was good. Unsettlingly good. "He does," I said. "You should be careful around men like that."

"Should I avoid speaking to him?"

"No. Avoiding him too obviously gives him its own answer. Speak courteously, say less than you know, and never fill a silence simply because he leaves one for you."

Jace nodded slowly. "That sounds difficult."

"It is. That is why he does it."

We reached a window overlooking the yard. Night had settled fully over King’s Landing. Somewhere below, guards moved between posts. Somewhere beyond the hill, Dravvaxx slept in the Dragonpit, though sleep felt like the wrong word for a creature that seemed half aware even in stillness.

Jace looked out into the dark. "Did Highgarden help us?"

"Yes."

"Even with the rumours?"

"Especially because of them." He looked confused, so I continued. "If Highgarden had meant nothing, no one would work so hard to decide what it meant. Larys is shaping the story because the story has weight. Otto’s side would prefer us unseen, untested, and easy to describe. We made that harder."

"But not impossible."

"No. Never impossible."

Jace accepted that without complaint. He was learning that victories did not end trouble. They changed its shape. After he left, I remained by the window for a while.

The secret battle had not begun at Highgarden. It had begun long before, perhaps the moment Rhaenyra was named heir, perhaps the moment Aegon was born, perhaps the moment men realised Viserys wanted love to do the work of law. But Highgarden had made one part of it clearer.

Larys had struck with whispers after the Kingsguard appointment. I had answered with sight, steel, dragons, and Reachmen carrying stories home.

Now Larys had answered the answer, not by denying the tournament’s effect, but by turning one bright piece of it toward shadow. Gwayne’s honourable defeat had become, in some mouths, a symbol of Hightower weakness. My victory had become, in others, proof of Galeris ambition. Jace’s welcome had become another reason for men to argue over what kind of prince he was.

That was influence. Not banners. Not ravens sealed with commands. Not armies forming on roads. Influence was quieter. It lived in which details survived the journey from one mouth to another. It lived in whether a smile looked willing, whether a compliment sounded forced, whether a boy on a dragon became a prince in memory or a rumour in silk.

Larys understood that. So did I. The difference was that Larys preferred men unseen. I had brought my son into the sky over Highgarden. I would not let him be pushed back into shadow because a crippled lord with a soft voice knew how to season lies.

Below, a guard laughed at something I could not hear. The sound rose briefly, then vanished into the larger murmur of the city. Tomorrow, there would be another whisper. There always was.

Now, at least, I knew which hands were choosing where to place it.