Chapter 144: The Silent War

“And we,” and now his voice fell so low it might have been meant for someone invisible, “have the Vale’s walls of stone, granaries that overflow, and a river of gold earned from everyone’s wars. We need not conquer the Riverlands. We need only keep it weak, keep it bleeding, keep it expensive, while gold, grain, and the right promises soothe, purchase, and divide the houses that fear the west’s rule or hate it, above all the ones Maegor’s Hold frightened into obedience and resentment in the same afternoon.”

“As for the North, grain is the key. Hunger is the best persuader and the sharpest knife. Vale grain can seep north through White Harbor, through Moat Cailin, through any channel that will carry it. Not free, of course. For furs, timber, and minerals; and more dearly, for the friendship of certain families, for promises of future investment, for roots of the Vale spreading quietly beneath all that solid-looking ice. And when the western duke has worn himself out on the Trident, when the southern kingdoms have finished devouring one another, when the North is at its last gasp of hunger and cold and quarrel,” he drained the Arbor gold and felt the cold of it turn into something burning, “then perhaps the falcon spreads its wings. Not with an army. Armies are crude, and the price is vulgar. With gold, grain, intelligence, and lies woven finer than Myrish lace, wound around the prey turn by turn until it cannot struggle, and settles, of its own will, into the hunter’s palm.”

He set down the glass and wrote his letters. Each said something different. One went to a discontented knight inside the Vale who happened to hold the defense of an important pass, and promised him rank and gold. One went to a minor Vale lord with kin ties into the eastern Riverlands, married into the late Reymond Vance’s line, and offered sincere sympathy for the family’s misfortune, with the gentle hint that fortunes have been known to turn. And one went by a channel that did not exist, to a trading partner at White Harbor or Moat Cailin, concerning the route, the signals, and the special terms for a shipment of relief grain whose final destination was a certain northern castle presently starving, and presently very unhappy with Winterfell.

He sealed them with wax under different, unremarkable merchant seals. He needed no storm yet. He needed only to be the most patient of gardeners, sowing division, suspicion, dependence, and ambition in their rows, watering here with a little gold and there with a little grain, and waiting while the seeds took root and spread through a Westeros that the wars had made, in his particular sense of the word, so very fertile.

At Maegor’s Hold, Arthur finished reading Grey Shadow’s summary of Baelish’s recent movements. He could not know what the sealed letters said, but the pattern spoke for itself, in personnel quietly shifted, in goods quietly moved, in the resumption of perfectly normal trade with certain Riverlands families: Petyr had not given up on the Trident, and his weight was sliding toward quieter infiltration, and toward the North. Arthur’s brow set hard.

The real threat had never left the board. The truce with the Reach was brittle, Dorne’s expansion was a fact on the map, the war of the dragon and the lion ground on, the madness in King’s Landing continued, and now to all of it was added this serpent at his flank, tongue flickering, ready to strike from whatever angle no one was watching. Baelish had no great host and no great name, and had climbed to where he stood on wit and manipulation alone, and in Arthur’s private reckoning that made him no less dangerous than the Reach with its tens of thousands, or Daenerys with her dragons and her Unsullied.

“Alwin,” he said, weary in the voice and sharp in the eyes, “orders, in my name.

“First. The east of the Riverlands gets an Eastern Inspector, and Ser Rhaegar Spicer holds the office alongside his command, seated at the Golden Tooth with authority across the whole east. He supervises the taxes, verifies the muster rolls, mediates the disputes, hunts the smuggling, and above all watches every man and every wagon that moves between us and the Vale. Whatever he finds, he may report straight to me, and act as the case requires.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to NovelPhoenix for the genuine story.

“Second. Tighten the grip on Seagard, the Twins, and every dock on every branch of the Trident. Everything in and out is inspected, registered, and taxed, grain, weapons, and valuables above all. Trade with the Vale is not forbidden. It is watched to the last copper, and it pays heavily for the privilege.

“Third. Lord Jason strengthens his reconnaissance along the river coast while he patrols the western and northern lanes, and reports any gathering of hulls, or any sailing, that does not look like commerce. And he opens closer ties with House Manderly at White Harbor. I want the truth of the North’s condition, and I want to know whether grain from no known source is entering it by sea.

“Fourth.” He paused, fingers tapping the table without his noticing. “A friendly note to Lord Petyr Baelish of the Vale, under the joint names of the Lord Paramount of the Trident and Lord of Casterly Rock. Thank him for the restraint he ultimately showed during the recent misunderstanding at Seagard. Tell him the west and the Trident desire peace and trade with the Vale. And remind him, tactfully, that the internal affairs of the Riverlands are settled, that we trust the Vale to respect its neighbor’s territory and its neighbor’s peace, and that any attempt to unsettle either will be treated as a serious provocation, and answered accordingly, and firmly.”

It was a probe, a warning, and a diplomatic posture in one envelope, an attempt to fence the Vale’s behavior inside something that could be called controllable, at least on the surface.

Alwin wrote it all down, hesitated, and asked, “My lord. As to the North. Should we do anything? If the Vale truly means to have it...”

Arthur was silent for a moment, and faces moved through him. Jon Snow’s, still and grey in the deep chambers of the Rock. Arya’s, pale and stubborn over her healing wounds. Bran’s hollow eyes. The whole ravaged white country north of the Neck. The North was Jon’s home and Arya’s; it was the land of the men who had stood the Wall with him; and it was, in the whispers of the greenseer, a living link in the green pulse itself, which was a debt of another order entirely.

“The North,” he said slowly. “We have no strength to intervene in it directly, and we will not pretend otherwise. But we will pay attention. Word to our people in Winterfell, Maester Luwin and the few servants we trust: watch the North’s insides closely, the grain and where it comes from, the tempers between the great houses, and any sign of an outside hand at work, the Vale’s above all. And a letter to Maester Luwin under my personal seal. Ask after Jon’s and Arya’s recovery. Ask whether the North has need of limited relief, medicines, winter gear, such things as a few ships can carry. That much, by sea, we can do.”

He could not sit and watch the North slide whole into Petyr’s hand; that would raise on his own border a powerful enemy fit to join hands with the Reach and the Vale against him. Nor did he have the strength for more than watchfulness and small mercies. He could keep the thread alive, show goodwill where it cost little, and hope that Jon woke, or Arya rose, or the North found its own turning from within.

Alwin took his leave, and Arthur stood alone at the window. Maegor’s Hold lay silent and grim under the night, and beyond it ran the endless dark plains of the Trident, and beyond those, faint against the sky, the mountains of the north.

The Reach. Dorne. The Vale. King’s Landing. Dragonstone. The North. Enemies at every point of the compass and storms out of all of them, and himself, it seemed, standing on a shrinking plate of ice above deep water, with the current pulling underneath and the sharks keeping their patient circles. Every answer he gave cost strength. Every breath he was allowed came short.

“Petyr Baelish.” He said the name quietly, and there was killing cold in his eyes when he did, and beneath the cold something rarer: the gravity a man reserves for a brilliant opponent. The contest with the Vale had only begun, and it would not be settled by one bloody charge or two. It would be a longer war, a hidden one, a silent one, fought in wisdom, patience, and resources, where swords mattered and gold, grain, intelligence, men’s hearts, lies, and promises would all be weapons, and all of them lethal.

The chaos of Westeros deepened with every power’s ambition, hatred, and arithmetic. And Arthur Greyoak, in the middle of the board, went on carving out for the west and the Trident a road full of thorns that might, at its far end, come out into the dawn.

The road ahead was long, and there was danger the whole length of it.