Strange Knights and Hollow Crowns
Twenty-Sixth Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC
You take a long moment to look between Lord Tyrell and his mother with a faintly incredulous expression, taking the moment of theater to actually
look at them as deeply as your power allows. Nothing on the lord, five auras on the Queen of Thorns—three strong and two middling—most abjurations, though one looks like conjuration magic and another shimmering with the changeable corona of a contingency spell. She simply looks more prepared to face magic than any lord or lady you have ever faced.
Somehow you doubt the fey armed and armored them out of the goodness of their hearts.
"Yes... a lost raven. I'm sure the envoys you've sent to Braavos and later the Deep similarly got lost on the road of life." For once you wield sarcasm like a weapon rather than swallowing it behind false courtesy.
At that Mace winces, though he hides the gesture better than you would expect given his reputation. Olenna on the other hand just looks on without even a flicker of an expression upon her lined face. Still waiting for you to show your hand, then. Well, you certainly have no objection to doing so, though you doubt they will enjoy what they will see.
"However, it warms my heart to see such
loyal bannermen as the Tyrells having done well for themselves in the intervening years. You even managed to get your own
Kingsguard. More colorful than that of the Usurper, too, since plain white is certainly something more befitting of dreary Winterfell than beautiful Highgarden."
Even the wind in the briars seems to have stopped at these words. Out of the corner of your eye you see amusement flicker in Ser Richard's eye behind the mask of duty, but it is to your host that the attention must turn.
"Half right," the Queen of Thorns speaks up bluntly. "Not a Kingsguard but a Queensguard. Have you seen the fools in white armor prancing around the Red Keep? One of them running mad after the Lannister girl?
Disgraceful." She lingers just a moment longer than necessary on the word. Do they know or at least guess at your involvement? In the end it matters little, for such a thing could never be proved by any reasonable measure.
"A Queensguard?" you prompt instead. "That seems a very
hopeful thing to me. Still, the notion is curious enough that I will entertain the question for courtesy's sake..." The implication that your stock of courtesy grows thin is not lost on anyone. "Who do you expect to need such a thing?"
"My daughter Margaery of course," Mace replies, puffing his proverbial feathers again. You have the strangest impression of a man wearing a mask made in the likeness of his own features exaggerated to comical proportions. "A finer rose you will not find in all the land, and with her hand comes the strength of the Reach." That would account for why so many who are wise so easily discount 'the Fat Flower'. There is a seed of truth to the bluster and pride, but it does not tell the whole story, nor even half of it.
Were he upon a stage you might be inclined to applaud. Here and now upon the greatest of all stages you only reply: "So you would give your daughter a guard of fey knights, yet she is not here, but sent to the one court in all the lands where there is little need for the fey to guard against monsters and perils." You shake your head as though confused and saddened. "What a tangled weave this is. I was told the Court of Stars has helped greatly against various horrors besieging the Reach, yet a devil lived in this very keep for months, unbothered by any of the higher fey that could have detected it. You seek the crown that Garth the Gardner took from the fey, yet hide that fact even from your closest allies."
"My daughter has much yet to learn, some of which she cannot find here," the Lord of Highgarden says, forgetting to play his buffoonish part for a moment. Something of what you said must have struck home.
"The words are as hollow as empty air," you snort when it becomes clear he is not going to reply to the rest of your points. "Let me ask again in plainest terms: is this an alliance of equals, or did you make peace with being the subordinate again for the time being? Is this plot your doing, or are the fey holding the strings?" Gesturing towards the 'Azure Knight' you add: "Is he a guardian, or a warden?"
"More dutiful knights have never been seen, though all this watching for new perils can get
tiresome on old bones," Olenna Tyrell says softly. Her words trail their meaning plain to your ears:
We made a painful bargain, but it was still better than what most got. What are you offering?
For the first time in the whole conversation the fey warrior's face shows emotion, not anger precisely, more annoyance, as one might show at some petty insult. He did not hear her true meaning.
What do you say?
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OOC: So thanks to some good Sense Motive rolls you figured out the secret to Mace making people underestimate him. He plays a caricature of himself. There is just enough truth to the mask to fool even observant people, particularly the ones who want it to be true.[/QUOTE]
