Final Pledge
Thirty First Day of the Third Month 294 AC
As you read the latest report in Sarell's chillingly precise tone you reach out for the goblet of hot chocolate steaming on the desk. It lies cold and bitter in your stomach.
There is a fey court with a wounded lord to deal with, one who courts Ruin for more then himself. This will have to be dealt with and you doubt it will come without cost. Still, you remind yourself that another fraction of the Court of Stars has established a wary truce with you and a third is even willing to trade knowledge for knowledge. A better board to play upon than one which held the Court of Stars whole and plotting to make all the Reach into the puppets and pawns.
Speaking of puppets and pawns... "I am going to Highgarden, there will be no audiences today," you say to your assistant as you rise from behind the desk and begin to visualize the halls of the ancient keep, though doing your best to push the faces of its current occupants from your mind. Anger after all makes for a poor medium of translocation.
Even your mother who is more inclined to sympathy and understanding to the High Lords of Westeros than most had been furious when she understood what House Tyrell had planned, all the more so in the fact that they had been trying to renegotiate it with the Azure Key rather than abandoning the prospect like the snare it was.
The only one of your companions inclined to offer the benefit of the doubt at this point was Tyene and hardly in the most glowing of terms. "They are not doing that much worse at poking a dragon with a stick than some of my own ancestors did, and some of it might be excused by the fact they can't see the whole dragon."
Somehow you feel that Mace Tyrell would find his sole advocate at court being a Dornishwoman and Oberyn's daughter at that particularly galling.
***
The world twists and with a familiar pop you are elsewhere, three generations of House Tyrell already awaiting your visit with some trepidation. Not enough,
definitely not enough. "I regret to inform you my lords, and my lady, that you have come out the worst from the games you have played these past ten years, a fact you might have deduced yourselves, but here we are." You pause a long moment for emphasis. "And now it is time to
stop playing games."
"Your Grace, I never sought to do anything but my duty," the Lord of Highgarden bristles.
"Regardless of your original reasoning for bargaining with the fey, however righteous you are currently feeling knowing you are resolved in your choices,
I do not care," you reply, keeping your tone even as it is cold. "That doesn't leave me with a good impression of your competence, much less your goodwill. You have to understand how much work goes into
actually protecting your realm, and I should know given hundreds of life or death battles I've experienced to do precisely that."
"We do not all have the boon of dragon's blood to warm us," Olenna Tyrell replies to her son and grandson's shock. You will give the woman that much as you meet her aged but unwavering gaze, she does not lack for courage.
"I agree," you reply to the further surprise of the others in the chamber, though from the way she almost seems to brace in her chair like a pikeman ready to receive charge you suspect the Queen of Thorns can see you are not going anywhere pleasant with this. "Not everyone id capable of meeting such forces, sword in hand or claw extended. Again,
I do not care. Your allies had alien goals which you could not have possibly comprehended in full. They were unreliable factors which could not be planned around with the level of knowledge and amount of agency you possessed. That you did not lose
more than what you did during that infiltration by Baator speaks more of that bargain than anything else."
You see Mace Tyrell open his mouth, then you see him close it. It is his son who speaks at last: "Your Grace, what is required of us?"
Good fucking question, you think, but do not quite say. Instead you lay things out as starkly as you can: "My trust in the good word of House Tyrell begins like any debt, at a deficit. I expect a few things to happen first before House Tyrell may walk in the light like any other vassal in good standing of mine. I expect complete and utter loyalty. Not the sort wrought of good works exchanging hands from both sides, or faith restored after numerous services performed, I mean the sort of devotion one who has raised them up from nothing holds. If you cannot be as faithful to me as House Manderly is to House Stark, why do I keep you around?"
"Yes, Your Grace," All of them agree, hopefully truthfully. You were certainly being sincere in that threat.
With one final nod to show that you had heard their words, you vanish from Highgarden, amplifying the faint gust of air that comes with translocation into a hot wind and leaving a charred spot on the carpet where you stood. A waste of wishcraft perhaps, but a satisfying one.
What next?
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OOC: I used the full social buffs for this one, mythic surge and all. It felt like that kind of discussion.