Chapter 25: The Vulture's Feast

Chapter 25: The Vulture's Feast

The news of the Red Wedding arrived on Dragonstone like a seismic shock, a tremor from a distant earthquake. Lyra delivered the report in the Chamber of the Painted Table, her voice a cold, steady instrument reciting a litany of horrors. She spoke of guest right violated, of a king butchered at a wedding feast, of his mother's throat being slit, of the Stark direwolf's head being sewn onto the boy-king's decapitated body.

When she finished, a heavy, sickened silence filled the room. Jax, a man who had waded through the blood of the Disputed Lands for decades, looked pale. His knuckles were white where he gripped the edge of the table.

"To break bread under a man's roof," the old general growled, his voice thick with disgust. "To accept his salt and steel… and then to do that. Even the savages of the Dothraki sea hold guest right as sacred. This… this is an obscenity."

Daenerys, who had been listening with growing horror, her hands resting protectively on her son's sleeping form in a nearby cradle, finally spoke. Her voice was a trembling whisper. "They played music to cover the sound of the crossbows. They murdered them all… a king and his sworn men… at a wedding?"

She looked at Valerius, her violet eyes searching for some anchor in the moral abyss that had just opened before them. "This is the kingdom we mean to rule? One where such… evil… is celebrated as victory?"

Valerius met her gaze. His own face was calm, impassive, a mask of carved stone. He had known this was coming. He had read about it in a leather-bound book in a world of steel and glass, and the reality was every bit as grotesque as the text had described. But where his council saw an atrocity, he saw the single greatest strategic gift he could have ever received.

He let the silence hang for a long moment, allowing the full weight of the event to settle upon them. Then, he spoke, his voice quiet but carrying an immense authority that instantly calmed the roiling emotions in the room.

"You see butchery," he began, his eyes moving from Jax's disgusted face to Daenerys's horrified one. "You see an unforgivable sin. And you are not wrong. But you must learn to see beyond the act itself, to the consequences that flow from it. Tywin Lannister, in his arrogant pursuit of a swift and total victory, has just handed us the keys to his kingdom."

He rose from his basalt throne and began to pace, his movements slow and deliberate.

"What is the foundation of any stable rule?" he asked, his voice taking on the familiar cadence of a lecture. "It is not just strength. It is legitimacy. It is the belief, held by the great and the small, that the ruler operates within a certain set of accepted laws, both of gods and of men. Tywin Lannister has just taken the most sacred of those laws—guest right—and publicly, brazenly, shattered it for all the world to see."

He stopped and looked at them. "He believes he has ended a war. What he has actually done is permanently poison his own victory. He has shown every lord in Westeros, from the Dornish spearmen to the northern hunters, that his word is worthless, that his honor is a sham, that no treaty or truce with House Lannister can ever be trusted. He has won the physical war, and in the very same stroke, has lost the war for moral authority. And that is a war you cannot win with gold or swords."

He gestured to the Painted Table. "The North is now 'pacified.' Ruled by the treacherous Roose Bolton, a man who murdered his king. Do you think the northern lords—the Manderlys, the Glovers, the Mormonts—will ever truly bend the knee to the man with the flayed man on his banner? No. They will smile, and they will plot, and they will wait for a true leader to rally behind. The North is not won; it is a coiled snake waiting to strike."

"The Riverlands are now under the dominion of House Frey," he continued. "An insult to every noble house in the realm. The Freys are seen as grasping, cowardly, and now, monstrously treacherous. They will rule through fear, and fear breeds hatred."

"Tywin has not created a lasting peace," Valerius concluded, his voice dropping. "He has created a kingdom built upon a foundation of simmering, righteous fury. It is a house of cards, beautiful on the outside, but rotten within. And a house like that requires only a single, well-aimed push to collapse."

His council stared at him, their horror slowly being replaced by a dawning, chilling understanding. They were seeing the world through his eyes now—not as a series of events, but as a complex system of interconnected weaknesses.

"So the Long Watch continues," Jax said, finally grasping the new reality. "We let the rot spread."

"Precisely," Valerius affirmed. "The war of kings is over. Now begins the war of festering wounds. And we will be the patient physicians who wait for the patient to grow so weak he cannot resist our cure."

The next few years were the embodiment of that strategy. The period was not a passive wait, but an active, predatory preparation for the final stage. The plan Valerius laid out for his council was a masterpiece of cold, calculated patience.

"Our invasion is no longer a matter of 'if,' but 'when,'" he declared. "And the 'when' will be the moment of their maximum internal weakness. Our task now is to hasten that moment and to perfect our own strength."

He gave his new directives. The first was to the North. "Lyra, our campaign against the Ironborn has made us unexpected heroes in the North. We have a reservoir of goodwill there. I want you to use it. Send a select few of your best agents, disguised as merchants or wandering scholars. They are not to offer alliances or make promises. They are simply to travel the North, from White Harbor to Bear Island. They will speak to the minor lords, to the household knights, to the landed masters. They will listen to their grievances against the Boltons. They will offer sympathy. And they will subtly plant a seed—a rumor of a powerful, just king rising in the east, a king who values honor and might one day be interested in avenging the wrongs done to the noble House Stark. We will cultivate their dissent like patient gardeners."

His second directive was economic. "Corvin, Lord Tywin will now be focused on rebuilding. He will need to re-establish trade. I want you to make it impossible for him. Use our immense capital to disrupt the markets. Flood the Free Cities with cheap Myrish lace and Tyroshi dyes, undercutting the Lannisters' own exports. Our agents in the Iron Bank are to quietly buy up the debts of any Westerosi lords who owe money to Casterly Rock. We will become their creditors. We will turn Tywin's greatest weapon—his wealth—against him, making his new regime economically beholden to a power he cannot see."

His third was military. "Jax. Master Valerius. The time for mere training is over. I want integrated, full-scale war games. I want the legions practicing amphibious landings on the shores of the Stepstones, supported by live fire from our new ship-mounted cannons. I want our Spectre legions practicing urban warfare in the mock city we have built on Aegis Point. And Master Valerius," he said, turning to the old inventor, "I want you to begin work on mounting the cannons onto swiveling turrets. I want our warships to be floating artillery platforms capable of delivering devastating broadsides from any angle."

The final directive was personal, and it was for Daenerys. Their son, Aerion, was now a bright, curious boy of five. His education became the dynasty's primary focus. While Valerius taught him strategy at the Painted Table, Daenerys taught him their true heritage in the Dragonmont.

The dragons were now creatures of impossible scale. The great cavern that was their sanctuary had become a cage. Balerion's wingspan was so wide he could no longer fully extend his wings, a fact that made the Black Dread perpetually surly and prone to fits of volcanic rage that only Daenerys could soothe. Their need for the open sky was a palpable, pressing thing.

Aerion, however, was in his element among them. He would spend hours with his mother in the sweltering heat, speaking to the dragons in the High Valyrian she had taught him. He had formed a clear, undeniable bond with Viserion, the cream-and-gold dragon. The beast, though immense and terrifying, would lower its great head to allow the small boy to stroke its horn, and would rumble with a sound that was less a growl and more a contented purr.

"He is their prince," Daenerys said to Valerius one evening, as they watched Aerion laugh while Viserion gently nudged him with his snout. "They see him as one of them. A hatchling of their own."

"He is," Valerius said, his eyes on his son. "And soon, he will see them fly under an open sky. We are almost ready. All the pieces are in place."

The final piece, the one that would signal the end of the long, patient wait, arrived four years after the Red Wedding. The news was so sudden, so perfectly aligned with Valerius's predictions of Lannister self-destruction, that it felt like an act of divine providence.

Lyra brought the report directly to Valerius's solar. Her face was, for the first time in years, alight with something that looked like genuine shock.

"My lord," she said, her voice tight. "A raven from our top agent in King's Landing. Lord Tywin Lannister is dead."

Valerius, who was reviewing a schematic of a new cannon turret with Master Valerius, slowly turned. "How?"

"It… it is almost unbelievable, my lord. He was murdered. Shot with a crossbow while sitting on the privy in the Tower of the Hand." Lyra took a deep breath. "He was killed by his own son. Tyrion. The dwarf. He escaped from the black cells where he was awaiting execution for the murder of King Joffrey, killed his father, and has since vanished, presumably smuggled out of the city by Varys the Spider."

Valerius stood in silence, absorbing the information. Joffrey was dead, poisoned at his own wedding. Tywin was dead, murdered by the son he despised. The two pillars of the Lannister victory, the boy-king and the old lion, were gone. The kingdom was now in the hands of a grieving, paranoid Queen Regent and a gentle boy-king, Tommen, who was a puppet for anyone who could grasp his strings.

He walked to the Painted Table. With a steady hand, he reached out and removed the great golden lion marker from Casterly Rock. The piece that had dominated the entire board was gone.

He looked at his council, at his queen. Their faces reflected a dawning, terrifying realization. The wait was over. The great, patient plan had reached its apotheosis. The enemy had, just as he had predicted, destroyed itself from within.

"The lions have finally eaten the lion," Valerius said, his voice a soft, deadly whisper. "The house is rotten from the head down. The great War of the Five Kings has ended in a pathetic, sordid mess, leaving a hollowed-out kingdom ruled by a foolish woman and a child."

He turned to Daenerys. She was looking at him, her violet eyes blazing with an understanding and anticipation that mirrored his own. She knew what came next.

"My queen," he said, his voice now ringing with an authority that was no longer just that of a lord, but of a true emperor on the cusp of his conquest. "It is time to choose your coronation gown. We have waited long enough."

He faced his stunned council. "Jax, ready the legions. Silas, prepare the fleet. Corvin, liquidate our assets in the Free Cities and convert them to gold. Master Valerius, your inventions are about to have their grand debut. Lyra, recall your agents. Their work is done."

He smiled, a cold, final expression. "The crucible of war is over. The vulture's feast can now begin." He looked out the high window, towards the west. "We sail on the next tide."