Chapter 16: The Harrenhal Prospectus

Chapter 16: The Harrenhal Prospectus

281 AC, 3rd Moon

The year of the false spring arrived on Massey's Hook not as a relief, but as a minor, predictable variance in the weather patterns. Valerius's domain did not depend on the whims of the seasons. His fields, enriched by processes Maester Arlan was still struggling to fully comprehend, produced their bounty with industrial regularity. His fleet of twelve steel-hulled ships, the fastest and most durable vessels in the narrow sea, sailed on winds of his own making, their movements dictated by shipping schedules, not storms. The Pyralis enterprise had, in the nine years since Valerius's hostile takeover of Lycoris's body, become a sovereign economic power, its true wealth and influence utterly invisible to the feudal world it inhabited.

His family life was managed with the same cold precision. Lyra, his wife, was a model of quiet compliance, a perfectly integrated component of the household's surface-level operations. She ran the keep, raised their son, and never once asked what her husband did in the long hours he spent in his solar or in the deep, forbidden levels beneath the keep. She had given him an heir, Corvus, and in doing so, had fulfilled the primary clause of her contract.

Corvus, now a boy of nine, was Valerius's key long-term investment. His education had moved far beyond letters and sums. He was being trained in the true language of power: logistics, resource management, and psychological manipulation.

"Lord Tywin Lannister believes his power comes from his name, his armies, and the gold he digs from the earth," Valerius explained to his son, standing before the great map that dominated the Strategy Room. "He is wrong. His power is an illusion, propped up by our technology. We control the pumps that keep his mines from flooding. Therefore, we control his treasury. He is our most powerful vassal, and he is too proud to ever admit it."

Corvus traced the shipping route from Lannisport to the Free Cities where the Lannister bullion was laundered into Pyralis accounts. "Because admitting dependency is admitting weakness."

"Precisely," Valerius said, a rare flicker of approval in his eyes. "Never allow your enemies to see your strength, and never allow your assets to know the true extent of their dependency. That is the foundation of control."

The rest of the realm, however, was not so well-controlled. It was rotting from the head down. The news from King's Landing, delivered by his network of spies, painted a picture of a dynasty in its death throes. King Aerys, having not left the Red Keep since the Defiance of Duskendale four years prior, had descended into a state of profound paranoia. He saw plots in every shadow and trusted no one, least of all his own son and heir, Rhaegar.

The final, irreparable schism between the King and his Hand, Lord Tywin, had come just last month. In a move of stunning, spiteful brilliance, Aerys had named Tywin's son and heir, Ser Jaime Lannister, to the Kingsguard. With a single royal decree, he had robbed his greatest rival of his legacy. Tywin had resigned the Handship in a cold fury and returned to Casterly Rock, leaving the governance of the realm to a council of sycophants and schemers.

Valerius had analyzed the event with the detached interest of a corporate analyst watching a rival company's CEO get fired. "Aerys has won a petty victory at the cost of the kingdom's stability," he had told his council. "He has driven away the only competent man in his government out of sheer jealousy. The realm is now rudderless, adrift in a sea of incompetence."

It was into this volatile market that the prospectus for a new venture arrived. A raven came, not from a great house, but from Lord Walter Whent, announcing a great tourney to be held at his seat of Harrenhal. The prizes offered were extravagantly, impossibly large—three times those of Tywin Lannister's own legendary tourney.

Maester Arlan read the proclamation aloud in the solar. "Lord Whent must have found a dragon's hoard to fund such an event."

"Lord Whent has found a prince's ambition," Valerius corrected, his eyes gleaming with understanding. "This is not a tourney. It is a business meeting. A poorly disguised attempt at a hostile takeover of the Iron Throne. The funding comes from Prince Rhaegar."

He saw the strategy instantly. Rhaegar, seeing his father's madness spiraling out of control, needed a venue to rally the great lords, to build a coalition for a regency or a forced abdication. A tourney was the perfect cover, a gathering of the entire political class of Westeros away from the paranoid confines of the Red Keep.

"Will you attend, my lord?" Trystan asked. He was now thirty-one, the unquestioned commander of Valerius's military and intelligence operations.

"Certainly not," Valerius said with a dismissive wave. "I am Lord Pyralis, the quiet ruler of a small, prosperous peninsula. I have no interest in the games of knights and princes. My presence would be an anomaly. It would invite questions I have no desire to answer."

He turned to his team, his voice taking on the sharp, incisive tone he used when outlining a major operation. "However, the intelligence value of this gathering is incalculable. It is a convergence of every major player in the market. We will not participate, but we will observe. We will conduct the most thorough market research project this continent has ever seen."

The plan was swift and comprehensive. Trystan would lead a team of ten agents, all of them Serpentsguard disguised as sellswords accompanying a minor merchant. His mission was to observe the interactions of the high lords: to note the private meetings between Stark, Arryn, Tully, and Baratheon; to gauge the strength of Rhaegar's support; to identify the key players in the coming conflict.

Maester Arlan would dispatch his own assets, two of his most trusted acolytes, their loyalty long since transferred from the Citadel to the promise of Valerius's 'new science.' They would mingle with the servants, the squires, and the other maesters, gathering the low-level intelligence, the whispers and rumors that often painted a truer picture than the pronouncements of lords.

Dozens of other Pyralis agents—sailors from his fleet, trusted men from the villages of the Hook—would infiltrate the massive tent city that would spring up around Harrenhal, posing as merchants, laborers, and gamblers. They would be his eyes and ears in every tavern and brothel.

"There is one final variable," Valerius said, looking at the map. "The Mad King himself."

"Surely he will not leave the safety of the Red Keep," Arlan ventured. "His paranoia is too great."

"His paranoia is precisely why he will go," Valerius countered. "The Spider, Varys, will ensure it. He will whisper in the King's ear that this tourney is a plot, that Rhaegar means to depose him. Aerys's fear of being overthrown is surpassed only by his fear of appearing weak. He will go to Harrenhal to confront his son, to remind the world that he is still the dragon. His presence will transform a political conference into a powder keg." 

As Trystan and his teams made their final preparations, Valerius retreated to the Strategy Room. He stood before the great map, a stick of charcoal in his hand. He drew a circle around the monstrous castle of Harrenhal. Inside the circle, he did not write the names of the competitors—Stark, Baratheon, Dayne. He wrote the cold, hard language of his own world.

Event: Harrenhal Tourney (281 AC)

Primary Stakeholder: Rhaegar Targaryen

Objective: Covert Political Consolidation (Attempted Deposition/Regency)

Key Risk Factor: Unscheduled appearance of Aerys II (High Probability)

Projected Outcome: Catastrophic failure of Primary Objective. Ignition of cascading political and military conflict.

Pyralis Strategy: Passive Intelligence Gathering. No direct investment. Position for post-conflict acquisition of distressed assets.

He looked at the board, at the inevitable chain of events he knew was about to unfold. The crowning of Lyanna Stark. The fury of Robert Baratheon. The abduction. The murders of Rickard and Brandon Stark. The war. It was all a predictable, tragic, and wonderfully profitable sequence. The great houses of Westeros were about to liquidate themselves in a blaze of honor and glory.

He would watch, he would wait, and he would profit. The tourney at Harrenhal was not a game to him. It was the opening bell for the greatest bear market in the history of the Seven Kingdoms, and he was ready to buy the dip.