[ASOIAF SI] The Gilded Stag: A Ruthless Joffrey Uplift | Chapter 25: VARYS III (Public) (Patreon)

The morning fog upon the Lower Rhoyne was a thick, pale shroud, smelling of ancient mud, rotting reeds, and the cold sweat of the river. It clung to the slow-moving waters like damp wool, masking the banks and silencing the cries of the river herons.

Varys sat upon a hard wooden bench near the stern of the narrow skiff, pulling a coarse, undyed woolen cloak tighter around his shoulders. The rough fabric bit into his skin, a stark, agonizing contrast to the soft velvets and Myrish lace he had worn for fifteen years in the Red Keep. He had deliberately scrubbed away the heavy, sweet scent of lilacs that had always announced his presence, choosing the scent of river mud and stale sweat to mask his flight. His scalp, usually shaved smooth and powdered white, bristled with a coarse grey stubble. He had not touched a razor since the night he fled the capital.

He was no longer the Spider. He was a fugitive, shivering in the damp, stripped of his carefully woven web by a fifteen-year-old boy.

He looked toward the prow of the skiff. Ser Jorah Mormont stood like a carved figurehead, a massive bear of a man wrapped in a faded green surcoat, his hand resting upon the pommel of his broadsword. His dark, deep-set eyes scanned the wall of grey mist with the grim, paranoid intensity of a hunted beast.

Huddled amidst the sparse cargo was the girl. Daenerys Targaryen sat with her knees pulled to her chest, wrapped tightly in a heavy blanket of Pentoshi weave. Her silver-gold hair was tangled and damp from the river mist, her violet eyes wide, hollow, and darting at every shadow in the fog. Beside her, slumped against the gunwale, was her brother. Viserys sported a swollen, purple bruise across his jaw, his aristocratic features twisted into a permanent sneer of arrogant fury, even in sleep.

And between Varys’s boots sat a heavy, iron-bound chest of black oak.

The boatman thrust his long pole into the muddy riverbed, leaning his weight against the wood. The rhythmic splash, creak, splash of the pole was the only sound in the world, measuring out the heartbeats of their desperate journey.

Varys closed his eyes, and the sound of the water became the distant, terrifying rush of the tide against the sea walls of Pentos.

It had been a masterpiece of timing, born of sheer, absolute dread. Varys had crossed the Narrow Sea on a smuggler’s cutter, driven by the cold knowledge that the moment the news of the Red Keep’s bloody purge reached the Free Cities, the illusion of Illyrio Mopatis’s power would shatter like cheap glass.

When Varys had slipped through the servant's gate of Illyrio's sprawling manse, the air had been thick with the scent of roasting garlic and sweet perfumes. The unsullied guards had stood like bronze statues at the doors, utterly oblivious. The magisters of the city still believed the Cheesemaker was a prince of merchants, a man whose wealth rivaled the Iron Bank itself. They did not know what Varys knew: that Illyrio was a crushed, bloody ruin beneath the skull of Meraxes in the dark beneath the capital, murdered by the golden-haired demon who called himself the Crown Prince.

Varys had not sought the heavy gold in the lower vaults. Wagons of gold were slow. Wagons drew the eyes of the city watch, and questions meant death. Instead, he had moved through the hidden corridors like a phantom, bypassing the guards, moving straight for the deepest, most secure chamber.

He had taken only the most concentrated wealth in the known world. He filled a leather satchel with handfuls of raw, uncut rubies, and seized the three petrified dragon eggs. They were heavy as stone, entirely cold to his touch, and worth the price of a sellsword army.

The true difficulty had not been the vault. It had been the volatile cargo in the guest wing.

Varys remembered the tense, breathless standoff in the shadowed hallway outside the Targaryen chambers. Ser Jorah Mormont had stepped from the gloom, his sword half-drawn, expecting an assassin or perhaps a messenger bearing his long-awaited royal pardon from King Robert.

“The fat man is dead,” Varys had whispered, the words cutting through Mormont’s hopes like a rusted blade. “The game in King’s Landing is broken. The Baratheon prince is a monster of iron and malice, and he has seized the board. Your pardon is ash, Ser Jorah. If the magisters learn Illyrio is dead, they will butcher these children and sell their heads to the Iron Throne to curry favor. Draw your steel and help me, or die with them tonight.”

Mormont had stared at him, the desperate, hollow look of an exile realizing the shores of home had just burned to the ground. Then, the bear had nodded, drawing his steel.

Daenerys had been easy to rouse, waking with the silent, compliant terror of an abused hound. But Viserys had been a nightmare. When Varys told him they must flee through the servant's gate, the Beggar King had erupted.

“I am the dragon!” Viserys had hissed, his voice rising, threatening to alert the entire manse. “I will not skulk in the dark like a thief! I will wait for Khal Drogo! I will wait for my army!”

There had been no time for honeyed words. Varys had given Mormont a single, cold look. The exiled knight had stepped forward and struck Viserys across the jaw with a heavy, mailed fist. The Beggar King had crumpled without a sound. They had forced milk of the poppy between his slack lips, rolled him into a heavy Myrish carpet, and carried him out the water gate like a stolen tapestry.

As their skiff had rowed out into the harbor of Pentos, the first light of dawn had broken over the sea. With the morning tide came the merchant galleys and the swift courier ships from the West. Varys did not need to see the wax seals on their letters to know what they carried. His spymaster’s instinct, honed over decades of survival, told him the window had definitively closed. The illusion was dead. They had escaped the Cheesemaker's manse by the span of an hour.

A sudden lurch of the boat pulled Varys from the memory.

The boatman pulled his pole from the water, letting the skiff drift. The fog was thinning, parting like a torn veil to reveal a wider stretch of the slow-moving Rhoyne. And there, anchored deep within a thick grove of weeping willows and tall river reeds, was a flat-bottomed poleboat with a low wooden cabin built upon its deck, its hull bearing the chipped remnants of blue paint.

The Shy Maid.

Varys stood slowly, his knees aching from the damp cold. Ser Jorah shifted his grip on his sword, his eyes narrowing at the larger vessel.

"Hold your steel, Ser Jorah," Varys murmured, his voice dry and raspy. "There are no enemies here. Only the last of our desperate hopes."

The skiff bumped gently against the hull of the Shy Maid. For a moment, there was only the sound of the river lapping against the wood. Then, the heavy wooden door of the cabin swung open.

A man stepped out onto the deck. He was clad in worn leather and a faded blue cloak, his hair a fiery, greying red. His face was a map of hard lines, weathered by years of sun and bitter exile, his pale blue eyes sharp and utterly unforgiving. Jon Connington, the exiled Lord of Griffin's Roost, former Hand of the King to Aerys Targaryen, known now only as Griff.

Connington’s hand was resting on the hilt of his sword. He looked down at the skiff, his eyes sweeping over Mormont, the bruised Viserys, and the shivering Daenerys. Then, his gaze locked onto the bald, stubbled man in the coarse wool cloak.

Connington froze. The color drained beneath his weathered skin. He knew the Spider. And he knew that if the Spider was here, stripped of his silks and traveling on a muddy skiff, the foundations of the world had cracked.

"Varys," Connington breathed, the name sounding like a curse in the quiet air. He reached down, offering a calloused hand, and hauled the former Master of Whisperers onto the deck of the Shy Maid.

Before Varys could find his footing, Connington seized the front of his coarse wool cloak and dragged him violently away from the rail, out of earshot of the skiff below.

"What have you done?" Connington hissed, his voice a venomous, barely audible thread. He shot a look of pure, unadulterated loathing toward the silver-haired boy nursing his jaw in the skiff. "You brought the Mad King's whelps here. To my ship. To him. Are you mad? Illyrio swore they would be kept in Pentos. He swore they would cross the Dothraki sea to bleed the Usurper's armies."

"Illyrio is dead," Varys said.

The words hung in the damp air, heavier than the fog. Connington stared at him, his grip slowly loosening on Varys's cloak as the absolute finality of the statement sank into his rigid posture.

"Dead," Connington repeated numbly. "How?"

"A trap in the Red Keep," Varys murmured, the memory of the falling dragon skull still haunting the edges of his vision. "A trap laid not by Robert, or Lord Stark, or even Tywin Lannister. It was laid by the boy. Joffrey Baratheon."

Varys looked around the cramped deck of the Shy Maid, his voice grim. "The capital is purged, Jon. Baelish is dead. The City Watch belongs to the Crown Prince. The grand design we spent fifteen years weaving was unraveled in a single, bloody night by a prince who rules with iron and terror. If we had stayed in Pentos, those children would be missing their heads. The gold is lost. We had to run."

At that moment, the cabin door creaked again. A boy stepped out into the grey light of the morning. He was fifteen, tall and lithe, moving with a fluid, practiced grace. His hair was dyed a deep, vibrant blue, but the roots showed the unmistakable silver-gold of Old Valyria. His eyes were a deep, mesmerizing purple. Aegon. Young Griff. The perfect prince, raised in secret to be the savior of the realm.

Aegon looked at Varys, then down at the skiff.

Below, Viserys Targaryen groaned, pushing himself up from the wooden bench. He rubbed his bruised jaw, his lilac eyes blinking against the light. He looked up, his gaze locking onto the tall, blue-haired boy on the deck above him. Viserys's lip curled, the familiar, delusional arrogance rushing back into his features.

"Who is this?" Viserys demanded, his voice raspy but dripping with haughty entitlement. "I am the blood of the dragon. I demand to know whose vessel I am boarding."

Jon Connington closed his eyes, his knuckles turning white on the hilt of his sword.

Varys watched the two dragons look at each other, feeling the cold dread settle deep into his bones. The careful separation was broken. The groomed savior and the mad heir were now trapped together on a single, wooden boat, surrounded by a world that was actively hunting them.

The game was no longer a dance of shadows. It was a desperate sprint for survival, and Joffrey Baratheon had already taken the lead.