[ASOIAF SI] The Gilded Stag: A Ruthless Joffrey Uplift | Chapter 27: WILLAS (Public) (Patreon)

The midday sun streamed through the arched, leaded glass of the highest white tower in Highgarden, casting elongated pools of gold across the Myrish carpets. Outside, the air was heavy with the sweet, intoxicating perfume of climbing roses and lemon blooms, carried on a gentle breeze that swept off the slow-moving River Mander. It was a day made for hawking, a clear, mild morning meant for riding out into the lush green fields of the Reach, but Willas Tyrell remained seated at his heavy oak desk, his ruined leg propped stiffly upon a velvet-cushioned stool.

His leg ached, a dull, familiar throb that always worsened when the winds blew from the west, carrying the dampness of the Sunset Sea. He rubbed his thigh absently, his brown eyes fixed upon the mountain of parchment spread before him.

His father, Lord Mace Tyrell, dreamed of golden crowns and royal marriages. His brother Loras dreamed of tourney crowns and martial glory. But Willas dealt in the cold, unyielding reality of the realm. Glory did not feed the smallfolk, and crowns did not balance the ledgers.

At present, the ledgers from the capital were a ruin of red ink, and the ravens brought nothing but madness.

Willas picked up a scrap of stiff parchment. The seal of yellow wax, bearing the crowned stag of Storm's End, had been broken. It was the third such letter Loras had smuggled out by swift rider in the past fortnight, heavily ciphered and reeking of panic.

The heavy oak door to his solar creaked open.

"Leave us," a sharp, reedy voice commanded. The heavy footfalls of Erryk and Arryk, the twin guardsmen his grandmother mocked as Left and Right, retreated down the winding stair.

Lady Olenna Tyrell stepped into the sunlit solar. She was a diminutive woman, her shoulders hunched beneath a cowl of spun golden thread, looking for all the world like a fragile, wrinkled husk. But Willas knew better. The Queen of Thorns possessed a mind as sharp as a Valyrian blade, and her small, bright eyes missed nothing.

"You look as though you have swallowed a sour plum, Willas," Olenna said, leaning heavily upon her cane as she navigated the carpets. She settled into a high-backed chair opposite his desk, exhaling a long breath. "Tell me you have not been staring at those wretched grain yields again. The smallfolk will reap what they reap."

"It is not the grain, Grandmother," Willas said quietly. He pushed the ciphered parchment across the polished oak. "It is Loras. Or rather, Lord Renly."

Olenna did not reach for the letter. She merely sniffed, adjusting the folds of her gown. "The Storm Lord bleats so loudly he deafens his own ravens. What does my foolish grandson write now?"

"He begs us to make haste," Willas replied, leaning back in his chair. "He insists that Father must bring Margaery to King's Landing before the moon turns. Renly believes that with Jon Arryn dead, the King is entirely isolated. He wishes to thrust Margaery into Robert's bed to break the Queen's influence."

Olenna barked a harsh, dry laugh. "Break the Queen's influence? Robert Baratheon is a rotting carcass waiting for the vultures. He is fat, drunken, and half-mad from his own whoring. To place our sweet Margaery in his bed would be to tie her to a sinking galley. Renly is a boy playing at cyvasse, thinking he can move dragons with rabble."

"He is terrified, Grandmother," Willas corrected, his voice grave. "And he has every right to be. We all do."

He swept his hand over the other letters upon his desk—reports from their own spies in the capital, whispers from passing merchants, and sealed missives from the Citadel.

"The capital is a different world than it was three moons ago," Willas continued, tapping a finger against a ledger. "Lord Arryn is dead. Petyr Baelish, the Master of Coin, is dead—found hanging in the black cells by his own torn velvet cloak. The Commander of the City Watch is gone, replaced by Jacelyn Bywater, the Ironhand, a veteran who answers only to the Crown Prince."

"A suicide," Olenna mocked, her wrinkled lips curling in pure disdain. "Littlefinger loved himself far too much to trust his weight to a strip of velvet. He was purged. Swept from the board. And the realm knows exactly who holds the broom."

Willas nodded slowly. The tales of Joffrey Baratheon's Name Day Tourney had struck Highgarden like a thunderbolt. They had always known the Prince was physically imposing, bred from the towering Baratheon line, but the sheer lethality and cunning on display had shocked the Reach. The "Titan's Bastard" had battered Ser Jaime Lannister into the dirt and caught the Mountain's greatsword with a blade of dark, rippling steel.

"He is fifteen," Willas murmured, almost to himself. "Yet he executes a bloodless purge of the Red Keep while his father drinks. He locks down the gold cloaks in a single dawn. He commands the Hound as a lapdog, and he breaks the most feared knights in the realm for sport. Loras writes that the boy is a predator of iron and malice."

"Loras is a summer knight whose pride was wounded when a true warrior took the field," Olenna said sharply. But the humor had faded from her eyes, replaced by a cold, calculating stillness. "But your brother is right to be fearful. A boy does not act with such ruthless efficiency unless he has been preparing for war his entire life. The lion and the stag have bred a terror."

"Which leaves us with four doors," Willas said, gesturing to the space between them. "And we must decide which one Highgarden will open."

"Go on, then," Olenna prompted, resting her chin upon her hands. "Play the scholar."

"The first door is King Robert," Willas said. "We follow Renly's folly. We send Margaery to seduce a dying drunkard, risking the absolute, terrifying wrath of both Tywin Lannister and his warlord grandson. It is a fool's gambit."

"Closed and barred," Olenna agreed without hesitation.

"The second door is Renly himself," Willas continued. "If Robert dies, Loras will push us to crown the Lord of Storm's End. Renly is beloved by the smallfolk and holds the stormlords. But Grandmother... if Renly marches on King's Landing, he will not be facing a drunken brother. He will be facing Joffrey. And from every report I have read of the Prince's mind and muscle, Joffrey would slaughter him in the field."

Olenna hummed, a low, considering sound. "Renly wears his armor like a silk tunic. Joffrey wears it like a second skin. We keep the Storm Lord close, Willas. We smile, we pour him arbor gold, but we do not unsheathe our swords for him. Not yet. What of the third door?"

"Shadows across the Narrow Sea," Willas said dismissively. "Whispers of the Beggar King and his sister in Pentos. Irrelevant, unless the Baratheon dynasty completely shatters."

"Which leaves the Golden Beast himself," Olenna said softly. She looked toward the window, her gaze fixing on the distant, rolling green hills of the Reach. "The true prize. If Margaery marries the Crown Prince, she becomes the most powerful Queen in the history of Westeros. The Lannister wealth and the Tyrell harvest, bound together by a king who can actually hold a warhammer."

"A magnificent dream," Willas said. "But you see the danger. Can a clever girl truly tame a predator that hunts like that? If Margaery fails to charm him, if she displeases a boy who hangs his father's councilors in the dark... we cannot protect her."

Olenna’s jaw tightened. "My sweet rose is not a fragile thing, Willas. But you are right. We do not place her hand in the jaws of a lion until we know if it intends to bite."

"We may not have the luxury of time," Willas said. He reached beneath the pile of letters from Loras and withdrew a heavy, pristine sheet of vellum. It bore the royal seal of King Robert, stamped in dark yellow wax, but beside it was a second seal—a crest of pale green wax bearing the insignia of House Rogare of Lys.

"This arrived three days past," Willas said, his tone turning utterly flat. "From the capital. It is a formal decree from the Crown. Joffrey has not merely taken the swords, Grandmother. He has taken the ledgers. He has brought the Lyseni bankers to King's Landing. He has established a Royal Bank."

Olenna frowned, her cane tapping sharply against the floorboards. "Lyseni coin-clippers? What does this have to do with us? Let the Crown count its coppers with foreigners if they wish."

"It has everything to do with us," Willas said grimly. "The Crown owes Highgarden nearly a million golden dragons. It is our greatest leverage over the Iron Throne. Joffrey’s decree offers my father, Lord Mace, a permanent seat on the board of this new Bank."

"A seat?" Olenna scoffed. "Mace will puff his chest like a mating pigeon. He loves seats and titles."

"There is a condition," Willas said, leaning forward, the scholarly detachment vanishing from his voice. "To claim the seat, the Crown's existing debt to Highgarden is to be converted. They are issuing paper. 'Royal Bonds,' the decree calls them. Promissory notes backed by the Crown's taxation, with an option to convert them into shares of the Bank's ventures."

Silence fell over the solar, heavy and absolute. The Queen of Thorns stared at her grandson, her sharp mind turning the Essosi terminology over, stripping away the gilded language to find the steel beneath.

"He is not paying our debt," Olenna whispered, the realization dawning cold and hard. "He is taking our wealth hostage."

"Precisely," Willas said, a grim knot forming in his stomach. "It is a masterstroke of economic warfare. If Joffrey falls, or if the Crown's ventures fail, the paper is worth less than the ink it is written with. He is forcing us to tie the financial survival of Highgarden directly to the survival of his regime. If we invest, we cannot afford to let him be overthrown."

"And if we refuse?" Olenna asked, though they both knew the answer.

"If we refuse the seat and the paper," Willas said, "we declare ourselves open enemies of a Prince who just purged his own capital and brought the Iron Bank's rivals to his shores. He would simply void the debt altogether. We would lose nearly a million dragons, and invite his wrath."

Olenna Tyrell closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were flinty and devoid of any grandmotherly warmth. "The boy is a terror. He fights like the Warrior and plots like the Crone."

"We must send an envoy to King's Landing," Willas said. "To formally accept the board seat on Father's behalf and oversee the conversion of our debt. But Father cannot go. If Mace sits at a table with Joffrey Baratheon and those Lyseni bankers, they will flatter him, pour him sweet wine, and he will eagerly sign away the rest of our vaults to buy favor."

"No," Olenna agreed fiercely. "Mace stays here, dreaming of crowns. We need someone who pinches a copper until it bleeds. Someone deeply unpleasant, who cares nothing for flattery or tourney glory."

"Garth," Willas suggested.

Olenna’s lip curled in distaste. "Garth the Gross. The man is flatulent, ill-mannered, and smells of sour milk. He is perfect. He will count every last stag during this 'conversion,' and he will make the Lyseni regret the day they learned to use an abacus."

"I will give Garth strict, absolute orders," Willas said, pulling a blank sheet of parchment toward him. "He is to accept the bonds for the existing debt. But he is not to invest a single, solitary dragon of new, liquid gold into Joffrey’s ventures. Not the shipyards, not the guilds, nothing. We manage the paper we are forced to take, but the purse strings to our true vaults remain drawn tight."

"He will need an escort," Olenna noted. "Garth cannot protect himself, and we need eyes on the Prince that are not clouded by Renly's charm. Loras is compromised."

"Garlan," Willas said immediately. "My brother sees the truth of men in the yard. He does not seek glory for himself. He will measure Joffrey's true martial strength, and he will evaluate the discipline of Jacelyn Bywater's new gold cloaks. We will know exactly what manner of army the Golden Stag is building."

The Queen of Thorns nodded, gripping the head of her cane. She rose slowly from her chair, her bones popping in the quiet room.

"We wait," Olenna declared, her voice hard as iron. "We send Garth to handle the parchment, and Garlan to watch the swords. We smile at Renly, and we bow to the King. But Joffrey Baratheon gets no new Tyrell gold, and he gets no Tyrell armies, until he proves he can hold the throne that is his by rights." She paused at the door, looking back at her crippled grandson. "And until he places a crown upon Margaery's head."

Willas dipped his quill into the dark ink. "No gold. No swords. Until the Rose is Queen."