The Unyielding Stag (Game of Thrones AU/Invincible)
Chapter 11: The Spider

A/N: The Spider spins his web.

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Even after all these years, there was something so… fascinating about watching everybody scurry about, playing their games and scheming to their hearts' content. Each and every last one of them thinking themselves smarter than all the rest. All of them convinced that they and they alone could fool everyone else into dancing to their tune.

Personally, Varys knew full well that he didn't know everything. That was half the reason he sought out as much knowledge as he could. His thirst for secrets, his hunger for information… it had served him well in the decades he'd spent in King's Landing. Quite well indeed.

… But things weren't always perfect. And Varys could acknowledge full well now that looking back, he'd made his fair share of mistakes.

When King Aerys II had first brought Varys to Westeros, the much younger Spymaster had still been a creature of avarice and ambition like so many others in the King's Court. He had used copious amounts of the crown's coin to build his a spy network on the continent, sending out his little birds in every direction to bring him scraps of information that he could take and use for his own purposes.

In turn, Varys had served the King faithfully and loyally as his Master of Whisperers, believing that it was only the right thing to do when Aerys was so willing to fund Varys' endeavors. Only now with so much time and so much distance could he look back and acknowledge the mistakes he'd made.

The Mad King was already mentally unwell even back then, but Varys hadn't cared. Newly arrived in King's Landing and drunk on his own skill, he had only really been interested in proving himself. No more, no less. Heh, if Varys the Younger could see him now, he dared not think what he might say.

Varys the Elder, or rather, Varys of the Present, was a far different man having seen what his folly and hubris brought the world. These days, he was far more discerning about just who he gave his true loyalty.

Back in the days before the Rebellion, Varys the Younger had turned Rhaegar's plans over to his father, counseling to Aerys that his own son was planning to overthrow him. If he could go back and do it all over again… he would have chosen differently. Rhaegar would have been a much better ruler than Aerys after all, and likely a better ruler than Robert Baratheon as well.

But alas, what's done is done and crying over it was futile. In a similar manner, Varys also had to eat crow regarding the wildfire caches hidden all over the city. He hadn't known about them… but he should have. A humbling experience, to say the least.

Still, to be humbled was to be human. And Varys couldn't help but feel that there were many more people in King's Landing that could do with a good humbling at this point in time. Everyone had their plans in the wake of the King's death. Everyone had their schemes.

The Queen, for instance. Word of the attempted poisoning of the recently legitimized Axel Baratheon had reached Varys' ears by this point, his little birds up in the Vale sending the information along before it had even reached King's Landing.

Varys didn't need to know anything more than that the attempt had been made to know who had tried to kill Axel Baratheon with the Strangler, of course. After all, Cersei Lannister had been trying to kill young Axel since he was a babe. Her attempts to poison Robert's oldest bastard were well documented, at least as far as Varys' network was concerned. As were her failures.

This latest effort had been a failure as well, though the stories left Varys more than a little curious to how it had been done. He'd received such fanciful tales… and his little birds were not known for their creativity nor their imagination.

Likewise, there was Littlefinger. The minor lord of a minor holding who had managed to raise himself up to greater and greater heights through cuckolding the very patron who had brought him to King's Landing and made him Master of Coin. Varys doubted that Petyr even suspected he knew about his long running affair with Lysa Arryn, otherwise the man would have almost certainly tried to have him killed by this point.

Just as he'd tried to have Lord Arryn and Axel Baratheon killed on the High Road just a few days ago. Bandits… such a messy tool to be sure. The whole thing smacked of general incompetence and opportunistic greed, both things that Varys had long come to associate with his so-called 'rival' over the years.

Of course, any rivalry between him and Lord Littlefinger was entirely in the other man's head. Varys didn't have rivals. To put it in a way that Petyr would understand, he had assets and he had liabilities, though the two could certainly be interchangeable. Varys didn't always protect his assets nor did he strike down his liabilities.

At the end of the day, Baelish was useful enough to Varys in his own way that he would keep the other man's secrets for the time being. Besides, it would be amusing to see what Littlefinger would do next now that his initial opportunistic attack on the Hand and their new would-be King had failed.

… And then there was Renly Baratheon. Varys can't help but smile a little as he stands in the shadow of an entrance to the Red Keep's many hidden passages. Situated on the outside of the keep itself, this particular exit gives him an excellent view of the Southern Gate, even this late in the evening. Especially when he's able to track the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands and his men via their torches as they make their way through the street towards the gate.

Earlier today, the knights that Renly had sent out to intercept Jon Arryn and Axel Baratheon had returned through the North Gate and made a beeline for Lord Renly's chambers in the Red Keep. Or rather… what was left of them anyways.

Out of the dozens of Baratheon Knights that Renly had tasked with making sure the Lord Hand and their new King never actually made it to King's Landing, a mere three made it back alive. They'd immediately gone to inform their Lord of their failure of course, and in response Renly had, for once since this whole mess began, made a smart decision. He was running.

What else could he do? He didn't have control of the Goldcloaks, they were mostly loyal to the Lannisters. He wasn't particularly well loved or respected by the Faith, not with his sword swallowing something of an open secret among the nobility of Westeros. And above all else, he'd spent most of his actual military strength in the city on the failed attempt on his nephew's life.

Put simply, Renly hadn't finally made the right decision because he'd somehow become smarter than he was yesterday. No, he'd made the right decision because it was the only decision he had left.

What the Lord of Storm's End would do once he fled all the way back to his lands; Varys wasn't sure. He had plenty of little birds that would inform him of Renly's plans as soon as they could find them out though. One thing was certain, however… Varys did not think that Renly was the right fit to sit upon the Iron Throne.

Varys the Younger might not have cared, but Varys the Elder cared a bit too much after all these years. In his old age, the Spider found himself caring about stability. About good, honest sense. About calm and rational leadership. Robert Baratheon might not have been the best King they could have had these past twenty or so years, but he was better than his predecessor, Varys had to give him that.

At the same time, his sons… his sons had worried Varys. The eldest, Joffrey, had been incredibly cruel and downright monstrous, reminding Varys more of the man that Robert had successfully dethroned than anything else. Meanwhile, the younger one, Tommen, had been terribly shy, a consequence of being a target of his elder brother's sadism for so much of his life.

Neither was what Varys considered a fitting King for the Seven Kingdoms and that mattered a lot more to him these days. At some point in the last few decades he had come to care about this damn continent and the people on it. That the Princes had died with their father, while a terrible tragedy, might also turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

Stannis Baratheon might make for a good king… no, actually, by Varys' standards he would make an excellent king. The only real issue was that everyone else did not share Varys' standards. Stannis was so universally disliked by his peers that his own younger brother had immediately began plotting to take the Iron Throne after Robert's death.

Renly… Renly would ultimately make for a mediocre King. Better than Robert but not as good as Stannis in Varys' humble, completely unbiased opinion. And yet, he couldn't help but get ahead of himself.

If he truly wanted to be King, he should have tried calling for a Great Council openly. He should have questioned the veracity of Robert's final words coming on his deathbed when the man was half-burned to death and demanded that the Great Houses of Westeros gather to have a say in who should be the King after Robert. If he really thought he had a chance, put himself before them all as the best possible option.

But of course, Renly knew what Varys knew. His proclivities were enough of an open secret among the Lords of Westeros that no Great Council would ever be likely to make him King. Maybe if it was just him and Stannis and nobody else, but that was where things got so messy, wasn't it? Because it wasn't just Robert's brothers anymore. It was also his hastily legitimized bastard son.

A woman's scream suddenly splits the night air, causing Varys to glance up above him through the stone to where it comes from. The scream was not one of fear or sadness or horror, but rather… anger. Raw, furious rage. As such, Varys knows that Cersei Lannister has just found out that Renly fled the city.

Ser Jaime's death had sent the Queen Dowager into another tailspin. At first, she'd screamed that it was murder… but all signs pointed to the man throwing himself off of the highest ramparts of the Red Keep. There were no signs of a struggle, everything from his sword to his armor to his white tabard had been neatly set aside before he jumped.

The death of one of the three remaining members of the Kingsguard had thrown the city into quite the tizzy. Varys himself suspected he knew why Jaime had done it, even if nobody else seemed to have put two and two together. From what Varys knew though… it seemed likely that they'd finally uncovered the real reason that Jaime Lannister killed the Mad King all those years ago.

After all, it hadn't just been Aerys that Jaime killed that day. It had also been the latest Hand of the King, Wisdom Rossart of the Alchemist's Guild. Who could have commissioned so much wildfire from the Guild? Who could have ordered it all buried beneath the city? And how in the world could the knowledge of its existence died such a quiet death that it took more than twenty years for it to be discovered?

Everyone else tended to forget who the Mad King's last Hand was. But not Varys. Varys didn't forget things. Jaime's death had been the last piece of the puzzle he needed to be absolutely certain of what must have happened. The Kingslayer had broken his oath to save the city from Aerys and Rossart's madness. And then he'd kept it a secret for more than two decades.

In doing so, he'd gotten half of the Royal Family killed. He'd gotten his sister's sons killed. The guilt must have eaten poor Jaime Lannister alive, because in the end, he'd taken his own life.

Funny how fate works sometimes. Cersei had come out of another bout of catatonic shock over Jaime's suicide still under the impression that her latest attempt at poisoning Axel Baratheon up in the Eyrie would have succeeded. When she'd then heard about Renly sending so many of his knights out of the city, she'd decided it was the perfect time to kill him and do away with one of the Baratheon brothers.

Alas, Cersei's intelligence network wasn't nearly as good as Varys', nor had the widowed Queen thought to consult the Master of Whispers. If she had… Varys isn't sure what he would have told her in all honesty. But it mattered not because at the end of the day, Cersei Lannister thought herself a player and not a pawn.

She'd been outmaneuvered by her target though… completely by accident. Renly's flight from the city just so happened to allow him to dodge Cersei's would-be assassination attempt entirely. Judging by the moving torches heading for each of King's Landing's gates, the Queen has now given orders to have the city put in a state of lockdown.

Nobody in or out. Perhaps she hopes to catch Renly hiding somewhere in King's Landing. Or perhaps she fears he discovered her plot (he hadn't) and now tries to cover up her actions and hide the attempt. In the end, it matters little, at least to Varys.

The Queen believes Axel Baratheon to be dead. Littlefinger has yet to hear back from his assassins and perhaps believes much the same. Renly knows that Axel and Lord Arryn still live and are heading towards King's Landing, but he's fled before he could tell anyone.

Only Varys knows everything to do with this truly sordid mess. Only he has all of the pieces of this particularly ghastly puzzle.

And yet… he's told nobody anything. For one, none of them have asked. For two, none of them are his King.

It's a delightfully messy situation they all find themselves in. And yet, Varys' humor is tempered a bit by the strange tales that have begun to surround their would-be King. Axel Baratheon is said to have survived the Strangler, a rare and extremely deadly poison, without breaking a sweat. Likewise, Varys has heard rumors that he saved Lord Arryn's life and did not take a single injury during the ambush by Littlefinger's bandits.

And now there are the strange tales from Renly's surviving men, picked up by Varys' little birds and dutifully written down exactly as they were spoken by those panicked, unmanned knights. Tales of Axel Baratheon moving faster than any man should be able to. Tales of him being a demon who killed half of them before they could even blink.

… Tall tales no doubt, to hide their failure when they should have had twice as many men and the element of surprise to boot. But at the same time, Varys couldn't be sure. He knew better than most that magic was very real. He'd experienced the horrors of magic firsthand, in fact.

He just… wasn't sure where an orphan like Axel Baratheon would have come upon the chance to learn magic, sequestered as he'd been up in the Vale all his life. Even the stories Varys had heard about Axel making in roads with the mountain clans didn't explain it.

Those brutish men who made the crevices and crags of the Mountains of the Moon their home did not have a reputation for profane rituals or dark magics. They were savages who relied on strength of arms and viciousness to carry out their raids on the more civilized people of the Vale, not blood sacrifices or anything like that.

Still, there was an old saying that came to mind as Varys slipped back from the shadowed alcove and back inside, making his way back into the bowels of the Red Keep's hidden passage network. Once was happenstance, twice was coincidence. But three times… three tales regarding Axel Baratheon's strangeness now… that bore further investigation.

Of all the current candidates for the throne, Axel Baratheon held the most esteem in Varys' eyes at the moment. Not because of anything the young man himself had done, but because he had the backing of Jon Arryn. And for all his numerous failures to rein in Robert, as well as his perpetual blindness to Littlefinger's machinations, Lord Arryn had proven to be a somewhat capable administrator.

… But if Axel Baratheon turned out to be a young, aspiring sorcerer, then Varys wasn't sure he would be able to accept that. Not even if it was for the good of the realm.

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A/N: Next time, Axel and Jon make it to King's Landing at long last. Just a couple more chapters and then we'll be done with the first Arc of the story!

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