-x-x-x- Chapter 11 -x-x-x-

As we rode through the Lion's Mouth, Robert was already looking around with an impressed air about him. When we rode into the Rock proper and he saw the place we Lannister's called home for the first time his jaw dropped into open awe and in a rare moment of empathy he turned to Cersei, who was riding beside him, and said "If I think that King's Landing is a shithole after having lived in Storm's End and the Eyrie then how can you stand it after spending your life living in this?", ending with a broad sweep of his right arm to encompass the whole of Casterly Rock. Cersei, with a much better read on Robert after a ten days in his constant company, drolly said "A crown covers many sins, even ones so grand as having to live in the dung heap that is King's Landing."

He let out a booming laugh before saying "True enough." to his wife and then turning to me "I think I'll have to make regular visits to your home Lord Lannister, I fear that my darling wife will be homesick and I just couldn't bare to let her go alone."

I gave a small smile and a slight, tilted, nod before saying "It would be our pleasure to host you, Your Grace. But perhaps you would like Cersei to give you the grand tour while I deal with matters."

He agreed and off they went, leaving me to check on the hasty funeral preparations that had started with the arrival of the Raven announcing Tywin's passing.

As I examined the life like statute of Tywin, done in purest marble with hair of gold, eyes of emerald, and clothed in armor of red and yellow gold, the statue was a masterwork that seemed almost life like and with an attention to detail that left me boggled when I thought about this had all been done in a mere week or so. Every relevant artisan in the entire Rock must have been working on it in shifts to get it done on time, but they had managed it.

Turning to Gerion, who had been left behind to oversee the Rock when the rest of us went off the to royal wedding, I gave a nod "It's perfect, and the rest of the funeral?"

"Taken care of, my lord." he replied smoothly.

I gave a slight head shake, "Call me Jaime when its just family Uncle. I understand why father was a stickler for propriety and the formalities after the way grandfather brought our house so low but I have the reputation father built to trade on and so its time to move past the necessities that grandfathers actions forced father to."

He gave a brief smile, "As you wish, Jaime. I still can't believe he is dead though, and of a stroke of all things?", He shook his head in disbelief "I always figured it would be the assassins blade; even if it would have taken a Faceless Man to get through his security after the first few years of his rule."

I blinked, "It was that bad?"

He gave a grim nod "A dozen food tasters in two years, five guards dead from throwing themselves in-front of arrows meant for him, and he took to traveling with no less than five hundred guards every time he was outside of Casterly Rock or Lannisport after the third time his party ran into suspiciously well equipped, and skilled, "bandits" on the road.

"We ended up purging most of the servants in the Rock and replacing them, so many spies got in in my fathers time that we had to restart from scratch."

I blinked again, never having heard about all of this, and said "What caused the assassination attempts to stop?"

Gerion gave a bitter laugh "My brother made it a policy to have a standing order with the Faceless Men; a hundred thousand Golden Dragons for them every time they gave the gift to one who ordered the assassination of any Lannister. He put ten million on deposit with the Iron Bank and simply told them to pay every time a Faceless Man came to the bank and reported the contract honored."

I choked in surprise before finally getting out "Father simply trusted them enough to authorize payment without even asking him? Much less showing proof?"

"Aye, let that be a lesson to your Jaime; never doubt the honor of the Faceless Men for they are as honest as death and would never cheat a contract."

I gave a nod of understanding, "Any other stories I haven't heard?"

He chuckled "Oh plenty, you never really knew him before your mother died and when she passed she took his heart to the Stranger with her. Your father was always a hard man, but before that it was because he had to be and not because he chose to be. Her passing...well if Joanna had still been alive then Princess's Elia and Rhaenys and Prince Aegon would have survived."

"I see, I assume that nothing that can't wait occurred while I was in King's Landing?" I said, changing the subject.

"No, with everyone who was anyone off at the wedding things have been quiet. Your projects are coming along nicely though, although it's a pity that my brother died before he could find out about your "Sparrow School"; I was waiting to laugh my ass off at his reaction, even had a bet with Genna that he would out right splutter at least thrice." he replied.

I chuckled "Yeah, that was a conversation I was putting off as long as possible. Personally, I figure that Kevan is in my Solar demanding an explanation before the nights out."

As it turned out, I was wrong. He showed up barely past sunrise as I was just getting to work on the backlog of paper.

He stormed in and barely waiting for the door closed he spat out "WHY IS THE ROCK PLAYING HOST TO A WHORE SCHOOL?"

I leaned back, again thinking that I really needed to talk to that carpenter, and steepled my fingers "Ah, took you longer than I expected to hear about the Sparrow School. Personally I figured you would have stormed in last night."

Ignoring my response he barked out, clearly angry, "ANSWER THE QUESTION!"

The smile on my face dropped and I pointed imperiously at the supplicants chair before my desk, my voice in full command tone as I ordered "Sit. Down."

His ass was in the seat before he even seemed to realize that he had moved, years of ingrained obedience to Tywin carrying over. I gave a nod once he was seated and continued "Now Uncle, I trust you more than anyone save my brother and, perhaps, my sister and I want you to question me, to debate with me in council, to point out flaws in my reasoning or plans, and even to privately tell me when you think I am being a fucking idiot. That being said, I expect you to remain respectful at all times. Formality you can do away with, at least when it is just family, but I am the Lord of our House and you will treat me as such. Am I understood?"

He flinched slightly and, after I asked my question, nodded his head and gave a full salute as he said "Yes, My Lord."

Waving a hand in a throwing away gesture I gave a slight nod of my own "Good, I trust we won't have to repeat this conversation in the future. As for the Sparrow School, our houses biggest weakness is our information network. Oh, through Pycelle we see much of what the Maester's collect but our own spies are woefully lacking in both numbers and quality.

"Cersei being queen gives us the opportunity to easily fill the Red Keep with our own agents, my goal is to have every servant and staff member one of ours within the next three years. Everyone of them trained in all of the techniques needed to gather information, and detect others agents. The women will all be beautiful and skilled between the sheets, and few men can keep secrets with their dick in a women's mouth; especially if she is trained in how to extract those secrets.

"That is the direct, immediate, benefit to us. More pragmatically, Robert loves his whores and won't give them up now that he is married. You know it, I know it, Cersei knows it. That being the case, we bring him whores who are under out control, who we can ensure are clean of the pox, and who we can keep dosed with moon tea. Keeping him in the palace and with no reason to visit the capitals brothels will also greatly reduce the inevitable rumors about how he is cheating on Cersei.

"In the longer term, I plan on having our Sparrows in every lords household and controlling every brothel in the Seven Kingdoms. With you as Master of Laws and in control of the Gold Cloaks it should be trivial to take over all the ones in King's Landing and from there we can simply grow naturally, fertilized with our gold and the odd bit of direct action. I intend to have it become known, to those in the right places, that Tyrion has decided with fathers death to spit on his grave by becoming the whoremaster of King's Landing. Of course, what no one but a select few will know is that he is our House's Master of Whispers."

Finishing my explanation I waited with baited breath to hear his response. "Fine, fine, I'll grant it makes sense purely pragmatically. But you want us to become known as a house whose heir is a whoremaster? They will see it as great weakness on your part that you can't rein in your brother and in turn our house will loose much of the respect that your father spent his entire life regaining."

"Respect is both a currency and a tool, nothing more and nothing less. If getting a decent network of spies and informers demands I loose some respect as its coin then I will gladly pay the bill. And if anyone should be too disrespectful too loudly then I shall remind them that I am my fathers son and the bards will need to be paid to write a companion song to the Rain's of Castamere.", as I spoke the third sentence my eyes went hard as steel and my voice so cold it could freeze helium.

Kevan flinched slightly at the tone "As you say, but I assume you don't plan to rely entirely on whores for your information network?"

I chuckled, "Of course not. We will set up some of the better male Sparrows as traders, merchants, and artisans and make it a point to pay merchants and traders across the Kingdoms for information; perhaps fronted with the appearance of a merchant house in the free cities. With control over brothels the breadth of the realm it will be easy for our men to visit and pass along the information without anyone becoming suspicious."

He gave a nod of understanding, if not total agreement with my idea, "Fine, I see that you have made up your mind on this. Any other plans that I should know about?"

A shrug "Assuming the group I have designing a ship produce a satisfactory result, I plan on totally rebuilding our navy and building the largest trade fleet in the known world. I also plan on emulating the Iron Bank and setting up a Bank of the Westerlands, with Tyrion as its Chairman, and re-ordering how the whole of the realm thinks of finance. Then there is my plan to rebuild the army to be even more professional and maintain that army by renting units out as mercenaries and guards both in Westeros and in Essos. Then there is digging a channel between Seagard and the Green Fork, and making that passable for barges all the way down to the Bay of Crabs; I figure that you can ship me all the smallfolk removed from Flea Bottom as a result of that little rebuilding project we talked about at the wedding and I can use them as the work force. And assuming that proves viable and I can get Ned Stark to play along, I want to dig another passage from the Fever all the way to the Bite, passing through Moat Cailin, and dredge the Fever so that the whole thing is big enough for even the largest trading vessels.

"That's all just for starters, but the rest can wait until later."

He spluttered as I blithely listed off half a dozen major projects - each one of which would have been considered incredibly ambitious - and ended with the note that this was only part of the list.

Kevan went to speak but thought better of it, took a deep breath, let it out, and then said "I assume we will be discussing all of this later with the rest of your advisers?"

A nod "I plan on getting Robert off hunting for a day or two once the funeral is over with tomorrow and was going to have a meeting with you, Gerion, Tyrion, Cersei, and Genna where I lay it all out in much more detail and get your opinions. Although I am going to be rebuilding the army, when I was in the Kingsguard I spent most of my free time reading every book in the royal library talking about military tactics, strategy, and units. I know war and I know how to make our army far more capable.

"The rest? Well I'm pretty convinced of at least the basic ideas but am a lot hazier on the details and feasibility."

After a few minutes of small talk he left and I got back to work for another hour or so before leaving to prepare for the funeral.

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