Carliene Stark

II Chapter 65

"I see you are your father's daughter" the Lord Hand noted.

I looked over at him. "Is that a problem?" I tested.

"Not at all" he assured quickly but calmly. "But he would want his daughter safe and happy don't you think?"

I clenched my jaw. "My father is dead" I reminded him bitterly.

He nodded. "Something we have in common"

All the other circumstances were entirely different though, but i knew there was no need to point that out. "I found out who killed Joffrey" I informed him instead. Now it was his time to look at me expectantly. "It was Olenna" I told him, deciding not to make him wonder any longer.

He did not look surprised and I knew he must have already suspected as much. "It makes sense I suppose" he pointe dout, balancing on his horse. "No one in their right mind would want their granddaughter to be married to someone as cruel as my nephew. And Tommen would have been far easier for Margery to control" 

I frowned in displeasure. "She would have let you be executed for that" I realised, once again having mixed feelings about the old rose. 

"Yes and I doubt she would have lost a single night's sleep over it" he agreed.

I shook my head. "It is not right" 

He gave a small smile. "You are kind for thinking so, my Lady" he told me before tilting his head in a testing manner. "I would have thought you to hold a grudge against Lannisters by now" 

My grip slightly tightened on the reins. "Only some of them" I admitted.

We rode on in silence for a while, following the Roseroad north, seeing the many tracks the Tyrell host had left as they came this way just a few weeks earlier. "It as a good thing you did" Tyrion spoke up again. "...convincing the queen to keeping our prisoners alive"

"Shouldn't that be your task? As her hand?" I tested, maybe a little too sharply.

He did not seem to mind my tone. "Indeed" he agreed. "But she was already on edge about my plans failing so horribly and I feared that if I pushed the subject too harshly she would have accused me of picking favours with my family. So it is good that it came form you" he explained. 

Picking favours with his family, it was a silly thought and one that hadn't occurred to me before. I subtly studied the small Lord from the side as we rode on, realising that trusting him and his intensions somehow had come so naturally to me, even though I felt I had become a rather suspicious person lately. "What exactly happened at Casterly Rock?" I asked him.

He gave a small sigh. "Well they had barricaded themselves inside the castle, just as we would have expected" he began as I tried to think back to the Rock and its layout and visualise the attack. "Luckily the Unsullied were able to enter through the secret tunnels and make quick work of the small forces left behind. Once most of our troops were on land and the ships were left mostly unmanned, the Iron Fleet surprised us, coming from the north and sinking or taking all of the Braavosi fleet" There we had it again, the iron Fleet. It really was growing to be more of a thorn in the eye than anyone would have believed at the start. 

"And the castle was abandoned?"

He nodded. "The castle and the lands surrounding it and many holdfasts of the Lords proud or stupid enough to follow my sister into their doom" he spoke disappointed. "Most of the provisions and nearly all of the gold was gone too. We were left with an empty castle and barren lands, making it very difficult to sustain an army of our size long enough to reestablish some order and some form of governance in the Westerlands"