Chapter 179: The Albatross Report

He had spent a lifetime walking a rope between powers. On a keen nose, a flexible mind, and an exact reading of where the profit lay, he had brought House Manderly up out of the pit it had fallen into after the Usurper’s War and back among the first houses of the North, and had made White Harbor richer under his hand than it had ever been under a Stark’s.

This time, beneath the rope, there was no soft sand. There was a drop, and there was fire in it, and there were blades.

Any step at all might be the one that finished them.

“Father.” The study door opened quietly and Ser Wendel Manderly came in.

He was far leaner than his father, having taken his mother’s height, with a sailor’s weathered face and sharp, calculating eyes. He was Lord Wyman’s right hand in commerce and in everything that happened on the water, and one of the very few of the family admitted to its true business.

“Captain Fancourt of the Albatross passed the latest observation through the Black Fish on the third pier.” He kept his voice down and set a tightly rolled sheet of unmarked parchment on the table.

Lord Wyman came upright as fast as his bulk allowed and had it open at once.

Fancourt ran the Albatross Merchant Guild’s house in White Harbor and was one of House Manderly’s most valuable sources of secret intelligence, with threads running into every quarter of the port and beyond it, and with connections to Arthur Greyoak, who stood somewhere behind the Albatross, of a kind that neither Lord Wyman nor the captain had ever described aloud to the other. It was an arrangement that had profited both men for years and that both understood could end in a single afternoon. A report from him would very probably show how far the west’s investigation had come, and, more valuable still, what judgment the west had privately reached about White Harbor, which was a thing no letter from Casterly Rock would ever state plainly.

The report was brief, and the weight of it was enormous.

First, confirmed: the intelligence service of the west and the Trident has opened a full investigation into White Harbor, concentrating on recent abnormal ships and men connected to the Vale. At least three middling harbor officials and two merchants with close Vale trade have been approached, which is to say questioned, or bought.

Second, warning: Lord Arthur’s suspicion of White Harbor is now settled fact, and his hunting parties have entered the Gift, with orders that name both Vale infiltrators and inside men. Lord Mallister’s squadrons have thickened their patrols in the Bite and in the waters off White Harbor, and there are signs of disguised hulls working close in.

Third, assessment: on the attack at Grey Creek Fort, the west has concluded that White Harbor is a key node. Failing proof of innocence or a reasonable account, Lord Arthur will act further, and economic sanction, naval blockade, or the backing of Jon Snow and other northern houses in bringing pressure to bear on White Harbor are none of them excluded.

The text here originated in the author's NovelPhoenix chapter, but the author did not permit its copying.

Fourth, and this is Fancourt’s own opinion rather than his guild’s: the fence-sitting strategy carries extreme risk in this crisis. Every party has run out of patience and every party is now demanding a side. My lord must choose before the storm tears White Harbor apart, and must be prepared to pay whatever the choice costs. Delay and ambiguity will buy the enmity of all of them at once.

Lord Wyman’s face darkened as he read, and darkened further at the end.

The west had moved faster and harder than he had allowed for. Hunting parties in the Gift meant that any man White Harbor had sent to talk with the Vale, or to smooth an infiltrator’s road, could be dead in a ditch by now with his tongue used first. A naval blockade was a hand around the city’s throat. And Fancourt’s closing line went straight into the place where his oldest fear lived: that his caution, his watching, his careful playing of both hands, had been transformed by one night’s fighting at Grey Creek into his greatest vulnerability, and might make House Manderly the one thing every party in the North could agree to be angry about.

“Wendel.” His voice had gone dry. “Our people. Is it cleaned up? Those guests of ours.”

Ser Wendel nodded, his face grave. “After the attack, on your instruction, every form of assistance that could leave a trace was cut. The last few meetings with the Vale’s messengers were at sea or well outside the walls, using one-way methods that cannot be followed back. The harbor records that could be altered have been altered. Where they could not be, the men who kept them are no longer available to be asked. Unless the westermen take one of ours alive, or get testimony out of somebody at the center of this house, hard proof that we had any direct part in the attack will be very difficult to assemble.”

“And that is not enough.” Lord Wyman shook his head, his gaze going back to the two letters. “No proof, but heavy suspicion and an obvious motive. For men in their position that is sometimes sufficient. Jon must steady the North and remove whatever is unstable in it. Arthur Greyoak wants revenge, and deterrence, and a rear he can turn his back on. In the eyes of both of them we are, at this moment, the largest unstable element on the board, and the hidden danger most in need of removing.”

He drew a long breath, and something settled in him. His enormous frame shifted with difficulty in the chair, and he looked up at his son.

“Go. In my name, write replies to Winterfell and to Casterly Rock. Separately.”

Wendel took up pen and paper at the side table, and his father began to dictate, slowly, the way a man lays bricks.

“To Jon Snow. Respectful in wording, sincere in attitude. First: deny categorically any connection whatever between White Harbor and the Vale’s infiltration, and declare ourselves shocked and outraged by the attack on Grey Creek Fort. Second: state that orders have already gone out for a thorough investigation of the port and every trade road, that any man found negligent or derelict will be punished without mercy, and that inspection of all arriving men and goods has been strengthened, above all anything coming from the direction of the Vale. Third: reaffirm House Manderly’s thousand years of loyalty to the Starks and to Winterfell, promise to do everything in our power to keep the supply road to Winterfell open, and offer, in addition, a further sum for the North’s relief and a consignment of supplies to help Lord Jon in the work of holding the country together. Fourth, and carefully: imply that the root of the present crisis lies in the greed and aggression of the Vale and in the improper intervention of the west and the Trident. House Manderly stands ready to unite every loyal northern house under Lord Jon’s leadership against foreign insult, while maintaining the necessary vigilance toward any outside power that might threaten the North’s unity and independence.”

It was a Wyman Manderly letter to the last comma: clear himself, swear loyalty, sweeten it with coin, and in the same breath work a small knife under the west’s ribs, turning Jon’s attention outward and hinting at a partnership founded on northern independence, which was a phrase that could be made to mean almost anything at all.