**Renly's Camp**
Dawn broke pale and cold over Riverrun as Michel and Jon made ready to depart, the two hundred men assembled in the yard already mounted, breath fogging in the early chill. Robb clasped his cousin's forearm one final time before Michel swung up into the saddle, and then the column moved out through the gates, turning east toward the long road to the Eyrie, leaving the great host behind them to finish its own preparations for the march west.
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Many leagues to the south, in a camp that stretched for what seemed like miles across the Reach, Renly Baratheon sat before his own war table, turning a cup of wine slowly in his hands while his army continued its unhurried march toward King's Landing. He was in no rush, and made no secret of it—not while the throne he intended to claim sat weakening by the day, its defenders spread thin and bleeding on fronts they could not hope to hold indefinitely. Let Stannis rage from Dragonstone. Let the lions tear themselves apart in the Riverlands. When Renly finally arrived at the gates of King's Landing, he intended to find them undefended, the fruit ripe and ready to fall into his open hand.
It was into this comfortable calculation that Margaery Tyrell swept into his tent, her expression alive with the particular energy of a woman who had come bearing news too important to wait for proper announcement.
"We have word," she said, settling herself without waiting for invitation. "Michel Arryn has captured Jaime Lannister. Broke the siege of Riverrun entirely—marched an army of twenty thousand men to do it, and won."
Renly's brow lifted with mild interest, though not yet the alarm Margaery seemed to think the news warranted. "The Vale's young lord. I'd heard rumblings, but not the full shape of it."
"There's more." Margaery leaned forward, her voice dropping into something more urgent. "Robb Stark has joined him now, with twenty thousand northern swords, and the Riverlands have raised another fifteen thousand of their own. Falcon, wolf, and fish—the old alliance, reformed, exactly as it stood at the start of Robert's Rebellion." She let that settle a moment before continuing. "Fifty-five thousand men, Renly, marching together as one host. If that alliance turns south once the Lannisters are dealt with, it could decide this entire war before you ever reach the gates of King's Landing."
Renly set down his cup slowly, the ease draining somewhat from his expression as the scale of it sank in. "Then we need them with us, not against us."
"Precisely." Margaery's eyes had already taken on the particular brightness they carried whenever she saw a path others had not yet noticed. "Which is why I think we should offer them an alliance of our own. Properly sealed—not merely words on a raven's leg, but bound the way such things are always bound." She paused, letting the suggestion breathe. "My cousin, Aemma Redwyne. A betrothal to Robb Stark, heir to Winterfell. Bind the Reach to the North by marriage, the way my brother's betrothal already binds you and me. Seventy thousand Tyrell spears standing behind fifty-five thousand of theirs—no force left in Westeros could stand against that, Renly. Not Stannis. Not what remains of the lions once the North is finished with them."
Renly considered this in silence for a long moment, turning the shape of it over the way he turned every offer that arrived wrapped in Tyrell ambition—weighing what it cost him against what it promised in return. Finally he nodded, slow and deliberate. "Send the raven. Offer the betrothal." He paused, something more calculating entering his voice now. "And offer him a seat on my small council, once the throne is mine. A man who breaks armies the way he has earned that much, at the least."
"There's one thing more," Margaery said, and something careful entered her tone now, the tone of a woman preparing to spend more than she wished to. "Winter's coming. The North will need grain before long, more than they can grow themselves in those long, hard seasons. Offer to sell it to them—at forty percent below market price. It costs us dearly in the short term, but it buys something no gold ever could: their gratitude, and their loyalty, freely given rather than merely bought."
Renly's brow lifted at the figure, weighing the cost of it against the alliance it might secure, but he said nothing to argue the point.
Margaery watched him consider it, and behind her composed expression, her mind was already several steps further down the road than either man in that tent yet realized. *Forty percent is a wound, yes—but a small one, against what it purchases.* If this all played out as she intended, if the crown one day rested on her own brow rather than merely near it, she understood well enough that queens paid prices ordinary lords never had to consider. This was simply the first of many.
"I'll see the raven sent within the hour," she said, and rose, already composing the letter in her mind before she'd even reached the tent flap.