Chapter 564

"Uncommitted crimes?" Aegor hadn’t expected his bodyguard to come up with such a refined phrase and couldn't help but chuckle. "That’s right—uncommitted crimes. But Harwin, answer me this: do you think the Gifted Army follows my commands with such discipline because they share my ideals, or because they are devoted to me out of love?"

Harwin hesitated for a moment before giving the correct answer: "Neither. It’s because you rule through both reward and terror, forcibly subduing them and leading them southward."

Even he hadn’t anticipated this situation beforehand—how could he blame his subordinates for failing to do so?

"People have limited energy. You’re my captain of the guard. Your mission is to protect my life; that alone is enough. Everyone has their own expertise. The political landscape of the Seven Kingdoms is far more complex than the Gift or the lands beyond the Wall, and human nature is unpredictable. We need to establish intelligence and security divisions as soon as possible. Strength alone is not enough—our soft power must not be a weakness. Draft a preliminary list of personnel for these new departments and present it to me this afternoon."

"Don’t just bask in relief and flattery." Aegor shot his bodyguard a glance. As the man at the helm, he couldn’t afford to be as shocked and smug as his subordinates. In the span of a breath, he had already discarded useless emotions and begun thinking deeper. "From this event, we should at least realize two more critical issues. Have you reflected on them?"

...

"My lord’s foresight is as—"

Aegor shook his head. "Your direction isn’t wrong, but your reasoning is off. This wasn’t your fault."

"Huh?" Harwin was taken aback. "But... there were ten of them in total. Executing them for an uncommitted crime—isn’t that excessive? We could just kill a few key figures as a warning and send the rest back to the Gift as laborers. No need to waste manpower."

"Hmm. I was too inattentive to the lower ranks of the Gifted Army, which allowed outside infiltration to go unnoticed. I will be more vigilant in the future!"

That man—not only had he, in some way, become the queen’s benefactor, but he must have already deduced that Aegor was the true culprit… Yet he was far beyond Aegor’s reach. Aegor could neither deal with him directly nor convince Daenerys to turn against him without cause. In all likelihood, this man would soon inherit Varys’s mantle, becoming Aegor’s greatest potential threat.

To strike first is to seize the advantage; to act second is to suffer the consequences. Some truths are eternal.

Just imagining the alternative sent an uncontrollable chill up his arms.

...

He had become Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch not merely due to his own abilities, but also because the Watch lacked other competent leaders. Both the Night’s Watch and the Gifted Army had long operated in a simplistic, black-and-white environment—friend or foe, nothing in between. Overlooking dangers they had never encountered before was only natural. This time, they were lucky—despite their mistakes, they had avoided paying a fatal price. But if they failed to learn from this, wouldn’t they be no better than beasts?

"I understand," Harwin replied firmly, then hesitated before adding, "There is one more matter to address—the kitchen workers bribed by Mizedan are still in the dungeon. What should be done with them?"

"He wasn’t afraid of death, yet he refused to speak the truth and expose Varys? A man already doomed to die—why maintain his 'victim' status instead of placing the blame where it belonged?"

"Hang them all. Display their bodies in the training yard of Winterfell—wait, no, the dragons are there. Hang them outside the southern gate instead. Make sure every Northern lord traveling north sees them before they enter the castle."

With R’hllor’s blessing, Aegor had been immune to the poison, meaning Varys’s grand scheme had never had a chance of fully succeeding. But immunity to poison did not mean invincibility. Surviving the attempt didn’t guarantee victory. No matter how he considered it, if the eunuch’s grand plan had been carried out on schedule, if the Northern lords and Petyr Baelish had all been poisoned to death during the feast in Winterfell…

"You really don’t think, do you?" Aegor shot him a glance but didn’t actually expect him to grasp the next point. "That Mizedan—he preferred suicide over revealing anything, leaving us entirely reliant on speculation for the details of his and Varys’s plan. And you’re just happy about this? Have you really not realized the implications?"

Aegor shrugged. "I suppose we were lucky. Cancel all follow-up operations, destroy any fabricated evidence we prepared. Since someone has willingly turned this into an unsolvable mystery, let’s not complicate things further."

It wasn’t Harwin’s fault for struggling to understand—without the advantage of Aegor’s transmigrator knowledge, even his own reasoning wouldn’t have skipped so many steps to reach the final conclusion so easily. He had simply known the truth beforehand and then worked backward, giving the illusion of remarkable foresight.

"The queen is furious about the prisoner’s suicide. She’s ordered an investigation into his origins and the mastermind behind him, regardless of the cost. But given the current intelligence, this will likely be an impossible task. Apart from confirming that he 'wasn’t from Westeros,' we know nothing about Mizedan. We don’t even know where he came from. As for that eunuch, Varys, he has no family or friends to question for information." Harwin chuckled wryly. "You originally intended for this to be a perfect mystery, but even though the investigation didn’t follow your script, with the only suspect dead, it still ended up exactly as you wanted. The gods must be on our side."

Even if he had survived, what kind of divine maneuvering would have been required to clear himself of suspicion while also salvaging relations with the North and maintaining Daenerys’s trust?

Relief and lingering fear mixed together in Aegor’s mind as a familiar phrase echoed through his thoughts.

"That’s right. The Gifted Army follows me south not out of loyalty or love, but because they fear me and instinctively obey me. They know defying me means death. If I hesitated over whether a traitor deserved to die, or whether another could be rehabilitated, I’d burn myself out dealing with internal discipline long before we reached King’s Landing." Aegor set down his bowl of soup and decided it was time to reeducate his most trusted lieutenant. "Yes, the Gifted are our people now, and yes, they fought alongside us against the Others. But playing the hero who saved humanity doesn’t change the fact that they are a horde of savages from beyond the Wall. And what is the nature of villains? When you show weakness, they act with cruelty; when you show cruelty, they become obedient. This is true not just in war, but in all aspects of life. You are my captain now, but one day, you’ll lead your own men. Remember this: mercy has no place in command."

His opponent had planned earlier, prepared more thoroughly, and acted with far greater precision. His scheme was superior in every way—except for one crucial mistake: he had moved a day too late. That single misstep had allowed Aegor, impulsive yet ruthless, to upend the board entirely. The grand scheme of a master manipulator had collapsed in an instant, and its architect had been reduced to nothing more than a nameless corpse in history’s river.

"Perhaps he decided that no matter what he did, he wouldn’t escape death, so he chose to spare himself the struggle."

Harwin had clearly reached the same conclusion. If he had once admired Aegor’s decisiveness from a distance, then after realizing how close he had come to being a casualty of his opponent’s scheming, that admiration had transformed into absolute devotion.

...

Harwin no longer bothered questioning Aegor’s logic. He had learned one thing: whatever the Lord Commander said or did—he was always right.

Feigning unconsciousness was dreadfully boring. It was time to get back to work. Politics, after all, could no longer be ignored.