The Spider (1)

In his growing paranoia, Aerys no longer trusted his son, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, his wife, Queen Rhaella Targaryen, or his Hand of the King, Lord Tywin Lannister. Varys was brought to Aerys's court at some point after the death of Lord Steffon Baratheon in 278 AC. As a spymaster in King's Landing, Varys's influence grew with Aerys's increasing paranoia. According to Ser Barristan Selmy, "the rot in King Aerys's reign began with Varys". Varys was always quick to point out any traitors Aerys might have missed. He used the crown's gold to create his spy network, who he called his "little birds". Varys furthermore mastered the secret passages within the Red Keep.

Right know Varys was at his strongest and most influential point at any time, even in the world without Victor. He would never have as much deterrence than now, with the trust of a Mad King that is fearing anyone around him except for Varys.

Victor would be a fool if he tried to intimidate some like the Spider so close to his lair. He never planned to blackmail Varys to begin with. He always thought, at least now, him and Varys were natural allies. No matter how large the spy network was that Varys built for himself, everything still relied on the power of the Targaryen dynasty.

Without this large force protecting him he would get uprooted quickly by his enemies, which he had quite a lof of them. His first and largest enemy would probably be Tywin Lannister, who's relationship with the Aerys started to worsen a lot once he relied on Varies as his eyes and ears.

Both Varys and Victor were allies to the Targaryen dynasty now and Varys would be a fool if he tried to attack a close enemy to the future queen. Furthermore, the drown will rely heavily on the military strength of Dorne in the future and trying to attack the man who has control over the Stepstones, Lys and will marry the oldest daughter of the future Lord Paramount of Dorne would be a truly foolish move without any gain.

And one can say many bad things about Varys, but he is certainly not a fool. On the contrary he is a networking master and would certainly accept an offer for an alliance with House Di Natale if the benefits outweigh the risks.

The Paladin was waiting for his young lord to gather his thoughts before he continued.

"Don't worry my Lord. We specifically planned for any emergency during your stay in the Crownlands. We placed many incendiary bombs close to any location you will visit to distract our enemies. Even in King's Landing distraction bombs are placed.

Even if the Spider decided to attack you for no reason whatsoever, we are sure to safely bring you back to the ships and escort you to Lys.

Any attack on the heir of House Di Natale will cause a large chaos in the Crownlands, without a doubt.

But you don't have to worry too much. Even if the Mad King decided to attack you, he could not really use too much force in King's Landing, if the Targaryen dynasty is not in danger. The crown prince and the king have many problems in the last few weeks and Prince Rhaegar certainly would not attack one of his closest allies and the future close relative of his own fiancé.

And the rest of the noble families would never really use their ace cards to attack the heir of a family that doesn't conflict with them whatsoever. Since the founding of the Athenaeum club and the spread of Penicillin and cloud steel weapons no force in Westeros wants to get on the bad side of the noble families of Lys, especially the influential House Di Natale.

We placed the location for the meeting with the Spider at Castle Stokeworth, will full acceptance of Lady Tanda Stokeworth. She gladly fulfilled our request when she learned about your short stay at Castle Stokeworth and that Victor Di Natale would meet some important people at her house.

Castle Stokeworth is only three quarters of the distance between Rook's Rest and King's Landing. There will be enough room to maneuver once an accident would really happen and we took over full control over any defensive mechanism of Castle Stokeworth."

Oberyn was extremely impressed by the professional attitude of House Di Natale's spy leader. Of course, Victor wanted Oberyn to watch everything right in front of him and get further information just how far the influence of House Di Natale reached. Just being the son-in-law of House Martell was not enough to put them exactly on the same height when negotiating deals. During his first visit to Sunspear and his first meeting with Prince Doran he could feel the arrogance deep in the bones of the old and powerful nobles of Westeros.

If Victor didn't show them some extent of his power and influence in Westeros, he would always have to give in during negotiations in the future. That is one of the reasons why he made so many seemingly unfavorable deals with House Martell in the past.

The impression of House Di Natale in the minds of the large nobles of Westeros could only be changed bit by bit and Victor had enough time and patience to do so. Oberyn wasn't even able to gather too many secret information from his spy network.

Victor described to his four spy leaders in detail information about future spy networks during his time. Something like how the organization should be build up, using different codes to give information, having one-way contacts in the organization and even ideas like a dead mailbox.

Overall, just the organizational structure of his spy network was far ahead of anything the feudal era could come up with, simply because Victor relied on the trial of error of many different generations in his previous life. Just knowing the code name of the spy leader is King's Landing was really not providing too many information to Oberyn. Yet from his expressions Victor could still feel a certain dread, because having control over such a spy and information network made his close friend a little more dangerous to his own family. He wasn't quite sure whether to be grateful that his close ally just got a little stronger in his impression or whether to be fearful because House Martell could never control House Di Natale in the future.