m_findlow

Title: Deadly blooms
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Characters: Varys, Olenna Tyrrell
Author: m_findlow
Rating: M
Length: 500 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt - Intelligence at fffc
Summary: Some flowers in the royal gardens are more deadly than others.

Varys had been busy enjoying the pleasures of the summer gardens as he pondered over the latest tidbits from his little birds. He had a great many souls in his oversized robe pockets, and several who like him, enjoyed taking in the natural beauty of the flowers and ferns from exotic far flung corners of the realm - or at least so they pretended. He knew to whom each and every one of them whispered, or whose conversations they secretly overheard, but all little birds sang when he asked it of them. Gardens such as these were full of birds of all kinds, but only one spider.

When he spotted the Lady Olenna making her way slowly along the path in his general direction, he paused to bow low to her. 'My Lady,' he said. 'What a pleasure it is to have House Tyrrell back in King's Landing,' he simpered.

'The pleasure is all yours, I assure you,' she replied gruffly. 'Were it not for this engagement, I should much prefer to be back in Highgarden.'

'I fear these gardens are not the same without such a lovely flower as you to grace them.'

Olenna scowled at him. 'Save your pithy compliments. My grandchildren may be flowers worthy of being put on display, but I am nothing more than a ragged old weed that some here in King's Landing would be quite content to have pulled up root and stem and done away with. Walk with me if you must. I should like to hear precisely what bed my loveliest flower is being planted into.'

Varys fell silently into step beside her, his silk slippers making even less sound than her own. 'I am but a simple man,' he replied. 'Some would say not a man at all.'

Olenna snorted at the reply. 'Codswallop. Don't insult my intelligence, Lord Varys. You are a member of the King's Small Council. You have eyes and ears in every hall. You are smarter than most and less conceited than that miserable Littlefinger.'

Varys did not hum nor nod his head in agreement. 'I take it then that I am not the first to whom you have posed this very same question.'

'You are not,' Olenna replied, as if the matter were of no consequence. 'I had thought to get the answers I wanted from the Stark girl, but she has proven to be a uselessly stalwart defender of that horrid creature that sits upon the throne.'

'She has not been raised to play the game,' Varys agreed. 'She learned the hard way the cost of playing only one side.'

'And in doing so saved herself a lot of trouble, 'Olenna replied. 'I should like very much to ensure that Margaery avoid as much of those troubles as possible. She is a clever girl, but still far too cocky to think she will wrap Joffrey around her finger.'

'Yet roses have thorns,' Varys said.

'And the sharpest grow from old wood, not new green stems.'