Fire & Blood

The Lysene Spring and the End of Regency

Peace reigned over King’s Landing for the remainder of that year, marred only by the death of Manfryd Mooton, Lord of Maidenpool and the last of King Aegon’s original regents. His lordship had been failing for some time, never truly having regained his strength after the Winter Fever, so his passing excited little comment. To take his place upon the council, Lord Rowan turned to Ser Corwyn Corbray, Lady Rhaena’s husband. Her sister, Lady Baela, meanwhile returned to Driftmark with Lord Alyn and their daughter. Not long after, Prince Viserys thrilled the court by announcing that the Lady Larra was with child. All of King’s Landing rejoiced.

Beyond the city, however, 134 AC would not be a year to remember fondly. North of the Neck, winter still held the land in its icy fist. At Barrowton, Lord Dustin closed his gates as hundreds of starving villagers gathered beneath his walls. White Harbor fared better, for its port allowed food to be brought in from the south, but prices rose so high that good men began to sell themselves into bondage to slave traders from across the sea so their wives and children might eat, whilst worse men sold their wives and children. Even in the winter town, beneath the very walls of Winterfell, the northmen fell to eating dogs and horses. Cold and hunger carried off a third of the Night’s Watch, and when thousands of wildlings walked across the frozen sea east of the Wall, hundreds more of the black brothers perished in battle.

In the Iron Islands, a savage struggle for power followed upon the death of the Red Kraken. His three sisters and the men they had married seized Toron Greyjoy, the boy upon the Seastone Chair, and put his mother to death, whilst his cousins joined with the lords of Harlaw and Blacktyde to raise up Toron’s half-brother Rodrik, and the men of Great Wyk rallied to a pretender called Sam Salt, who claimed to be descended of the black line.

Their bloody three-way fight had been raging for half a year when Ser Leo Costayne descended upon them with his fleet, landing thousands of Lannister swords and spears on Pyke, Great Wyk, and Harlaw. Lord Oakenfist had refused to be a part of House Lannister’s vengeance upon the ironmen, but the old Sea Lion proved more amenable to Lady Johanna’s entreaties…swayed, mayhaps, by her promise to marry him if he delivered the Iron Islands to her son’s rule. That proved beyond Ser Leo’s power to achieve, however. Costayne died amidst the stony hills of Great Wyk, cut down by the hand of Arthur Goodbrother, and three-quarters of his ships were seized or sunk in those cold grey seas.

Though Lady Johanna’s wish to put every ironman to the sword was frustrated, no man could doubt that the Lannisters had paid their debt by the time the fight was done. Hundreds of longships and fishing boats were burned, with as many homes and villages. The wives and children of the ironborn who had wreaked such havoc on the westerlands were put to the sword wherever they were found. Amongst the slain were nine of the Red Kraken’s cousins, two of his three sisters and their husbands, Lord Drumm of Old Wyk and Lord Goodbrother of Great Wyk, as well as the Lords Volmark and Harlaw of Harlaw, Botley of Lordsport, and Stonehouse of Old Wyk. Thousands more would die of starvation before the year was done, for the Lannisters also carried off many tons of stored grain and salt fish, and despoiled that which they could not carry. Though Toron Greyjoy remained upon the Seastone Chair when his defenders beat off the Lannister assault upon the walls of Pyke, his half-brother Rodrik was taken and brought back to Casterly Rock, where Lady Johanna had him gelded and made him her son’s fool.

Across the width of Westeros, another struggle for succession broke out late in the year 134, when Lady Jeyne Arryn, the Maiden of the Vale, died at Gulltown of a cold that had settled in her chest. Forty years of age, she perished in the Motherhouse of Maris on its stony island in the harbor of Gulltown, wrapped in the arms of Jessamyn Redfort, her “dear companion.” On her deathbed, her ladyship dictated a last testament, naming her cousin Ser Joffrey Arryn as her heir. Ser Joffrey had served her loyally for the past ten years as Knight of the Bloody Gate, defending the Vale against the savage wildlings of the hills.

Ser Joffrey was only a fourth cousin by degree, however. Far closer by blood was Lady Jeyne’s first cousin, Ser Arnold Arryn, who had twice attempted to depose her. Imprisoned after his second failed rebellion, Ser Arnold was now quite mad after long years in the Eyrie’s sky cells and the dungeons under the Gates of the Moon…but his son Ser Eldric Arryn was sane, shrewd, and ambitious, and came forward now to press his father’s claim. Many lords of the Vale rallied to his banners, insisting that long-established laws of inheritance could not be put aside by “the whim of a dying woman.”

A third claimant emerged in the person of one Isembard Arryn, patriarch of the Gulltown Arryns, a still more distant branch of that great house. Having split off from their noble kin during the reign of King Jaehaerys, the Gulltown Arryns had gone into trade and grown rich. Men japed that the falcon on Isembard’s arms was made of gold, and he soon became known as the Gilded Falcon. He used that wealth now, bribing lesser lords to support his claim and bringing sellswords across the narrow sea.

Lord Rowan did what he could to alleviate these woes, commanding the Lannisters to withdraw from the Iron Islands, shipping food to the North, and summoning the Arryn claimants to King’s Landing to present their cases to the regents, but his efforts were largely ineffectual. The Lannisters and the Arryns alike ignored his decrees, and far too little food arrived at White Harbor to alleviate the famine. Though well-liked, neither Thaddeus Rowan nor the boy he served were feared. By year’s end, many at court had begun to whisper that it was not the regents who ruled the realm, but rather the moneychangers of Lys.

Though the court and city still doted on the king’s brother, that clever, gallant boy Viserys, the same could not be said for his Lysene wife. Larra Rogare had taken up residence in the Red Keep with her husband, yet in her heart she remained a lady of Lys. Though fluent in High Valyrian and the dialects of Myr, Tyrosh, and Old Volantis in addition to her own Lysene tongue, Lady Larra made no effort to learn the Common Tongue, preferring to rely upon translators to make her wishes known. Her ladies were all Lyseni, as were her servants. The gowns she wore all came from Lys, even her smallclothes; her father’s ships delivered the latest Lysene fashions to her thrice a year. She even had her own protectors. Lysene swords guarded her night and day, under the command of her brother Moredo and a towering mute from the fighting pits of Meereen called Sandoq the Shadow.

All this the court and kingdom might have come to accept in time, had Lady Larra not also insisted upon keeping her own gods. She would have no part in the worship of the Seven, nor the old gods of the northmen. Her worship was reserved for certain of the manifold gods of Lys: the six-breasted cat goddess Pantera, Yndros of the Twilight who was male by day and female by night, the pale child Bakkalon of the Sword, faceless Saagael, the giver of pain.

Her ladies, her servants, and her guards would join Lady Larra at certain times in performing obeisances to these queer, ancient deities. Cats were seen coming and going from her chambers so often that men began to say they were her spies, purring at her in soft voices of all the doings of the Red Keep. It was even said that Larra herself could transform into a cat, to prowl the gutters and rooftops of the city. Darker rumors soon arose. The acolytes of Yndros could supposedly transform themselves from male to female and female to male through the act of love, and whispers went about that her ladyship oft availed herself of this ability at twilight orgies, so she might visit the brothels on the Street of Silk as a man. And every time a child went missing, the ignorant would look at one another and talk of Saagael’s insatiable thirst for blood.

Even less loved than Larra of Lys were the three brothers who had come with her to King’s Landing. Moredo commanded his sister’s guards, whilst Lotho set about establishing a branch of the Rogare Bank atop Visenya’s Hill. Roggerio, the youngest, opened an opulent Lysene pillow house called the Mermaid beside the River Gate, and filled it with parrots from the Summer Islands, monkeys from Sothoryos, and a hundred exotic girls (and boys) from every corner of the earth. Though their favors cost ten times as much as any other brothel dared to charge, Roggerio never lacked for customers. Great lords and common tradesmen alike spoke of the beauties and wonders to be found behind the Mermaid’s carved and painted doors…including, some said, an actual mermaid. (Almost all that we know of the myriad marvels of the Mermaid comes to us from Mushroom, who alone amongst our chroniclers is willing to confess to visiting the brothel himself on many occasions and partaking of its many pleasures in sumptuously appointed rooms.)

Across the sea, the Daughters’ War finally reached its end. Racallio Ryndoon fled south to the Basilisk Isles with his remaining supporters; Lys, Tyrosh, and Myr divided the Disputed Lands; and the Dornish took dominion over most of the Stepstones. The Myrish suffered the greatest losses in these new arrangements, whilst the Archon of Tyrosh and the Princess of Dorne gained the most. In Lys, ancient houses fell and many a highborn magister was cast down and ruined, whilst others rose up to seize the reins of power. Chief amongst these was Lysandro Rogare and his brother Drazenko, architect of the Dornish alliance. Drazenko’s ties to Sunspear and Lysandro’s to the Iron Throne made the Rogares the princes of Lys in all but name.

By the end of 134 AC, some feared they might soon rule Westeros as well. Their pride and pomp and power became the talk of King’s Landing. Men began to whisper of their wiles. Lotho bought men with gold, Roggerio seduced them with perfumed flesh, Moredo frightened them into submission with steel. Yet the brothers were no more than puppets in the hands of Lady Larra; it was her and her queer Lysene gods who held their strings. The king, the little queen, the young prince…they were only children, blind to what was happening about them, whilst the Kingsguard and the gold cloaks and even the King’s Hand had been bought and sold.

Or so the stories went. Like all such tales, they had some truth to them, well mixed with fear and falsehood. That the Lyseni were proud, grasping, and ambitious cannot be doubted. That Lotho used his bank and Roggerio his brothel to win friends to their cause goes without saying. Yet in the end they differed but little from many of the other lords and ladies of Aegon III’s court, all of them pursuing power and wealth in their own ways. Though more successful than their rivals (for a time, at least), the Lyseni were only one of several factions competing for influence. Had Lady Larra and her brothers been Westerosi, they might have been admired and celebrated, but their foreign birth, foreign ways, and foreign gods made them objects of mistrust and suspicion instead.

Munkun refers to this period as the Rogare Ascendency, but that term was only ever used at Oldtown, amongst the maesters and archmaesters of the Citadel. The people who lived through it called it the Lysene Spring…for spring was indeed a part of it. Early in 135 AC, the Conclave sent forth its white ravens from Oldtown to herald the end of one of the longest and cruelest winters that the Seven Kingdoms had ever known.

Spring is ever a season of hope, rebirth, and renewal, and the spring of 135 AC was no different. The war in the Iron Islands came to an end, and Lord Cregan Stark of Winterfell borrowed a huge sum from the Iron Bank of Braavos to buy food and seed for his starving smallfolk. Only in the Vale did fighting continue. Furious at the refusal of the Arryn claimants to come to King’s Landing and submit their dispute to the judgment of the regents, Lord Thaddeus Rowan sent a thousand men to Gulltown under the command of his fellow regent, Ser Corwyn Corbray, to restore the King’s Peace and settle the matter of succession.

Meanwhile, King’s Landing experienced a period of prosperity such as it had not seen in many years, in no small part thanks to House Rogare of Lys. The Rogare Bank was paying rich returns on all the monies deposited with them, leading more and more lords to entrust the Lyseni with their gold. Trade flourished as well, as ships from Tyrosh, Myr, Pentos, Braavos, and especially Lys crowded the docks along the Blackwater, offloading silks and spices, Myrish lace, jade from Qarth, ivory from Sothoryos, and many other strange and wondrous things from the ends of the earth, including luxuries seldom seen in the Seven Kingdoms before.

Other port towns shared in the bounty; Duskendale, Maidenpool, Gulltown, and White Harbor saw their trade expand as well, as did Oldtown to the south, and even Lannisport upon the sunset sea. On Driftmark, the town of Hull experienced a rebirth. Scores of new ships were built and launched, and Lord Oakenfist’s mother greatly expanded her own trading fleets, and began work on a palatial manse overlooking the harbor that Mushroom dubbed the Mouse House.

Across the narrow sea, Lys itself was prospering under the “velvet tyranny” of Lysandro Rogare, who had taken on himself the style of First Magister for Life. And when his brother Drazenko married Princess Aliandra Martell of Dorne, and was named by her Prince Consort and Lord of the Stepstones, the ascendancy of House Rogare reached its apex. Men began to speak of Lysandro the Magnificent.

During the first quarter of 135 AC, two momentous events were the occasion of great joy throughout the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. On the third day of the third moon of that year, the people of King’s Landing woke to a sight that had not been seen since the dark days of the Dance: a dragon in the skies above the city. Lady Rhaena, at the age of nineteen, was flying her dragon, Morning, for the first time. That first day she circled once around the city before returning to the Dragonpit, but every day thereafter she grew bolder and flew farther.

Only once did Rhaena land Morning inside the Red Keep, however, for not even the best efforts of Prince Viserys could persuade his brother the king to come see his sister fly (though Queen Daenaera was so delighted with Morning that she was heard to say that she wanted a dragon of her own). Shortly thereafter, Morning carried Lady Rhaena across Blackwater Bay to Dragonstone where, as she said, “Dragons and those who ride them are more welcome.”

Less than a fortnight later, Larra of Lys gave birth to a son, Prince Viserys’s firstborn child. The mother was twenty years of age, the father only thirteen. Viserys named the child Aegon after his brother, the king, and placed a dragon’s egg inside his cradle, as had become the custom with all trueborn children of House Targaryen. Aegon was anointed with the seven oils by Septon Bernard in the royal sept, and the bells of the city rang in celebration of his birth. Gifts were sent from every corner of the realm, though none so lavish as those bestowed upon the babe by his Lyseni uncles. In Lys, Lysandro the Magnificent declared a day of feasting in honor of his grandson.

Yet even in the midst of joy, whispers of discontent began to be heard. This new son of House Targaryen had been anointed into the Faith, but soon enough the city heard that his mother meant to have him blessed by her own gods as well, and rumors of obscene ceremonies in the Mermaid and blood sacrifice in Maegor’s Holdfast began to be heard on the streets of King’s Landing. The trouble might have ended there, with talk, but soon thereafter a series of disasters befell the realm and royal family, each following hard upon the heels of the other, until even men who mocked the gods, like Mushroom, began to question whether the Seven had turned against House Targaryen and the Seven Kingdoms in their wroth.

The first omen of the dark times to come was seen on Driftmark, when the dragon’s egg presented to Laena Velaryon upon her birth quickened and hatched. Her parents’ pride and pleasure quickly turned to ash, however; the dragon that wriggled from the egg was a monstrosity, a wingless wyrm, maggot-white and blind. Within moments of hatching, the creature turned upon the babe in her cradle and tore a bloody chunk from her arm. As Laena shrieked, Lord Oakenfist ripped the “dragon” off her, flung it to the floor, and hacked it into pieces.

The news of this monstrous dragonbirth and its bloody aftermath were greatly troubling to King Aegon, and soon led to angry words between His Grace and his brother. Prince Viserys still had his own dragon’s egg. Though it had never quickened, the prince had kept it with him throughout his years of exile and captivity, for it held great meaning for him. When Aegon commanded that no dragon’s eggs were to be allowed in his castle, Viserys grew most wroth. Yet the king’s will prevailed, as it must; the egg was sent to Dragonstone, and Prince Viserys refused to speak to King Aegon for a moon’s turn.

His Grace was much dismayed by the quarrel with his brother, Mushroom tells us, but what happened next left him bereft and devastated. King Aegon was enjoying a quiet supper in his solar with his little queen, Daenaera, and his friend Gaemon Palehair and the dwarf was entertaining them with a silly song about a bear that drank too much, when the bastard boy began to complain of a cramping in his gut. “Run fetch Grand Maester Munkun,” the king commanded Mushroom. By the time the fool returned with the Grand Maester, Gaemon had collapsed and Queen Daenaera was moaning, “My belly hurts too.”

Gaemon had long served as King Aegon’s food taster as well as his cupbearer, and Munkun soon declared that both he and the little queen were the victims of poisoning. The Grand Maester gave Daenaera a powerful purgative, which most like saved her life. She retched uncontrollably throughout the night, wailing and writhing in pain, and was too drained and weak to leave her bed the next day, but she was cleansed. Munkun came too late for Gaemon Palehair, however. The boy died within the hour. Born a bastard in a brothel, “King Cunny” had reigned briefly over his kingdom on a hill during the Moon of Madness, seen his mother put to death, and served Aegon III as cupbearer, whipping boy, and friend. He was thought to be but nine years old at his death.

Afterward Grand Maester Munkun fed what remained of the supper to a cage of rats, and determined that the poison had been baked into the crust of the apple tarts. Fortunately, the king had never been especially fond of sweets (nor of any other food, if truth be told). The knights of the Kingsguard at once descended to the Red Keep’s kitchens and took a dozen cooks, bakers, scullions, and serving girls into custody, delivering them to George Graceford, the Lord Confessor. Under torture, seven confessed to attempting to poison the king…but each account differed from the next, there was no agreement on where they got the poison, and none of the captives correctly named the dish that had been poisoned, so Lord Rowan reluctantly dismissed their confessions as “not fit to wipe my arse with.” (The Hand was in a black state even before the poisoning, for he had only recently suffered his own personal tragedy when his young wife, the Lady Floris, died in childbirth.)

Though the king had spent less time with his cupbearer after his brother’s return to Westeros, Gaemon Palehair’s death nonetheless left Aegon inconsolable. One small good came from it, for it helped to heal the rift between the king and his brother Viserys, who broke his stubborn silence to comfort His Grace in his grief, and sat with him by the queen’s bedside. That proved little enough, however. Thereafter it was Aegon who was silent, for his old gloom had settled over him once again, and he seemed to lose all interest in his court and kingdom.

The next blow fell far from King’s Landing, in the Vale of Arryn, when Ser Corwyn Corbray ruled that Lady Jeyne’s will must prevail and declared Ser Joffrey Arryn the rightful Lord of the Eyrie. When the other claimants proved intransigent and refused to accept his ruling, Ser Corwyn imprisoned the Gilded Falcon and his sons and executed Eldric Arryn, yet somehow Ser Eldric’s mad father, Ser Arnold, eluded him and fled to Runestone, where he had served as a squire in his boyhood. Gunthor Royce, known in the Vale as the Bronze Giant, was an old man, as stubborn as he was fearless; when Ser Corwyn arrived to winkle Ser Arnold out of his sanctuary, Lord Gunthor donned his ancient bronze armor and rode out to confront him. Words grew heated, turned to curses, then to threats. When Corbray drew on Lady Forlorn—whether to strike at Royce or merely threaten him will never be known—a crossbowman on Runestone’s battlements loosed a quarrel and pierced him through the breast.

Striking down one of the king’s regents was an act of treason, akin to attacking the king himself. Moreover, Ser Corwyn had been uncle to Quenton Corbray, the powerful and martial Lord of Heart’s Home, as well as the beloved husband to Lady Rhaena the dragonrider, good-brother to her twin, Lady Baela, and thus by marriage kin to Alyn Oakenfist. With his death, the flames of war sprang up anew across the Vale of Arryn. The Corbrays, Hunters, Craynes, and Redforts rallied in support of Lady Jeyne’s chosen heir, Ser Joffrey Arryn, whilst the Royces of Runestone and Ser Arnold, the Mad Heir, were joined by the Templetons, Tolletts, Coldwaters, and Duttons, along with the lords of the Fingers and Three Sisters. Gulltown and House Grafton remained staunch in its support of the Gilded Falcon, despite his captivity.

The answer from King’s Landing was not long in coming. Lord Rowan sent one last flight of ravens to the Vale, commanding those lords supporting the Mad Heir and Gilded Falcon to lay down their arms at once, lest they provoke “the Iron Throne’s displeasure.” When no reply was forthcoming, the Hand took counsel with Oakenfist and made plans to bring the rebellion to an end by force.

With the coming of spring, it was thought that the high road through the Mountains of the Moon would once again be passable. Five thousand men set out up the kingsroad, under the command of Ser Robert Rowan, Lord Thaddeus’s eldest son. Levies from Maidenpool, Darry, and Hayford swelled their numbers on the march, and once across the Trident they were joined by six hundred Freys and a thousand Blackwoods under Lord Benjicot himself, making them nine thousand strong entering the mountains.

A second attack was launched by sea. Rather than make use of the royal fleet commanded by Ser Gedmund Peake the Great-Axe, his predecessor’s uncle, the Hand turned to House Velaryon for the required ships. Oakenfist would command the fleet himself, whilst his wife, Lady Baela, went to Dragonstone to comfort her widowed twin (and incidentally make certain that Lady Rhaena did not attempt to avenge her husband’s death herself on Morning).

The army Lord Alyn was to carry to the Vale would be commanded by Lady Larra’s brother Moredo Rogare, Lord Rowan announced. That Lord Moredo was a fearsome fighter, none could doubt; tall and stern, with white-blond hair and blazing blue eyes, he looked the very image of a warrior of Old Valyria, men said, and bore a longsword of Valyrian steel he called Truth.

His prowess notwithstanding, however, the Lyseni’s appointment was deeply unpopular. Whilst his brothers, Roggerio and Lotho, were both fluent in the Common Tongue, Moredo’s grasp of the language was limited at best, and the wisdom of putting a Lyseni in command of an army of Westerosi knights was widely questioned. Lord Rowan’s enemies at court—amongst them many of the men who owed their offices to Unwin Peake—were quick to say that this was proof of what they had been whispering for half a year, that Thaddeus Rowan had sold himself to Oakenfist and the Rogares.

Such muttering might not have mattered had the assaults upon the Vale been successful. They were not. Though Oakenfist easily swept aside the Gilded Falcon’s sellsails to capture the harbor at Gulltown, the attackers lost hundreds of men taking the port walls by storm, and thrice as many during the house-to-house fighting that followed. After his translator was slain during the battle in the streets, Moredo Rogare had great difficulty communicating with his own troops; the men did not understand his commands, and he did not understand their reports. Chaos ensued.

At the other end of the Vale, meanwhile, the high road through the mountains proved far less open than had been assumed. Ser Robert Rowan’s host found itself struggling through deep snows in the higher passes, slowing their advance to a crawl, and time and time again their baggage train came under attack by the savages native to those mountains (descendants of the First Men driven from the Vale by the Andals thousands of years before). “They were skeletons in skins, armed with stone axes and wooden clubs,” Ben Blackwood said later, “but so hungry and so desperate that they could not be deterred, no matter how many we killed.” Soon the cold and the snow and the nightly attacks began to take a toll.

High in the mountains, the unthinkable happened one night as Lord Robert and his men huddled about their campfires. In the slopes above, a cave mouth was visible from the road, and a dozen men climbed up to see if it might offer them shelter from the wind. The bones scattered about the mouth of the cave might have given them pause, yet they pressed on…and roused a dragon.

Sixteen men perished in the fight that followed, and threescore more suffered burns before the angry brown wyrm took wing and fled deeper into the mountains with “a ragged woman clinging to its back.” That was the last known sighting of Sheepstealer and his rider, Nettles, recorded in the annals of Westeros…though the wildlings of the mountains still tell tales of a “fire witch” who once dwelled in a hidden vale far from any road or village. One of the most savage of the mountain clan came to worship her, the storytellers say; youths would prove their courage by bringing gifts to her, and were only accounted men when they returned with burns to show that they had faced the dragon woman in her lair.

Their encounter with the dragon was not the last peril encountered by Ser Robert’s host. By the time they reached the Bloody Gate, a third of them had perished in a wildling attack or died from cold or hunger. Amongst the dead was Ser Robert Rowan, crushed by a falling boulder when the clansmen toppled half a mountainside down upon the column. Bloody Ben Blackwood assumed command upon his death. Though still a half year shy of manhood, Lord Blackwood by this time had as much experience of war as men four times his age. At the Bloody Gate, the entrance to the Vale, the survivors found food, warmth, and welcome…but Ser Joffrey Arryn, the Knight of the Bloody Gate and Lady Jeyne Arryn’s chosen successor, saw at once that the crossing had left Blackwood’s men unfit for battle. Far from being a help to him in his war, they would be a burden.

Even as the fighting in the Vale of Arryn continued, the promise of the Lysene Spring suffered another grievous blow hundreds of leagues to the south, with the near-simultaneous demise of Lysandro the Magnificent in Lys and his brother Drazenko in Sunspear. Though the narrow sea lay between them, the two Rogares died within a day of each other, both under suspicious circumstances. Drazenko perished first, choking to death upon a piece of bacon. Lysandro drowned when his opulent barge sank whilst carrying him from his Perfumed Garden back to his palace. Though a few would insist that their deaths were unfortunate accidents, many more took the manner and timing of their passings as proof of a plot to bring down House Rogare. The Faceless Men of Braavos were widely believed to have been responsible for the killings; no more subtle assassins were known to exist anywhere in the wide world.

But if indeed the Faceless Men had done these deeds, at whose bidding had they acted? The Iron Bank of Braavos was suspected, as was the Archon of Tyrosh, Racallio Ryndoon, and various merchant princes and magisters of Lys known to have chafed under the “velvet tyranny” of Lysandro the Magnificent. Some went so far as to suggest that the First Magister had been removed by his own sons (he had sired six trueborn sons, three daughters, and sixteen bastards). So skillfully had the brothers been removed, however, that not even the fact of murder could be proved.

None of the offices through which Lysandro exercised his dominion over Lys were hereditary. His crab-eaten corpse had scarce been dredged up from the sea before his old enemies, false friends, and erstwhile allies began the struggle to succeed him.

Amongst the Lyseni, it is truly said, wars are fought with plots and poisons rather than with armies. For the rest of that bloody year, the magisters and merchant princes of Lys performed a deadly dance, rising and falling almost fortnightly. Oft as not their falls were fatal. Torreo Haen was poisoned with his wife, his mistress, his daughters (one being the maid whose wisp of a gown had caused such scandal at the Maiden’s Day Ball), siblings, and supporters at the feast he held to celebrate his elevation to first magister. Silvario Pendaerys was stabbed through the eye leaving the Temple of Trade, whilst his brother Pereno was garroted in a pillow house as a slave girl pleasured him with her mouth. The gonfaloniere Moreo Dagareon was slain by his own elite guards, and Matteno Orthys, a fervent worshipper of the goddess Pantera, was mauled and partly devoured by his prized shadowcat when its cage was unaccountably left open one night.

Though Lysandro’s children could not inherit his offices, his palace went to his daughter Lysara, his ships to his son Drako, his pillow house to his son Fredo, his library to his daughter Marra. All of his offspring partook of the wealth represented by the Rogare Bank. Even his bastards received shares, albeit fewer than those alloted to his trueborn sons and daughters. Effective control of the bank, however, was vested in Lysandro’s eldest son, Lysaro…of whom it was truly written, “he had twice his father’s ambition and half his father’s ability.”

Lysaro Rogare aspired to rule Lys, but had neither the cunning nor the patience to spend decades in the slow accumulation of wealth and power, as his father Lysandro had. With rivals dying all around him, Lysaro first moved to secure his own person by buying one thousand Unsullied from the slavers of Astapor. These eunuch warriors were renowned as the finest foot soldiers in the world, and were moreover trained to absolute obedience, so their masters need never fear defiance or betrayal.

Once surrounded by these protectors, Lysaro secured his selection as gonfaloniere, winning the commons with lavish entertainments and the magisters with bribes larger than any of them had ever seen before. When these expenditures exhausted his personal fortune, he began to divert gold from the bank. His intent, as he later revealed, was to provoke a short, victorious war with Tyrosh or Myr. As gonfaloniere, the glory of conquest would accrue to him, enabling him to win the office of first magister. By sacking Tyrosh or Myr, he would gain sufficient gold to restore the funds he had taken from the bank and leave him the richest man in Lys.

It was a fool’s scheme, and it was quickly undone. Legend claims it was men in the hire of the Iron Bank of Braavos who first began suggesting that the Rogare Bank might be unsound, but regardless of who started it, such talk was soon heard all over Lys. The city’s magisters and merchant princes began to demand the return of their deposits; a few at first, then more and more, until a river of gold was pouring from Lysaro’s vaults…a river that soon enough ran dry. By that time Lysaro himself was gone. Faced with ruin, he fled Lys in the dead of night with three bed slaves, six servants, and a hundred of his Unsullied, abandoning his wife, his daughters, and his palace. Understandably alarmed, the city magisters moved at once to seize the Rogare Bank, only to discover that naught remained but a hollow shell.

The fall of House Rogare was swift and brutal. Lysaro’s brothers and sisters claimed to have played no part in the despoiling of the bank, but many doubted their claims of innocence. Drako Rogare escaped to Volantis on one of his galleys whilst his sister Marra fled to the temple of Yndros in man’s garb and there claimed sanctuary, but all their siblings were seized and put on trial, even the bastards. When Lysara Rogare protested, “I did not know,” Magister Tigaro Moraqos replied, “You should have,” and the mob roared its approval. Half the city had been ruined.

Nor was the damage confined to Lys. As word of the fall of the House of Rogare reached Westeros, lords and merchants alike soon realized the coin they had entrusted to the House of Rogare was lost. In Gulltown, Moredo Rogare moved swiftly, yielding up his command to Alyn Oakenfist and taking ship for Braavos. Lotho Rogare was arrested by Ser Lucas Leygood and his gold cloaks as he attempted to depart King’s Landing; all his letters and ledgers were seized, along with every scrap of gold and silver remaining in the vaults atop Visenya’s Hill. Meanwhile, Ser Marston Waters of the Kingsguard descended on the Mermaid with two of his Sworn Brothers and fifty guardsmen. The patrons of the brothel were driven into the street, many of them naked (Mushroom was amongst those so rousted, by his own admission), whilst Lord Roggerio was marched at spearpoint through a jeering crowd. At the Red Keep, the brothel keeper and the banker both were imprisoned in the Tower of the Hand; their kinship to Prince Viserys’s wife spared them the horrors of the black cells, for the nonce.

At first it was widely assumed that the Hand had ordered their arrest. With Ser Corwyn’s death in the Vale, only Lord Rowan and Grand Maester Munkun remained as regents. This misapprehension lasted only a few hours, for that very evening Lord Rowan himself joined the Rogares in captivity. Nor did the Fingers, the Hand’s supposed protectors, do aught to defend him. When Ser Mervyn Flowers entered the council chambers to take his lordship into custody, Tessario the Tiger ordered his men to stand aside. The only resistance was that offered by Lord Rowan’s squire, who was quickly overwhelmed. “Spare the boy,” Lord Thaddeus pleaded, and they did…but not until Flowers had cut off one of the lad’s ears, “to teach him not to bare steel to the Kingsguard.”

The list of those to be seized and held for trial as suspected traitors did not end there. Three of Lord Rowan’s cousins and one of his nephews were also arrested, along with twoscore grooms, servants, and knights retainer in his service. All were taken unawares and yielded meekly. But when Ser Amaury Peake approached Maegor’s Holdfast with a dozen men-at-arms, he found Viserys Targaryen himself upon the drawbridge, a battleaxe in hand. “It was a heavy axe, the prince a somewhat spindly boy of three-and-ten,” the fool Mushroom tells us. “One doubted that the lad could even lift that axe, much less wield it.”

“If you are come to take my lady wife, ser, turn and go,” the young prince said, “for you shall not pass whilst I still stand.”

Ser Amaury found his show of defiance more amusing than threatening. “Your lady is wanted for questioning in connection with the treason of her brothers,” he told the prince.

“And who is it who wants her?” the prince demanded.

“The Hand of the King,” Ser Amaury replied.

“Lord Rowan?” asked Viserys.

“Lord Rowan has been removed from office. Ser Marston Waters is the new King’s Hand.”

At that moment Aegon III himself stepped from the holdfast gate to stand beside his brother. “I am the king,” His Grace reminded them, “and I never chose Ser Marston for my Hand.”

Aegon’s intervention took Ser Amaury aback, Mushroom tells us, but after a moment’s hesitation he said, “Your Grace is still a boy. Until you come of age, Sire, your leal lords must make such choices for you. Ser Marston was chosen by your regents.”

“Lord Rowan is my regent,” the king insisted.

“No longer,” said Ser Amaury. “Lord Rowan betrayed your trust. His regency is at an end.”

“By whose authority?” demanded Aegon.

“The Hand of the King,” said the white knight.

Prince Viserys laughed at that (for King Aegon never laughed, to Mushroom’s dismay) and said, “The Hand names the regent and the regent names the Hand, and round and round and round we dance…but you shall not pass, ser, nor shall you touch my wife. Begone, or I promise you, every man of you shall die here.”

Then Ser Amaury Peake ran short of patience. He could not allow himself to be balked by two boys, one of fifteen and one of thirteen, the elder unarmed. “Enough,” he said and ordered his men to move the boys aside. “Be gentle with them, and see that they come to no harm at our hands.”

“This is on your head, ser,” Prince Viserys warned. He drove his axe deep into the wood of the drawbridge, scampered back, and said, “Go no farther than the axe, or you will die.” The king took him by the shoulder and drew him back into the safety of the holdfast, and a shadow stepped onto the drawbridge.

Sandoq the Shadow had come from Lys with Lady Larra, a gift from her father the Magister Lysandro. Black of skin and black of hair, he stood almost seven feet tall. His face, which he oft kept hidden behind a black silk veil, was a mass of thin white scars, and his lips and tongue had been removed, leaving him both mute and hideous to look upon. It was said of him that he had been the victor of a hundred fights in the death pits of Meereen, that he had once torn out the throat of a foe with his teeth after his sword had shattered, that he drank the blood of the men he killed, that in the pits he had slain lions, bears, wolves, and wyverns with no weapon but the stones he found upon the sands.

Such tales grow in the telling, to be sure, and we cannot know how much of this, if any, is to be believed. Though Sandoq could not read or write, Mushroom tells us he was fond of music, and would oft sit in the shadows of Lady Larra’s bedchamber playing sweet sad notes on a queer stringed instrument of goldenheart and ebony that stood near as tall as he did. “I could sometimes make the lady laugh, though she did not understand more than a few words of our tongue,” the fool says, “but the Shadow’s playing always made her weep, and strange to say she liked that better.”

It was a different sort of music that Sandoq the Shadow played at the gates of Maegor’s Holdfast, as Ser Amaury’s guardsmen rushed at him with sword and spear. That night his chosen instruments were a tall black shield of nightwood, boiled hide, and iron, and a great curved sword with a dragonbone hilt whose dark blade shone in the torchlight with the distinctive ripples of Valyrian steel. His foes howled and cursed and shouted as they came at him, but the Shadow made no sound save with his steel, sliding through them silent as a cat, his blade whistling left and right and up and down, drawing blood with every cut, slashing through their mail as if they had been clad in parchment. Mushroom, who claims to have seen the battle from the roof above, testifies that “it did not look so much like a swordfight as like a farmer reaping grain. With every stroke more stalks would topple, but these stalks were living men who screamed and cursed as they fell.” Ser Amaury’s men did not lack for courage, and some lived long enough to strike blows of their own, but the Shadow, always moving, caught their blades upon his shield, then used that shield to shove them backward, off the bridge onto the hungry iron spikes below.

Let this be said of Ser Amaury Peake: his dying did not disgrace the Kingsguard. Three of his men were dead upon the drawbridge and two more were twisting on the spikes below by the time Peake slid his own blade from its scabbard. “He was clad in white scale armor under his white cloak,” Mushroom tells us, “but his helm was openface and he had not brought a shield, and sorely did Sandoq make him answer for these lacks.” The Shadow made a dance of it, the fool says; betwixt each fresh wound he dealt Ser Amaury, he would kill one of his remaining minions before turning back to the white knight. Yet Peake fought on with stubborn valor, and near the end, for half a heartbeat, the gods gave him his chance when the last of the guards somehow got his hand around Sandoq’s sword, and ripped it from the Shadow’s grasp before he went tumbling off the bridge. From his knees, Ser Amaury staggered back to his feet and charged his unarmed foe.

Sandoq tore Viserys’s battleaxe from the wood where the prince had buried it and split Ser Amaury’s head and helm in half from crest to gorget. Leaving the corpse to topple onto the spikes, the Shadow paused long enough to shove the dead and dying from the drawbridge before retreating inside Maegor’s Holdfast, whereupon the king commanded the bridge to be raised, the portcullis lowered, and the gates barred. The castle-within-the-castle stood secure.

And so it would remain for eighteen days.

The rest of the Red Keep was in the hands of Ser Marston Waters and his Kingsguard, whilst beyond the castle walls Ser Lucas Leygood and his gold cloaks kept a firm grip on King’s Landing. Both of them presented themselves before the holdfast the next morning, to demand that the king leave his sanctuary. “Your Grace does us wrong to think we mean him harm,” Ser Marston said, as the corpses of the men Sandoq had slain were brought up from the moat. “We acted only to protect Your Grace from false friends and traitors. Ser Amaury was sworn to protect you, to give his own life for yours if need be. He was your leal man, as I am. He did not deserve such a death, at the hands of such a beast.”

King Aegon was unmoved. “Sandoq is no beast,” he answered from the battlements. “He cannot speak, but he hears and he obeys. I commanded Ser Amaury to be gone, and he refused. My brother warned him what would happen if he stepped beyond the axe. The vows of the Kingsguard include obedience, I thought.”

“We are sworn to obey the king, sire, this is so,” replied Ser Marston, “and when you are a man grown, my brothers and I will gladly fall upon our swords should you command that of us. So long as you remain a child, however, we are required by oath to obey the King’s Hand, for the Hand speaks with the king’s voice.”

“Lord Thaddeus is my Hand,” Aegon insisted.

“Lord Thaddeus sold your realm to Lys and must answer for it. I will serve as your Hand until such time as his guilt or innocence can be proved.” Ser Marston unsheathed his sword and went to one knee, saying, “I swear upon my sword in the sight of gods and men that none shall do you harm whilst I stand beside you.”

If the Lord Commander believed those words would sway the king, he could not have been more wrong. “You stood beside me when the dragon ate my mother,” Aegon answered. “All you did was watch. I will not have you watch while they kill my brother’s wife.” Then he left the battlements, and no words of Marston Waters could induce him to return that day, or the next, or the next.

On the fourth day Grand Maester Munkun appeared together with Ser Marston. “I beseech you, sire, end this childish folly and come out, that we may serve you.” King Aegon gazed down on him, saying naught, but his brother was less reticent, commanding the Grand Maester to send forth “a thousand ravens” so the realm might know the king was being held a captive in his own castle. To this the Grand Maester made no answer. Nor did the ravens fly.

In the days that followed, Munkun made several further appeals, assuring Aegon and Viserys that all that had been done was lawful, Ser Marston went from pleas to threats to bargaining, and Septon Bernard was brought forth to pray loudly for the Crone to light the king’s way back to wisdom, all to no avail. These efforts drew little or no response from the boy king beyond a sullen stubborn silence. His Grace was roused to anger only once, when his master-at-arms, Ser Gareth Long, took his turn attempting to convince the king to yield. “And if I will not, who will you punish, ser?” King Aegon shouted down at him. “You may beat poor Gaemon’s bones, but you will get no more blood from him.”

Many and more have wondered at the seeming forebearance of the new Hand and his allies during this stalemate. Ser Marston had several hundred men within the Red Keep, and Ser Lucas Leygood’s gold cloaks numbered more than two thousand. Maegor’s Holdfast was a formidable redoubt, to be sure, but it was but weakly held. Of the Lyseni who had come to Westeros with Lady Larra, only Sandoq the Shadow and six more remained at her side, the rest having gone with her brother Moredo to the Vale. A few men loyal to Lord Rowan had made their way to Maegor’s before its doors were closed, but there was not a knight, a squire, or a man-at-arms amongst them, nor amongst the king’s own attendants. (There was one knight of the Kingsguard within the holdfast, but Ser Raynard Ruskyn was a prisoner, having been overwhelmed and wounded by the Lyseni at the very start of the king’s defiance.) Mushroom tells us that Queen Daenaera’s ladies donned mail and took up spears to help make it appear that King Aegon had more defenders than he did, but this ruse could not have fooled Ser Marston and his men for long, if indeed it fooled them at all.

Thus the question must be asked: Why did Marston Waters not simply take the holdfast by storm? He had more than enough men. Whilst some would have been lost to Sandoq and the other Lyseni, even the Shadow would surely have been overwhelmed in the end. Yet the Hand held back, continuing his attempts to end the “secret siege” (as this confrontation would later become known) with words, when swords would most likely have brought it to a swift conclusion.

Some will say that Ser Marston’s reluctance was simple cowardice, that he feared to face the blade of the Lysene giant Sandoq. This seems unlikely. It is sometimes put about that Maegor’s defenders (the king himself in some accounts, his brother in others) had threatened to hang their captive Kingsguard at the first sign of attack…but Mushroom calls this “a base lie.”

The most likely explanation is the simplest. Marston Waters was neither a great knight nor a good man, most scholars agree. Though bastard born, he had achieved knighthood and a modest place in the retinue of King Aegon II, but his rise would likely have ended there if not for his kinship to certain fisherfolk on Dragonstone, which led Larys Strong to choose him above a hundred better knights to hide the king during Rhaenyra’s ascendancy. In the years since, Waters had climbed high indeed, becoming Lord Commander of the Kingsguard over knights of better birth and far greater renown. As the Hand of the King, he would be the most powerful man in the realm until Aegon III came of age…but at the crux he hesitated, weighed down by his vows and his own bastard’s honor. Unwilling to dishonor the white cloak he wore by ordering an attack upon the king he had sworn to protect, Ser Marston eschewed ladders, grapnels, and assault, and continued to put his trust in reasoned words (and perhaps in hunger, for the supplies within the holdfast could not last much longer).

On the morning of the twelfth day of the secret siege, Thaddeus Rowan was brought forth in chains to confess to his offenses.

Septon Bernard detailed Lord Rowan’s alleged crimes: he had taken bribes in the form of gold and girls (exotic creatures from the Mermaid, says Mushroom, the younger the better), had sent Moredo Rogare to the Vale to dispossess Ser Arnold Arryn of his rightful inheritance, had conspired with Oakenfist to remove Unwin Peake as the King’s Hand, had helped to loot the Rogare Bank of Lys, thereby defrauding and impoverishing many “good and leal men of Westeros of noble birth and high station,” had appointed his own son to a command “for which he was manifestly unworthy,” leading to the death of thousands in the Mountains of the Moon.

Most terrible of all, his lordship was accused of having plotted with the three Rogares to poison King Aegon and his queen, so as to place Prince Viserys on the Iron Throne with Larra of Lys as his queen. “The poison used is called the Tears of Lys,” Bernard declared, an assertion that Grand Maester Munkun then confirmed. “Though the Seven spared you, sire,” Bernard concluded, “Lord Rowan’s foul plot took the life of your young friend Gaemon.”

When the septon had completed his recitation, Ser Marston Waters said, “Lord Rowan has confessed to all these crimes,” and beckoned to the Lord Confessor, George Graceford, to bring the prisoner forward. Manacled at ankle with heavy chains, his face so bruised and swollen as to be unrecognizable, Lord Thaddeus did not move at first, until Lord Graceford pricked him with the point of his dagger, whereupon he said in a thick voice, “Ser Marston speaks truly, Your Grace. I have confessed to all. Lotho promised me fifty thousand dragons when the deed was done, and another fifty when Viserys took the throne. The poison was given to me by Roggerio.” So halting was this speech, so slurred the words, that some upon the battlements thought his lordship must be drunk, until Mushroom pointed out that all his teeth were missing.

The confession left King Aegon III bereft of speech. All that the boy could do was stand and stare, with such despair upon his face that Mushroom feared His Grace might be about to leap from the battlements onto the spikes below, to rejoin his first queen.

It fell to Prince Viserys to make answer. “And my wife, Lady Larra,” he shouted down, “was she a part of this plot too, my lord?” Lord Rowan gave a heavy nod. “She was,” he said. “And what of me?” asked the prince. “Aye, you as well,” his lordship answered dully…an answer that seemed to surprise Marston Waters, whilst greatly displeasing Lord George Graceford. “And Gaemon Palehair, ’twas he who put the poison in the tart, I’ll venture,” Viserys went on glibly. “If it please my prince,” mumbled Thaddeus Rowan. Whereupon the prince turned to the king his brother and said, “Gaemon was as guilty as the rest of us…of nothing,” and the dwarf Mushroom called down, “Lord Rowan, was it you who poisoned King Viserys?” To which the old Hand nodded, saying, “It was, my lord. I do confess it.”

The king’s face grew hard. “Ser Marston,” he said, “this man is my Hand and innocent of treason. The traitors here are those who tortured him to bring forth this false confession. Seize the Lord Confessor, if you love your king…else I will know that you are as false as he is.” His words rang across the inner ward, and in that moment, the broken boy Aegon III seemed every inch a king.

To this very day, some assert that Ser Marston Waters was no more than a catspaw, a simple honest knight used and deceived by men more subtle than himself, whilst others argue that Waters was part of the plot from the beginning, but turned upon his fellows when he sensed the tide turning against them.

Whatever the truth, Ser Marston did as the king had commanded. Lord Graceford was seized by the Kingsguard and dragged away to the very dungeon he himself had ruled when he awoke that day. Lord Rowan’s chains were removed, and all his knights and serving men were brought up from the dungeons into the sunlight.

It did not prove necessary to subject the Lord Confessor to torment; the sight of the instruments was all that was required for him to give up the names of the other conspirators. Amongst those he named were the late Ser Amaury Peake and Ser Mervyn Flowers of the Kingsguard, Tessario the Tiger, Septon Bernard, Ser Gareth Long, Ser Victor Risley, Ser Lucas Leygood of the gold cloaks with six of the seven captains of the city gates, and even three of the queen’s ladies.

Not all surrendered peacefully. A short, savage battle was fought at the Gate of the Gods when men came for Lucas Leygood, leaving nine dead, amongst them Leygood himself. Three of the accused captains fled before they could be taken, with a dozen of their men. Tessario the Tiger chose to flee as well, but was taken in a dockside tavern near the River Gate as he was dickering with the captain of an Ibbenese whaler for passage to the Port of Ibben.

Ser Marston chose to confront Mervyn Flowers himself. “We are the both of us bastards and Sworn Brothers besides,” he was heard to tell Ser Raynard Ruskyn. When told of Graceford’s accusation, Ser Mervyn said, “You will be wanting my steel,” drawing his longsword from its sheath and offering its hilt to Marston Waters. Yet as Ser Marston grasped it, Ser Mervyn seized his wrist, drew a dagger with his other hand, and plunged it into Waters’s belly. Flowers got no farther than the stables, where a drunken man-at-arms and two young stableboys found him saddling his courser. He killed them all, but the noise brought others running, and the bastard knight was finally overwhelmed and beaten to death, still clad in the white cloak that he had shamed.

His lord commander, Ser Marston Waters, did not long outlive him. He was found in White Sword Tower in a pool of his own blood and carried to Grand Maester Munkun, who examined him and pronounced the wound mortal. Though Munkun sewed him up as best he could and gave him milk of the poppy, Waters expired that same night.

Lord Graceford had named Ser Marston as one of the conspirators as well, insisting that “that bloody turncloak” had been with them from the start, a charge Waters was no longer able to dispute. The rest of the plotters were consigned to the black cells to await trial. Some protested their innocence, whilst others claimed, as Ser Marston had, that they had acted from the honest belief that Thaddeus Rowan and the Lyseni were the traitors. A few proved more forthcoming, however. Ser Gareth Long was the most voluable, declaring loudly that Aegon III was a weakling unfit to hold a sword, much less sit the Iron Throne. Septon Bernard argued from his Faith; the Lyseni and their queer foreign gods had no place in the Seven Kingdoms. It was always intended that Lady Larra should die together with her brothers, he said, so Viserys would be free to take a proper Westerosi queen.

The frankest of the plotters was Tessario the Thumb. He had done it for gold and girls and vengeance, he said. Roggerio Rogare had banned him from the Mermaid for striking one of his whores, so he had demanded the brothel and Roggerio’s manhood for his price, and these things had been promised to him. But when his inquisitors asked who had made this promise, Tessario had no answer but a grin…a grin that turned into a grimace, and thence a scream, when he was asked again under torture. The first name he gave was that of Marston Waters, but on further questioning he named George Graceford, and still later Mervyn Flowers. Mushroom tells us that the Tiger was on the point of giving a fourth name, mayhaps the true name, when he expired.

One name was never mentioned, though it hung over the Red Keep like a cloud. In The Testimony of Mushroom, the fool says plainly what few dared say at the time: that there must surely have been another conspirator, lord and master of the rest, the man who set all this in motion from afar, using the others as his catspaws. The “player in the shadows,” Mushroom calls him. “Graceford was cruel but not clever, Long had courage but no cunning, Risley was a sot, Bernard a pious fool, the Thumb a bloody Volantene, worse than the Lyseni. The women were women, and the Kingsguard were used to obeying commands, not giving them. Lucas Leygood loved swaggering about in his gold cloak, and could drink and fight and fuck with the best of them, but he was no plotter. And all of them had ties to one man: Unwin Peake, Lord of Starpike, Lord of Dunstonbury, Lord of Whitegrove, once Hand of the King.”

No doubt others entertained the same suspicions once the plot to kill the king had been unmasked. Several of the traitors had blood ties to the former Hand, whilst others owed him their positions. Nor was Peake a stranger to conspiracy, having once planned the murder of two dragonriders under the sign of the Bloody Caltrops. But Peake had been at Starpike during the secret siege, and none of his supposed catspaws ever spoke his name, so his involvement remained unproven, then as now.

So thick was the miasma of mistrust in the Red Keep that Aegon III did not leave Maegor’s Holdfast for six more days after his brother Viserys unravelled Lord Rowan’s false confession. Only when he saw Grand Maester Munkun send forth a murder of ravens, summoning twoscore leal lords to King’s Landing, did His Grace allow the bridge to be lowered once again. They had run so short of food within the holdfast that Queen Daenaera cried herself to sleep at night, and two of her ladies were so weak from hunger that they had to be helped across the moat.

By the time the king emerged, Lord Graceford had named his names, many of the traitors had been seized, others had fled, and Marston Waters, Mervyn Flowers, and Lucas Leygood were dead. Soon thereafter Thaddeus Rowan once more took up residence in the Tower of the Hand…but it was plain to all that his lordship was in no fit state to resume his duties as the Hand of the King. The things that had been done to him in the dungeons had broken him. One moment he might seem his old self, hale and hearty, only to begin weeping uncontrollably the next. Mushroom, who could be as cruel as he was clever, would make mock of the old man, accusing him of outlandish crimes to elicit even more absurd confessions. “I do recall that one night I made him confess to the Doom of Valyria,” says the dwarf in his Testimony. “The court roared with laughter, but as I look back upon it now, I blush for shame.”

After a moon’s turn, with Lord Rowan showing little or no signs of improvement, Grand Maester Munkun persuaded the king to relieve him of his office. Rowan set out for his seat at Goldengrove, promising to return to King’s Landing once he had recovered his health, but he died upon the road in the company of two of his sons. For the rest of that year, the Grand Maester served as both regent and Hand, for the realm required governance and Aegon had still not reached the age of manhood. As a maester, chained and sworn to serve, Munkun did not feel it was his place to pass judgment on high lords and anointed knights, however, so the accused traitors languished in the dungeons, awaiting a new Hand.

As the old year waned and gave way to the new, lord after lord arrived in King’s Landing, answering the king’s summons. The ravens had done their work. Though never formally constituted as a Great Council, the gathering of the lords in 136 AC was the largest assembly of nobles in the Seven Kingdoms since the Old King had summoned the lords of the realm to Harrenhal in 101 AC. King’s Landing was soon full to the point of bursting, to the delight of the city’s innkeeps, whores, and merchants.

Most of those attending came from the crownlands, the riverlands, the stormlands…and the Vale, where Lord Oakenfist and Bloody Ben Blackwood had at last forced the Gilded Falcon, the Mad Heir, the Bronze Giant, and all their supporters to bend the knee and do homage to Joffrey Arryn as their liege (Gunthor Royce, Quenton Corbray, and Isembard Arryn were amongst those accompanying Lord Alyn to the gathering, along with Lord Arryn himself). Johanna Lannister sent a cousin and three bannermen to speak for the west, Torrhen Manderly sailed down from White Harbor with twoscore knights and cousins, and Lyonel Hightower and the Lady Sam rode up from Oldtown with a tail six hundred strong. Yet the largest retinue was that accompanying Lord Unwin Peake, who brought a thousand of his own men and five hundred sellswords. (“What ever could he be afraid of?” Mushroom quipped.)

There beneath the shadow of the empty Iron Throne (for King Aegon did not choose to come to court), the lords attempted to choose new regents to rule until His Grace could come of age. After meeting for more than a fortnight, they were no closer to accord than when they had begun. Without the strong hand of a king to guide them, some lords gave vent to old grievances, and the half-healed wounds of the Dance began to bleed afresh. The strong men had too many enemies, whilst the lesser lords were looked down upon for being poor or weak. Finally, in despair at reaching an agreement, Grand Maester Munkun proposed that three regents be chosen by lot. When Prince Viserys added his voice to Munkun’s, the proposal was adopted. The lots fell to Willam Stackspear, Marq Merryweather, and Lorent Grandison, of whom it could be truly said that they were as inoffensive as they were undistinguished.

The selection of the King’s Hand was a matter of more import, and one that the lords assembled were unwilling to leave to the new regents. There were those, chiefly from the Reach, who urged that Unwin Peake be asked to serve as Hand once more, but they were quickly shouted down when Prince Viserys declared that his brother would prefer a younger man, “and one less like to fill his court with traitors.” Alyn Velaryon’s name was also put forward, but he was deemed to be too young. Kermit Tully and Benjicot Blackwood were spurned for the same reason. Instead the lords turned to the northman, Torrhen Manderly, Lord of White Harbor…a man unknown to many of them, but for that very reason without enemies south of the Neck (save perhaps for Unwin Peake, whose memory was long).

“Aye, I’ll do it,” Lord Torrhen said, “but I’ll need a man who is good with coin if I’m to deal with these Lyseni thieves and their bloody bank.” Then up stood Oakenfist, to offer the name of Isembard Arryn, the Gilded Falcon of the Vale. To appease Lord Peake and his supporters, Gedmund Peake the Great-Axe was named lord admiral and master of ships (it was said that Oakenfist was more bemused than angry, and declared that the choice was a good one, as “Ser Gedmund loves paying for ships, I love sailing them”). Ser Raynard Ruskyn became Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, whilst Ser Adrian Thorne was chosen to command the gold cloaks. Formerly the captain on the Lion Gate, Thorne was the only one of Lucas Leygood’s seven captains not accused of involvement in the plot.

And so it was done. All that remained was for Aegon III to put his seal to it, which he did without demur the next morning before retreating once again to the solitary splendor of his chambers.

His new Hand began at once to tend to the business of the realm. His first task was a daunting one: to sit in judgment at the trials of those accused of poisoning Gaemon Palehair and plotting treason against the king. No fewer than forty-two persons stood accused, for those named by Lord Graceford had in turn named others when questioned sharply. Sixteen had fled and eight had died, leaving eighteen to be judged. Thirteen of those had already confessed to some degree of involvement in the crimes, for the king’s inquisitors were most persuasive. Five continued to insist upon their innocence, declaring that they had truly believed the treason to be Lord Rowan’s, and thus had joined the plot to save His Grace from the Lyseni who meant to kill him.

The trials lasted three-and-thirty days. Prince Viserys was present throughout, often accompanied by his wife, the Lady Larra, her belly swelling with their second child, and their son Aegon with his wet nurse. King Aegon came but thrice, on the days that judgment was pronounced upon Gareth Long, George Graceford, and Septon Bernard; he showed no interest in the rest, and never asked about their fates. Queen Daenaera did not attend at all.

Ser Gareth and Lord Graceford were condemned to die, but both chose to take the black instead. Lord Manderly decreed that they should be put aboard the next ship to White Harbor, from whence they could be taken to the Wall. The High Septon had written to ask clemency for Septon Bernard “that he might atone for his sins through prayer, contemplation, and good works,” so Manderly spared him from the headsman’s axe. Instead Bernard was gelded and condemned to walk barefoot from King’s Landing to Oldtown with his manhood hung about his neck. “If he survives, His High Holiness may make what use of him he will,” the Hand decreed. (Bernard did live, and spent the rest of his life as a scribe, copying holy books at the Starry Sept under a vow of silence.)

Those gold cloaks who had been accused and taken (a number had escaped) chose to emulate Ser Gareth and Lord Graceford, taking the black in preference to losing their heads. The same choice was made by the surviving Fingers…but Ser Victor Risley, once the King’s Justice, stood upon his right as an anointed knight to demand a trial by battle “that I may prove my innocence by wager of my body, in the sight of gods and men.” Ser Gareth Long, first and foremost of those who had named Risley part of the plot, was duly brought back to court to face him. “You always were a bloody fool, Victor,” Ser Gareth said, when his longsword was placed into his hand. The former master-at-arms dispatched the former headsman quickly, then turned with a smile to the condemned in the back of the throne room and asked, “Anyone else?”

The most troubling cases were those of the three women who stood accused, all of them highborn ladies and attendants to the queen. Lucinda Penrose (she who had been attacked whilst hawking before the Maiden’s Day Ball) admitted to wanting Daenaera dead, saying, “If my nose had not been slit, it would be her serving me, not me serving her. No man will have me now, because of her.” Cassandra Baratheon confessed that she had often shared her bed with Ser Mervyn Flowers, and sometimes at Ser Mervyn’s behest with Tessario the Tiger, “but only when he asked it of me.” When Willam Stackspear suggested that perhaps she was part of the reward the Volantene had been promised, Lady Cassandra burst into tears. Yet even her confession paled beside that of Lady Priscella Hogg, a sad and somewhat simple girl of fourteen, stout and short and plain of face, who had somehow conceived the notion that Prince Viserys would marry her if only Larra of Lys were dead. “He smiles whenever he sees me,” she told the court, “and once when he passed me on the steps, his shoulder brushed against my bosom.”

Lord Manderly, Grand Maester Munkun, and the regents questioned the three women closely, mayhaps (as Mushroom avers) trying to elicit the name of a fourth woman, hitherto unmentioned: Lady Clarice Osgrey, widowed aunt of Lord Unwin Peake. Lady Clarice supervised all Queen Daenaera’s maids, companions, and attendants, as she did Queen Jaehaera’s ladies before them, and was well acquainted with many of the confessed conspirators (Mushroom says that she and George Graceford were lovers, and suggests that her ladyship was so aroused by torture that she sometimes joined the Lord Confessor in the dungeons to assist him with his work). If she had been involved, it was likely Unwin Peake had as well. All their probing proved to no avail, however, and when Lord Torrhen asked bluntly whether Lady Clarice had been complicit, all three of the condemned women could only shake their heads.

Though unquestionably part of the conspiracy, the roles played by the three women had been comparatively minor. For that reason, and on account of their sex, Lord Manderly and the regents chose to show them mercy. Lucinda Penrose and Priscella Hogg were condemned to have their noses cut off, with the understanding that the punishment would be stayed should they give themselves to the Faith, so long as they remained true to their vows.

Cassandra Baratheon’s high birth spared her the same punishment; she was, after all, the late Lord Borros’s eldest child and sister to the present Lord of Storm’s End, and had once been betrothed to King Aegon II. Though her mother, Lady Elendra, was not well enough to attend the trials, she had sent three of her son’s bannermen to speak for Storm’s End. Through them (and Lord Grandison, whose lands and keep were also of the stormlands), it was arranged for Lady Cassandra to wed a minor knight named Ser Walter Brownhill, who ruled a few hides of land on Cape Wrath from a castle oft described as being made of “mud and tree roots.” Thrice bereft, Ser Walter had fathered sixteen children by his previous wives, thirteen of whom still lived. It was Lady Elendra’s thought that caring for these children and any additional sons or daughters that she herself might give Ser Walter would keep Lady Cassandra from plotting any further treasons. (And so it did.)

This concluded the last of the treason trials, but the dungeons beneath the Red Keep had not as yet been emptied. The fate of Lady Larra’s brothers Lotho and Roggerio remained to be decided. Though innocent of high treason, murder, and conspiracy, they still stood accused of fraud and theft; the collapse of the Rogare Bank had led to the ruination of thousands, in Westeros as well as Lys. Though bound to House Targaryen through marriage, the brothers were neither kings nor princes themselves, and their lordships were but empty courtesies, Lord Manderly and Grand Maester Munkun agreed; they would be tried and punished.

In this, the Seven Kingdoms lagged well behind the Free City of Lys, where the collapse of the Rogare Bank had led inexorably to the utter ruin of the house that Lysandro the Magnificent had built. The palace he had bequeathed to his daughter Lysara was seized, together with the manses of his other children, and all their furnishings. A handful of Drako Rogare’s trading galleys learned of the house’s fall in time to divert course to Volantis, but for every ship saved, nine were lost, together with their cargos and the Rogare wharves and storehouses. Lady Lysara was deprived of her gold, gems, and gowns, Lady Marra of her books. Fredo Rogare saw the magisters seize the Perfumed Garden, even as he tried to sell it. His slaves were sold, along with those of his siblings, trueborn or bastard. When that proved insufficient to pay more than a tenth of the debts left by the bank’s collapse, the Rogares themselves were sold into slavery, together with their children. The daughters of Fredo and Lysaro Rogare would soon find themselves back in the Perfumed Garden where they had played as children, but as bed slaves, not proprietors.

Nor did Lysaro Rogare, architect of his family’s doom, escape unscathed. He and his eunuch guards were captured in the town of Volon Therys on the Rhoyne, as they were waiting for a boat to carry them across the river. Loyal to the end, the Unsullied died to a man fighting to protect him…but only twenty remained with him (Lysaro had taken one hundred when he fled from Lys, but had been forced to sell most of them along the way), and they soon found themselves hemmed in and surrounded in the confused, bloody fighting by the docks. Once taken, Lysaro was sent downriver to Volantis, where the Triarchs offered him to his brother Drako, for a certain price. Drako declined and suggested the Volantenes sell him back to Lys instead. And so Lysaro Rogare was returned to Lys, chained to an oar in the belly of a Volantene slave ship.

During his trial, when asked what he had done with all the gold that he had stolen, Lysaro laughed and began to point to certain magisters in the assembly, saying, “I used it to bribe him, and him, and him, and him,” picking out a dozen men before he could be silenced. It did not save him. The men he had bought voted with the rest to condemn him (and kept the bribes as well, for the magisters of Lys put avarice ahead of honor, as is well-known).

Lysaro was sentenced to be chained naked to a pillar before the Temple of Trade, where all those despoiled by him would be allowed to whip him, the number of lashes accorded to each person to be determined by the extent of their losses. And so it was done. It is written that his sister Lysara and brother Fredo were amongst those who availed themselves of the whip, whilst other Lyseni placed wagers on the hour of his death. Lysaro expired in the seventh hour of the first day of his scourging. His bones would remain chained to the pillar for three years, until his brother Moredo pulled them down and interred them in the family crypt.

In this instance, at the least, Lysene justice proved to be considerably harsher than that of the Seven Kingdoms. Many in Westeros would gladly have seen Lotho and Roggerio Rogare suffer the same dire fate as Lysaro, for the collapse of the Rogare bank had impoverished great lords and humble tradesmen alike…but even those who most despised them could offer no shred of proof that either had known of their brother’s depredations in Lys, or had benefited from his plundering in any way.

In the end, the banker Lotho was adjudged guilty of theft, for taking gold and gems and silver not his own, and failing to restore same on demand. Lord Manderly gave him the choice of taking the black, or having his right hand removed as if he were a common thief. “Then praise Yndros, I am left-handed,” Lotho said, choosing mutilation. Nothing at all could be proved against his brother Roggerio, but Lord Manderly sentenced him to seven lashes all the same. “For what?” Roggerio demanded of him, aghast. “For being a thrice-damned Lyseni,” Torrhen Manderly responded.

After the sentences had been carried out, both of the brothers left King’s Landing. Roggerio closed his brothel, selling off the building, the carpets, drapes, beds, and other furnishings, even the parrots and the monkeys, using the coin thus gained to buy himself a ship, a great cog he named the Mermaid’s Daughter. Thus was his pillow house reborn, this time with sails. For years to come, Roggerio sailed up and down the narrow sea, selling spiced wine, exotic viands, and carnal pleasure to the denizens of great ports and humble fishing villages alike. His brother Lotho, short a hand, was taken up by Lady Samantha, the paramour of Lord Lyonel Hightower, and returned with her to Oldtown. The Hightowers had not entrusted so much as a groat of their gold to the Lyseni, and thus remained one of the wealthiest houses in all Westeros, second mayhaps only to the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, and Lady Sam wished to learn how to put that gold to better use. Thus was born the Bank of Oldtown, which has made House Hightower richer still.

(Moredo Rogare, the eldest of the three brothers who had come with Lady Larra to King’s Landing, was in Braavos during the trials, treating with the keyholders of the Iron Bank. Before the year was out, he would sail for Tyrosh, flush with Braavosi gold, to hire ships and swords for an attack on Lys. That is a tale for another time, however, beyond our current purview.)

King Aegon III did not once appear to sit the Iron Throne during the trials of the brothers, but Prince Viserys came every day to sit beside his wife. What Larra of Lys thought of the Hand’s justice neither Mushroom nor the court chronicles can tell us, save to note that she wept when Lord Torrhen handed down his verdict.

Soon thereafter the lords began to depart, each to their own seat, and life resumed as before in King’s Landing under the new regents and King’s Hand…though more the latter than the former. “The gods chose our new regents,” Mushroom observed, “and it would seem that gods are just as thick as lords.” He was not wrong. Lord Stackspear loved to hawk, Lord Merryweather loved to feast, and Lord Grandison loved to sleep, and each man thought the other two were fools, but in the end it made no matter, for Torrhen Manderly proved to be an honest and able Hand, of whom it was rightly said that he was brusque and gluttonous, but fair. King Aegon never warmed to him, it is true, but His Grace did not have a trusting nature, and the events of the past year had only served to deepen his suspicions. Nor could Lord Torrhen be said to have had much regard for the king, whom he referred to as “that sullen boy” when writing to his daughter in White Harbor. Manderly did become fond of Prince Viserys, however, and doted on Queen Daenaera.

Though the northman’s regency was comparatively short, it was far from uneventful. With the considerable help of the Gilded Falcon, Isembard Arryn, Manderly enacted a major reform of the taxes, providing more income for the Crown and some relief for those who could prove they had suffered losses from the plundering of the Rogare Bank. With the Lord Commander, he brought the Kingsguard up to seven once again, bestowing white cloaks upon Ser Edmund Warrick, Ser Dennis Whitfield, and Ser Agramore Cobb to fill the places of Marston Waters, Mervyn Flowers, and Amaury Peake. He formally repudiated the pact that Alyn Oakenfist had signed to secure the release of Prince Viserys, on the grounds that the agreement had been made not with the Free City of Lys, but with House Rogare, which could no longer be said to exist.

With Ser Gareth Long upon the Wall, the Red Keep had need of a new master-at-arms. Lord Manderly appointed a fine young swordsman named Ser Lucas Lothston. The grandson of a hedge knight, Ser Lucas was a patient teacher who soon became a favorite with Prince Viserys, and even won a certain grudging respect from King Aegon. For Lord Confessor, Manderly tapped Maester Rowley, a fresh-faced youth newly arrived from Oldtown, where he had studied under Archmaester Sandeman, reputedly the wisest healer in the history of Westeros. It was Grand Maester Munkun who urged that Rowley be appointed. “A man who knows how to ease pain will also know how to inflict it,” he told the Hand, “but it is also important that we have a Lord Confessor who sees his work as duty, not pleasure.”

On the eve of Smith’s Day, Larra of Lys gave Prince Viserys a second son, a large and lusty boy that the prince named Aemon. A feast was held to celebrate, and all rejoiced at the birth of this new prince…save mayhaps for his year-and-a-half-old brother, Aegon, who was discovered hitting the babe with the dragon’s egg that had been placed inside the cradle. No harm was done, for Aemon’s howls soon brought Lady Larra running to disarm and discipline her elder son.

Soon thereafter, Lord Alyn Oakenfist grew restless, and began to make plans for the second of his six great voyages. The Velaryons had entrusted much of their gold to Lotho Rogare, and lost more than half their wealth in consequence. To restore their fortunes, Lord Alyn assembled a large fleet of merchantmen, with a dozen of his war galleys to guard them, intending to sail to Old Volantis by way of Pentos, Tyrosh, and Lys, visiting Dorne on the way home.

It is said that he and his wife quarreled before the voyage, for Lady Baela was of the blood of the dragon and quick to anger, and had heard too much talk from her lord husband about Princess Aliandra of Dorne. Yet in the end they reconciled, as they always did. The fleet set sail at mid-year, led by Oakenfist in a galley he named Bold Marilda after his mother. Lady Baela remained on Driftmark with Lord Alyn’s second child growing inside her.

The king’s sixteenth nameday was drawing near. With the realm at peace, and spring in full flower, Lord Torrhen Manderly decided that King Aegon and Queen Daenaera should make a royal progress to mark his coming of age. It would be good for the boy to see the lands he ruled, the Hand reasoned, to show himself to his people. Aegon was tall and comely, and his sweet young queen could supply whatever charm the king might lack. The commons would surely love her, which could only be of benefit to the solemn young king.

The regents concurred. Plans were made for a grand progress lasting a full year, one that would take His Grace to parts of the realm that had never seen a king before. From King’s Landing they would ride to Duskendale and Maidenpool, and thence take ship for Gulltown. After a visit to the Eyrie, they would return to Gulltown and sail for the North, with a stop at the Three Sisters.

White Harbor would give the king and queen a welcome such as they had never seen, Lord Manderly promised. Then they could continue north to Winterfell, perhaps even visit the Wall, before turning south again, down the kingsroad to the Neck. Sabitha Frey would host them at the Twins, they would call upon Lord Benjicot at Raventree Hall, and of course if they visited the Blackwoods they must needs spend the same amount of time with the Brackens. A few nights at Riverrun, and they would cross over the hills into the west, to visit Lady Johanna at Casterly Rock.

From there it would be down the sea road to the Reach…Highgarden, Goldengrove, Old Oak…there was a dragon at Red Lake, Aegon would not like that, but Red Lake was easily avoided…a visit at one of Unwin Peake’s seats might help assuage the former Hand. At Oldtown the High Septon himself could no doubt be persuaded to give the king and queen his blessing, and Lord Lyonel and Lady Sam would welcome the chance to show the king that the splendors of their city far outshone those of King’s Landing. “It will be a progress such as the realm has not seen in more than a century,” Grand Maester Munkun told His Grace. “Spring is a time for new beginnings, sire, and this will mark the true beginning of your reign. From the Dornish Marches to the Wall, all will know you for their king, and Daenaera for their queen.”

Torrhen Manderly agreed. “It will do the lad some good to get out of this bloody castle,” he declared, in Mushroom’s hearing. “He can hunt and hawk, climb a mountain or two, fish for salmon in the White Knife, see the Wall. Feasts every night. It would not harm the boy to put some flesh on those bones of his. Let him try some good northern ale, so thick you can cut it with a sword.”

Preparations for the king’s nameday celebrations and the royal progress to follow consumed all of the attention of the Hand and the three regents in the days that followed. Lists of those lords and knights wishing to accompany the king were drawn up, torn up, and drawn up again. Horses were shod, armor polished, wagons and wheelhouses repaired and repainted, banners sewn. Hundreds of ravens flew back and forth across the Seven Kingdoms as every lord and landed knight in Westeros begged the honor of a royal visit. Lady Rhaena’s desire to accompany the progress on her dragon was delicately deflected, whilst her sister Baela declared that she would come along whether she was wanted or not. Even the clothing that the king and queen would wear came in for careful thought. On the days when Queen Daenaera wore green, it was decided, Aegon would be clad in his customary black. But when the little queen wore the red-and-black of House Targaryen, the king would don a green cloak, so both colors would be seen wherever they might go.

A few matters were still under discussion when King Aegon’s nameday dawned at last. A great feast was to be held that night in the throne room, and the ancient Guild of Alchemists had promised displays of pyromancy such as the realm had never seen.

It was still morning, though, when King Aegon entered the council chambers where Lord Torrhen and the regents were debating whether or not to include Tumbleton on the progress.

Four knights of the Kingsguard accompanied the young king to the council chambers. So did Sandoq the Shadow, veiled and silent, carrying his great sword. His ominous presence cast a pall in the room. For a moment even Torrhen Manderly lost his tongue.

“Lord Manderly,” King Aegon said, in the sudden stillness, “pray tell me how old I am, if you would be so good.”

“You are ten-and-six today, Your Grace,” Lord Manderly replied. “A man grown. It is time for you to take the governance of the Seven Kingdoms into your own hands.”

“I shall,” King Aegon said. “You are sitting in my chair.”

The coldness in his tone took every man in the room aback, Grand Maester Munkun would write years later. Confused and shaken, Torrhen Manderly prised his considerable bulk out of the chair at the head of the council table, with an uneasy glance at Sandoq the Shadow. As he held the chair for the king, he said, “Your Grace, we were speaking of the progress—”

“There will be no progress,” the king declared, as he was seated. “I will not spend a year upon a horse, sleeping in strange beds and trading empty courtesies with drunken lords, half of whom would gladly see me dead if it gained them a groat. If any man requires words with me, he will find me on the Iron Throne.”

Torrhen Manderly persisted. “Sire,” he said, “this progress would do much and more to win you the love of the smallfolk.”

“I mean to give the smallfolk peace and food and justice. If that will not suffice to win their love, let Mushroom make a progress. Or perhaps we might send a dancing bear. Someone once told me that the commons love nothing half so much as dancing bears. You may call a halt to this feast tonight as well. Send the lords home to their own keeps and give the food to the hungry. Full bellies and dancing bears shall be my policy.” Then Aegon turned to the three regents. “Lord Stackspear, Lord Grandison, Lord Merryweather, I thank you for your service. Consider yourselves free to go. I shall have no further need of regents.”

“And will Your Grace have need of a Hand?” asked Lord Manderly.

“A king should have a Hand of his own choosing,” said Aegon III, rising to his feet. “You have served me well, no doubt, as you served my mother before me, but it was my lords who chose you. You may return to White Harbor.”

“Gladly, sire,” said Manderly in a voice that Grand Maester Munkun would later call a growl. “I have not drunk a decent ale since coming to this cesspit of a castle.” Whereupon he removed his chain of office and set it on the council table.

Less than a fortnight later, Lord Manderly took ship for White Harbor with a small entourage of sworn swords and servants…amongst them Mushroom. The fool had grown fond of the big northman, it would seem, and had eagerly accepted his offer of a place at White Harbor rather than remain with a king who seldom smiled and never laughed. “I was a fool but never such a fool as to stay with that fool,” he tells us.

The dwarf would come to outlive the young king that he abandoned. The later volumes of his Testimony, filled with colorful accounts of his life in White Harbor, his sojourn at the court of the Sealord of Braavos, his voyage to the Port of Ibben, and his years amongst the mummers of the Lisping Lady, are valuable in their own right, though less useful to our purpose here…so, sadly, the little man with the foul tongue must pass from our story. Though never the most reliable of chroniclers, the dwarf spoke truths no one else dared speak, and was often droll besides.

Mushroom tells us that the cog that Lord Manderly and his party sailed upon was called the Jolly Salt, but the mood aboard the ship was far from jolly as they beat north toward White Harbor. Torrhen Manderly had never liked “that sullen boy,” as his letters to his daughters make clear, nor would he ever forgive the king for the brusque manner of his dismissal, or the way His Grace “murdered” the royal progress, whose abrupt end his lordship took for a deeply humiliating personal affront.

Within moments of taking the governance of the Seven Kingdoms into his own hands, King Aegon III had made an enemy of a man who had been amongst his most leal and devoted servants.

And thus did the rule of the regents come whimpering to an end, as the broken reign of the Broken King began.