The Wolf and the Falcon
"Oh, but I must insist that your Lordship not hear of the things I have to say," Mya said, though she did want him to hear. She was waiting for the little Lord to wander into her trap like a lost little rabbit. "No, I command you to tell me!" Sweetrobin was quickly becoming impatient, and was already raising his voice. The sickly lord of the Eyrie, was stomping his feet at Mya with balled fists, like a little child.
"If you command me, then I must tell you, my Lord," was Mya's humble reply. "Would his Lordship mind if I whispered them to his ear? We do not want anyone else to hear, I am afraid," she tried to convince him. And Robert Arryn was so eager to know this terrible, terrible, secret that he immediately lent her his ears without saying a word, and gestured for her to tell him quickly.
After all, Mya thought, it involved his beloved Uncle Petyr. Of course the little Lord would want to hear what the man had said about him. Oh how the little lord adored his Uncle Petyr. She leaned down, and cupped her hand to whisper.
"He said your Lordship is not strong enough, that you are nothing like your father," Mya started, her poisonous words rolling off her tongue like smooth silk "He said you are too weak, and that he might simply get rid of you and rule the Eyrie himself." These lies made Robert progressively angrier. Mya took care not to show her smiling face, and her satisfaction that the naïve, short-tempered, and sickly 'Sweetrobin' had eaten up her words and blindly believed them. As she was returning to Lady Alayne's chambers, she could not help but shake her head at how gullible this lord was. Nothing like his father, indeed.
Sansa would stare at her reflection in the mirror and marvel at her black hair, until Mya returns with news. Grinning in satisfaction, her new handmaiden would recount the story of all the whispering she had done.
"And he seemed to believe it, all of it?"
"Yes, my lady. It has fascinated me to no end."
With a smirk, Sansa stared back at her reflection in the mirror. She knew Littlefinger is returning to the Eyrie tomorrow. And Sweetrobin would waste no time making an entire scene. It must feel horrible to believe that your favorite person says terrible things about you…terrible things that you, perhaps, also believe yourself…
The next day, everything had gone according to her plan. Sweetrobin made a scene, screaming at Littlefinger.
"I am not weak, Uncle Petyr. I AM NOT WEAK!" he would scream, his voice echoing in the High Hall of the Arryns. The rest of his speech was barely audible, and Petyr tries to speak in between the poor boy's ramblings, but he was not heard. "You want me dead? NO! I will make you fly!" Lord Robert Arryn stomped off to his chambers, seething. Littlefinger was left standing in the middle of the High Hall, amongst the lords and ladies of the Vale.
Since then, their relationship has become strained. Robert refused to see him, and therefore prevented him from explaining his side.
Sansa knew sooner or later, Littlefinger would come running to her.
"You must wed Harry as soon as possible," he told her. Harrold Hardyng is heir to Robert Arryn. And despite Sansa's loathing of the man, her marriage to him is essential for her plans. Littlefinger desperately yearns for the wedding to take place, and for Harry to accept Sansa, in the guise of his own bastard daughter, Alayne Stone. But Harrold's contempt of bastards gets in the way. In the end, Littlefinger was forced to reveal who she really is.
"She is not a mere bastard, Lord Harrold," he told the heir, "She is none other than the Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell."
As early as after a forthnight, Sansa is wed to Harrold Hardyng, wearing the greys and the direwolf sigil of her true house. The ceremony was not worth noting, she thought. It was splendid, she supposed. The same as the ceremony of her wedding to the Imp, and yet quite different, and she dared think to herself if this one might actually be worse.
The High Hall is filled with people – the lords and ladies of the Vale, come together for the wedding of their Young Falcon to the Lady Sansa of Winterfell. "Such a match," they would say. And yet, Sansa sat stoic next to her new husband, quite aware that it was the same man who has already fathered bastards, and has always looked down upon Mya Stone, and herself, while she was pretending to be Littlefinger's bastard daughter.
Once all merriment and festivities have finished, days would pass, and the young lord Robert Arryn would be taken to bed, ill. No one thought anything of it, because the young lord of the Eyrie has always been sickly. Much like his father's death, everyone accepted this to be of natural causes. Perhaps everyone believed the Eyrie needed a new lord and lady to sit upon the weirwood throne.
"It has been awful, my Lady Waynwood," a weeping Sansa told Lady Anya, talking about her cousin's sudden passing. "I am devastated." And Sansa did her best to look the part. Her eyes are rimmed red from crying, and she has pretended to be in prayer for hours on end.
The Lords and Ladies joined her in mourning, especially after having lost her aunt to the moon door, and now her cousin to a disease.
Drying her tears, and taking care to make herself grit her teeth with force, she muttered, "It must have been Littlefinger. He knew Robert was starting to oppose him, and the lord of the Fingers was having none of it." All around her, many are nodding their heads, convinced at this theory. Many murmured in agreement, and some even started to speak up, saying they had witnessed the quarrel Robert Arryn had with his uncle, some even heard their voices and the things they were saying. It sounded as though Baelish has been planning to murder him, one day – the same account of the events of anyone present there.
The lords and ladies once again take sympathy with Sansa, for they believe this is all the doing of the turncoat, Petyr Baelish. They have all harbored a little of animosity towards him since the beginning of his rise to power.
This became a great subject matter for a special meeting of all the house lords of their vasalls in the Vale. They had all decided upon one thing: that Petyr Baelish is accused of the murder of the Lord Paramount of the Vale, and True Warden of the East. That very same day, Petyr Baelish is found, and immediately taken into the sky cells.
Sansa walks slowly towards the sky cells, and as he approached the one where Littlefinger resides, she had to suppress a smirk on her face. "Lord Petyr Baelish…" she called out to him from outside. "It would be wiser to simply fall asleep, and let the slope take you into the blue."
"My dearest Sansa, this is far from over."
The very next day, Baelish demanded a trial by combat. He must be very foolish. For if Tyrion Lannister had successfully evaded death in this very same castle before, the same could not be said for him.
His trial had become a farce, a show. The lords and ladies of the Vale all want him dead, and though he was granted with the trial that he sought, no honorable knight, nor sniffling squire would stand for him. No one would.
Desperately looking around the room full of people for a friendly face, he found no one. Petyr Baelish looked pitiful, with his hair astrew, and his eyes wild. The sky cells had this effect on people. Could drive them mad, could make them wish they simply jumped down into the blue, and became a pile of flesh, blood and crushed bones on the mountains and the jagged rocks. A quick death, atop the mountains of the Vale.
Without a champion, Petyr Baelish was doomed to die. All the lords and ladies all across the Vale had agreed that he must die, he must die now. And so the moon door was opened, and the powerful gusts of wind outside could be heard howling and echoing in the austere halls of the Eyrie, sending chills down everyone's spine. But they all anticipated the death of the mockingbird, who stood before the justice of the moon door's weirwood, as if the old gods must laugh and be gleeful at his death, the schemer's death was at the mercy of a scheme against him.
His pleading eyes could not meet anyone's. And he stared at Sansa, and she stared back with steely determination, sitting with Harrold Arryn in their weirwood throne. Sansa smirked.
"Make the bad man fly!"
