coldblue: 1) In Essos he never really had a reputation so wide spread, which leaves it open for rumour and lies which he is not so fond of; look at Jaime and Cersei. 2) Not much, however he will venture to Dorne either next chapter or the one after. 3) We'll have to wait and see about the Starks, I'm afraid. 4) They'll definitely meet, but if they do ally it won't be till around early Clash of King's time. 5) I wasn't really considering any pairing just yet, but maybe Sansa, though I'm thinking the age gap might be to big and if it was it would probably be a far less creepier version of Baelish and Sansa's relationship. 6) In Essos he traded whatever was most valuable on the other side of the Narrow Sea, and he still does however he may dip into what Westeros has to offer the east.


Sibling Rivalry

He sits across from the Lord Hand. "Now, Tybolt." Jon Arryn says as his head inclines upward to acknowledge him. "How good is your High Valyrian?"

"Rough. Military, you know. No good for anything outside an encampment."

The old man frowns at him, and for a moment he begins to fear how good the Hand of the King is at scoping out liars. "I thought that you took up service in the armies of Tolos."

He gives a modest shake of the head. "Tyrosh."

"Ah. And no fraternising?"

He smiles. "Not past a point. I can insult people in the Dragon Tongue if that helps you."

They are both smiling now. "I'll bear that in mind," the Lord Hand says. "Your time may come. For now... I was thinking of someone to deal with this diplomat from Slaver's Bay. Man wants to broker some kind of deal with us - steel and other goods in exchange for slaves."

"What do they want the steel for?"

"Wouldn't say, not that I care for trade. If I did I'd have no need for yourself and Baelish." In the corner, the fire dies, an ash covered log subsiding amidst the few still burning embers; Lord Arryn, wrapped in his own thoughts, rises from his chair and kicks it down in person. He stands looking down at it, twisting the ring on his finger. A beautiful deep blue, with the soaring falcon of House Arryn etched into the jewel. The old man looks at him with tired eyes and tells him, "Long day. Go home. Don't insult anyone - in Valyrian or other wise."

Before he leaves he stands in the doorway, smiling slowly. The Warden of the East smiles too, as if to say, where were you ten years ago. Before all of this mess and follies. Then Lord Arryn's head dips over to his papers. He is a man who, in his years of service to the realm, scarcely has time to sleep; three hours will refresh him, and he will be up to hear the tolling of the city bells at dawn to signal the start of another smokey day in King's Landing.


Outside in the courtyard his people are waiting with lights to take him home. A hand meets his arm when he approaches: Tyrek, with his slight and pale eyes. "Did he ask you about the diplomat? Everyone's been talking about it. Does he want you to go to Yunkai, or to Tolos?" Tyrek's smile flickers, the midnight wind is turning the torch light into a dull blur.

"I haven't to speak of it; Lord Arryn fears that I may insult someone if I do."

The lad frowns. In these passed two months at King's Landing he has never known his master to insult anyone, because that is Tyrion's job. Master Tybolt does his insulting in private and mostly through the rhetoric he has with Petyr Baelish, who is always keen on keeping an eye on them.

The streets are damp and deserted; the mist of the Blackwater Bay creeping over the city walls and skipping passed the gold cloaks patrols. Over the city, the stars are stifled by clouds, and amidst the floor of the street remain the rotting pieces of yesterdays market. Tyrek gives him the office news, while he comes up with a response for the diplomat, and whoever else it may concern: 'His Grace, King Robert, wholly rejects any offers of trade in which the Seven Kingdoms will be paid with slaves or such persons who are forced to work against their own will. He dismisses any such terms with the strongest amount of feelings.'

Someone is screaming down by the harbour. The boatmen are singing, and beyond that can be heard faint splashing; mayhaps they are drowning somebody. This weather makes his scars ache, but the way he walks inside of the Lion's Den it is as though it were still midday: smiling brightly.

Tyrion is still up. When the door is heard and the servants shuffling to greet their employer in good time, he waddles into the hall with one of the kitchen cats beside him. "Forget where you lived?

He sighs.

"How was Cersei?"

"Didn't see her."

"Jaime?"

He nods.

Finally, "And Lord Arryn?"

He nods.

"Eaten?"

"Yes."

"Tired."

"Not really."

"Drink." No question about that. "Arbor?"

"Dornish."

The panelling has been painted. He walks into a flood of gold and scarlet. "Father-" Tyrion begins.

"Letter?"

The dwarf hands over the unopened letter, while he fetches the wine. He sits down next to his big brother and takes a cup with each raise of his hand. "He greets us. Well one of us." Tyrion shrugs. "Hopes I am well. Hopes you are well. Hopes his beloved daughter, Cersei, and her twin, Jaime, are well. He himself is well. And for no more lack of time, your father, Tywin Lannister, Warden of West, Lannistport, ecsetra, ecsetra." He tears up the letter and tosses it aside.

His brothes face is placid. Shrugging, the Imp only says, "Jaime's letters are longer."

"What would you expect? He was always the favourite." The cat nibbles at his fingers, as his round innocent eyes stare up at him. "How's business?"

"Better than Lord Arryn. What was today's business?"

"He wanted me to deal with some diplomat from the Slaver Cities."

"Oh?"

"I told him my High Valyrian was no good."

Tyrion snorts into his cup. "You weasel."

"He doesn't have to know everything about me."

"Someone should." No, he thinks, Tyrion, they really shouldn't. It's the last thing said between them before going to bed.


Before dawn: time to get on with his day. He begins with writing out the letter for the diplomat, and waking Lancel up to send it to the right place. When the Hand asks him about he will say he has had someone paid to write the letter. By dawn he is washed, shaved and his fast is broken. Wrapped in linen and fine wool, he sits by on of the houses many fires.

This early it is time for him to miss his wife and her father, Wykys. That good old man, who would be up early, drop a hand on his head and say, Tybolt, enjoy yourself on my behalf.

In those days he'd been what - twenty-eight, twenty-nine - still new to Braavos. One of those old men who had mastered Water Dancing in their youth and could still go toe to toe with the young men who were learning it now. His family had been one of those odd balls in Braavos, being old enough to have a Sealord, but not rich enough to meet the bribes required to take the office, or keep it for that matter.

He is still thinking of Braavos when Tyrion arrives complaining about the horses in the stable being right beneath his window. Lucion is summoned to take the criticisms to account, while he goes to make the Crown money. When he checks all the counting books, Tybolt is amazed. Mayhaps, Petyr is not as incompetent as he thought. He slams closed the books and turns to the fool appointed to run the harbour.

"I've seen your stock," easily rectified. "I've seen your accounts," no room for fault in that department. "Now show me your clerks." That was the key, of course, the key that would unlock profit in this cesepool. People are always the key, and if you can look them in the face you can be pretty sure if they're honest and up to the job. He tossed the dubious chief clerk out saying, you go or I will tear you apart with my teeth. In his place they'd put the jammering junior, a boy that he'd been told was stupid. Timid, was all he was; he looked over his work each night, mindlessly and wordlessly indicating each errand omission, and the boy had already taken to following him around like a lost pup anyway. A few weeks invested and a few days in the harbour, checking who and what was being taken in: by the years end, this harbour should be back in profit.

These are good days for him: every day there is a battle he can win. While the Westerosi wakes up for prospect of morning prayers with the village septon, he wakes up to the gods who speak easily and with an infinity of gold; when Cersei is settling in for a session of self loathing, he and Tyrion are running across the city for the new horde of gold they can make. Not that he runs; an old wound drags from time to time.

"Tybolt Lannister?" people say. "That is an ingenious man. Do you know he has the whole of the Seven Pointed Star by heart?" He is the man that septons come to if an argument about the Gods break out; he is the man for telling your tenants twelve good reasons as to why their rent is far. Nobody can out talk him, should he wish to talk. "Tyrion," he says to his little brother in the hall, "I believe in a year or two we'll be rich."

The dwarf smiles. "If Cersei gets her way, we'll be needling her dresses."

"If it comes to that, I'd leave the needles in."

"Well you'd better be ready for a good pricking. She wants to see you," Tyrion tells him.

"Will Jaime be there?"

"I doubt it. I think she wants to put you in your place." Tyrion's eyes were glowing.

"Well then, I'll be on my best behaviour."


He arrives at the Red Keep before dinner. The ravens of the Keeps Maesters, penned into the keeping yards, are crying out for their free kin on the Blackwater and further inland. Some children of Lord Arryn's household are playing in the yard, but when he walks in they part like the sea. They know that being as generous as Lord Arryn, he will gives them a copper each for their civility.

There eyes light up at the sight of a shiny, gold, dragon being laid into their palms, for which they grace him with conversation. "So, you are going to see the evil lady. She has bewitched the king, you know? And has the worst things to say about the Hand. Do you have a holy medal or a token to protect you, m'lord?"

"I used to, but I lost it."

"You should ask the Hand," one child says. "He will get you another."

These rooms in the Red Keep are vaguely familiar, though he would have recognized them better if blood was on the walls and the scent of a burning city in his nostrils. As he passes on toward his sister's inner layer, he sees a half-familiar face in a white cloak and says, "Preston?" The fellow detaches himself from the wall where he is leaning. "It's been a while. How are you?"

A sulky shrug.

"It must feel different to be here, now that the world is so different."

"No."

"You don't miss my lord father?"

A tightening of a jaw. Tybolt still remembers the teeth he knocked out of that mouth. "No."

"You are happy?"

"Yes," through gritted teeth.

The room in which his sister resides is a part of the castle built by the Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in her year as queen, her own face being etched into the wall above his sisters head. The Princess put Cersei to shame: sharp and shallow. She stood by the window, her fingers tugging enviously on her sleeves and ripping some of the thread trimmings. When she sees him she releases it, hand dipping back away to hide from him.

The King is out hunting, taking Jaime with him and her sons would no doubt be with their maester and septa learning. She is alone and bored; so she's reduced to sending for her brother and whatever entertainment she can get out of him.

Various women are sitting on low stools, sewing or pretending to. One of them Jocelyn Swyft, a cousin of their's by marriage through Ser Kevan. She had served Cersei on and off at Casterly Rock for more than a few years, depending whenever Cersei bored of her. She keeps her head down. Another one is Alysanne Lefford, still looking all pink and white.

The Lefford heiress looks him over quietly and a series of expressions run wild across her face. Who's this beggar? Oh, Gods it's him. He's alive. And finally, is this the best I could have gotten?

Back in the shadows there is another girl, who has her face turned away, trying to hide. He does not blame Princess Myrcella for trying to hide from her mother in the back of the room. Cersei seems to inspire it; looking fixedly at the floor as the others do. His sister expects him to do the same, or bow at the very least. In not doing so he offends her.

"Brother," she says to him with a warming smile and eyes of contempt. "Why is suddenly everything about you? The court and Jon Arryn seem to have nothing but praise for you. The Lord Hand does not cease in quoting yourself, or so he would have us think. You are so right on all points, he tells us, that you are at all points to be quoted. It's sending me insane."

He cocks his head. "Did you just want someone to complain too? Or am I here for a better purpose?"

Her glare is furious, and for an instant Tybolt is reminded of his mother in a temper. The way her whitened teeth snag and gnaw on her lips makes her look as though she would eat him alive. "I heard you have become a regularity in the Tower of the Hand." He shrugs and she demands an elaboration. "What is the talk?"

"The trials and tribulations of trade." He tells her: an answer that does not please her in the slightest. Sighing, he says, "if you don't tell me what you want to know I can't tell you, Cersei." Not that I would tell you if you did.

She lets all the air in her lungs blow out through her nose. "I want to know why you are working for Lord Arryn."

"And why I haven't gone back to the Rock, no doubt."

The reply incenses her. Biting on her tongue she warns him, "Careful, brother. You may have forgotten, but I know the truth about you."

Holding back the flicker of alarm is difficult, but most of the women do not see it. Most. Not Cersei; she sees it and smiles. Smiles and thinks that she has him. Nothing left to do now but call her bluff. "Which truth would that be, Cersei?"

Her head lifts to display her proudchin and sharp cheek bones, as her eyes continue to glare at him heavily. "You killed a man. Gregory Lorch: in cold blood." The cat like grin of their mother spread across her lips. "You're a murderer."

Not a stitch have the women added to their sewing since he has been in the room. His turn to smile. "Did I?" Shrugging makes her flinch. "You know nothing, Cersei. There were a lot of men in Lannisport that day. Ask any of them, they'll all tell you the same thing. Besides, Gregory was stabbed. Do I look like the kind of man to carry a knife?"

"Very well," she says when he stops. "Very well we will discuss this later. One thing. One simple thing I asked of Lord Arryn, and he would not deliver. One simple thing."

"If my lord Hand could not deliver it then it was not simple."

"Perhaps I am a simple person," snaps the Queen. "Do you feel I am?"

"You may be. Let's be honest, Cersei, I hardly know you."

Her resolve impresses him. She has not approached and slapped him yet. You may go, she says: and Alysanne Lefford jumps to follow him out.


The heiress to the Golden Tooth is flushed red, her lips are parted. She's brought her sewing with her, which he thinks is strange; but perhaps, if she leaves it behind, his sister will pull the stitches out . "We thought she might run up and slap you. Will you come again? Jocelyn and I can't wait."

"If she can stand it," he says. Alysanne tells him that his sister enjoys a skirmish with someone that isn't King Robert. He notices the stitching in her hand. "What are you working on there?" he asks, and she shows him. House Lannister's coat of arms. On everything that it can be, stands the roaring lion of Casterly Rock: coifs, veils, banners, walls, doublets and wall hangings; she has garments that no one has ever worn before just so their father's lion can be sewn onto it, which Cersei can then call her own.

...

"And how are you?" It seems discourteous not to ask, this woman who he may or may not have been married to had the dowry been smaller, and he had not broken the arm of her cousin a week before it was meant to be settled.

She looks surprised. "Well enough," her eyes swivel round and glare into the room from whence she came. "Though your sister keeps us worn down. She and the King..."

"They quarrel. Or so one hears."

"They never stop. Your sister never stops," she says, laughing. "If she weren't his queen, you could pity Robert for the dog's life Cersei leads him."

"My brother heard rumour that Cersei might be -"

"Yes, there have, but she's not. She can't, because they don't. Haven't since the youngest prince."

A blonde eyelash of his raises. "She'd tell you?"

"Out of spite, mayhaps." She shrugs, "When ever there's a feast he might get lucky. Once Robert got close to it; pulled down her shift and started kissing her breasts, in front of everyone!"

"Good man if he can find them."

Alysanne laughs; a boisterous and unladylike laugh, which must have been heard by his sister, because Myrcella, small and hiding still, moves into hall. "Lady Lefford," she says, "My Lady Mother wants you." Lady Lefford snaps her patience and turns on her heels, dress whipping behind herwith the ease of long practice.

He is left alone with his niece, who looks up at him expectantly. "Mother says that we shouldn't speak with you anymore." The Princess tells him.

By 'we' he assumes she means her siblings. He smiles down at the little lioness. She's so small, and her skin pale enough to be mistaken for being translucent. Loose golden curls fold down across her shoulders and back. For him, it's almost like starring at a ghost. "I imagine she says that same about your Uncle Tyrion." A childish blush creeps on to her face before she nodded her head.

"But you still see him anyway." Her eyes went to the size of a side plate and her face the colour of the capes her mother's guards use. He holds out a hand for her. "Would you like to come see him?"

She looks back toward the lair in which her mother lies. "Mother wouldn't like it." It seems despite the good will and generous things that Tyrion and Jaime say of him, Myrcella is still not as comfortable with him as her brothers are. Her wide eyes look up at him in wonder. "Do you carry a knife?"

He smiles; she would make a better lord than him. Opening the cuff of his left sleeve he shows her the glint of steel strapped to his wrist. She seems unfazed at the presence of an armed, more powerful, person than herself in the room; Ser Uncle Jaime has a sword, why should his older brother not have his weapon. "Dagger," he supplies the child. "In case you'd like to correct your mother."

She smiles and asks to be shown it closer. The steel is gilded, and holds as sharp an edge as can be curved into an eagles talon. When asked where he got it, he says he bought it and, correctly, she thinks he is lying still, but this time he stares her out.

"Are you sure you don't want to see your uncle?"

Regretfully, the princess shakes her head. "Yes," and turns back toward the chambers of her mother. "But I can't."

"Next time?" He offers. She accepts the promise.


When he arrives at home the boys are at their own dinner alone, Tyrion having left for a brothel. They move to rise and greet him, but he insists they do not. He runs his eyes along the knives laid out for carving their chosen meats. With a look at one, he decides it needs sharpening and takes it in hand. Standing behind Lancel, he asks, "Do you think I look like a murderer? In your good opinion, cousin?"

Their jaws drop and bodies stiffen. After a while, it is Lucion who mumbles, "At this moment, master, I would have to say..."

"No, obviously, but suppose I was on my way to see the Hand. Can you picture yourselves? Carrying papers and ink, the like?"

"A clerk would carry those." Tyrek says, recalling their own roles more or less.

He points the point at him, but keeps the blunt edge trained on Lancel. "So you can't picture it?" Lancel removes the hat he, and turns it inside out. He looks to see if his brains are inside it, or at least some response for him to give.

"Not like a murderer, no." An eager Lucion claims.

"But," squeaks Lancel, "if you will forgive me, master, you always look like a man who knows how to carve up someone."

Scared shitless, he leaves the boys back to their meal, only to almost stumble over Tyrion, a whore trailing behind him with wine and each a gentle sway that matches the dwarf's own. His little brother only has to take one sharp look up at him to know how it went with Cersei.

"Did she bite your bollocks off?" slurres the Imp, to the giggle of his whores, whom are no doubt expecting to be paid extra for laughing.

He produces his eagles talon. "Do I look like a murderer?" He questions the whores.