Maester Colemon pressed a cup of sweetsleep into Robert's hand every night while bidding him sweet dreams, and every night Robert worked open the rusted, wind-worn clasps and hinges of his bedchamber window to toss the potion into the sky below. He'd been half poisoned by sweetsleep by the time he was sent to the Rock, and the gods themselves would not convince him to drink it ever again.
The part of him that was still that little baby who had cried all the way to Casterly Rock, who had had to be strapped to his pony because he threw himself off in temper so often, was afraid that Maester Creylen would know, and would tell Lord Tywin. Robert had learned long ago that Lord Tywin was always told, and was always disappointed.
Still, he would not have minded something to ease the shaking in his hands, or the sting of sunlight through thin mountain air on his eyes and in his chest, now that Maester Creylen's tinctures were used up. Joy had teased him, suggesting he send to Myr for tinted eye-glasses, like the lenses the goldsmiths sometimes used when doing very fine work with still-hot gold, and his lady mother had snapped at Joy, shrill with fury that someone was daring to mock her little Sweetrobin.
He had begged, and pleaded, and outright ordered, and still she persisted with that stupid nickname! He was Lord of the Vale now, the last true scion of House Arryn, and on his way to being a man, but still she refused to accept that he was not the little boy she had screamed after, when his lord father had sent him away. He dreaded to think what he might have become, left in her care unchecked, and felt guilty for it. His mother had suffered many losses during her marriage to his father, and his father had not been the sort of man who might ease her pain. Comfort and compassion had not been Jon Arryn's way, and such were things that Lysa Tully needed in staggering abundance.
Robert had been the same, until Lord Tywin frightened it out of him. Lord Tyrion had once told Robert and Joy that Robert's mother had almost married the Kingslayer, before he wore a white cloak, and Robert could not help but wonder how different a woman his mother might have been, had she had Lord Tywin's cool influence - and a chance at healthier children, and more of them, since the Lannisters were abundantly fertile and Robert's father had been anything but.
A knock on his door heralded Gyles' arrival, and Robert smiled. He liked Gyles and Terrance very much, and was grateful that Joy's teasing was allowing them to see that he was not the brat he had been, that he was a man they might wish to have as a friend for something other than his title.
Gyles was tall and skinny, with the round face of a much fatter lad, and a cloudy fringe of pale red hair that reminded Robert of one of Lady Genna's sons. He was as easily offended as he was amused, but had a decent heart, as far as Robert could tell, and seemed fiercely loyal - although to whom, Joy had reminded him, Robert could not be sure.
"Pardon my saying so, my lord," Gyles said, closing the door behind him, "but it might be best if you visit your mother for a little, before you find your rest - she's been caterwauling and wailing like a demon for near an hour now, and a visit from you might quiet her where nothing else has."
Robert groaned to hear it, furious with his mother once more - she had flooded the table with tears when he had refused to call her Mummy at dinner, and he had been desperately thankful that only Joy and Lord Nestor had been there to see her. She was always upset over something, either his refusals to allow her to baby him or the continued absence of whomever she had agreed to marry - forgetting, of course, that she could not marry without Robert's permission, or at least that of Lord Nestor, as his regent.
He had been so relieved to maintain Lord Nestor as Steward, to install him as regent! The promise of a good marriage for each of his children and an inheritance for Albar, and Lord Nestor had been Robert's to the bone. Joy had spoken with Mya Stone, who was friends with Lady Myranda, and Robert had already sent word for his cousin Harrold to come from Coldoaks to court her.
He had only been in the Eyrie less than a full moon's turn, and already felt that he better understood Lord Tywin - to have all this power, safe in even Robert's shaking fingers simply because none would dare challenge his right to it, was intoxicating.
But his mother - she was becoming impossible. He half wished that he might send her away, but could not imagine inflicting her in her current state on anyone else. Besides, she was his mother and therefore his responsibility. Lord Tywin had always made sure that Robert understood the importance of responsibility, and he was not about to dishonour such a cardinal lesson.
"I will go to her," he said to Gyles, who slumped just slightly in relief. Robert half felt that he ought to reprimand his almost-friend, but did not wish to make a hypocrite of himself. "Go to bed, Gyles, doubtless we will have another long day tomorrow."
Gyles bowed on his way out, and Robert sighed again. It was hard enough, to convince the Vale to let him rule, without his bloody mother acting like a spoiled child.
"You!" she shrieked as soon as he stepped through the door of his bedchamber. "You are the cruelest of sons, neglecting me so terribly-"
"I am not being neglectful, my lady," he said firmly, glad for Maester Colemon's usually unwelcome presence. At least the maester would provide some distraction if his lady mother truly lost her temper. "I am trying to rule the Eyrie, and have not time for your coddling."
"It is not coddling-"
"Pardon me, my lady," Robert said, aware that his tone was clipped but uncaring, "but it is. Whether you are attempting to coddle me, or demanding that we all coddle you, it makes no difference. It is an interference that I will not stand for either way."
"So cruel!" she wept, turning her back on him. "So very cruel, just like your father-"
"Speaking of my father," he said, suddenly angry on behalf of the man he had hardly known. "Your haste to remarry is unseemly, my lady, and I will not stand for it. I will not suffer any more suitors to visit you, not until at least a full year has passed since my lord father's death. Perhaps once that time has elapsed, we might speak of finding a suitable husband for you-"
"It has already been decided who I shall marry," she said, spinning to face him again, trembling chin up in defiance. "It has been agreed-"
"Not by me," Robert snapped. "You are of House Arryn until you wed another, my lady, and so I am your lord. I will not see you wed to some lickspittle who will shame me."
Her chin stopped trembling, her hands stopped shaking, and her eyes were so bloodshot with tears that the blue was truly shocking.
"You are just as cruel as your father and mine both," she said, voice thin with anger in a way alien to all Robert knew of her. "I see now that my Sweetrobin is gone - just as your father wished, when he tore you from my arms."
"I am glad that you recognise it, my lady," he said. "But remember, when next you call me cruel, just who it is controls your expenses. It is not your secret betrothed. It is me."
And he left, Maester Colemon on his heels, and made it to his own bedchamber before the coughing started. It was a painful thing, a ragged sort of hacking that left his whole chest aching and his throat raw and his hand bloodied, and he decided he would send to the Rock, asking Maester Creylen for more of the tincture for that and for his shaking hands.
Perhaps, he thought as he climbed into bed, Maester Creylen would have something to calm his mother. It could not hurt to ask.
Gyles and Terrance had taken Joy's presence in stride, and so it was that the four of them sat together for the morning meal every day. It was always the nicest part of Robert's day, just as his meals with Joy had been at the Rock, and had made the transition a little easier.
"I've been hearing unfortunate tales of this heir of yours," Joy said, spooning honey into her porridge. "Very unfortunate tales indeed, my lord."
"Hardly surprising," Terrance rumbled, in that shockingly deep voice of his. "He has an unfortunate reputation, does Harry Hardyng. The only ones who see naught but good of him are Lady Randa and old Anya Waynwood, although for different reasons."
Joy has been collecting rumours and hearsay since their arrival, just as she used in the Rock, and there has been such an awful lot of hearsay about Cousin Harry. Father of three and husband of none, generous to his lovers until he finds that pregnancy has changed their bodies, arrogant and cruel when he feels himself superior, unforgiving of anything he views as weakness. Robert already dislikes him, but Harry is his heir, and must be managed and, if possible, moulded. Lord Tywin would say that any man can be moulded, given the proper motivation, but Robert did not have Lord Tywin's towering reputation, never mind his presence. He had a long way ahead of him before Harry the Heir was fit for purpose.
"Wally Waynwood sees to it that Harry's girls don't starve," Gyles said, not looking away from the ledgers he'd wheedled from Lord Nestor's accounts man. Gyles had an eye for numbers, just as Terrance had an ear for lies, and Joy a way with people. Robert could not imagine a better inner circle, unless he could prevail upon the Citadel to replace Maester Colemon with someone more capable. "He's a good egg, Wally, even if he does stammer shockingly and can't swing a sword for love nor money - no offence meant, my lord."
Robert waved it away - Gyles had meant no harm by it, and Robert knew that there was no lie in it. He had not been well enough to take to the yard since his arrival at the Eyrie, strained as his lungs were by the thin air. He wondered if descending to the Gates of the Moon when winter came in would help, but doubted it. Even if the air below was not so thin, it would still be sharp and cold, without the weight of salt and sea in it that had made breathing so much easier for him at the Rock.
"Speaking of money, my lord," Gyles said, frowning over his cup - the mulled berry cordial that Robert had missed at the Rock, when he had missed so little else about home - and tapping the ledgers. "Why in the Father's name did your lady mother withdraw enough gold from the vault here to fund a small army just before your arrival?"
Gyles lifted his head to meet the stunned silence he had left in his wake, looking a touch sheepish.
"Ah," he said. "I assumed that you knew, Robin. I am so sorry."
"Do not be," Robert said, frowning a little at being called Robin before deciding it was better than Sweetrobin, and somehow friendlier than Robert, and certainly than my lord. "It is best I know now, before she can have had much chance to throw away good gold on whatever fancies have taken her."
Gyles' frown deepened, and he heaved another ledger from near the bottom of the heap. Joy rose to stand behind him, hand on his shoulder, and read along with him, her eyes sharp as they followed the trail of Gyles' finger.
"It seems, Robin," she said, flashing him a wink so quick the others surely missed it at the name, "that she has already begun spending."
Gyles passed the ledger of Robert's mother's household accounts across the table for Robert and Terrance to inspect, and Robert felt his hands begin to shake - not from sickness, but from fury.
"I threatened last night to revoke her expenses," he said, throwing aside his napkin and pushing back from the table as quickly as he could. "How could she be so stupid!"
As if Lord Littlefinger, so despised by Lord Tywin and by everyone else who had ever met him, it seemed, needed his mother's money - no, not Lady Lysa's! Robert's money!
The others flocked around him as he departed his solar, and by the time they reached his mother's day room they had gathered Maester Colemon, Lord Nestor, Ser Albar, Vardis Egen, and Fat Hugh who had been Robert's lord father's squire, once. Robert could feel the colour flushing his cheeks and neck and ears, and could not hear much above the thudding of his heart in his ears. How dare she! What right had she to take money not hers and give it to a man who ought to be nothing to her!
"My lord," Maester Colemon was saying, "my lord, perhaps it is simply that your lady mother sent money to Lord Baelish so that he might pay off bills in her name-"
"Unlikely, maester," Lord Nestor said, "since Lord Arryn - my apologies, my lord, the previous Lord Arryn had arranged in his will for the steward of his household in King's Landing to pay off any outstanding bills in the city before the household moved home to the Eyrie. Besides, who would trust Littlefinger with coin not his own?"
Robert's chest was heaving, anger and strain both taking their tole, by the time he reached his mother's day room. Joy laid a hand on his arm, fingertips to the inside of his wrist, and he took it as the suggestion it was - a moment, to catch his breath, before nodding for Terrance to throw open the doors.
His mother startled to her feet, with her wittering ladies all around her - Robert did not know their names, but knew that Joy would, and made a note to ask her later.
"Sweetrobin!" she crowed, as though she had not set herself against him just last night. "You know how I hate it when you come unannounced, sweetling, but do send the others away so that we might have-"
She jumped when he slammed the ledgers down on her little reading table, a hand to her throat.
"You," he hissed, pointing a finger that shook shamefully into her swollen face, "have been stealing from me."
Her face, always pale, was white as bone, but Robert could not show her any mercy now. He could not be kind, could not be gentle, not when she was taking money from his treasury to throw it at some, some whoremonger who by all reports had money enough to buy the whole realm!
"I was not stealing," she said, drawing herself up - how bothersome that she was taller than him! "I am Lady of the Eyrie, it is my money as much as yours-"
"As it happens, my lady," Lord Nestor said, moving remarkably delicately for such a big man, "it is not your money. Your lord husband was quite clear in his will that you were not to be Lord Arryn's regent, and so his coin is not yours to spend. You have an expenses account-"
"I am his mother!" she shrieked, pushing Lord Nestor aside, pushing Robert aside, so she could poke Joy hard in the chest. "This is all your doing, you little slut! Turning my boy away from me so you can sink your claws into him."
"How dare you," Robert said, fury boiling his eyes in his head now, "Lady Joy is my guest-"
"And a filthy, half-foreign Lannister whore!" Mother shrieked, so vicious that Joy, fearless Joy, stepped back. Terrance and Gyles were with Robert, one at either of his shoulders, and Robert opened his mouth to reprimand his mother when the shaking spread from his hands.
"Robert?" Joy said, fearless once more. "Robert, give me your hands-"
"Too late," he said, because he could feel his chest going hollow, which meant the shaking had spread too deep. "Don't let me bite through my-"
And it spread all the way, and he knew no more.
"Your mother is having a lie down," Joy said, as he began to stir. "And you did not shit yourself, so there are two things for which you can be thankful, little falcon."
She was sitting on the side of his bed in a clean, plain gown of green wool, and he had never seen anything lovelier, not with the way the late sun spilling through his windows and catching on the pale of her hair, the gold in her green eyes, the smooth brown of her cheekbones and the round curve of her nose.
"You shook for a very long time, though," she said, her smile falling away. She brushed his hair back from his face, and he felt clammy and sticky and altogether disgusting, and wished that he might bathe. "Longer than I have seen you shake in a very long while."
"I've sent to Maester Creylen for more of my tinctures," he said, wincing to speak because his throat was so sore. "It will be some time before they arrive, though, and the air here is so thin - Maester Colemon's only treatment for my shakes is sweetsleep, and I cannot drink that if I am to do my duty, can I?"
Joy was chewing her lip, as she only did when she was truly worried, and ran her fingers through his hair again.
"Perhaps a little dreamwine in your cup before bed," she said. "You shake less when you're well rested, I know - but it is not only your shaking that worries me, Robert. What about this?"
Her other hand held one of his handkerchiefs, sewn by her with a sky-blue falcon and muddied all over with blood.
"Your lungs, Robert," she said, and there were tears in her lovely eyes. "Your lungs are failing, aren't they?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "But I think they will be better, when we move to the Gates of the Moon for the winter. The air is not so thin there."
Her smile was watery, but it was a smile, and so he counted it a victory. He had so few of them that every one counted.
He would deal with his mother in the morning, when his chest no longer ached and his throat was not raw. Lord Nestor would hardly let her run rampant in his absence.