Author's Notes: Welcome to a new chapter! Thank you all, once more, for your support! Every hit, Kudos, comment, bookmark, favorite and follow mean a lot to me. I hope you enjoy the latest chapter of TDR.
Last, but not least, I would like to thank catzrko0l for beta-ing this chapter!
Chapter 61
Petyr II
Petyr stood by his window and carefully peered down at the citizens of King's Landing as he indulged in his favorite pastime. He would pick out a person or two from the crowd. Just by observing them—their appearance, their clothes, their mannerisms, their gait—he would then ascribe motivations to them and spin a fiction in his head as to where they came from and, most importantly, where they were going. It mattered little in the end whether he got it right. He'd had enough practice with the denizens of the Keep that he was confident he would get the broad strokes of each person down. Until lately.
He had been so confident that he knew who Aemon Targaryen and Jaime Lannister were. The Kingslayer was a stick in the mud, volatile, near-mute with a tumultuous relationship with his sister. He was certain that the Kingslayer and the whore queen had fucked each other once or twice in their youth, but their relationship had soured upon her marriage to Robert Baratheon. It was easy to see a jealous lover in the Kingslayer rather than true hate. Unfortunately, nothing had come or remained of that relationship, so he was left merely with a suspicion that did not amount to sufficient blackmail material. It was still useful in gauging both the Kingslayer's and the whore queen's actions, even if not fully accurate.
He would've had Cersei right where he wanted her, if she hadn't lost her mind and snuck a quick fuck with her brother in Winterfell. But she had never been all that bright to begin with, despite her smug self-assurance. She was only where she was because she had been born into the most powerful house in Westeros as a woman.
In fact, all of the Lannister brood stood in the long shadow of their sire and would never be able to step outside of it. The Kingslayer was making an attempt playing at Hand, but it was obvious the position was beyond his wits. While his appearance was mostly kempt, there was no mistaking the bruises under his eyes from lack of sleep and his frequently frayed temper. The only reason he was keeping his head above water was because of that damn healer. About the only smart move the Kingslayer had made since arriving was cultivating the healer as a spy and a hub of information. The boy, Vicente, was proof of the nefarious nature behind the healer's clinic.
Petyr had a feeling the boy was not as disloyal as he pretended to be. Information wasn't lining up as it should have. It wasn't the boy who brought him the news of Cersei's starvation, but a servant who had been snooping for an easy gold dragon. He would have to look into it later.
Despite having the rug pulled out from under him in previous moves, it was pretty clear that the Kingslayer and the king were amateur players of the game. The second part of the plan was being implemented smoothly and would start showing results soon. Poisoning Robert Baratheon had been the first move. He was a hindrance and would put the dragon's claim in doubt the longer he kept him alive, so he did wonder why Aemon bothered keeping him around, especially after he'd already rounded up and torn down his brothers.
The king had made some smart moves, but all of them were grand gestures to be seen by the whole of the kingdom. He had done little in subtle gestures and, by his and the Kingslayer's bumbling, it was a wonder they'd gotten anything past him.
Yet they had. Just as Petyr had convinced the maester at Riverrun to send a letter to Lady Catelyn, he'd had one sent to the Blackfish as well. The Blackfish had finally abandoned his post at the Bloody Gate barely a week ago and the news out of the Eyrie was enough to chill Petyr to the marrow.
Although the king had declared the Eyrie under quarantine due to disease, it had now reached his ears that the dragon had actually forced a confession out of Lysa regarding the poisoning of Lord Jon Arryn. Furthermore, he had used a forged letter signed by him—Petyr Baelish—to implicate him in the crime.
Petyr did not believe in coincidences and there was surely no coincidence in his name being used to sign the letter. The dragon knew he was somehow behind Lord Arryn's poisoning before he took the letter to Lysa. That simply wasn't possible. No one, apart from perhaps Lysa, could know that.
Unless… His expression grew murderous and he clenched his fists in rage. It had to be Varys. Perhaps he should start leaking rumors regarding his underhanded dealings with that warlord in Qohor. The details were scant at best, but the Spider was working towards the destruction of the crown as assuredly as he was. They would've come to blows eventually. Perhaps it was best to start preparing for Lord Varys' eventual demise. He would be the trickiest to pin down.
Just another death to plan in a long line of many, Petyr mused, stroking his goatee. So many loose ends to take care of. He contemplated briefly arranging for the death of the Kingslayer's bastard in Winterfell. It would widen the gap in Lannister-Stark relations to a canyon, but Lord Tywin seemed reticent. The old bastard couldn't possibly be happy about the babe, but perhaps he thought his son would become unhinged at its death. No matter. The boy's death wouldn't be necessary for now. There would still be plenty more opportunities to kill him in the future, along with the rest of the Lannisters.
You're getting ahead of yourself, he thought and tamped down the murderous glee that had threatened to show. He still had a problem: the king knew he was behind Jon Arryn's death. If the king knew he was culpable that far back, then the king knew he wasn't to be trusted either. The dragon had actually lulled him into a false sense of security. Seven hells, even Lord Stark had managed to avoid spilling the king's secrets involuntarily. He knew now why Lord Stark had such a cloud of suspicion in his eyes when they'd had their little chat. Aside from King Aemon and Ser Barristan, Lord Stark and Lord Royce had been there at the confession.
The dragon had sent Ser Barristan on a foolhardy errand to escort his intended back to Westeros, but his assassins would make sure she never made it out of any Essosi port alive. That had been the first thing Lord Tywin had ordered of him the moment Ser Barristan left port. The old knight had taken a large ship, no doubt fit for a queen, but his assassins could take fleeter ships to arrive ahead of him.
The dragon and his uncle were now sequestered in Dorne, thanks to happenstance. The king's courtesy would be the death of him; it had been easy to guess that the king would move to Dorne as opposed to the other way around. With his seeming goal to foster peace, demanding Dorne come to submit would never have won him the loyalty he needed to keep the peace. His only option was to go and the only person left to rule would be the Hand to the King, Lord Jaime Lannister. The opportunity was too perfect to let pass by.
That left Lord Royce. As long as he was alive, the Vale would be under his control. While Petyr wasn't one to resort to the same weapon of choice for murder—especially not so soon after Robert Baratheon had been obviously killed—he was running short on time. They only had about two more months, at the most, before the king returned. The kingdom had to be ready to fall before then and there was still so much left to do.
A knock at his door turned his head and one of his girls stepped in. She had hair as dark as cocoa and skin as white as fresh milk, but she quickly averted her eyes upon meeting his and said in a small voice, "Ser Osmund Kettleblack is here to see you."
"Send him in. Keep the door closed and do not interrupt me until we are done," Petyr snapped.
Ser Osmund swaggered into the room with his head tipped. He pinched the ass of the whore as he passed and smirked at the slight flinch. His wavy black hair was well-styled and his conical goatee was trimmed to a fine point. Unlike his brothers, Ser Osmund was a handsome man who towered in the room and would've given Ser Gregor Clegane a decent battle. Not that he had the courage for that.
"You sent for me, my Lord?"
"Yes, you have the particulars?" Petyr asked, stepping over his desk to pull out a letter with a broken seal.
"Aye. You'll please my father with this."
"I repay those who are loyal to me. It is no less than you or he deserve," Petyr replied with an ingratiating smile.
The man read over the letter carefully, his smirk continuing to widen and Petyr saw greed in his eyes. "This should be easy."
"I would ask that you treat this assignment as delicately as you would if you were carrying a babe through floodwaters. She is not to be underestimated."
Ser Osmund frowned and stared at him questioningly. "You might want to be more specific."
"Your babe through floodwaters then. I don't care what happens after you sequester her."
"I've been livin' in the Keep same as you. She's a hard one to miss."
"Then you shouldn't miss her."
"When do you want me to act?"
"Give it a few days. Be noticeable, but not too much. This has to be believable. We're counting on you."
"Oh, aye, I can do it," Ser Osmund replied and then held out his hand expectantly.
Petyr dug into his desk and pulled out a pouch that clinked with the sound of coins. He tossed it at the knight.
"That'll do," Ser Osmund said. "I'll have her...sequestered. In short order." With a nod and a vicious lop-sided smile, he walked out of the room.
Petyr breathed a small sigh of relief. Another coin had been tossed onto the table in this bet, but it would be worth it. A marriage with Lysa would cement his claim on the Eyrie. He would be able to leap from lordship of a pitiful heap of rocks to lord of a mountain and Lord Paramount of the Vale. He had waited this long, he could wait a bit longer.
However, there was a doubt that had been growing in his mind. Although the dragon king appeared to know that he wasn't trustworthy, he made the fatal move of leaving his kingdom solely in the care of Jaime Lannister. Although the king said he trusted the Kingslayer quite publicly, that was less apparent in their private conversations. They clearly planned together, he hadn't heard a single word pass from the king to the Kingslayer about his involvement with poisoning Lord Jon Arryn. Did the Kingslayer know? They had, after all, engineered for Grandmaester Pycelle to take the fall by accusations of negligent death.
And they seemed to remain ignorant of his role in the Kingslayer's kidnapping by the Ironborn. That had been a risky move to openly state a plan, but Renly and Loras were halfwits who forgot the detail the moment they stepped out of the small council. If Varys ratted me out about Jon Arryn, there's no reason to suspect that he hasn't told them about the Ironborn, yet the king and the Kingslayer seemed to be at odds about when and how to move on the Iron Islands so that they could be brought to heel and punished for the Kingslayer's captivity. Just because the Spider gave them one tidbit of information, it didn't mean he gave them all. He could at least guarantee that Varys was smarter than that.
Unlike Lord Tywin. The pithy old lord had a good head for strategy on the battlefield, much like his son Jaime, but his inherent blindness to the personality flaws of his son was going to be the death of House Lannister. It was clear from the last month that the Kingslayer had no interest in being a king. Perhaps a better king than Robert, but his blindness and ineptitude in the game would be his downfall as it had been for so many others. He'd allow Tywin a few years to revel in his victory. But when the kingdom settled back down and grew quiet, he would strike again. He'd have a nearly foolproof plan too.
Now that he knew that barrels of wildfire existed around the city it would be easy to simply have a cache of them explode during a wedding at the Sept of Baelor. He would admit to the dragon king and the kingslayer having good knowledge about that threat and trying to stop it before it happened, but the healer's efforts were doomed to failure.
In all of the chaos and pandemonium that will ensue after the coup, the Kingslayer was likely to forget it all over again. If he did manage to find a way to rid the city of it, Baelish could always secure a cache and then move it just when the Kingslayer thought he and everyone else were safe.
He'd thought of how the board would settle if he'd known about the wildfire caches and had blown it up as the king's cousin was marrying the Tyrell girl. All major heads of houses would have been burnt to ash, including the king and the Hand. He would've had to kill Stannis and Renly Baratheon sitting in their cells to eliminate the most prominent contenders. Unfortunately, Petyr was still just a small lord with a spit of land and several brothels. He was enormously wealthy thanks to the brothels and the coin he'd been siphoning from the crown's account, but he had no army. In the wake of such an aftermath, he figured Dorne would be the next to claim the crown with their fresh army. Garlan Tyrell was in High Garden and he would have the next biggest army to fight. Either Dorne and the Reach would clash or they'd somehow come to an understanding. It was difficult to say. The lords in all of the other kingdoms would only be able to squabble with each other. He would have to wait to take out the next king before he could possibly make his own move for the Crown.
Orchestrating a spider web of downfalls with the Vale as his reward was by far the easiest and the quickest step to forwarding his goals of taking the crown. However, he was becoming concerned with Lord Tywin's zealous need to take the kingdom back for the Lannisters. While he had every intention of widening the rift between the dragon king and the Kingslayer, he had his doubts about the Kingslayer's willingness to go forward with the plan. The game was risky, but it never hurt to have an escape route. He can't enjoy a crown if he's dead.
He scribbled a quick message:
Aurich,
I think it's time you delivered on that favor. We will be considered even if you aid me in this. Come here tomorrow. You know the routine.
He didn't bother with his name. The captain would know who sent it.
Author's Note:
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