Robert pushed his spoon across the bowl and back, but never brought it to his lips. “I am not hungry,” he decided. “I want to go back to bed. I never slept last night. I heard singing. Maester Colemon gave me dreamwine but I could still hear it.”
Alayne put down her spoon. “If there had been singing, I should have heard it too. You had a bad dream, that’s all.”
“No, it wasn’t a dream.” Tears filled his eyes. “Marillion was singing again. Your father says he’s dead, but he isn’t.”
“He is.” It frightened her to hear him talk like this. Bad enough that he is small and sickly, what if he is mad as well? “Sweetrobin, he is. Marillion loved your lady mother too much and could not live with what he’d done to her, so he walked into the sky.” Alayne had not seen the body, no more than Robert had, but she did not doubt the fact of the singer’s death. “He’s gone, truly.”
“But I hear him every night. Even when I close the shutters and put a pillow on my head. Your father should have cut his tongue out. I told him to, but he wouldn’t.”
He needed a tongue to confess. “Be a good boy and eat your porridge,” Alayne pleaded. “Please? For me?”
“I don’t want porridge.” Robert flung his spoon across the hall. It bounced off a hanging tapestry, and left a smear of porridge upon a white silk moon. “The lord wants eggs!”
“The lord shall eat porridge and be thankful for it,” said Petyr’s voice, behind them.
Alayne turned, and saw him in the doorway arch with Maester Colemon at his side. “You should heed the Lord Protector, my lord,” the maester said. “Your lord’s bannermen are coming up the mountain to pay you homage, so you will need all your strength.”
Robert rubbed at his left eye with a knuckle. “Send them away. I don’t want them. If they come, I’ll make them fly.”
“You tempt me sorely, my lord, but I fear I promised them safe conduct,” said Petyr. “In any case, it is too late to turn them back. By now they may have climbed as far as Stone.”
“Why won’t they leave us be?” wailed Alayne. “We never did them any harm. What do they want of us?”
“Just Lord Robert. Him, and the Vale.” Petyr smiled. “There will be eight of them. Lord Nestor is showing them up, and they have Lyn Corbray with them. Ser Lyn is not the sort of man to stay away when blood is in the offing.”
His words did little to soothe her fears. Lyn Corbray had slain almost as many men in duels as he had in battle. He had won his spurs during Robert’s Rebellion, she knew, fighting first against Lord Jon Arryn at the gates of Gulltown, and later beneath his banners on the Trident, where he had cut down Prince Lewyn of Dorne, a white knight of the Kingsguard. Petyr said that Prince Lewyn had been sorely wounded by the time the tide of battle swept him to his final dance with Lady Forlorn, but added, “That’s not a point you’ll want to raise with Corbray, though. Those who do are soon given the chance to ask Martell himself the truth of it, down in the halls of hell.” If even half of what she had heard from Lord Robert’s guards was true, Lyn Corbray was more dangerous than all six of the Lords Declarant put together. “Why is he coming?” she asked. “I thought the Corbrays were for you.”
“Lord Lyonel Corbray is well disposed toward my rule,” said Petyr, “but his brother goes his own way. On the Trident, when their father fell wounded, it was Lyn who snatched up Lady Forlorn and slew the man who’d cut him down. Whilst Lyonel was carrying the old man back to the maesters in the rear, Lyn led his charge against the Dornishmen threatening Robert’s left, broke their lines to pieces, and slew Lewyn Martell. So when old Lord Corbray died, he bestowed the Lady upon his younger son. Lyonel got his lands, his title, his castle, and all his coin, yet still feels he was cheated of his birthright, whilst Ser Lyn . . . well, he loves Lyonel as much as he loves me. He wanted Lysa’s hand for himself.”
“I don’t like Ser Lyn,” Robert insisted. “I won’t have him here. You send him back down. I never said that he could come. Not here. The Eyrie is impregnable, Mother said.”
“Your mother is dead, my lord. Until your sixteenth name day, I rule the Eyrie.” Petyr turned to the stoop-backed serving woman hovering near the kitchen steps. “Mela, fetch his lordship a new spoon. He wants to eat his porridge.”
“I do not! Let my porridge fly!” This time Robert flung the bowl, porridge and honey and all. Petyr Baelish ducked aside nimbly, but Maester Colemon was not so quick. The wooden bowl caught him square in the chest, and its contents exploded upward over his face and shoulders. He yelped in a most unmaesterlike fashion, while Alayne turned to soothe the little lordling, but too late. The fit was on him. A pitcher of milk went flying as his hand caught it, flailing. When he tried to rise he knocked his chair backwards and fell on top of it. One foot caught Alayne in the belly, so hard it knocked the wind from her. “Oh, gods be good,” she heard Petyr say, disgusted.
Globs of porridge dotted Maester Colemon’s face and hair as he knelt over his charge, murmuring soothing words. One gobbet crept slowly down his right cheek, like a lumpy grey-brown tear. It is not so bad a spell as the last one, Alayne thought, trying to be hopeful. By the time the shaking stopped, two guards in sky-blue cloaks and silvery mail shirts had come at Petyr’s summons. “Take him back to bed and leech him,” the Lord Protector said, and the taller guardsman scooped the boy up in his arms. I could carry him myself, Alayne thought. He is no heavier than a doll.
Colemon lingered a moment before following. “My lord, this parley might best be left for another day. His lordship’s spells have grown worse since Lady Lysa’s death. More frequent and more violent. I bleed the child as often as I dare, and mix him dreamwine and milk of the poppy to help him sleep, but . . .”
“He sleeps twelve hours a day,” Petyr said. “I require him awake from time to time.”
The maester combed his fingers through his hair, dribbling globs of porridge on the floor. “Lady Lysa would give his lordship her breast whenever he grew overwrought. Archmaester Ebrose claims that mother’s milk has many heathful properties.”
“Is that your counsel, maester? That we find a wet nurse for the Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale? When shall we wean him, on his wedding day? That way he can move directly from his nurse’s nipples to his wife’s.” Lord Petyr’s laugh made it plain what he thought of that. “No, I think not. I suggest you find another way. The boy is fond of sweets, is he not?”
“Sweets?” said Colemon.
“Sweets. Cakes and pies, jams and jellies, honey on the comb. Perhaps a pinch of sweetsleep in his milk, have you tried that? Just a pinch, to calm him and stop his wretched shaking.”
“A pinch?” The apple in the maester’s throat moved up and down as he swallowed. “One small pinch . . . perhaps, perhaps. Not too much, and not too often, yes, I might try . . .”
“A pinch,” Lord Petyr said, “before you bring him forth to meet the lords.”
“As you command, my lord.” The maester hurried out, his chain clinking softly with every step.
“Father,” Alayne asked when he was gone, “will you have a bowl of porridge to break your fast?”
“I despise porridge.” He looked at her with Littlefinger’s eyes. “I’d sooner break my fast with a kiss.”
A true daughter would not refuse her sire a kiss, so Alayne went to him and kissed him, a quick dry peck upon the cheek, and just as quickly stepped away.
“How . . . dutiful.” Littlefinger smiled with his mouth, but not his eyes. “Well, I have other duties for you, as it happens. Tell the cook to mull some red wine with honey and raisins. Our guests will be cold and thirsty after their long climb. You are to meet them when they arrive, and offer them refreshment. Wine, bread, and cheese. What sort of cheese is left to us?”
“The sharp white and the stinky blue.”
“The white. And you’d best change as well.”
Alayne looked down at her dress, the deep blue and rich dark red of Riverrun. “Is it too—”
“It i
s too Tully. The Lords Declarant will not be pleased by the sight of my bastard daughter prancing about in my dead wife’s clothes. Choose something else. Need I remind you to avoid sky blue and cream?”
“No.” Sky blue and cream were the colors of House Arryn. “Eight, you said . . . Bronze Yohn is one of them?”
“The only one who matters.”
“Bronze Yohn knows me,” she reminded him. “He was a guest at Winterfell when his son rode north to take the black.” She had fallen wildly in love with Ser Waymar, she remembered dimly, but that was a lifetime ago, when she was a stupid little girl. “And that was not the only time. Lord Royce saw . . . he saw Sansa Stark again at King’s Landing, during the Hand’s tourney.”
Petyr put a finger under her chin. “That Royce glimpsed this pretty face I do not doubt, but it was one face in a thousand. A man fighting in a tourney has more to concern him than some child in the crowd. And at Winterfell, Sansa was a little girl with auburn hair. My daughter is a maiden tall and fair, and her hair is chestnut. Men see what they expect to see, Alayne.” He kissed her nose. “Have Maddy lay a fire in the solar. I shall receive our Lords Declarant there.”
“Not the High Hall?”
“No. Gods forbid they glimpse me near the high seat of the Arryns, they might think that I mean to sit in it. Cheeks born so low as mine must never aspire to such lofty cushions.”
“The solar.” She should have stopped with that, but the words came tumbling out of her. “If you gave them Robert . . .”
“. . . and the Vale?”
“They have the Vale.”
“Oh, much of it, that’s true. Not all, however. I am well loved in Gulltown, and have some lordly friends of mine own as well. Grafton, Lynderly, Lyonel Corbray . . . though I’ll grant you, they are no match for the Lords Declarant. Still, where would you have us go, Alayne? Back to my mighty stronghold on the Fingers?”
She had thought about that. “Joffrey gave you Harrenhal. You are lord in your own right there.”
“By title. I needed a great seat to marry Lysa, and the Lannisters were not about to grant me Casterly Rock.”
“Yes, but the castle is yours.”
“Ah, and what a castle it is. Cavernous halls and ruined towers, ghosts and draughts, ruinous to heat, impossible to garrison . . . and there’s that small matter of a curse.”
“Curses are only in songs and stories.”
That seemed to amuse him. “Has someone made a song about Gregor Clegane dying of a poisoned spear thrust? Or about the sellsword before him, whose limbs Ser Gregor removed a joint at a time? That one took the castle from Ser Amory Lorch, who received it from Lord Tywin. A bear killed one, your dwarf the other. Lady Whent’s died as well, I hear. Lothstons, Strongs, Harroways, Strongs . . . Harrenhal has withered every hand to touch it.”
“Then give it to Lord Frey.”
Petyr laughed. “Perhaps I shall. Or better still, to our sweet Cersei. Though I should not speak harshly of her, she is sending me some splendid tapestries. Isn’t that kind of her?”
The mention of the queen’s name made her stiffen. “She’s not kind. She scares me. If she should learn where I am—”
“—I might have to remove her from the game sooner than I’d planned. Provided she does not remove herself first.” Petyr teased her with a little smile. “In the game of thrones, even the humblest pieces can have wills of their own. Sometimes they refuse to make the moves you’ve planned for them. Mark that well, Alayne. It’s a lesson that Cersei Lannister still has yet to learn. Now, don’t you have some duties to perform?”
She did indeed. She saw to the mulling of the wine first, found a suitable wheel of sharp white cheese, and commanded the cook to bake bread enough for twenty, in case the Lords Declarant brought more men than expected. Once they eat our bread and salt they are our guests and cannot harm us. The Freys had broken all the laws of hospitality when they’d murdered her lady mother and her brother at the Twins, but she could not believe that a lord as noble as Yohn Royce would ever stoop to do the same.
The solar next. Its floor was covered by a Myrish carpet, so there was no need to lay down rushes. Alayne asked two serving men to erect the trestle table and bring up eight of the heavy oak-and-leather chairs. For a feast she would have placed one at the head of the table, one at the foot, and three along each side, but this was no feast. She had the men arrange six chairs on one side of the table, two on the other. By now the Lords Declarant might have climbed as far as Snow. It took most of a day to make the climb, even on muleback. Afoot, most men took several days.
It might be that the lords would talk late into the night. They would need fresh candles. After Maddy laid the fire, she sent her down to find the scented beeswax candles Lord Waxley had given Lady Lysa when he sought to win her hand. Then she visited the kitchens once again, to make certain of the wine and bread. All seemed well in hand, and there was still time enough for her to bathe and wash her hair and change.
There was a gown of purple silk that gave her pause, and another of dark blue velvet slashed with silver that would have woken all the color in her eyes, but in the end she remembered that Alayne was after all a bastard, and must not presume to dress above her station. The dress she picked was lambswool, dark brown and simply cut, with leaves and vines embroidered around the bodice, sleeves, and hem in golden thread. It was modest and becoming, though scarce richer than something a serving girl might wear. Petyr had given her all of Lady Lysa’s jewels as well, and she tried on several necklaces, but they all seemed ostentatious. In the end she chose a simple velvet ribbon in autumn gold. When Gretchel fetched her Lysa’s silvered looking glass, the color seemed just perfect with Alayne’s mass of dark brown hair. Lord Royce will never know me, she thought. Why, I hardly know myself.
Feeling near as bold as Petyr Baelish, Alayne Stone donned her smile and went down to meet their guests.
The Eyrie was the only castle in the Seven Kingdoms where the main entrance was underneath the dungeons. Steep stone steps crept up the mountainside past the waycastles Stone and Snow, but they came to an end at Sky. The final six hundred feet of the ascent were vertical, forcing would-be visitors to dismount their mules and make a choice. They could ride the swaying wooden basket that was used to lift supplies, or clamber up a rocky chimney using handholds carved into the rock.
Lord Redfort and Lady Waynwood, the most elderly of the Lords Declarant, chose to be drawn up by the winch, after which the basket was lowered once more for fat Lord Belmore. The other lords made the climb. Alayne met them in the Crescent Chamber beside a warming fire, where she welcomed them in Lord Robert’s name and served them bread and cheese and cups of hot mulled wine in silver cups.
Petyr had given her a roll of arms to study, so she knew their heraldry if not their faces. The red castle was Redfort, plainly; a short man with a neat grey beard and mild eyes. Lady Anya was the only woman amongst the Lords Declarant, and wore a deep green mantle with the broken wheel of Waynwood picked out in beads of jet. Six silver bells on purple, that was Belmore, pear-bellied and round of shoulder. His beard was a ginger-grey horror sprouting from a multiplicity of chins. Symond Templeton’s, by contrast, was black and sharply pointed. A beak of a nose and icy blue eyes made the Knight of Ninestars look like some elegant bird of prey. His doublet displayed nine black stars within a golden saltire. Young Lord Hunter’s ermine cloak confused her till she spied the brooch that pinned it, five silver arrows fanned. Alayne would have put his age closer to fifty than to forty. His father had ruled at Longbow Hall for nigh on sixty years, only to die so abruptly that some whispered the new lord had hastened his inheritance. Hunter’s cheeks and nose were red as apples, which bespoke a certain fondness for the grape. She made certain to fill his cup as often as he emptied it.
The youngest man in the party had three ravens on his chest, each clutching a blood-red heart in its talons. His brown hair was shoulder length; one stray lock curled down across his forehead. Ser Lyn Corbray
, Alayne thought, with a wary glance at his hard mouth and restless eyes.
Last of all came the Royces, Lord Nestor and Bronze Yohn. The Lord of Runestone stood as tall as the Hound. Though his hair was grey and his face lined, Lord Yohn still looked as though he could break most younger men like twigs in those huge gnarled hands. His seamed and solemn face brought back all of Sansa’s memories of his time at Winterfell. She remembered him at table, speaking quietly with her mother. She heard his voice booming off the walls when he rode back from a hunt with a buck behind his saddle. She could see him in the yard, a practice sword in hand, hammering her father to the ground and turning to defeat Ser Rodrik as well. He will know me. How could he not? She considered throwing herself at his feet to beg for his protection. He never fought for Robb, why should he fight for me? The war is finished and Winterfell is fallen. “Lord Royce,” she asked timidly, “will you have a cup of wine, to take the chill off?”
Bronze Yohn had slate-grey eyes, half-hidden beneath the bushiest eyebrows she had ever seen. They crinkled when he looked down at her. “Do I know you, girl?”
Alayne felt as though she had swallowed her tongue, but Lord Nestor rescued her. “Alayne is the Lord Protector’s natural daughter,” he told his cousin gruffly.
“Littlefinger’s little finger has been busy,” said Lyn Corbray, with a wicked smile. Belmore laughed, and Alayne could feel the color rising in her cheeks.
“How old are you, child?” asked Lady Waynwood.
“Four-fourteen, my lady.” For a moment she forgot how old Alayne should be. “And I am no child, but a maiden flowered.”
“But not deflowered, one can hope.” Young Lord Hunter’s bushy mustache hid his mouth entirely.
“Yet,” said Lyn Corbray, as if she were not there. “But ripe for plucking soon, I’d say.”
“Is that what passes for courtesy at Heart’s Home?” Anya Waynwood’s hair was greying and she had crow’s-feet around her eyes and loose skin beneath her chin, but there was no mistaking the air of nobility about her. “The girl is young and gently bred, and has suffered enough horrors. Mind your tongue, ser.”
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