Petyr II

  Inside an out of the way inn in one of the poorer districts of Pentos, with a great big cup of pale ale in his hands and a hood over his head, Petyr Baelish finally allowed himself to relax.

  The inn wasn’t the type of establishment he usually preferred to frequent. The common room smelled of sweat and piss, as did the other patrons aside from him and his men; the food was of dubious enough quality he’d settled for fresh bread and aged cheese, and there wasn’t enough torches and candles in the room to make out the faces of anyone not sitting directly in front of you.

  That was for the best though, he supposed. No one would look for the former Master of Coins of the Seven Kingdoms in a piss dump like this.

  The journey to Essos had been refreshingly pleasant after all the commotion of the past weeks. It would be, of course, after Petyr had the immense pleasure of watching King’s Landing beautifully ablaze from the stern of the ship.

  Oh how he would have paid half his fortune to see the wails of despair of the child king and his miserable grandfather the day after the fires.

  He had been a busy man in his last days in Westeros. Smuggling himself and a few of his men into the city had been no trouble at all. He knew every route and dark hole in and out of the city, and though the gold cloaks were not on his payroll anymore, men like them were always amenable to a good bit of bribing.

  After that, it had been easy communicating with his people inside the city. A slip of gold here, an old debt called there, and Petyr had it all worked out. Most of the men and women involved would have balked at the final goal of his plan, burning half of the city and kidnapping the future Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, but they were hardly intelligent enough to put into perspective how all their individual tasks converged into the final result.

  The attempt kidnapping of the Tyrel girl had been a spur of the moment idea, he had to admit, but it had its merits. He’d waited as long as he thought sensible to see if the men he sent after the her would return, but that hadn’t borne fruit. It was a shame, but no true detriment to his plans. The men were expendable, and his goal to break the Tyrell-Lannister alliance would simply have to be postponed.

  Flattening King’s Landing to the ground, on the other hand, had been a long thought out scheme of his in case things ever went south. He had plans upon plans on what to do if his intentions were ever ousted during his years in the capital. The most important reason for stopping in King’s Landing, aside from collecting the stashes of gold from his safehouses in the city, had been sending messages to all his contacts across Westeros.

  Although he was famed for his brothels in the capital, those weren’t the only establishments he’d purchased during his tenure as Master of Coin. Petyr held the deed to several inns, taverns, warehouses, and shops all across the east coast of Westeros, including brothels in Gulltown, Duskendale, Saltpans, and Maidenpool. He had sold most of his investments in the Riverlands before the war broke out, of course, as he was the one to trigger it after all, and he’d seen his brothels burn in King’s Landing from the prow of the ship.

  But that didn’t mean he was out of the game quite yet.

  With the birds flown, many houses in the Vale, Riverlands, and Crownlands had likely received his message already. Oh, he might not be a lord anymore, and they would seethe under his demands, but he knew too many of their deep dark secrets for them to ignore him completely.

  Hidden bastards, love affairs, eccentric tastes in the bedroom, tax evasion…. That had been his true trade in Westeros. He was everyone’s best friend, the one they turned to when they needed this or that problem fixed. Most of the fools cloaked themselves in a veneer of honor, but they would do the evilest of deeds if it meant their house kept a clean name.

  And Petyr had every intention of cashing in when the time came.

  All he needed now was a pretender to the throne to attach himself to. Just another ladder to climb. Stannis would kill him before he could open his mouth, and the Greyjoys were fools of the highest grade.

  But the Targaryen girl in the east… well, she provided the perfect opportunity. Young, malleable, and in desperate need of competent advisors. Barristan Selmy was with her, last Petyr heard, and the old kingsguard was no friend of his, but that was an easy enough problem to circumvent. Old people were quite prone to accidents.

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  Smiling into his cup, Petyr gulped down the surprisingly good ale. Better than the slop the peasants in Westeros drank. Tomorrow, he would board ship to Slaver’s Bay and—

  The door to the inn swung open. He paid little attention to whichever sewer rat would come into the common room, up until the other patrons, who had been watching the door, suddenly got up from their seats and desperately scurried out of the room.

  Petyr did look up then, and came face to face with no less than a dozen Unsullied warriors, dressed in leather armor and spiked caps. The leader of the group, an indistinct man with a pot belly and a solemn face, came up to his table and uttered a single word to him.

  “Come.”

  xxxx

  The manse Petyr was brought to was nothing short of beautiful. Built of marble and white stone, and surrounded by tall, bricked walls, it had a bright and open atmosphere to it, with pillared galleries lined with myrish rugs and expansive courtyards paved with white tiles.

  He had been brought to one such yard—a garden, really, with row after row of flowerbeds and carefully planned hedges.

  Unlike his palace, however, the man Petyr found himself sitting across from had to be the fattest, most ugly excuse for a person he’d ever seen, and he’d witnessed Lysa’s orgasming face several times.

  The fat magister laughed at the most recent of Petyr’s jokes, spittle and bits of food flying out of his swollen lips. After getting a hold of himself, Ilyrio Mopatis wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and fixed him with a sober look for the first time in their hour-long conversation.

  Something had changed in him.

  “You know, he told me about you, my lord,” Mopatis said. “Slippery as a snake, and crafty... oh yes, very crafty. I can see that now, too. Had I not known of you beforehand, I would be under your charm after this mere conversation.”

  Hiding a frown behind years of experience, Petyr managed to keep his easy smile. “I wasn’t aware my reputation had travelled so far,” he said. “I come from very humble beginnings, you understand, and I wouldn’t imagine how gossip from across the Narrow Sea about a moneylender from an insignificant house would come to a man such as yourself, honorable magister.”

  A chicken bone cracked beneath the teeth of Iliryio Mopatis, before he spat it out and let out a wheezing chuckle. “You’ve answered it yourself, haven’t you? How else would such gossip arrive to my ears if not flown on the back of little birds?”

  His stomach fell at those words, and suddenly Petyr felt like all the ice north of the Wall had been dumped onto his back. His mouth opened and closed, his mind racing to find a way to turn this around, to deflect every accusation that was going to be thrown his way.

  But Ilyrio stopped him with a raised hand. “Oh, no need to worry, Lord Baelish. Varys is an old friend of mine. He spoke of you often during our correspondences. He mentioned you fondly, mind you, as I’m sure you would expect.”

  The magister’s eyes gleamed with amusement, or was it guile? It was easy to take the man for a fool given the way he looked, but many a high lord had underestimated Petyr too, given his own image, and he wasn’t about to fall in the same pit trap.

  “Yes,” he said through gritted teeth. “Lord Varys and I shared a friendly rivalry during our time in the king’s small council.”

  “Hmm, yes, a friendly rivalry. That is a good way to spin it. Well, my lord, let me be honest with you. Despite my friend’s misgivings, I have come to admire your talents from afar. Quite like an infatuated girl, if you would believe it.” The magister wheezed another laugh, his multiple chins wobbling on his pie-round face. “So I have a story for you, Lord Baelish, and at its end, a proposition. I hope you will consider it carefully. Now, what do you know of Elia Martell and her son, Aegon Targaryen?”

  xxxx

  After recounting an honestly insane story to him, the magister had fallen silent. Or as silent as a man munching on a trench-full of lemon cakes could be.

  The revelation of another possible Targaryen pretender was shocking, yes, but he hardly had the time to ponder such things. He had been a step away from going after the Targaryen girl when an even better pretender had just been shoved into his lap. Whether the boy was a true dragon or a whore’s bastard mattered not a whit.

  Tapping a finger against the table, Petyr thought the proposal through. If the magister was truly close with Varys, then there was no way he’d wish for any sort of mutual relationship with him unless something had happened. The eunuch despised him and his methods, even if he could admire the results.

  The only conclusion he could arrive to was that Mopatis had had a falling out with Varys, or somehow lost contact with him, and the magister was in need of another man who knew of the inner workings of the Seven Kingdoms—someone who personally knew the faces and personalities of the king’s court, and, most importantly, knew how to subvert them.

  Mopatis was trying to use him, of course, only to most likely discard him when his usefulness came to an end. An admirable strategy, to be sure, but one that Petyr relished in. The magister had no idea who he had just invited into his king’s council.

  By the time the war ended and the throne was Aegon’s, he would be the king’s most valued councillor, and the ladder which had been kicked out from under his feet would have been set again, ready for climbing. A boy king like him would be easy to manipulate, and just as easy to get rid of should the need arise.

  Looking up, Petyr gave Mopatis a small smile and a nod. Nothing would stop him from showing all those who sneered at him just how high he could reach, and how far down he would push them.