Petyr Baelish had been master of coin for exactly one moon, and in that time he had smiled at Alyn eleven times.
Alyn had counted. He counted everything about Petyr Baelish.
The man had come to court nearly three years ago, as Jon Arryn had said he would—at first as a deputy in the treasury, a clever young clerk from Gulltown with a pointed little beard and grey-green eyes that were always laughing at some joke no one else had heard. He had worked hard. He had worked well. He had found coin in places the old master of coin had never thought to look, and made the crown's debts seem lighter than they were. And when the old man had finally died of his heart in the spring, there had never been any real question of who would take his chair. Jon Arryn had proposed him. Robert had shrugged and said if he can find me gold, he can sit wherever he likes. And that had been that.
Now Petyr Baelish sat on the small council, and smiled.
Alyn smiled back. Always. He had become very good at it.
What he had found so far fit in a single small ledger that he kept hidden inside the hollow base of a wooden stag his father had carved for him as a boy. It was not much. A name here. A sum there. A brothel on the Street of Silk that had changed hands twice in a year, both times to men no one had ever heard of, both times for less than it was worth—and whose new owner's steward had been seen drinking in a tavern with one of Baelish's clerks. A captain of the gold cloaks who had grown mysteriously richer every season since Baelish came to court, and who now had a new house and a new wife and a new sword with a jewelled pommel. A treasury loan from the Iron Bank of Braavos, taken out in the crown's name at a rate that seemed, to Alyn's eye, a good deal higher than it needed to be, with a sizable fee paid to a Pentoshi intermediary that Alyn had never been able to trace.
And the letters. Lysa Arryn wrote a great many letters, for a woman who lived in the same castle as the man she was married to. Alyn did not know who they went to. But he had seen her at feasts, watching the new master of coin across the hall, and he had seen the way she flushed when he bowed to her.
It was all smoke. None of it was fire. A clever man could explain every piece of it away in a sentence, and Petyr Baelish was the cleverest man Alyn had ever met.
He had perhaps five years. He had worked it out as best he could from the stranger's story: how old Robb Stark had been when Jon Arryn died, how old his own dead namesake in that story would have been. Five years, give or take. The calendar had already lied to him once. It might lie again. But five years was the number, and he meant to use every day of them.
And when he moved, he would not move halfway.
He had thought about that a great deal. If he went to his father with suspicions, Baelish might lose his chain. He might be sent back to Gulltown or the Fingers in disgrace. And then he would be a clever, bitter, ambitious man with nothing left to lose and every reason to hate the heir to the Iron Throne—and he would still be alive, and still scheming, and Alyn would have spent his one throw of the dice for nothing.
No. When Alyn accused Petyr Baelish of anything, it would be something that ended with a rope, or a block, or the Wall at the very least. It would be proof so damning that not even Jon Arryn could argue for mercy.
And if he could not find it—
He had turned that thought over more times than he liked to admit. He did not enjoy where it went. But he made himself follow it to the end anyway, because the stranger's story had taught him what happened to people who flinched from the ends of their own thoughts.
If the truth could not be found, it could be made. A letter in the right hand. A seal on the wrong document. A witness who remembered things the right way. He would not like doing it. He would never be proud of it. But he had watched this man, in another world, burn down a kingdom to warm his hands. Weighed against that, one small lie seemed a very little thing.
That was the last door, though. He did not mean to walk through it unless he had to.
For now—for today, and most of the days before it—there was the yard.
He had been Ser Barristan's squire for two years now, and it still did not feel quite real.
His father had announced it at his tenth name day feast, rising from his seat with a cup in one hand, bellowing for silence, and declaring before the whole court that Prince Alyn Baratheon would squire for the finest knight in the Seven Kingdoms. Ser Barristan had knelt before the high table and accepted the charge with the grave, quiet courtesy that he brought to everything. Alyn had never seen his mother look so pleased and so annoyed at the same time—pleased at the honour, annoyed that it had not gone to her brother.
It meant polishing armour until his fingers bled. It meant mucking out stables, and oiling harness, and learning the name of every buckle and strap on a warhorse's barding. It meant serving at table and pouring wine and standing silent at the back of the Lord Commander's solar while the Kingsguard spoke of rotas and watches. It meant rising before dawn and going to bed long after dark.
And it meant the yard. Every day. Every single day, whatever the weather, the old knight's quiet voice correcting his stance, his grip, his footwork, the angle of his blade by the smallest fraction of an inch.
He was twelve years old now, and he stood five feet and five inches in his stockings.
He was taller than some grown men—than half the stableboys, than most of the kitchen servants, than a fair number of the smallfolk in the streets below the Red Keep. He was broad through the shoulders and heavy through the chest, with forearms already corded like rope. He was his father's son, the whole court said, and they did not mean his wits.
He trained with the older squires now, boys of fourteen, fifteen and sixteen, he beat most of them. Not always. But more often than not. His size gave him reach, and his weight gave his blows a crushing force that no boy his age could match. When he locked blades with a squire of fifteen, it was usually the other boy who gave ground.
The knights were another matter. Young knights of seventeen or eighteen, grown men with years of real training and, some of them, real battles behind them. They beat him. They beat him often, and they did not go easy on him because he was a prince. Ser Barristan saw to that.
"A knight who is spared in the yard," the old man had told him, on one of those early mornings, "will not be spared on the field. Better that you learn it here, bruised, than there, dead."
So Alyn went into the ring against men, and he got beaten, and he got up, and he got beaten again. And each time, a little less.
Ser Barristan Selmy had seen a great many squires in his life.
He had been one himself, sixty years ago, in a different age, under a different king. He had knighted a few. He had trained dozens. He had watched them grow and watched them fail and watched some of them die. He knew the look of a promising boy, and he knew the far rarer look of a great one.
He was watching one now.
The yard was crowded for a midweek morning. Word had got about—it always did—and the gallery that ran along the western wall was lined with squires and pages and idle knights, a sprinkling of ladies, even a few of the small council. On the steps below, a nursemaid had brought the king's three youngest to watch, and they sat in a row on the bottom step: the boy Lyonel bouncing and shrieking, the girl Argella scowling ferociously at everyone who came near, and the smallest, Cassana, perfectly silent, her green eyes fixed on her brother in the ring.
Beside Barristan at the rail, the king leaned on his elbows, a cup of wine in one fist, and grinned like a boy.
"Well?" said Robert. "Has he got a chance?"
"No, Your Grace."
"Ha! Honest, as ever. Why not?"
Barristan looked down into the ring, where the two combatants were circling. "Because Ser Loras Tyrell has been a knight for three weeks, and training for one since he could walk. Because he is sixteen and fought at Pyke. Because he is faster than the prince, and more skilled, and knows it."
"And my boy?"
"Your son," said Barristan, "is twelve."
Robert laughed and drank. "Twelve bigger than he is."
That was true. The Tyrell boy was slight and graceful, all lean muscle and whipcord, with a mop of brown curls and a face that half the ladies in the gallery had already begun sighing over. Across from him, in padded jack and half-helm and dented breastplate, the prince looked like a young bull set against a hawk. His head came up slightly shorter than the Knight of Flowers but he probably weighed 40 pounds more.
It would not be enough. Barristan had seen the boy fight—Loras Tyrell had squired for a Lord at Pyke, and he had been at the breach, and those who had seen him there spoke of him with a certain wonder. Barely thirteen, and already fighting like a man grown. His brothers were said to be good knights. This one would be better than good.
The marshal lowered his staff. The two came together.
The prince struck first—as Barristan had known he would, as he had spent two years trying to break him of. He came in hard and straight, the blunted tourney blade scything down in a blow that would have split a shield and staggered a grown man. The Tyrell boy was simply not there. He stepped aside, light as a leaf on the wind, and his own blade flicked out and rang off the side of the prince's helm.
Along the gallery, a gasp. On the bottom step, Argella shrieked with fury.
"He's too eager," Robert said. "He's always too eager."
"He is his father's son," said Barristan, and the king barked a laugh.
The prince shook his head, turned, and came again. And this time—Barristan saw it and felt a small flicker of something like pride—he did not charge. He held back. He had been hit, and it had taught him something, and he had learned it in the space of three heartbeats. He came in behind his blade, measured and careful, testing, feeling for the distance.
The Tyrell boy saw it too. He smiled. And then he went to work.
It was beautiful to watch. Barristan could admit that. Loras Tyrell fought as though the sword were a part of his arm—high, low, high again, a flurry of blows so fast they blurred. The prince met them. He did not meet them all, but he met more than Barristan would have wagered. He took some on his blade and some on his breastplate and some on his arms, and he gave ground, one step and then another and then another, and did not fall.
"Hold your ground, boy!" Robert bellowed. "Walk into it! Walk into it!"
And the prince did.
He took a blow full on the shoulder—Barristan heard the crack of it from the rail—and instead of retreating, he stepped forward into it. Inside the Tyrell boy's guard. Too close for a clean cut. And he brought his weight to bear, shoulder to shoulder, like a bull in a pen, and shoved.
Loras Tyrell went back four feet and nearly fell.
The gallery erupted. Robert Baratheon roared like a man who had just seen his son unhorse the Mountain. Lyonel was screaming and bouncing so hard the nursemaid had to grab his collar. Even Barristan, who had watched a hundred such bouts and a thousand, found that his hands had tightened on the rail.
The prince pressed. He came after the Tyrell boy with everything he had—great, heavy, sweeping strokes, two-handed, his whole weight behind every one. It was no longer the wild charge of before. It was controlled. Brutal and relentless, but controlled, each blow flowing into the next the way Barristan had spent two years drilling into him. And for the space of half a dozen strokes, the Knight of Flowers was on the back foot, and the whole yard could see it.
Then one of those great strokes went an inch too wide.
It was all the Tyrell boy needed. He slipped under the blade as it passed and came up inside and struck—once, twice, three times, so fast Barristan could hardly follow. Wrist. Ribs. Helm. The prince's sword spun out of his hand and clattered across the flagstones. He staggered. Loras hooked a foot behind his ankle and pushed, and the prince went over backwards and landed flat in the dust with the flat of a blunted blade resting against his throat.
It was done. The marshal raised his staff.
The yard was silent for a moment. Then, slowly, the applause began.
"Well," said Robert, after a long pause. His voice was not entirely steady. "Well. Seven hells."
"Indeed," said Barristan.
"He lost."
"He did."
"But he—" Robert shook his head, as if there were water in his ears. "Did you see him? That shove? He had him. For a moment, he had him. The Tyrell boy's a knight, Barristan. A real knight. Fought at Pyke. And my boy's twelve."
"I saw, Your Grace."
"Well? What do you think of him?" Robert rounded on him. "Don't give me your courtesies. What do you think?"
Barristan considered his answer carefully. He was not a man who gave praise lightly. He had served five kings and trained a great many boys, and it was not his way to pour honey in a father's ear.
"I think," he said at last, "that I was a squire at twelve. And had you set me against your son when I was twelve—against him, as he is now, I would not have won."
The king stared at him.
"His size, you will say," Barristan continued. "And yes. He has your size, and your strength, and he will have more of both. But it is not only size. He has the Lannister quickness on his feet and just as much of the cunning. He learned in the first exchange. He learned again in the second. He takes a blow and it teaches him. I have trained knights of thirty who never learned to do that." He looked back down into the ring, where the prince was sitting up in the dust, his half-helm askew, a trickle of blood running from his nose. "Give him four years, Your Grace, and there will be no one in this yard apart you and I who can beat him. Give him six, and there will be none in the realm."
Robert Baratheon said nothing at all. He only looked down at his son, and his great bearded face worked, and his eyes were bright.
"I'll drink to that," he said finally, in a hoarse voice, and did.
Alyn lay on his back in the dust and looked up at the sky, and at the Knight of Flowers standing over him, and thought: Well. That's fair.
Every part of him hurt. His shoulder was on fire where the blade had landed. His ribs ached with every breath. There was blood in his mouth and blood running from his nose and a ringing in his left ear that he suspected would last the rest of the day. His wrist felt as though someone had taken a hammer to it.
He had very nearly had him. For a moment there—for half a dozen strokes—he had felt the older boy give. Had felt the weight and the rhythm of the fight turn in his favour like a tide. And then he had got greedy, and swung an inch too far, and Loras Tyrell had taken him apart like a boy dismantling a toy.
Too eager, he thought. Always too eager. Barristan's been telling me for two years.
The Knight of Flowers lifted his blade from Alyn's throat and stepped back, and then, after a moment, held out his hand.
He was flushed and breathing hard, Alyn saw with some satisfaction. There was a bruise already purpling on his cheekbone where the shoulder-shove had caught him against his own crossguard, and a thin line of blood at his lip. He was smiling, and it was not the smile of a knight humouring a child. It was the smile of someone who had just been surprised.
"Your Grace," said Loras Tyrell. "That was very well fought."
Alyn took his hand. The older boy braced and hauled, and Alyn came up out of the dust—and kept coming up, until he was standing, and looking down, very slightly, at the knight who had just beaten him.
Loras's eyebrows rose.
"You shoved me," the knight said. "I haven't been shoved like that since Pyke. And then it was a man twice your age with an axe."
"Sorry," said Alyn.
"Don't be." Loras laughed and clapped him on his good shoulder. "In a few years, I suspect I won't be able to beat you at all. So I'd best enjoy it while I can." He glanced up at the gallery, at the king and the Lord Commander watching from the rail, and lowered his voice. "Next time, don't swing so wide at the end. You had me on my heels. You'd have had me down if you'd stayed tight."
"I know," Alyn said. "Believe me. I know."
The Knight of Flowers grinned and bowed—a flourish of a bow, courtly and graceful and not entirely serious—and strolled off toward the gate, where a small crowd of admiring squires was waiting to walk him back to his pavilion.
Alyn watched him go. Then he turned, spat blood into the dust, and went to find his sword.
His father was waiting for him at the bottom of the gallery steps. Robert did not say anything for a long moment. He just stood there, huge and black-bearded and beaming, and looked at his son. Then he seized him in a crushing embrace that set every one of Alyn's bruises screaming at once.
"Ow. Father. Ow."
"Ha!" Robert let him go and cuffed him on the back of the head, gently, for Robert. "You lost."
"I noticed."
"You lost to a knight! A proper one! And you nearly had him, you bloody lunatic. I saw it. The whole yard saw it." He cuffed Alyn again, just because he could. "Your mother's going to kill me for letting you do this. Look at your face."
"I can't, it's attached to me."
His father laughed so loud that a flock of pigeons exploded off the parapet above.
Behind the king, Ser Barristan waited, as calm and quiet as ever. When Alyn met his eyes, the old knight only nodded once. But it was the kind of nod that Alyn would have traded every honeycake in the Red Keep for, and he felt it settle warm in his chest.
"Tomorrow," Barristan said. "Before dawn. We will discuss the end of that exchange."
"Yes, ser."
"At length."
"Yes, ser."
On the bottom step, the triplets had broken free of their nursemaid. Lyonel hit him first, as always, flinging himself at Alyn's legs and shrieking about the shove, the shove, did you see, did you see. Argella followed and announced that she hated Ser Loras and would kick him the next time she saw him. Cassana came last, as she always did. She didn't say anything. She just slipped her small hand into his bloodied one and held on.
Alyn looked up, over their heads, over his father's shoulder, toward the gallery.
The crowd was dispersing now—squires wandering off to their duties, ladies drifting back indoors, knights heading for the tavern or the practice butts. But one man had not moved. He stood alone near the top of the gallery, slender and neat in a doublet of grey-green velvet, a small silver mockingbird pinned at his throat.
Petyr Baelish was applauding. Softly, slowly, his hands barely touching. And he was smiling.
When he saw Alyn looking, he inclined his head, as a courtier to a prince.
Soon, Alyn thought.
He smiled back.