They tried him the next day, in the throne room, before the whole court.
Alyn had never seen it so full. Every lord in King's Landing had come, and half the knights, and every lady who could squeeze herself into the gallery. They stood shoulder to shoulder, whispering like the sea, and fell silent when the doors opened and the prisoners were brought in.
Janos Slynt shuffled in chains, grey-faced, his bald head sweating. But Littlefinger walked. He had been given clean clothes, at his own request, and he walked between his guards as though they were his escort rather than his gaolers, his chin up, his eyes moving calmly over the crowd. Alyn watched him look at the Iron Throne, where the king sat. At Jon Arryn, standing beside it, grey as a ghost. At the queen, seated to the king's left, perfectly composed.
And, at last, at the prince, standing at his father's right hand.
For a moment their eyes met. And in Littlefinger's face, Alyn saw understanding dawn—the swift, bright, terrible understanding of a clever man who has finally, far too late, seen the whole board.
Then the charges were read.
It took the better part of an hour. Grand Maester Pycelle read them in his thin old voice, one after another, and with each one, the whispers in the hall grew louder. The bribes. The thefts. The fraud and the blackmail. The girls from Lys. And at the very last, in a hall gone suddenly and completely silent, the letters.
When Pycelle spoke Lysa Arryn's name, Jon Arryn closed his eyes.
Alyn watched him. The old Hand did not move. He did not speak. He only stood there beside the Iron Throne, very straight, as he had stood beside it for fifteen years, with his hands folded before him. But something in his face had gone out, like a candle guttering, and Alyn thought that he looked, in that moment, older than any man Alyn had ever seen.
I did that, Alyn thought. I saved his life. And that is the price.
He did not look away. He made himself watch. He owed Jon Arryn that much.
Littlefinger talked.
Of course he talked. It was what he was. He denied everything, gracefully, with a small sad smile. Then, when the letters were produced, he admitted to some things and denied others. Then he explained—so reasonably—that the Iron Bank loans had been in the crown's best interest, that the brothels were merely investments, that the girls were servants, well treated, that the gold cloaks had been paid only what was needed to keep the peace. Then he offered names. Others who had profited. Lords who had taken his coin, knights who had used his houses. Then he offered gold—great sums of it, hidden in places only he knew. Then he offered secrets. He hinted, delicately, that he knew things about members of this very court that might be of great interest to His Grace. That there were debts owed and favours outstanding that would die with him.
It was, Alyn thought, a masterful performance. Every argument was sound. Every offer was tempting. He watched the faces of the lords in the gallery and saw some of them wavering.
He did not look at his father. He did not need to.
"Are you finished?" said Robert Baratheon.
For the first time, Littlefinger faltered.
"Your Grace, if you would only—"
"I asked," said the king, "if you were finished."
The silence stretched. Petyr Baelish looked up at the Iron Throne, at the huge black-bearded man sitting on it, at the naked murder in his eyes. And Alyn saw him understand, at last, that there was nothing left to say.
"No," said Littlefinger quietly. "No, I suppose I'm not. I demand a trial by combat."
A ripple ran through the hall.
"By the laws of gods and men," Littlefinger went on, and his voice was steady again, "I have that right. I name as my champion Ser Janos Slynt, Commander of the City Watch." He turned his head and smiled, very faintly, at the sweating, trembling man chained beside him. "My lord commander will defend my innocence, and his own. I'm sure he agrees."
And Janos Slynt—who knew, as well as anyone, that he would be dead by nightfall if he did not—licked his lips and nodded.
It was clever, Alyn thought. Of course it was. It was the last move on the board, and it was the only one left. Janos Slynt was no great warrior, but he was a big man, and he had been a soldier once. The crown would have to name a champion. Some knight of the Kingsguard, most likely. Ser Barristan, or Ser Jaime. And it was not impossible—not quite impossible—that the gods might favour a desperate man.
The king rose.
He did not say anything at first. He only rose, slowly, and stood before the Iron Throne, and looked down at the two men in chains. Then he held out his hand, without looking, and a squire hurried forward and put the warhammer into it.
"The crown's champion," said Robert Baratheon, "will be me."
They fought in the outer ward that afternoon, under a hard grey sky, with the whole court watching from the walls.
Alyn had wondered—he would not deny it—whether it might be a real fight. Janos Slynt had been given back his armour and a longsword and a shield. He was desperate. Desperate men were dangerous. His father was not young anymore, he had just fought a battle a earlier.
It was not a real fight.
Janos came at the king with everything he had, and it was not enough, and it was not close to enough. Robert took the first blow on his shield and the second on the haft of his hammer, and then he stepped in and swung, once, and the sword and the shield and the arm that held it were no longer attached to Janos Slynt in any useful way. The Commander of the City Watch went down on one knee, screaming, and the king stood over him and looked down at him.
Then he raised the hammer, and brought it down.
Alyn did not look away. He wanted to. He did not. He watched the great black warhammer of the Demon of the Trident fall like the judgement of the gods, and he watched it strike, and he heard the sound it made, and afterwards there was no more Janos Slynt, only a body in gold-trimmed armour lying in the dust, and something dark and wet splashed across the flagstones in a spray.
The king stood over what was left, breathing hard. Then he turned his head and looked at Petyr Baelish.
"The gods have judged," Robert said. "Hang him."
They hanged him from the battlements of the Red Keep, above the King's Gate, where all the city could see.
Alyn went up to the walls to watch. He did not have to, and his mother told him not to, and he went anyway, because he had spent five years of his life on this and he would not look away from the end of it.
They put the noose around Littlefinger's neck. He did not fight. He did not weep or plead or beg, not anymore. He stood on the parapet with the wind off the bay tugging at his hair and his cloak, and he looked out over the city—the Street of Silk and the Street of Steel, Flea Bottom and the Hill of Rhaenys, the Great Sept and the Dragonpit and the ships in the harbour—and his face was calm and thoughtful, like a man doing sums.
Then his eyes found Alyn.
Something passed between them. Alyn could not have named it. But he saw it in Littlefinger's grey-green eyes: recognition, and a kind of bitter, reluctant admiration, and beneath it all a hatred so pure and so clear it was almost beautiful.
Peter looked back and met Robert’s eyes.
The executioner pushed him off the wall.
It was not quick. The drop was short, and the rope was not long enough to break his neck. Petyr Baelish swung out over the King's Gate and jerked and kicked and twisted at the end of it, his hands clawing at the noose, his heels drumming on the stones of the wall. His face went red. Then darker. Then purple. His eyes bulged. His tongue swelled in his mouth.
And the whole time, until the very end, those eyes did not leave the king.
Alyn watched him die, and thought: If he could hear what I'm thinking now, he would want to do that to me. Not Father. Me.
Because what he was thinking, gods help him, was that it had been easy.
He sat on his bed that night with the candles burning low and tried to make sense of what he felt.
It was done. He had done it. He had spent years watching and listening and planning, and he had caught the cleverest, most dangerous man in the Seven Kingdoms, the spider at the centre of the web, the man who had set the whole world on fire in the stranger's story—and he had caught him cleanly, and hanged him, and not one thing had gone wrong. No escape. No chase. No last-minute reversal. No brilliant counterstroke. Littlefinger had seen the trap too late, and fled, and been caught, and talked, and died.
And some small, shameful part of Alyn was disappointed.
He had expected more. He had built Petyr Baelish up in his mind for so long, into some great demon of cunning, a villain for the ages. He had expected a battle of wits for the history books. He had expected, at the very least, to draw his sword.
Instead, the mockingbird had died like any man, purple-faced and kicking, at the end of a rope.
Maybe that's the lesson, Alyn thought. He was only ever a man. The story made him bigger than he was, because in the story, no one saw him coming. That was the whole of his power. Not his cleverness—his invisibility. Once someone saw him, he was just a clerk with a pointed beard.
Later at Night, he lay back on his bed and stared at the canopy.
And now what?
Jon Arryn would not die of the Tears of Lys. That was the first thing. There was no one left to whisper in Lysa's ear—and no Lysa, either, not at court. She had been sent back to Riverrun under guard that very afternoon, to her father's house, in disgrace. Alyn had watched her go. She had screamed all the way down the Serpentine Steps.
What of her son? Robert Arryn was five, a sickly, clinging child who had never yet been parted from his mother. Was he even Jon's? The letters had not said—Alyn did not think Littlefinger had ever truly bedded her, whatever she had written, only strung her along—but it didn't matter what was true. The whole court had heard those letters read aloud. The question had been asked. And the Vale was a proud country, full of proud lords who would one day have to kneel to that boy.
Jon Arryn himself—Alyn did not know what would become of him. He was alive. But he had been made a fool before the whole realm, and he was an old man, and a proud one. Would he stay as Hand? Would he go home to the Eyrie? Would he live, but with something broken in him that would never mend?
The master of coin's chair was empty. His mother would want it filled by a Lannister, Alyn was sure of it—she had been dropping her uncle Kevan's name in his father's ear already, lightly, the way one drops a pebble in a pond. And his mother would want something else, too, in time. She had helped him. She had delighted in it. She would remember that she had helped him, and so would he.
Varys had done nothing. That frightened Alyn more than anything. The Master of Whisperers must have known—must have—at least some of what Littlefinger was doing. And he had said nothing, done nothing, simply watched. Watched Littlefinger build his web, and watched Alyn tear it down, and smiled his soft powdered smile, and waited to see who would win.
Well. Now he knew.
And that was the last thing, the thing Alyn had not thought through clearly enough, and which he saw now, lying in the dark, with terrible clarity.
His father had not kept his part in it quiet. Robert Baratheon had never kept anything quiet in his life. At the feast that night—a raucous, drunken, triumphant feast—the king had risen with his cup and roared out to the whole hall that it was his son who had found the traitor out. My son! Fourteen years old and he caught the cleverest rat in King's Landing, while the rest of you lot were lining up to borrow his coin! The hall had cheered. Alyn had smiled and raised his cup.
And every lord in that hall, every lady in the gallery, every clerk and knight and servant, had looked at the prince, and seen him.
Not a boy anymore. Not a big, strong, promising lad who was good with a sword. A player. Someone who could reach into the heart of the court and pull a man out by the roots, and hang him from the walls.
No one saw Littlefinger coming, Alyn thought. That was his power.
They'll all see me coming now.
Outside his window, far below, the wind off the bay moaned around the walls of the Red Keep. And above the King's Gate, in the dark, something turned slowly at the end of a rope, and creaked, and turned again.