Fire & Blood (A Targaryen History #1) - George R.R. Martin Page 0,296

aiding him.

“It would have gone more quickly if the Hand had sent to the Street of Flies for butchers,” Mushroom observes, “for it was butcher’s work they were about, hacking and cleaving.” Forty thieves had their hands removed. Eight rapers were gelded, then marched naked to the riverside with their genitals hung about their necks, to be put aboard ships for the Wall. A suspected Poor Fellow who preached that the Seven sent the Winter Fever to punish House Targaryen for incest had his tongue removed. Two pox-riddled whores were mutilated in unspeakable ways for passing the pox to dozens of men. Six servants found guilty of stealing from their masters had their noses slit; a seventh, who cut a hole in a wall to peek upon his master’s daughters in their nakedness, had the offending eye plucked out as well.

Next came the murderers. Seven were brought forth, one an innkeep who had been killing certain of his guests (those he judged would not be missed) and stealing their valuables since the Old King’s time. Where the other murderers were hanged straightaway, he had his hands hacked off and burned before his eyes, then he was hung by a noose and disemboweled as he strangled.

Last came the three most prominent prisoners, the ones that the mob had been waiting for: yet another “Shepherd Reborn,” the captain of a Pentoshi merchantman who had been accused and found guilty of bringing the Winter Fever from Sisterton to King’s Landing, and the former Grand Maester Orwyle, a convicted traitor and a deserter from the Night’s Watch. The King’s Justice, Ser Victor Risley, attended to each of them himself. He removed the heads of the Pentoshi and the false Shepherd with his headsman’s axe, but Grand Maester Orwyle was granted the honor of dying by the sword, in view of his age, high birth, and long service.

“When Our Father’s Feast was done and the mob before the gates dispersed, the King’s Hand was well satisfied,” wrote Septon Eustace, who would depart for Stoney Sept the next day. “Would that I could write that the smallfolk returned to their homes and hovels to fast and pray and beg forgiveness for their own sins, but that would be far from the truth. Flush with blood, they sought out dens of sin instead, and the city’s alehouses, wine sinks, and brothels were crowded unto bursting, for such is the wickedness of men.” Mushroom says the same, though in his own way. “Whenever I see a man put to death, I like to have a flagon and a woman afterward, to remind myself that I am still alive.”

King Aegon III stood atop the gatehouse battlements throughout the Feast of Our Father Above, and never spoke nor looked away from the bloodletting below. “The king had as well been made of wax,” observed Septon Eustace. Grand Maester Munkun echoes him. “His Grace was present, as was his duty, yet somehow he seemed far away as well. Some of the condemned turned to the battlements to shout out cries for mercy, but the king never seemed to see them, nor hear their desperate words. Make no mistake. This feast was served to us by the Hand, and ’twas he who gorged upon it.”

By midyear the castle, city, and king were all firmly in the grasp of the new Hand. The smallfolk were quiet, the Winter Fever had receded, Queen Jaehaera hid in seclusion in her chambers, King Aegon trained in the yard by morning and stared at the stars by night. Beyond the walls of King’s Landing, however, the woes that had afflicted the realm these past two years had only worsened. Trade had withered away to nothing, war continued in the west, famine and fever ruled much of the North, and to the south the Dornishmen were growing bolder and more troublesome. It was past time the Iron Throne showed its power, Lord Peake decided.

Construction had been completed on eight of the ten great warships commissioned by Ser Tyland, so the Hand resolved to begin by opening the narrow sea to trade once more. To command the royal fleet, he tapped another uncle, Ser Gedmund Peake, a seasoned battler known as Gedmund Great-Axe for his favored weapon. Though justly renowned for his prowess as a warrior, Ser Gedmund had little knowledge or experience of ships, however, so his lordship also summoned the notorious sellsail Ned Bean (called Blackbean, for his thick black beard) to serve as the