That Came After. Sadly, Septon Bernard preferred composing sacred music to setting down court gossip, and his writings are therefore of little interest to historians and scholars (and of less interest to those who find pleasure in sacred music, it grieves us to say).
None of these changes pleased the young king. His Grace was especially unhappy with his Kingsguard. He neither liked nor trusted the two new men, and had not forgotten the presence of Ser Marston Waters at his mother’s death. King Aegon misliked the Hand’s Fingers even more, if that is possible, especially their brash and foul-mouthed commander, Tessario the Thumb. That mislike turned to hatred when the Volantene slew Ser Robin Massey, one of the young knights that Aegon had wished to name to his Kingsguard, in a quarrel over a horse both men wished to buy.
The king soon developed a strong antipathy for his new master-at-arms as well. Ser Gareth Long was a skilled swordsman but a stern taskmaster, renowned at Starpike for his harshness toward the boys he instructed. Those who did not meet his standards were made to go for days without sleep, doused in tubs of iced water, had their heads shaved, and were oft beaten. None of these punishments were available to Ser Gareth in his new position. Though Aegon was a sullen student who displayed little interest in swordplay or the arts of war, his royal person was inviolate. Whenever Ser Gareth spoke to him too loudly or too harshly, the king would simply throw down his sword and shield and walk away.
Aegon seemed to have only one companion he cared about. Gaemon Palehair, his six-year-old cupbearer and food taster, not only shared all of the king’s meals, but oft accompanied him to the yard, as Ser Gareth did not fail to note. As a bastard born of a whore, Gaemon counted for little in the court, so when Ser Gareth asked Lord Peake to make the lad the king’s whipping boy, the Hand was pleased to do so. Thereafter any misbehavior, laziness, or truculence on King Aegon’s part resulted in punishment for his friend. Gaemon’s blood and Gaemon’s tears reached the king as none of Gareth Long’s words ever had, and His Grace’s improvement was soon marked by every man who watched him in the castle yard, but the king’s mislike of his teacher only deepened.
Tyland Lannister, blind and crippled, had always treated the king with deference, speaking to him gently, seeking to guide rather than command. Unwin Peake made a sterner Hand; brusque and hard, he showed little patience with the young monarch, treating him “more like a sulky boy than like a king” in Mushroom’s words, and making no effort to involve His Grace in the day-to-day rule of his kingdom. When Aegon III retreated back into silence, solitude, and a brooding passivity, his Hand was pleased to ignore him, save on certain formal occasions when his presence was required.
Rightly or wrongly, Ser Tyland Lannister was perceived as having been a weak and ineffectual Hand, yet somehow also sinister, scheming, even monstrous. Lord Unwin Peake came to the Handship determined to demonstrate his strength and rectitude. “This Hand is not blind, nor veiled, nor crippled,” he announced before king and court. “This Hand can still wield a sword.” And so saying, he drew his longsword from its scabbard and raised it high so all might see it. Whispers flew about the hall. It was no common blade that his lordship held, but one forged of Valyrian steel: Orphan-Maker, last seen in the hands of Bold Jon Roxton as he laid about at Hard Hugh Hammer’s men in a yard at Tumbleton.
The Feast Day of Our Father Above is a most propitious day for making judgments, the septons teach us. In 133 AC, the new Hand decreed that it should be a day when those who had previously been judged would at last be punished for their crimes. The city gaols were crowded to bursting, and even the deep dungeons below the Red Keep were near full. Lord Unwin emptied them. The prisoners were marched or dragged out to the square before the Red Keep’s gates, where thousands of Kingslanders gathered to see them receive their due. With the somber young king and his stern Hand looking down from the battlements, the King’s Justice set to work. As there was too much work for one sword alone, Tessario the Thumb and his Fingers were tasked with