Twenty-two lesser personages were also found to have played some part in King Aegon’s murder. His Grace’s litter-bearers were amongst them, along with the king’s herald, the keeper of the royal wine cellars, and the serving man whose task it was to make certain the king’s flagon was always full. All were marked down for death. So too were the men who had put the king’s food taster Ummet to the sword (Mushroom himself gave evidence against them), together with those responsible for cutting down Tom Tangletongue and drowning his father in ale. Most of these were gutter knights, sellswords, masterless men-at-arms, and scum of the streets who had been granted their dubious knighthood by Ser Perkin the Flea during the turmoil. To a man, each of them insisted that they had been acting on Ser Perkin’s orders.

Of the Flea’s own guilt there could be no doubt. “Once a turncloak, ever a turncloak,” Lord Cregan said. “You rose up in rebellion against your lawful queen and helped drive her from this city to her death, raised up your own squire in her place, then abandoned him to save your worthless hide. The realm will be a better place without you.” When Ser Perkin protested that he had been pardoned for those crimes, Lord Stark replied, “Not by me.”

The men who had seized the Queen Dowager upon the serpentine steps had worn the seahorse badge of House Velaryon, whilst those who had freed Lady Baela Targaryen from her imprisonment had been in service to Lord Larys Strong. Queen Alicent’s captors had slain her guards and were thus condemned to death, but an impassioned plea from Lady Baela herself spared her rescuers from a similar fate, though they too had bloodied their swords by cutting down the king’s men posted at her door. “Not even the tears of a dragon could melt the frozen heart of Cregan Stark, men said rightly,” Mushroom tells us, “but when Lady Baela brandished a sword and declared that she would cut off the hand of any man who sought to harm the men who had saved her, the Wolf of Winterfell smiled for all to see, and allowed that if her ladyship was so fond of these dogs, he would permit her to keep them.”

   The last to face the Judgment of the Wolf (as Munkun dubs these proceedings in the True Telling) were the two great lords at the heart of the conspiracy: Larys Strong the Clubfoot, Lord of Harrenhal, and Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake, Master of Driftmark and Lord of the Tides.

Lord Velaryon did not attempt to deny his guilt. “What I did, I did for the good of the realm,” the old man said. “I would do the same again. The madness had to end.” Lord Strong proved less forthcoming. Grand Maester Orwyle had testified that he gave the poison to his lordship, and Ser Perkin the Flea swore that he had been the Clubfoot’s man, acting entirely on his orders, but Lord Larys would neither confirm nor deny the accusations. When Lord Stark asked if he had anything to say in his own defense, he said only, “When was a wolf ever moved by words?” And thus Lord Cregan Stark, Hand of the Uncrowned King, declared the Lords Velaryon and Strong to be guilty of murder, regicide, and high treason, and decreed that they must pay for their crimes with their lives.

Larys Strong had always been a man who went his own way, kept his own counsel, and changed allegiances as other men changed cloaks. Once condemned, he stood friendless; not a voice was raised in his defense. It was quite otherwise with Corlys Velaryon, however. The old Sea Snake had many friends and admirers. Even men who had fought against him during the Dance spoke up for him now…some out of affection for the old man, no doubt, others from concern for what his young heir, Alyn, might do should his beloved grandsire (or sire) be put to death. When Lord Stark proved unyielding, some of them sought to circumvent him by appealing to the king to be, Prince Aegon himself. Foremost amongst them were his half-sisters, Baela and Rhaena, who reminded the prince that he would have lost an ear and perhaps more if Lord Corlys had not acted as he did. “Words are wind,” says The Testimony of Mushroom, “but a strong wind can topple mighty oaks, and the whispering of pretty girls can change the destiny of kingdoms.” Aegon not only agreed to spare the Sea Snake, but went so far as to restore him to his offices and honors, including a place on the small council.

   The prince was but ten years of age, however, and not yet a king. Uncrowned, and not yet anointed as king, His Grace’s decrees carried no weight in law. Even after his coronation, he would remain subject to a regent or regency council until his sixteenth nameday. Therefore, Lord Stark would have been well within his rights to pay no heed to the prince’s commands and proceed with the execution of Corlys Velaryon. He chose not to do so, a decision that has intrigued scholars ever since. Septon Eustace suggests that “the Mother moved him to mercy that night,” though Lord Cregan did not worship the Seven. Eustace further suggests that the northman was loath to provoke Alyn Velaryon, fearing his strength at sea, but this seems singularly at odds with all we know of Stark’s character. A new war would not have dismayed him; indeed, at times he seemed to seek it.

It is Mushroom who provides the most lucid explanation for this surprising leniency in the Wolf of Winterfell. It was not the prince who swayed him, the fool claims, nor the looming threat of the Velaryon fleets, nor even the entreaties of the twins, but rather a bargain struck with Lady Alysanne of House Blackwood.

“A lean tall creature was this wench,” says the dwarf, “thin as a whip and flat-chested as a boy, but long of leg and strong of arm, with a mane of thick black curls that tumbled down past her waist when loosed.” Huntress, horse-breaker, and archer without peer, Black Aly had little of a woman’s softness about her. Many thought her to be of that same ilk as Sabitha Frey, for they were oft in one another’s company, and had been known to share a tent whilst on the march. Yet in King’s Landing, whilst accompanying her young nephew Benjicot at court and council, she had met Cregan Stark and conceived a liking for the stern northman.

And Lord Cregan, a widower these past three years, had responded in kind. Though Black Aly was no man’s queen of love and beauty, her fearlessness, stubborn strength, and bawdy tongue struck a chord for the Lord of Winterfell, who soon began to seek out her company in hall and yard. “She smells of woodsmoke, not of flowers,” Stark told Lord Cerwyn, said to be his closest friend.

   And so when Lady Alysanne came to ask that he let the prince’s edict stand, he listened. “Why would I do that?” Lord Stark purportedly asked when she had made her plea.

“For the realm,” she answered.

“It is better for the realm that traitors die,” he said.

“For the honor of our prince,” said she.

“The prince is a child. He ought not have meddled in this. It is Velaryon who brought dishonor on him, for now it will be said until the end of days that he came to his throne by murder.”

“For the sake of peace,” said Lady Alysanne, “for all those who will surely die should Alyn Velaryon seek vengeance.”

“There are worse ways to die. Winter has come, my lady.”

“For me, then,” said Black Aly. “Grant me this boon, and I shall never ask another. Do this, and I shall know that you are as wise as you are strong, as kind as you are fierce. Give me this, and I shall give you whatever you may choose to ask of me.”