Unwin Peake was determined to redress that, and restore House Peake to its former greatness. Like his father, who had sided with the majority at the Great Council of 101, he did not believe it was a woman’s place to rule over men. During the Dance of the Dragons, Lord Unwin had been amongst the fiercest of the greens, leading forth a thousand swords and spears to keep Aegon II on the Iron Throne. When Ormund Hightower fell at Tumbleton, Lord Unwin believed command of his host should have come to him, but this was denied him by scheming rivals. This he never forgave, stabbing the turncloak Owain Bourney and plotting the murders of the dragonriders Hugh Hammer and Ulf White. Foremost of the Caltrops (though this was not widely known), and one of only three still living, Lord Unwin had proved at Tumbleton that he was no man to trifle with. He would prove that again in King’s Landing.

   Having elevated Ser Marston Waters to command of the Kingsguard, Lord Peake now prevailed upon him to confer white cloaks on two of his own kin, his nephew Ser Amaury Peake of Starpike, and his bastard brother Ser Mervyn Flowers. The City Watch was placed under the command of Ser Lucas Leygood, the son of one of the Caltrops who had died at Tumbleton. To replace the men who had died during the Winter Fever and the Moon of Madness, the Hand bestowed gold cloaks on five hundred of his own men.

Lord Peake did not have a trusting nature, and all he had seen (and been a part of) at Tumbleton had convinced him that his enemies would bring him down if given half a chance. Ever mindful of his own safety, he surrounded himself with his own personal guard, ten sellswords loyal only to him (and the gold he lavished on them) who in due course became known as his “Fingers.” Their captain, a Volantene adventurer named Tessario, had tiger stripes tattooed across his face and back, the marks of a slave soldier. Men called him Tessario the Tiger to his face, which pleased him; behind his back, they called him Tessario the Thumb, the mocking sobriquet that Mushroom had bestowed upon him.

Once secure in his own person, the new Hand began bringing his own supporters, kin, and friends to court, in place of men and women whose loyalty was less assured. His widowed aunt Clarice Osgrey was put in charge of Queen Jaehaera’s household, supervising her maids and servants. Ser Gareth Long, master-at-arms at Starpike, was granted the same title at the Red Keep and tasked with training King Aegon for knighthood. George Graceford, Lord of Holyhall, and Ser Victor Risley, Knight of Risley Glade, the sole surviving Caltrops aside from Lord Peake himself, were appointed Lord Confessor and King’s Justice respectively.

The Hand even went so far as to dismiss Septon Eustace, bringing in a younger man, Septon Bernard, to tend to the spiritual needs of the court and supervise His Grace’s religious and moral instruction. Bernard too was of his blood, being descended from a younger sister of his great-grandsire. Once relieved of his duties, Septon Eustace departed King’s Landing for Stoney Sept, the town of his birth, where he devoted himself to the writing of his great (if somewhat turgid) work, The Reign of King Viserys, First of His Name, and the Dance of the Dragons 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 aiding him.