One name was never mentioned, though it hung over the Red Keep like a cloud. In The Testimony of Mushroom, the fool says plainly what few dared say at the time: that there must surely have been another conspirator, lord and master of the rest, the man who set all this in motion from afar, using the others as his catspaws. The “player in the shadows,” Mushroom calls him. “Graceford was cruel but not clever, Long had courage but no cunning, Risley was a sot, Bernard a pious fool, the Thumb a bloody Volantene, worse than the Lyseni. The women were women, and the Kingsguard were used to obeying commands, not giving them. Lucas Leygood loved swaggering about in his gold cloak, and could drink and fight and fuck with the best of them, but he was no plotter. And all of them had ties to one man: Unwin Peake, Lord of Starpike, Lord of Dunstonbury, Lord of Whitegrove, once Hand of the King.”

   No doubt others entertained the same suspicions once the plot to kill the king had been unmasked. Several of the traitors had blood ties to the former Hand, whilst others owed him their positions. Nor was Peake a stranger to conspiracy, having once planned the murder of two dragonriders under the sign of the Bloody Caltrops. But Peake had been at Starpike during the secret siege, and none of his supposed catspaws ever spoke his name, so his involvement remained unproven, then as now.

So thick was the miasma of mistrust in the Red Keep that Aegon III did not leave Maegor’s Holdfast for six more days after his brother Viserys unravelled Lord Rowan’s false confession. Only when he saw Grand Maester Munkun send forth a murder of ravens, summoning twoscore leal lords to King’s Landing, did His Grace allow the bridge to be lowered once again. They had run so short of food within the holdfast that Queen Daenaera cried herself to sleep at night, and two of her ladies were so weak from hunger that they had to be helped across the moat.

By the time the king emerged, Lord Graceford had named his names, many of the traitors had been seized, others had fled, and Marston Waters, Mervyn Flowers, and Lucas Leygood were dead. Soon thereafter Thaddeus Rowan once more took up residence in the Tower of the Hand…but it was plain to all that his lordship was in no fit state to resume his duties as the Hand of the King. The things that had been done to him in the dungeons had broken him. One moment he might seem his old self, hale and hearty, only to begin weeping uncontrollably the next. Mushroom, who could be as cruel as he was clever, would make mock of the old man, accusing him of outlandish crimes to elicit even more absurd confessions. “I do recall that one night I made him confess to the Doom of Valyria,” says the dwarf in his Testimony. “The court roared with laughter, but as I look back upon it now, I blush for shame.”

   After a moon’s turn, with Lord Rowan showing little or no signs of improvement, Grand Maester Munkun persuaded the king to relieve him of his office. Rowan set out for his seat at Goldengrove, promising to return to King’s Landing once he had recovered his health, but he died upon the road in the company of two of his sons. For the rest of that year, the Grand Maester served as both regent and Hand, for the realm required governance and Aegon had still not reached the age of manhood. As a maester, chained and sworn to serve, Munkun did not feel it was his place to pass judgment on high lords and anointed knights, however, so the accused traitors languished in the dungeons, awaiting a new Hand.

As the old year waned and gave way to the new, lord after lord arrived in King’s Landing, answering the king’s summons. The ravens had done their work. Though never formally constituted as a Great Council, the gathering of the lords in 136 AC was the largest assembly of nobles in the Seven Kingdoms since the Old King had summoned the lords of the realm to Harrenhal in 101 AC. King’s Landing was soon full to the point of bursting, to the delight of the city’s innkeeps, whores, and merchants.

Most of those attending came from the crownlands, the riverlands, the stormlands…and the Vale, where Lord Oakenfist and Bloody Ben Blackwood had at last forced the Gilded Falcon, the Mad Heir, the Bronze Giant, and all their supporters to bend the knee and do homage to Joffrey Arryn as their liege (Gunthor Royce, Quenton Corbray, and Isembard Arryn were amongst those accompanying Lord Alyn to the gathering, along with Lord Arryn himself). Johanna Lannister sent a cousin and three bannermen to speak for the west, Torrhen Manderly sailed down from White Harbor with twoscore knights and cousins, and Lyonel Hightower and the Lady Sam rode up from Oldtown with a tail six hundred strong. Yet the largest retinue was that accompanying Lord Unwin Peake, who brought a thousand of his own men and five hundred sellswords. (“What ever could he be afraid of?” Mushroom quipped.)

There beneath the shadow of the empty Iron Throne (for King Aegon did not choose to come to court), the lords attempted to choose new regents to rule until His Grace could come of age. After meeting for more than a fortnight, they were no closer to accord than when they had begun. Without the strong hand of a king to guide them, some lords gave vent to old grievances, and the half-healed wounds of the Dance began to bleed afresh. The strong men had too many enemies, whilst the lesser lords were looked down upon for being poor or weak. Finally, in despair at reaching an agreement, Grand Maester Munkun proposed that three regents be chosen by lot. When Prince Viserys added his voice to Munkun’s, the proposal was adopted. The lots fell to Willam Stackspear, Marq Merryweather, and Lorent Grandison, of whom it could be truly said that they were as inoffensive as they were undistinguished.

   The selection of the King’s Hand was a matter of more import, and one that the lords assembled were unwilling to leave to the new regents. There were those, chiefly from the Reach, who urged that Unwin Peake be asked to serve as Hand once more, but they were quickly shouted down when Prince Viserys declared that his brother would prefer a younger man, “and one less like to fill his court with traitors.” Alyn Velaryon’s name was also put forward, but he was deemed to be too young. Kermit Tully and Benjicot Blackwood were spurned for the same reason. Instead the lords turned to the northman, Torrhen Manderly, Lord of White Harbor…a man unknown to many of them, but for that very reason without enemies south of the Neck (save perhaps for Unwin Peake, whose memory was long).

“Aye, I’ll do it,” Lord Torrhen said, “but I’ll need a man who is good with coin if I’m to deal with these Lyseni thieves and their bloody bank.” Then up stood Oakenfist, to offer the name of Isembard Arryn, the Gilded Falcon of the Vale. To appease Lord Peake and his supporters, Gedmund Peake the Great-Axe was named lord admiral and master of ships (it was said that Oakenfist was more bemused than angry, and declared that the choice was a good one, as “Ser Gedmund loves paying for ships, I love sailing them”). Ser Raynard Ruskyn became Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, whilst Ser Adrian Thorne was chosen to command the gold cloaks. Formerly the captain on the Lion Gate, Thorne was the only one of Lucas Leygood’s seven captains not accused of involvement in the plot.

   And so it was done. All that remained was for Aegon III to put his seal to it, which he did without demur the next morning before retreating once again to the solitary splendor of his chambers.

His new Hand began at once to tend to the business of the realm. His first task was a daunting one: to sit in judgment at the trials of those accused of poisoning Gaemon Palehair and plotting treason against the king. No fewer than forty-two persons stood accused, for those named by Lord Graceford had in turn named others when questioned sharply. Sixteen had fled and eight had died, leaving eighteen to be judged. Thirteen of those had already confessed to some degree of involvement in the crimes, for the king’s inquisitors were most persuasive. Five continued to insist upon their innocence, declaring that they had truly believed the treason to be Lord Rowan’s, and thus had joined the plot to save His Grace from the Lyseni who meant to kill him.