The trials lasted three-and-thirty days. Prince Viserys was present throughout, often accompanied by his wife, the Lady Larra, her belly swelling with their second child, and their son Aegon with his wet nurse. King Aegon came but thrice, on the days that judgment was pronounced upon Gareth Long, George Graceford, and Septon Bernard; he showed no interest in the rest, and never asked about their fates. Queen Daenaera did not attend at all.

Ser Gareth and Lord Graceford were condemned to die, but both chose to take the black instead. Lord Manderly decreed that they should be put aboard the next ship to White Harbor, from whence they could be taken to the Wall. The High Septon had written to ask clemency for Septon Bernard “that he might atone for his sins through prayer, contemplation, and good works,” so Manderly spared him from the headsman’s axe. Instead Bernard was gelded and condemned to walk barefoot from King’s Landing to Oldtown with his manhood hung about his neck. “If he survives, His High Holiness may make what use of him he will,” the Hand decreed. (Bernard did live, and spent the rest of his life as a scribe, copying holy books at the Starry Sept under a vow of silence.)

Those gold cloaks who had been accused and taken (a number had escaped) chose to emulate Ser Gareth and Lord Graceford, taking the black in preference to losing their heads. The same choice was made by the surviving Fingers…but Ser Victor Risley, once the King’s Justice, stood upon his right as an anointed knight to demand a trial by battle “that I may prove my innocence by wager of my body, in the sight of gods and men.” Ser Gareth Long, first and foremost of those who had named Risley part of the plot, was duly brought back to court to face him. “You always were a bloody fool, Victor,” Ser Gareth said, when his longsword was placed into his hand. The former master-at-arms dispatched the former headsman quickly, then turned with a smile to the condemned in the back of the throne room and asked, “Anyone else?”

   The most troubling cases were those of the three women who stood accused, all of them highborn ladies and attendants to the queen. Lucinda Penrose (she who had been attacked whilst hawking before the Maiden’s Day Ball) admitted to wanting Daenaera dead, saying, “If my nose had not been slit, it would be her serving me, not me serving her. No man will have me now, because of her.” Cassandra Baratheon confessed that she had often shared her bed with Ser Mervyn Flowers, and sometimes at Ser Mervyn’s behest with Tessario the Tiger, “but only when he asked it of me.” When Willam Stackspear suggested that perhaps she was part of the reward the Volantene had been promised, Lady Cassandra burst into tears. Yet even her confession paled beside that of Lady Priscella Hogg, a sad and somewhat simple girl of fourteen, stout and short and plain of face, who had somehow conceived the notion that Prince Viserys would marry her if only Larra of Lys were dead. “He smiles whenever he sees me,” she told the court, “and once when he passed me on the steps, his shoulder brushed against my bosom.”

Lord Manderly, Grand Maester Munkun, and the regents questioned the three women closely, mayhaps (as Mushroom avers) trying to elicit the name of a fourth woman, hitherto unmentioned: Lady Clarice Osgrey, widowed aunt of Lord Unwin Peake. Lady Clarice supervised all Queen Daenaera’s maids, companions, and attendants, as she did Queen Jaehaera’s ladies before them, and was well acquainted with many of the confessed conspirators (Mushroom says that she and George Graceford were lovers, and suggests that her ladyship was so aroused by torture that she sometimes joined the Lord Confessor in the dungeons to assist him with his work). If she had been involved, it was likely Unwin Peake had as well. All their probing proved to no avail, however, and when Lord Torrhen asked bluntly whether Lady Clarice had been complicit, all three of the condemned women could only shake their heads.

   Though unquestionably part of the conspiracy, the roles played by the three women had been comparatively minor. For that reason, and on account of their sex, Lord Manderly and the regents chose to show them mercy. Lucinda Penrose and Priscella Hogg were condemned to have their noses cut off, with the understanding that the punishment would be stayed should they give themselves to the Faith, so long as they remained true to their vows.

Cassandra Baratheon’s high birth spared her the same punishment; she was, after all, the late Lord Borros’s eldest child and sister to the present Lord of Storm’s End, and had once been betrothed to King Aegon II. Though her mother, Lady Elendra, was not well enough to attend the trials, she had sent three of her son’s bannermen to speak for Storm’s End. Through them (and Lord Grandison, whose lands and keep were also of the stormlands), it was arranged for Lady Cassandra to wed a minor knight named Ser Walter Brownhill, who ruled a few hides of land on Cape Wrath from a castle oft described as being made of “mud and tree roots.” Thrice bereft, Ser Walter had fathered sixteen children by his previous wives, thirteen of whom still lived. It was Lady Elendra’s thought that caring for these children and any additional sons or daughters that she herself might give Ser Walter would keep Lady Cassandra from plotting any further treasons. (And so it did.)

This concluded the last of the treason trials, but the dungeons beneath the Red Keep had not as yet been emptied. The fate of Lady Larra’s brothers Lotho and Roggerio remained to be decided. Though innocent of high treason, murder, and conspiracy, they still stood accused of fraud and theft; the collapse of the Rogare Bank had led to the ruination of thousands, in Westeros as well as Lys. Though bound to House Targaryen through marriage, the brothers were neither kings nor princes themselves, and their lordships were but empty courtesies, Lord Manderly and Grand Maester Munkun agreed; they would be tried and punished.

   In this, the Seven Kingdoms lagged well behind the Free City of Lys, where the collapse of the Rogare Bank had led inexorably to the utter ruin of the house that Lysandro the Magnificent had built. The palace he had bequeathed to his daughter Lysara was seized, together with the manses of his other children, and all their furnishings. A handful of Drako Rogare’s trading galleys learned of the house’s fall in time to divert course to Volantis, but for every ship saved, nine were lost, together with their cargos and the Rogare wharves and storehouses. Lady Lysara was deprived of her gold, gems, and gowns, Lady Marra of her books. Fredo Rogare saw the magisters seize the Perfumed Garden, even as he tried to sell it. His slaves were sold, along with those of his siblings, trueborn or bastard. When that proved insufficient to pay more than a tenth of the debts left by the bank’s collapse, the Rogares themselves were sold into slavery, together with their children. The daughters of Fredo and Lysaro Rogare would soon find themselves back in the Perfumed Garden where they had played as children, but as bed slaves, not proprietors.

Nor did Lysaro Rogare, architect of his family’s doom, escape unscathed. He and his eunuch guards were captured in the town of Volon Therys on the Rhoyne, as they were waiting for a boat to carry them across the river. Loyal to the end, the Unsullied died to a man fighting to protect him…but only twenty remained with him (Lysaro had taken one hundred when he fled from Lys, but had been forced to sell most of them along the way), and they soon found themselves hemmed in and surrounded in the confused, bloody fighting by the docks. Once taken, Lysaro was sent downriver to Volantis, where the Triarchs offered him to his brother Drako, for a certain price. Drako declined and suggested the Volantenes sell him back to Lys instead. And so Lysaro Rogare was returned to Lys, chained to an oar in the belly of a Volantene slave ship.