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Chapter 145: The Rat and the Slap
Artos woke before dawn and found himself, absurdly, in a good mood.
He had barely finished cleaning up one mess—the trials, the heads, the endless political aftershocks—and here he was walking straight into another before the blood had properly dried. Any sane man would have been exhausted.
But Artos was enjoying this one immensely.
He'd wanted the trials. He'd pushed for them, engineered half of them, and taken a certain grim satisfaction in seeing them through. But those had been work. Heavy, careful, bloody work.
But this, This was going to be fun.
"Ready, Ethan?"
Ethan stood by the door with his sword already belted, and nodded with the faintest smile.
"Aye, my lord. All men are in position. We've already sent parties to seize his assets and his gold—every establishment, every ledger, every strongbox we've identified." He paused. "I have sent men only from Winterguards. And we've temporarily closed the gates and the harbour. As a precaution."
Artos laughed outright.
"You shut the harbour? Ethan, you didn't need to go quite so far. He's a sneaky little rat, not a lion. He isn't going to slip through our fingers—he's going to sit exactly where he always sits, counting things."
Ethan inclined his head. He knew that perfectly well.
He simply refused to leave any of it to chance. That was, after all, precisely why Artos kept him.
"So where is our Littlefinger?" Artos pulled on his cloak. "Gods know he's made me wait long enough for this."
"One of his establishments, my lord. The one on the Street of Silk."
Artos's brows rose, and then he grinned.
"A brothel. At my age." He shook his head. "It's been years. Last time I set foot in one I was young and had an entirely different set of matters to take care of."
Ethan's smile widened a fraction and he wisely said nothing at all.
"Well. No matter." Artos rolled his shoulders once, and something in his face sharpened. "I'll take care of this business too. Lead the way."
"Aye, my lord."
The morning was still grey when they came up the Street of Silk—twenty Winterguard in grey and white, moving without hurry, boots striking the cobbles in a rhythm that made shutters open all along the street.
Inside, the establishment was quiet in the way such places are quiet in the early hours. Lamps still burning low. The smell of spilled wine and cheap incense. Two girls on a couch by the far wall, half-dressed, practising something on each other with the bored professionalism of women rehearsing a trade.
And behind a small desk in the corner, working through a stack of papers with a quill in hand, sat Petyr Baelish.
He looked up.
For exactly one heartbeat, something raw and entirely unguarded crossed his face.
Then the smile arrived, smooth as oil on water.
"My Lord Hand." Baelish set down his quill and rose. "You're here. Now that is a surprise."
Artos smirked back, as though nothing in the world were wrong.
"It is, isn't it."
"Indeed." Baelish spread his hands, gracious host to his bones. "Do you fancy some girls? It certainly can be lonely so far from here.You, or your men? Take any of the girls you like—it would be their genuine pleasure to attend the Hand of the King."
"No," Artos said pleasantly. "That's not why I'm here."
"Then what brings you, my lord?"
Artos's grin widened.
"You seem eager." He turned his head slightly. "Well. No worries. GUARDS."
The word cracked through the room like a whip.
Two Winterguard crossed the floor in four strides. Baelish's eyes went wide and he tried to step back, tried to twist away from the hands closing on his arms—and it was entirely futile. He was not a large man, and these were not ordinary soldiers. They had him bent forward and pinned between them before he'd finished his first word of protest.
"What—my lord, what is this—" Baelish's voice climbed. "This is a very poor troupe for a prank, my Lord Hand, I must—"
Artos ignored him completely.
"I, Artos of House Stark, Hand of the King," he said, and his voice filled that small tawdry room like a bell in a sept, "on behalf of King Robert of House Baratheon, the First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms—hereby place you under arrest for your actions against the Crown, for your intent to defraud the Crown of its coin, and for the misuse of your office as Master of Coin."
He was still smiling when he finished.
Baelish's face drained white, then flushed, and the veins stood out red in his eyes.
"This is a misunderstanding!" he shouted. "My lord, this isn't fair—" He wrenched against the guards' grip, achieving nothing whatsoever.
"Release me. Release me at once, I am the Master of Coin for the Crown, I sit on the King's own council—FREE ME—"
"You were the Master of Coin," Artos said. "As of this morning, you're a prisoner of mine."
"You cannot—do you know what I—"
"If you've something to say, say it at your trial." Artos turned toward the door. "Take him to his new home."
The guards began hauling him toward the exit, and Baelish kept shouting the entire way—innocence, office, injustice, the King's ear, the Queen's favour, a rising torrent of noise that filled the whole establishment.
Artos listened for perhaps ten seconds.
Then he raised a hand and gestured.
The guards stopped and brought him back.
Baelish was still mid-sentence when Artos slapped him.
The sound of it filled the room—flat, enormous, obscene, the kind of noise that made every person present flinch at once. One of the girls on the couch let out a small yelp.
Baelish's head snapped sideways, his knees gave out entirely, and he hung limp between the two guards, out cold, a thin line of blood running from his nose to his chin.
The room was absolutely silent.
"There," Artos said, shaking out his hand. "Now you can take him. I was sick of hearing him shriek that bullshit."
They dragged him out.
Artos stood a moment longer, then turned to survey the frozen, wide-eyed bystanders—girls clutching sheets around themselves, a serving boy pressed flat against the wall, an aging bookkeeper who looked ready to faint.
"Right," Artos said, in an entirely conversational tone. "Now that's done with. Who manages this place under Baelish?"
The city had it by midday.
That was the thing about King's Landing—it ran on gossip the way a mill ran on water, and the arrest of a sitting Master of Coin in a brothel on the Street of Silk was the finest grist the mills had been fed in a month.
By afternoon there were nine versions of it. By evening, fifteen. In some he'd been dragged out naked. In others he'd wept and offered gold. In one particularly popular telling, the Hand of the King had killed him outright with a single blow and the body had been thrown in the Blackwater.
Nobody knew anything. Everyone was certain.
Lords were confused. Merchants were terrified—half the trade in the city ran through paper Baelish had touched. Members of the court who had taken his coin, his loans, or his advice spent the day quietly reviewing which of those things could be proven.
It was so sudden, so entirely without warning, that nobody could work out how to react.
So a Small Council meeting was called.
They were all there when the hour came. Grand Maester Marwyn, Lord Renly, Lord Stannis's empty chair, Varys folded serenely into his seat with his hands in his sleeves, the Lord Commander standing stiff by the wall.
All of them except the Hand of the King, who had not yet arrived.
They talked, of course. They talked over each other.
"He must have proofs," Marwyn quavered. "Surely. Surely he must have proofs."
"He'd will have a mountain of them, if what we Heard his correct." Renly said.
The door opened.
Artos walked in.
Renly didn't even let him reach his chair.
"Lord Stark." He was on his feet. "What in the seven hells happened this morning? You arrested a member of this council—this council—without a word to any of us. Baelish is the Master of Coin—"
Artos raised a hand, calm as still water, and gestured for the room to settle.
He did not sit. He crossed to the far end of the table, picked up the flagon there, and began, unhurried, to pour himself a cup of wine.
"Aye," he said. "It's true. Lord Baelish was arrested this morning. He is presently in a cell beneath the Red Keep, and he will remain there until—"
The doors slammed.
They hit the walls hard enough to rattle the shutters, and a man came through them like weather breaking—red-faced, breathing hard, having clearly climbed the whole way from wherever he'd been told the news.
King Robert Baratheon, First of His Name, in the most enormous hurry of his recent life.
Artos looked up from the cup he had only just finished filling.
"Ah. Your Grace." He held it out, entirely serene. "Would you like a drink?"
Robert snatched the cup out of his hand and hurled it against the wall. Wine sprayed red across the stone and the cup rang away across the floor.
"EVERYONE OUT," he roared. "EXCEPT MY HAND."
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