Chaos and Order - A Multiverse Fanfic (Part I)

C39: Aftermath - Cersei's Game of Thrones!

Late morning of the next day,

Red Keep

The entire capital was in chaos.

The beginning of this chaos lay last night when Jon Arryn's kidnapper had infiltrated the castle once again.

The gossip was that the white-haired kidnapper wasn't alone, but he was a member of a trained group of thieves. The kidnapper would have gone in and out without alerting anyone, if not because of some internal fighting that had caught the guards' attention.

The entire Red Keep had been awakened by the thorough search that had taken place thereafter.

Even after the search, the night was bound to be a sleepless one for them.

This time, it was the queen.

Even bigger figures were involved in this sleepless scandal.

When the time was just shy of dawn, the queen, commanding the Kingsguards and her household guards herself, descended on the blackwater bay like a sun. The beggars at the port told later that in her royal garments, the queen looked so furious that even the waves had receded at her command.

Well, that could have been an exaggeration, but the purpose of Cersei Lannister was not.

Anchored at the port was Mariene. When the red-cloaked Lannister guards stormed the ship, under the command of Kingsguard Meryn Trant, they found Lysa Arryn disguised and hidden under the Captain's bunk. The heir of Vale, Robert Arryn, was with her.

Why? Where was she going? How did the queen know?

The royal court must have demanded the answers from Cersei later. But first, she threw Lysa Arryn into the dungeon, accusing her of perpetrating the kidnapping of her husband, Jon Arryn. Even outrageous was Cersei's action of sending Robert Arryn to her father, Tywin Lannister, via the same ship right there and then.

But who would dare to doubt the queen's explanation?

"The capital is festered with kidnappers and thieves," she told the court. "I feared for the little boy's safety. Lysa Arryn is half-mad. Who knows what she had planned to do with the boy?"

The king had listened to this all as if his face were a stone. He hadn't said a single word, nor had he refused the queen's reasoning. But Robert Baratheon's fury erupted when Cersei accused the Lady of Vale of having an affair with the Master of Coin, Petyr Baelish.

"How dare you say such things?" the king had roared, they say.

"My king," Cersei had replied innocently. "Lysa Arryn and Petyr Baelish had been at it under your royal nose for who knows how long. I say we should use a hard hand on her. All lies will spill out from her whore mouth before the sunset."

That was the end.

In the late afternoon, this sleepless night ended, with no more word from the castle.

The only thing was sure that a storm was brewing, hidden under these events, which would soon engulf the entire Westeros. How could the lords, sworn to House Arryn, sit without doing nothing when their liege lord was kidnapped, and the heir of Vale was shipped off to the Warden of West?

Something had tipped over the balance of the seven kingdoms. Someone had lit the match of discord.

That someone was savoring wine in the company of none other than Jon Arryn.

*

*

"You seem happy?" Jon Arryn asked feebly.

There was a smile on Kai's face. Happy? Yes, he was. After regaining his strength, the first thing Kai had done was to let the queen know about Petyr's plan. It was a short meeting, barely enough to take in her sleepy face. Kai had to be content with that, though.