"Hm, hope she learns her lesson for now..." Petyr murmured as he took out a dozen or so rolls of parchment from the box.
He had known the woman for more than a decade now, and she was one of his most useful subordinates in the Capital, the one who was in charge of making sure his brothel business ran smoothly, and the one whom he could count on to run some of his secretive errands like the current one of fetching the box of information, but she had this tiny flaw of having a little kindness in her heart.
Which was very hypocritical, considering that she was working in a brothel that exclusively exploited young girls, and sometimes boys, to earn its money.
But Baelish had come to understand it a long time ago that it was simply part of human behaviour.
That this was how the ignorant and the religious fools consoled themselves; they needed to know that they were good people, that they had compassion in them, or else they would not be able to sleep at night.
And in his opinion, this only made her more useful to him, as people like her with empathy in them were the easiest ones to manipulate and made for very good tools.
Their kind had such a linear line of thought that it was almost child's play for him to predict their actions and reactions, and when you know how someone is going to function in the future, you can effortlessly make them dance on the palm of your hand...
"Mm," He hummed with a smile as he rolled open the first piece of parchment.
'The king was seen enjoying the chest of priceless drinks from Essos gifted by Jon Snow, along with his two brothers, Stannis Baratheon, and Renly Baratheon, and there was some talk involving their parents' momentos...'
"The Baratheon brothers reforming their bonds..." Baelsih muttered with a thoughtful look on his face, "Useful, but not too useful. 10 silver stags," he decided before using a nearby candle to burn away the parchment.
"Stannis Baratheon was seen storming out of a meeting with his brothers an hour after it started..."
'Oh, now this one is much more promising,' Baelish thought with a smile.
The first one had been sent to him by a sneaky royal guard, while this one had come from a young maid who had a much closer view of the whole situation. And to motivate her some more, Baelish decided to reward her with a gold dragon for her trouble.
'Now, how to use this... perhaps make the conflict bigger, reopen some wounds...'
Petyr mused over it for a few moments before he decided to let it rest for now and make use of it later when an opportunity presented itself.
"Ser Barristan and Jon Snow duelled in that—"
"Useless! Everyone and their mother must know about that by now," Baelish scoffed irritably as he directly burned it away without even reading it fully, as the news was more worthless than the parchment it was written on.
He did not care much for the showy, stick-wavy posturing contest those prideful fools always went on about, constantly debating who could best whom, and who could move their stick a little faster.
As if any of it mattered in any way other than fooling some naive maidens and the ignorant smallfolks.
Baelish had always looked down on those idiots who spent hours upon hours, almost one-third of their lives, training every single day in the yard, when in the end... not matter how hard they trained, even a small company of crude fighters belonging to a petty nobles from a small town consisting of just a dozen men could easily take out those so called best warriors of the realm with a just a few crossbows.
And even if you do have a good talent, and work hard to become the best of the best, what does it get them in the end... a silly bodyguard job where they get to 'protect' a fat pig all day long and watch over him as he stumbles from one whore to another.
The prime example of this was, of course, that fool Jamie Lannister.
He had so much potential in his youth, so much in the reach of his hands, and what does he throw it all away for? 'Just to become a lowly sentry so that he could fuck his sister on the side.'
Baelish snorted as his lips curled in disdain, and while he admitted that the bitch was indeed quite pretty with a very seductive body, he did not think that it was in any way worth the Lordship of the wealthiest house in Westeros.
'Hm, how about using this scandalous piece of news against those Northerners?' The idle thought appeared in Baelish's head, and his mind immediately began to run through the various scenarios to calculate the feasibility of the plan.
From what he had observed over the past week or so, the Stark heir, even though he inherited the Tully colouring, carried himself around with the same sense of foolish honour as his father.
So if he were to 'accidentally' come across such an outrageous piece of gossip about the King, the Queen, and their progenies, then surely his pride as a good honest man would compel him to take some drastic steps 'for the sake of the realm'.
"It should not be too hard to..." Baelish murmured to himself as he contemplated with his eyes narrowed in thought, but then suddenly the face of that hateful brat appeared in his mind, and he shook his head, 'No, not only is it uncertain whether he will fall for it, but there is also that bastard present nearby, with their good relationship, Robb Stark will definitely share the news with his brother, and with that boy's cunning, there is little chance for them to fall into any obvious trap,'
"Ah, forget it, the secret is too valuable to waste on the likes of him," Baelish grunted as he decided to let it go, 'After all, that brute Northerner has plenty of replacements for his heir already prepared in his castle,' he thought with hatred in his eyes, as the image of that Barbarian using his Catelyn to push one child after another as if she were a pig.
The vision enraged him so much that he almost disregarded everything else to just go and have the Stark heir brutally killed just to make them feel pain.
Thankfully, for their sake, he managed to control himself at the last moment.
'Patience... I must have patience...' he told himself as he took deep breaths to soothe his rage, 'I shall have my dues sooner or later, and none of those loathsome Starks is going to have a good end... Everyone of them will pay the price,' he promised himself again and again before finally calming down.
'Now, if only I could find out where they were, then everything would be so much easier,' he thought with a frustrated frown on his face.
Ever since he had learned that the Stark couple had gone to Essos along with their two daughter on some kind of journey, with barely any protection, he had become obsessed with finding their location and had spent every bit of resources available to him to search for their whereabouts.
After all, it was rare for that coward to come out of his broken castle and leave himself so vulnerable, so he would be stupid not to try to take advantage of this situation. He was sure that as long as he found out which city they were in or where their next step would be, then he could easily set up a trap, and catch all of them in a swoop, and if not, 'Even snatching a daughter or two would be a big profit...'
Alas, for some reason, that fool was either too cautious this time or seemed to have picked his destination completely at random, as no matter how many spies he sent to the ports of the North, none of them was able to find out any details of the route that the Stark family was likely to follow.
And the free cities were just too massive and populated for him to scour them one by one... at least not without paying a disproportionate amount of gold, and that would be too wasteful.
It was times like this that he envied the Eunuch's vast network in the East so much, because somehow that hateful fellow had spread his little birds to every single city in that continent, and had the ability to know everything that happened there, whether it was out in the open or hidden inside dark alleyways.
Sadly, though, merely having gold was not enough to create something like that, and you need a strong local power that is willing to support you and work for you wholeheartedly... unfortunately, Baelish did not have that.
'Forget it, let's just play with those two brats for now, and who knows, perhaps there could come a chance in the future to use them as bait to reel in the big fish,'
Baelish shook his head with a small smile and stopped his daydreaming before picking up the next piece of parchment from the chest, but the moment he read the first words, his smile disappeared, and his eyes narrowed in surprise.
"Lady Margaery Tyrell and the Northerner Jon Snow were seen wandering the streets together, moving from one shop to another, tasting the street foods in the various markets of the Capital, and even went to an orphanage to donate. They spent almost five hours in each other's company from noon to dusk before leaving for their respective mansions with their guards..."
'A bastard and the only daughter of a mighty Lord Paramount wandering together openly in the streets,' he mused with a frown on his face, as his mind worked furiously, trying to make sense of this information. 'It can't just be a coincidental encounter, could it? There has to be more to this.'
"But how could that Old crone even allow something like this, or was she simply unaware?" he thought out loud as he leaned back in his chair, 'No, that would be too ridiculous. With how cunning and controlling that old witch is, she probably even decides what all her progeny will eat for the day, so there is little chance that this happened without her approval, and even if she was caught off-guard, she should have gotten the news halfway through, and called her granddaughter back, but she did not...'
'Why, though? What could someone like her even see in that bastard?'
The ambitions of the Tyrells had never been hidden from anyone, so he had assumed that with their arrival in the capital, they would send their precious little girl to seduce the heir to the Throne, or perhaps go for the second prince, and had even considered them forcing her to have a secret rendezvous with the King, but this... this had never been in any of his calculations.
'What could be the reason...' he ruminated over it again and again, but no matter how many times he thought about it or which angle he came at this from, it just did not make sense.
To improve relations between North and the Reach? No, then the target would have been Robb Stark instead of him.
Then maybe for his wealth? No, that would be even more unlikely.
'It can't be just because he is a little handsome, could it?' he finally thought with a frustrated look on his face.
"Curse it, seems like I need to send a few more spies to sniff around the Starks and the Tyrells, to get to the bottom of this," he made a mental note of this as he scratched his head, deciding to put the matter of finding the reason on hold for now, as without complete information, it was hard for him to come to any concrete conclusion.
But there is a lot that could be done even without knowing the reason behind it.
"A lowly bastard, and a beautiful pure maiden, ah, such a beautiful story," he murmured as a smile slowly appeared on his face, "Now, how should I go about turning this into a tragic tale so that it could last in people's minds for decades..."
A Kidnapping?
Or a love Rival—perhaps the prince?
Seduce the boy, or go the other way and ruin the pure maiden.
"Ah, so, so many options, it is hard for a man to choose..."
///