Hugh Hammer (ASOIF/SI)

 Life was indeed strange he pondered, as he gazed out through the

 window in his hidey-hole, high above him and angled so that all he

 got was a view of the sky, scudded with grey and cold looking

 clouds, with the odd patch of washed-out pale blue. The room he

 resided in was cold, often bitterly so, and never was a fire able to be

 provided to heat his bones, but he was dressed warmly enough for it

 to be only of marginal bother to him.

 He was fed with a steady stream of reports and descriptions of

 events, in the Red Keep, the city and the wider Realm, though his

 ability to have any impact on events was, well limited to say the

 least.

 He accepted this for now, confident that this would only be a

 temporary setback, and that he would have his revenge upon those

 who had tried to destroy him. That he had expected betrayal was not

 the issue for him, it was that it had come so soon, and so clumsily in

 the end, from which he had been able to extract himself with only

 marginal discomfort.

 Hah! 'Marginal discomfort', that was a joke was it not, he had lived

 most of the last three years in hiding in Kings Landing, and so what

 was a return to his previous mode of existence to him eh?

 He was not one of those lords who demanded comforts and luxuries

 commensurate to his station, being well able to 'rough it' as required,

 for it was the thrill of his job that provided him with all the comforts

 that he needed in truth.

 He had spent the war hidden away in Kings Landing, directing his

 agents against the Usurper bitch, and now that she was no more,

 though her get sat atop the Iron Throne, he was still hiding away in

 Kings Landing. Shorn of much of his official power as he was no

 longer Master of Whispers, but not helpless, oh no, far from it.

And so, he had turned his attentions to rescuing himself from his

 predicament and in bringing low those who had betrayed him so

 swiftly. Chiefly Lord Ormund Hightower, of that he had been certain

 and as the moons had passed and his information on the Hightower

 who was Hand of the King had improved, he had the necessary

 proof. The elevation of Ser Tyland Lannister to the position of Master

 of Whispers had merely confirmed that Ormund Hightower had been

 the chief instigator of the plot against his life.

 He had Suspected Lord Corlys to be involved also, but about the

 Sea Snake was not altogether sure, oh the man was guilty of

 betraying him, there was no doubt of that, but there was

 considerable evidence that this was done if not without malice, then

 more as a sop to others, notably Lord Ormund.

 And that interested him greatly, as had the recent nigh on nine

 moons since the Day of Fire and Blood, what the bards were calling

 the effective end of the war. An appropriate name he thought, for fire

 and blood had been evident in great quantities that day. From the

 wholesale destruction of the armies of the Stormlands to the

 devastation that two of the largest dragons then extant crashing to

 earth, locked together in a death embrace of fang and claw, hosing

 their flames all about them as they trashed and savaged each other

 in the ruins of the Great Sept.

 Whole sections of the Great Sept had been thrown up to three

 hundred yards away by the death throes of the dragons, and over

 five acres around Viseny's Hill had been destroyed, either directly by

 falling debris or consumed by fire.

 The reports reaching him spoke of the usual plots and treasons

 bubbling along as expected, but with some interesting twists and

 flavours he had not anticipated. The survival of Prince Hugh for one

 greatly surprised him. He had made no move to eliminate the Prince,

 not seeing the need to after he had been betrayed, and he had

 watched with great interest the actions of Prince Hugh, and his

 supporters, chief among them Lord Corlys.

And was that not interesting in and of itself, that the Lord regent

 would so elevate the man whom he had originally agreed to destroy

 as an obstacle to his climb atop the Iron Throne? But it had seemed

 that Lord Corlys had never intended for Prince Hugh to fall now had

 he? That much was now obvious to him, what with the lad's elevation

 to the Small Council of all things. Alas, the lad's position was fairly

 powerless, despite its grand sounding title and his supposed 'control'

 over House Targaryen's dragons.

 But Lord Corlys had kept Prince Hugh firmly under his control and

 most definitely ennobled and alive, and even if Prince Hugh himself

 seemed oblivious to what was going on around him, Lord Corlys still

 valued him as a piece to be moved on the board.

 He, he had miscalculated with respect to this Hugh fellow, legitimised

 bastard of Prince Daemon himself, and formerly wed to Daemon's

 daughter, and the granddaughter of Lord Corlys.

 Whose rape and murder he had definitely not sanctioned, the men

 involved had been sellswords hired by Lord Ormund, and he had

 been able to find out little about them or their orders, all having either

 died during the battels in the Red Keep or been impaled by Prince

 Hugh afterwards. Their corpses had remained until the howling

 winter winds had stripped the rotting, skeletal corpses from their

 stakes, nobody willing to risk the Prince's wrath by cutting them

 down.

 There was an interesting nexus of events happening that Hugh could

 be the potential fulcrum around which things could be moved to a

 more suitable arrangement for him. And for the realm of course, for

 the current situation was causing much unease and grumblings

 across the land.

 The fact that House Hightower had emerged relatively unscathed

 from a second assault on the power of House Targaryen in a

 hundred years was generating rather heated comment among

 Houses that had remained steadfastly loyal to the Iron Throne. Hah!

 'Steadfastly loyal' he had to laugh at that, the most vocal, or at least

vocal quietly about the seeming elevation of House Hightower were

 former Green Houses.

 As far as he was concerned he had not turned his cloak all those

 years ago, he had merely been supporting what was the accepted

 rule of law, and one which the Targaryen's themselves had followed.

 And there had also been the simple fact that he had been in the Red

 Keep and to gainsay Dowager Queen Alicent and Lord Otto's wishes

 would have been tantamount to suicide, as Lord Beesbury had found

 out to his cost.

 This disquiet with the current situation gave him something to exploit,

 as did the rather laughable actions of Lady Johanna Lannister and

 Lady Elenda Baratheon, and their respective clutches of nubile,

 maiden daughters. The girls were being used as their mothers'

 respective weapons in the game that was afoot, a game to snare a

 King, a Prince, and a Lords heir.

 And these two ladies were not alone in this, for every day the Red

 Keep seemed to welcome another unwed highborn daughter and her

 parents, the fool Mushroom declaring that the Red Keep was rapidly

 taking on the appearance of a cattle mart, though missing was a

 layer several feet deep of cow dung that was normally associated

 with the sale of livestock.

 He knew that all of these were playing the game, most with hopeless

 ineptitude, and only a few with some guile and skill, and that each

 was as likely to interfere with each other as inadvertently spoil his

 plans, or those of several others.

 He needed to act soon if he wanted to have any hope of regaining

 even a modicum of his power, and Lord Stark would not remain in

 Kings Landing forever, he was the Lord with the most men readily

 available to him, so he had to be part of whatever he planned. Not

 that he thought this would be difficult, for he was more than confident

 that he could sway the Warden of the North to his cause. But still, he

 needed something to, to kick off what he was planning, something

 that could not be traced back to him, something inadvertent, even

inconsequential to the plans he had, to act as a spark to light the

 kindling he had been so carefully placing underneath his enemies.

 The by now familiar sound of the bolt being withdrawn from his cell's

 door reached his ears, he composed himself and watched as his

 captor, or was it his protector? for was not Lady Misery a bit of both

 in truth? Step into the room where he had spent the vast majority of

 the last year.

 "I think I have found what you were looking for Lord Strong, the

 spark to light the blaze….."

 "Oh good, I was beginning to tire of your company anyway" he

 quipped back, not letting the eagerness he felt creep into his voice.

 "So long as you remember our deal…."

 "That you would mention that now my dear shows how little you trust

 me in truth" he replied, pitching his voice so as it was hurt sounding.

 "Please, don't try my patience Lord Strong, neither of us trust the

 other, but neither of us can survive without the other. For now, our

 fates are bound, our lives linked….."

 He ignored what Lady Misery had just said and simply asked "what

 have you discovered?"