On the fourth day Grand Maester Munkun appeared together with Ser Marston. “I beseech you, sire, end this childish folly and come out, that we may serve you.” King Aegon gazed down on him, saying naught, but his brother was less reticent, commanding the Grand Maester to send forth “a thousand ravens” so the realm might know the king was being held a captive in his own castle. To this the Grand Maester made no answer. Nor did the ravens fly.

In the days that followed, Munkun made several further appeals, assuring Aegon and Viserys that all that had been done was lawful, Ser Marston went from pleas to threats to bargaining, and Septon Bernard was brought forth to pray loudly for the Crone to light the king’s way back to wisdom, all to no avail. These efforts drew little or no response from the boy king beyond a sullen stubborn silence. His Grace was roused to anger only once, when his master-at-arms, Ser Gareth Long, took his turn attempting to convince the king to yield. “And if I will not, who will you punish, ser?” King Aegon shouted down at him. “You may beat poor Gaemon’s bones, but you will get no more blood from him.”

Many and more have wondered at the seeming forebearance of the new Hand and his allies during this stalemate. Ser Marston had several hundred men within the Red Keep, and Ser Lucas Leygood’s gold cloaks numbered more than two thousand. Maegor’s Holdfast was a formidable redoubt, to be sure, but it was but weakly held. Of the Lyseni who had come to Westeros with Lady Larra, only Sandoq the Shadow and six more remained at her side, the rest having gone with her brother Moredo to the Vale. A few men loyal to Lord Rowan had made their way to Maegor’s before its doors were closed, but there was not a knight, a squire, or a man-at-arms amongst them, nor amongst the king’s own attendants. (There was one knight of the Kingsguard within the holdfast, but Ser Raynard Ruskyn was a prisoner, having been overwhelmed and wounded by the Lyseni at the very start of the king’s defiance.) Mushroom tells us that Queen Daenaera’s ladies donned mail and took up spears to help make it appear that King Aegon had more defenders than he did, but this ruse could not have fooled Ser Marston and his men for long, if indeed it fooled them at all.

Thus the question must be asked: Why did Marston Waters not simply take the holdfast by storm? He had more than enough men. Whilst some would have been lost to Sandoq and the other Lyseni, even the Shadow would surely have been overwhelmed in the end. Yet the Hand held back, continuing his attempts to end the “secret siege” (as this confrontation would later become known) with words, when swords would most likely have brought it to a swift conclusion.

Some will say that Ser Marston’s reluctance was simple cowardice, that he feared to face the blade of the Lysene giant Sandoq. This seems unlikely. It is sometimes put about that Maegor’s defenders (the king himself in some accounts, his brother in others) had threatened to hang their captive Kingsguard at the first sign of attack…but Mushroom calls this “a base lie.”

The most likely explanation is the simplest. Marston Waters was neither a great knight nor a good man, most scholars agree. Though bastard born, he had achieved knighthood and a modest place in the retinue of King Aegon II, but his rise would likely have ended there if not for his kinship to certain fisherfolk on Dragonstone, which led Larys Strong to choose him above a hundred better knights to hide the king during Rhaenyra’s ascendancy. In the years since, Waters had climbed high indeed, becoming Lord Commander of the Kingsguard over knights of better birth and far greater renown. As the Hand of the King, he would be the most powerful man in the realm until Aegon III came of age…but at the crux he hesitated, weighed down by his vows and his own bastard’s honor. Unwilling to dishonor the white cloak he wore by ordering an attack upon the king he had sworn to protect, Ser Marston eschewed ladders, grapnels, and assault, and continued to put his trust in reasoned words (and perhaps in hunger, for the supplies within the holdfast could not last much longer).

On the morning of the twelfth day of the secret siege, Thaddeus Rowan was brought forth in chains to confess to his offenses.

Septon Bernard detailed Lord Rowan’s alleged crimes: he had taken bribes in the form of gold and girls (exotic creatures from the Mermaid, says Mushroom, the younger the better), had sent Moredo Rogare to the Vale to dispossess Ser Arnold Arryn of his rightful inheritance, had conspired with Oakenfist to remove Unwin Peake as the King’s Hand, had helped to loot the Rogare Bank of Lys, thereby defrauding and impoverishing many “good and leal men of Westeros of noble birth and high station,” had appointed his own son to a command “for which he was manifestly unworthy,” leading to the death of thousands in the Mountains of the Moon.

Most terrible of all, his lordship was accused of having plotted with the three Rogares to poison King Aegon and his queen, so as to place Prince Viserys on the Iron Throne with Larra of Lys as his queen. “The poison used is called the Tears of Lys,” Bernard declared, an assertion that Grand Maester Munkun then confirmed. “Though the Seven spared you, sire,” Bernard concluded, “Lord Rowan’s foul plot took the life of your young friend Gaemon.”

When the septon had completed his recitation, Ser Marston Waters said, “Lord Rowan has confessed to all these crimes,” and beckoned to the Lord Confessor, George Graceford, to bring the prisoner forward. Manacled at ankle with heavy chains, his face so bruised and swollen as to be unrecognizable, Lord Thaddeus did not move at first, until Lord Graceford pricked him with the point of his dagger, whereupon he said in a thick voice, “Ser Marston speaks truly, Your Grace. I have confessed to all. Lotho promised me fifty thousand dragons when the deed was done, and another fifty when Viserys took the throne. The poison was given to me by Roggerio.” So halting was this speech, so slurred the words, that some upon the battlements thought his lordship must be drunk, until Mushroom pointed out that all his teeth were missing.

The confession left King Aegon III bereft of speech. All that the boy could do was stand and stare, with such despair upon his face that Mushroom feared His Grace might be about to leap from the battlements onto the spikes below, to rejoin his first queen.

It fell to Prince Viserys to make answer. “And my wife, Lady Larra,” he shouted down, “was she a part of this plot too, my lord?” Lord Rowan gave a heavy nod. “She was,” he said. “And what of me?” asked the prince. “Aye, you as well,” his lordship answered dully…an answer that seemed to surprise Marston Waters, whilst greatly displeasing Lord George Graceford. “And Gaemon Palehair, ’twas he who put the poison in the tart, I’ll venture,” Viserys went on glibly. “If it please my prince,” mumbled Thaddeus Rowan. Whereupon the prince turned to the king his brother and said, “Gaemon was as guilty as the rest of us…of nothing,” and the dwarf Mushroom called down, “Lord Rowan, was it you who poisoned King Viserys?” To which the old Hand nodded, saying, “It was, my lord. I do confess it.”

The king’s face grew hard. “Ser Marston,” he said, “this man is my Hand and innocent of treason. The traitors here are those who tortured him to bring forth this false confession. Seize the Lord Confessor, if you love your king…else I will know that you are as false as he is.” His words rang across the inner ward, and in that moment, the broken boy Aegon III seemed every inch a king.

To this very day, some assert that Ser Marston Waters was no more than a catspaw, a simple honest knight used and deceived by men more subtle than himself, whilst others argue that Waters was part of the plot from the beginning, but turned upon his fellows when he sensed the tide turning against them.

Whatever the truth, Ser Marston did as the king had commanded. Lord Graceford was seized by the Kingsguard and dragged away to the very dungeon he himself had ruled when he awoke that day. Lord Rowan’s chains were removed, and all his knights and serving men were brought up from the dungeons into the sunlight.

It did not prove necessary to subject the Lord Confessor to torment; the sight of the instruments was all that was required for him to give up the names of the other conspirators. Amongst those he named were the late Ser Amaury Peake and Ser Mervyn Flowers of the Kingsguard, Tessario the Tiger, Septon Bernard, Ser Gareth Long, Ser Victor Risley, Ser Lucas Leygood of the gold cloaks with six of the seven captains of the city gates, and even three of the queen’s ladies.