They were lodging at a roadside inn between Goldengrove and the next place worth naming when Ser Edwyn arrived.
Alex heard him before the door opened, a big voice already laughing at something, the kind that filled rooms without effort.
Mikal’s face changed when he heard it.
Just the small loosening that happened when someone genuinely welcome walked in.
Ser Edwyn was broad, late forties, with a greying red beard and the comfortable battered look of a man who’d spent thirty years being knocked off horses and had made a decent life of it.
He found Mikal at the table and they greeted each other the way old friends did after a long gap — noise, a firm grip, immediate complaints about road conditions north of Goldengrove.
Then he found Alex.
“He got taller.” “He tends to,” Mikal said.
Edwyn pointed at him.
“You’ve got your mother’s eyes, boy.
Unsettling colour.
Like the sky before a storm.” “I’ve been told,” Alex said.
Edwyn laughed and dropped into the chair across from Mikal and called for wine.
They talked the way old friends talked.
Road news first.
Who’d won what recently, who’d done badly and why.
A knight from the Riverlands who’d broken three ribs in a melee and gone home in a cart.
A lord’s son who’d challenged someone twenty years older and been put on the ground in under a minute.
Alex ate and said nothing.
This was when you heard things worth hearing.
It took about an hour before Edwyn got to it.
“You heard about Lannisport?” he said to Mikal, the way he said most things, like he’d just remembered and wasn’t precious about the news.
Mikal shook his head.
“Big tourney.
Lord Tywin’s organising it, in honour of the new prince.” Edwyn drank.
“The queen Finally had a boy.
Viserys.
Healthy, apparently.
First time in years the realm’s had more than one Targaryen heir to look at.” Alex kept eating.
He’d known this was coming.
It existed in his memory as a fixed point, the second prince, the Lannisport tourney, Tywin hosting it with the particular generosity of a man who wanted the realm to notice him celebrating the royal family.
Hearing it said aloud made it real in a way it hadn’t quite been before.
The sequence was moving.
“How big?” Mikal asked.
“Big.
Tywin doesn’t do small.” Edwyn refilled his cup.
“Joust, melee, archery.
Invited half the realm by the sound of it.
Prize money’s serious, the kind that makes men ride three weeks to get there.” “The competition won’t be local men.” “No.
Casterly Rock’s household knights will be there.
Knights from all the major houses.” Edwyn shrugged.
“It won’t be Goldengrove.” Mikal nodded slowly.
He picked up his cup and held it without drinking.
“You’re going?” “Thinking about it.
My knees aren’t what they were.” He said it cheerfully, the way he said everything.
“But prize money like that doesn’t come around often.” The conversation moved to other things.
Alex finished his food and watched his father’s face and stayed quiet.
Later, when Edwyn had gone to bed, Mikal sat across from Alex with the remains of the evening between them.
The silence ran long enough that Alex knew his father was working through something and left him to it.
“Lannisport,” Mikal said finally.
“Yes.” “Long ride.” “Three weeks.
Maybe four.” Mikal looked at him.
“You’ve already been thinking about it.” “A bit.” “And?” Alex turned his cup slowly on the table.
“You said once that local work has a ceiling.” “I did.” “Lannisport isn’t local.” Mikal was quiet.
He looked at his cup.
“The competition will be harder than anything I’ve ridden against.” “I know.” Alex paused.
“But we’re not going there to win.
We’re going to be seen.
If you perform decently in front of that many lords and household knights,,,” He stopped, then pulled it back to something simpler.
“People remember names.
That seems worth something.” Mikal looked at him for a moment.
“The betting,” he said.
“Only sure things.
Same as before.” Another silence.
Outside, something moved in the hedgerow down the road.
“Four days,” Mikal said.
“We finish Ser Harlan’s job first.” Alex nodded.
That was close enough to a yes.
He went to bed and lay in the dark and thought about Lannisport, and Duskendale after it, and the Tourney of Harrenhal after that, and eventually the thinking became too slow to follow and he slept.