The night turned foul.
The storm broke in earnest, hurling sheets of rain against the walls again and again.
Even inside, the roar of it carried, a deep, restless rumble.
The swollen Tumblestone thundered somewhere beyond the walls.
Thunder cracked, and lightning split the darkness with an almost regular rhythm.
The air smelled of ozone and rain washed stone.
Edmure lay in his own bed, listening closely.
He hadn’t undressed, and hadn’t forgotten his mail shirt either.
His sword, a weapon he barely knew how to use, lay within easy reach.
Ever since Robb Stark had ridden off, the situation inside Riverrun had been building like a slow abscess.
The Blackfish had stayed behind, and he’d been simmering ever since, unhappy with how his nephew had behaved, unhappy with all of it.
It hardly took great insight to guess where that was heading.
Sooner or later, the Blackfish would act.
Karyl Vance, to whom Edmure had quietly floated a few ideas about setting up something like proper intelligence work, had shown real talent for the task.
Recruiting a handful of guards and knights loyal to Lord Tully specifically hadn’t proved difficult; they’d served the family faithfully since birth.
Edmure, Vance, and Piper together had known for some time exactly what the Blackfish was planning.
The uncle, for all his skill as a soldier, had never been much of a schemer.
He’d continued to think of his own nephew as slow witted and stubborn, and hadn’t bothered being particularly careful about it.
Edmure could have moved against him sooner, but an abscess like this one needed time to fully come to a head before it could be safely lanced.
That night, it finally did.
Noise erupted outside the door, raised voices, urgency.
Edmure’s personal guards refused entry to the strangers pressing at the door, and were quickly overruled.
Someone swore loudly.
Edmure recognized the voices: Ser Brynden, and Robin Ryger, the captain of the guard.
So the old man hadn’t managed to stay out of this after all.
The door burst open under a heavy blow, and the chamber filled at once with bodies, perhaps a dozen at first glance, reeking of sweat and nervous excitement.
Torches crackled, throwing ugly, shifting shadows across the walls, as though it weren’t men who’d come calling but something risen straight out of the underworld.
“Lord Tully, you’re under arrest,” the Blackfish’s voice rang out, clear and commanding, the voice of a man used to being obeyed on a battlefield.
“You’ll come with me.” “What a joyful reunion this is.” Edmure kept his nerves carefully hidden.
He’d already leapt from bed the moment the noise began, and now crossed toward the open doors leading out onto the balcony.
“Uncle.
What’s the meaning of this?” “Just set your sword down, Ed.
No one means to kill you, or harm you.
You have my word.” The old warrior’s voice sounded tired, worn thin.
He clearly took no pride, no pleasure, in any part of what was happening here, or in his own role in it.
“No.
I won’t,” Edmure said, stepping back through the doorway and out onto the balcony.
Lightning tore across the sky in a blinding flash.
Two heartbeats later, thunder rolled, deafening.
“Don’t be a fool.” The Blackfish didn’t draw his sword, but his hand settled on the hilt as he followed.
Ryger and the others came after him, some with blades already bared.
“The sooner this whole mess is over, the better it’ll be for everyone.” They followed Edmure out onto the balcony, and there the conspirators found an unpleasant surprise waiting.
“Stand where you are, Ser Brynden,” Karyl Vance said, stepping into view on one side, armored and sword in hand.
Behind him stood Lymond Goodbrook, shield bearers, swordsmen.
On the balcony’s other side, archers advanced in formation, arrows nocked and drawn, their sharp points trembling ever so slightly, ready to fly at a moment’s notice.
From within the chamber, Edmure heard more noise; Piper and his men had emerged from the neighboring room and sealed off the door.
The trap had closed.
“A trap.
We’ve walked into a trap,” someone among the common soldiers said, panic edging into his voice.
Several hands went for sword hilts.
For a moment the whole scene teetered on the edge of violence.
Ryger had gone pale, his eyes darting about in obvious confusion.
Only the Blackfish held himself with any real composure, even in the dim light.
“So that’s how it is,” he said, looking around him.
He might have wanted to run, but there was nowhere left to go.
They were surrounded on every side.
Spearpoints and drawn steel made the situation plain enough: one wrong move, and this would end in a massacre.
“Set down your sword, uncle.
Then this ends without bloodshed, for you and for your men both,” Edmure said, keeping his voice level.
For nearly a full minute, nothing happened.
The Blackfish held his gaze steady on Edmure’s face.
What was he searching for there?
Strength of will?
Resolve?
Some sign of who truly held command here?
The old Edmure could never have met that stare and matched it.
Edmure could.
“Seven hells,” the Blackfish cursed, drawing his sword and letting it clatter to the stone floor.
“We yield.” “A wise choice.” Relief bled through Vance’s voice, plain and unhidden.
“Bind them, all of them.
Ken, Rolf, Caulk, take their weapons and search them thoroughly.
Lymond, keep watch over everything.” His uncle said nothing further.
Only once Brynden had been led away to the dungeons did Edmure finally let himself breathe deeply.
Careful that no one noticed, he raised his hand and found, with some irritation, that it was still shaking.
Westeros, when you weren’t simply reading about it on a page but actually living inside it, carried a weight he hadn’t quite been prepared for.
A few quiet days passed after that.
Riverrun slowly recovered from the failed plot.
Few enough men had actually taken part in it, but they’d come uncomfortably close to driving a wedge straight through the castle’s own household.
On principle, Edmure stayed away from the Blackfish during those days.
Let his uncle sit with his thoughts a while longer, let him do some thinking of his own.
Together with Vance, he carefully chose envoys.
One would ride for Dorne, to speak with Prince Martell.
A second would travel to Highgarden and open a dialogue with Willas Tyrell, a thoughtful man by all accounts, and one worth approaching directly.
Edmure knew perfectly well that Lady Olenna was the sharper mind to deal with, but she remained in King’s Landing for now.
For that mission, Edmure meant to send his most capable man of all: Karyl.
He’d grown used to leaning on the man’s counsel, but there was no way around it this time.
Only Karyl had the skill to meet Tywin Lannister face to face and learn what the Lannisters might actually accept to end this war.
He’d need to make the acquaintance of Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper, of Tyrion, of the other lords gathered there besides.
All told, it was an enormously difficult mission Edmure was asking of him, walking, quite literally, straight into the lion’s den.
Mallister, expected at Riverrun any day now, would be sent on to Stannis Baratheon at Dragonstone.
Perhaps some understanding could be reached there.
And Beric Dondarrion, the Lightning Lord, and his men weren’t to be forgotten either; Edmure planned to invite the whole company to the castle and get better acquainted.
They seemed, after all, to be allies worth cultivating.
In the meantime, the Bloody Mummers had arrived at Riverrun, forcing Edmure into an unpleasant conversation with Vargo Hoat.
The mercenary stirred up exactly one feeling in him, sharp and unmistakable: disgust.
Still, Edmure judged that Peg had done the right thing, offering the man some measure of guarantee and steering him toward the castle.
There was use to be had here yet.
Jaime Lannister surely hadn’t forgotten who’d taken his hand.
Peg himself returned two days later.
He’d failed to capture the Kingslayer, and half his men had paid for the attempt with their lives.
And yet, somewhere underneath the disappointment, Edmure had already known it would likely end this way.
Taking a prisoner like that back, cleanly, had always been more than a little unrealistic.
After hearing Peg’s account in full and picking out the details that mattered, Edmure invited everyone to dine together that evening, hoping to lift the mood.
Wine and honest talk, he judged, would do the river lords some real good.
The following morning, without delay, he went to see the Blackfish.
His uncle had been given a reasonably decent cell.
Dim, faintly damp, though not unbearably so.
A narrow window near the ceiling, barred with thick iron, looked out onto the courtyard’s paving stones, close enough that a tall man could have reached through and touched the grass growing there.
The cell held only two pieces of furniture: a simple cot and a bucket for necessities.
It didn’t smell pleasant.
But the prisoner himself hadn’t been bound, had kept his own clothes, and was fed reasonably well, at least once a day.
“You took your time,” the Blackfish said, rising from his cot.
The creak of rusted hinges had woken him, and Edmure thought with some irritation that whoever was responsible for this floor needed a stern talking to; those hinges wanted oiling, and judging by the cracks in the walls and general grime, the man could stand to take better care of the space entrusted to him.
“What have you got to say, uncle?” Edmure remained near the half open door.
A few steps behind him waited a guard of three men.
He doubted Brynden would try to strangle him or attempt anything of the sort, but a little extra caution never hurt.
“What’s going to happen to me?” the prisoner asked, calm as though he were out for a walk rather than sitting in a dungeon, answering a question with one of his own.
“I’m the one asking questions here.
So.
What do you have to say?” “You’ve changed, Ed.
Very well, listen closely.
You may not believe this, but no one meant you any real harm.
This was mine to answer for; I’m the one who stirred Ryger and the others into this.
I only wanted to knock some sense back into you.
These past weeks you’ve behaved in ways that have put every one of us at risk.
And how you’ve treated King Robb, your own sister, that’s a separate conversation entirely.
I won’t even start on the Freys.” “Interesting.” “If it had gone as planned, you’d have been confined to your chambers, and I would have taken command of the army and the castle until things settled.
Then you’d have been released, restored fully as lord.
That’s all it was meant to be.
Believe it or don’t, but I’m telling you the truth.” “You argue your case well,” Edmure said.
Strange as it sounded, he believed him.
The Blackfish was an honorable man, not one who would ever have truly harmed his own nephew.
And the idea that the old knight had only wanted to rein him in, to force him back onto a path Brynden believed was right, made a certain sense, once Edmure thought it through.
He understood that kind of motivation well enough.
“I always dreamed of a strong, farsighted lord ruling here at Riverrun, Edmure.
I dreamed of the Trident’s name carrying weight, of our enemies fearing us, of our word actually meaning something,” Brynden admitted at last.
“And you.
You’ve always played the part of a weak, spoiled boy.
Ill suited for the role your birth handed you.
Women, drink, and merry songs, that’s been the whole of your life’s ambition.
I don’t want Riverrun for myself, don’t mistake me on that.
But you were never fit for it either.
A true river lord ought to be sitting where you sit.
And he should remember our words: Family.
Duty.
Honor.” “Is that what all this was about?” “Yes.
Now, do with me whatever you see fit.
Only show mercy to the common soldiers, and to Ryger.
None of this was their doing.
The fault rests with me alone.” “So you dream of a strong Lord of Riverrun.” Edmure held back a smile.
“Tell me, what do you think a man like that ought to do?
Where would he start?”
com/Hezzario