The dungeons of the Twins were damp and cold.
Barna was hungry, thirsty, and thoroughly frozen.
He had lost all sense of how long he had been down here. Time lost its meaning in the dark. He could only track its passage in the vaguest way, counting the number of times the guards dropped a piece of moldy black bread through the slot.
Every time he chewed that dry, hard bread, he thought about the moment of his capture.
The Frey soldiers had worked out why he was crossing the river. The war had already broken out — if a man crossed at this point and wasn't heading north, then his destination could only be Lord Solomon's lands. The officer in command had ordered the arrest on the spot, seemingly without hesitation.
And Bronn — that slippery, quick-nosed bastard — had caught the smell of danger before the Frey soldiers even came into view, and had simply disappeared while Barna was still dealing with the men. There and then gone.
Barna tried to sit up. Death did not frighten him. What frightened him was that he had failed Lord Solomon's trust. This had been the first meaningful assignment the Lord had ever given him. He had ruined it. The Lord had given him everything, and he had not been able to carry out even this straightforward a task. The shame of it gnawed at him in the dark.
Heavy footsteps. Coming from the far end of the passage.
The cell door scraped open. Barna and the handful of villagers who had followed him instinctively raised their forearms to shield their eyes from the sudden intrusion of torchlight.
A guard jabbed the butt of his spear into Barna's side.
"Up. Lord Walder wants to see you."
"On your feet. Move!!"
Barna's legs had gone entirely numb. He tried to rise, got halfway, and nearly went down. The guard had no patience for it. Two men came in, grabbed him under the arms, and half-carried him out of the cell.
The walk from the dungeon to the main keep was long. The light, after so long without it, made his head swim.
The two soldiers dragged him up the steps and through the corridors, one on each side, and deposited him into the great hall of the Twins.
The hall was wide but poorly lit. Old tapestries hung from the walls, thick with accumulated dust. The air had the smell of something that had been shut up for a long time.
On either side of the central aisle stood perhaps two dozen men and women, an assortment of shapes and sizes that suggested they had all been produced by the same indiscriminate process. They watched with expressions of identical blankness.
The two soldiers pushed his head toward the far end.
Barna looked up.
In the high-backed oak chair at the head of the hall sat a small, thin old man. His skin hung from his bones like a crumpled sheet of sheepskin parchment that had been soaked and dried too many times. His eyes were cloudy and small — but inside the cloudiness, they glittered with a sharpness and a meanness that had no business being in that face. Rat's eyes.
He wore a rich robe with several grease stains on the front, and he was currently cutting through a slice of meat with a small knife, methodically, without looking up.
Barna needed only a glance to place him.
Walder Frey. Lord of the Twins. One of the great lords of the Riverlands.
Walder looked at the filthy, ragged prisoners being brought in, and his voice rose in a high, querulous creak.
"Well, well. And what manner of people are these?"
"Plainly a lord's steward and his party, going to considerable effort to pass themselves off as merchants, bringing a cart's worth of weapons and equipment across my bridge."
Barna recalled Solomon's parting instruction — never reveal his identity — and opened his mouth to argue that he genuinely was a merchant and had nothing to do with any lord.
Walder Frey did not give him the chance.
He turned to the air in front of him and continued his grievance without requiring an audience to respond to it.
"Do you have any idea how important my bridge is? Do you know how many lords and merchants pass through this crossing every single day?"
"My family has a sacred obligation to ensure that every person who crosses is exactly who they say they are. We cannot allow spies, assassins, people with hidden intentions to slip into the Riverlands under cover of darkness."
"And you lot refused to identify yourselves!! Which naturally led to this entirely unnecessary misunderstanding!!"
He pointed the tip of his knife vaguely at the rows of relatives on both sides.
"These are my children and grandchildren. Everything we do, we do for the peace of the Riverlands. We protect people. And yet some people simply cannot find it in themselves to be grateful."
Barna endured the aching in his legs and the gnawing in his stomach and held himself upright as best he could. He kept his head down and listened to the old man's performance.
And as he listened, something settled into place in his chest, something that felt almost like relief.
He's inventing justifications. He's defending his own behavior to a prisoner.
Which meant he wasn't planning to execute anyone. Which meant Solomon must have won — or at the very least, was winning so decisively that Walder Frey now had reasons to want the situation managed rather than escalated.
Barna seized a gap in the monologue and spoke in the most respectful tone he could produce.
"Lord Walder Frey, My Lord — we are not spies. We are merchants from King's Landing, and we—"
Walder flapped his hand with the bored impatience of a man swatting a fly.
He arranged his face into a smile that was worse than no smile at all.
"There's no need to hide anything from us."
"I know, I know."
"This was a misunderstanding. A most regrettable misunderstanding."
He turned to look at the row of his sons.
"My boys were overzealous. They mistook a lord's steward for a suspicious character. I have already reprimanded them quite severely."
From both sides of the hall, the assembled Freys produced a round of obliging dry chuckles.
Walder returned his gaze to Barna. He leaned forward slightly. The small eyes narrowed.
His voice dropped.
"However. This misunderstanding has not been entirely without its compensations."
He stretched the words out, each syllable given its full measure.
"It gave me... the very considerable pleasure... of learning something about your remarkable lord. The Black Lion Solomon."
He accepted a cup from a serving girl and took a slow sip, then ran his tongue along his lips.
"I hear the young Black Lion won a battle he had no right to win, outside Willowbrook, and seized the Lege family's castle."
"Four trials by combat. Four victories. He has reclaimed his ancestral lands and established himself as a lord with genuine standing."
"Heh. Remarkable. That truly is remarkable."
His gaze drifted along the rows of children and grandchildren on both sides of him. He looked at them the way a man looks at stock on a shelf, not at people who share his blood.
"A young lord of such evident talent and promise. How can such a man go without a wife of suitable quality?"
He began in that slow, patient drawl. Barna felt the ground under him shift toward something worse.
"And a rising house. How can a rising house manage without a powerful alliance behind it?"
The last of Barna's composure drained away.
Walder Frey showed his hand at last.
He rose from his chair. He put on the smile of a man dispensing a great and gracious favor, the kind of smile that made the stomach turn.
He raised his voice so that no one in the hall could claim they hadn't heard.
"Therefore!! I have decided to give your lord a gift of incalculable value!!"
"I!! Walder Frey!! Lord of the Twins!!"
"Am prepared to give one of my daughters, or granddaughters, in marriage to Solomon, Lord of the Reekfort!!"
He picked up his cup and drank.
"With Frey blood in his house, with the Twins at his back, his position in the Riverlands will be unassailable. Tell him — this is my goodwill, freely offered."
The great hall was utterly silent.
Barna's mind was a complete blank.
Walder Frey gave a satisfied nod, like a man who has just conducted a thoroughly successful piece of business. He waved his hand in the direction of his guests, the gesture of a man dismissing something that had begun to bore him.
"Off you go, then. Tell your lord to think it over carefully."
"A Frey marriage alliance is not something offered to just anyone."