If Riverrun had taught me anything, it was that there were two great lies told to children.
The first was that hard work always paid off.
The second was that horses became more comfortable the more you rode them.
The first one I was willing to debate. The second was a filthy, malicious falsehood spread by stableboys and sadists.
By the time Damon and I rode out from Riverrun toward Fairmarket, I was already sore in places I had not previously known existed. My back ached, my thighs burned, and my arse had entered a state of numb misery that I suspected would one day be used by maesters to describe battlefield amputations.
The horse beneath me—smaller than the one I had ridden to Riverrun, thank the gods—seemed to sense my hatred and take quiet pleasure in every rut in the road.
"Try loosening your shoulders," Damon called from ahead of me, glancing back over his horse's neck. "You're sitting like a man waiting for the Stranger to leap out of the saddlebag."
"I'm sitting like a man who's being beaten to death by livestock."
"One day you'll thank me for teaching you to ride."
"One day I'll poison your horse."
The man-at-arms riding behind us barked a laugh. Damon, traitor that he was, merely smirked.
The road from Riverrun to Fairmarket was kinder than the long ride from the inn had been, though that said more about the first journey than this one. We rode beneath clear skies through the green heart of the Riverlands, following winding roads bordered by willow trees, hedgerows, and fields already turning gold beneath the late summer sun. Small villages appeared and vanished behind us, little clusters of cottages huddled around septs or mills, their people pausing in their work to watch our horses pass.
I watched everything.
I couldn't help it. This world had stopped feeling like a story the day I died in it, but every mile I traveled still made it feel larger, stranger, and more real. I had spent seven years at a crossroads inn watching the world come to me in scraps—merchants' tales, drunken soldiers' boasts, travelers' gossip. Now I was finally moving through it myself, and I found I liked it far too much for my own good.
Damon spent part of the ride telling me about Fairmarket, perhaps because he had decided that if I was going to make a fool of myself there, he might as well at least give me the proper names of the people I offended.
"It isn't Riverrun," he said. "Don't expect towers scraping the sky or halls large enough to host half the Riverlands."
"I grew up in an inn," I said. "If it has more than four rooms and a roof that doesn't leak every spring, I'll be impressed."
Damon ignored that. "Fairmarket is old—older than most places in the Riverlands. It sits along the Blue Fork, where roads and river traffic keep it busy year-round. There's always trade passing through, merchants coming and going, ferrymen, travelers, hedge knights, septons, and every other sort of nuisance the gods can invent. It isn't a great castle, but it's prosperous enough, and the town around it matters nearly as much as the keep itself."
That caught my interest immediately.
A market town was very different from a lonely little castle set amid marsh and riverbanks. Fairmarket meant people. Coin. Information. Nobles, merchants, caravans, and gossip from every direction. If the Crossroads Inn had been my little window into the wider world, then Fairmarket sounded like someone had taken that window and built an entire town around it.
"And your family?" I asked. "You've told me about your father. What about the rest?"
Damon shot me a suspicious look, as if I might be planning something.
"My mother is Lady Lythene Frey," he said at last. "You will call her 'my lady' and remember that she was born a Frey before she married into House Vypren."
I nearly grimaced on instinct.
Not because I had anything against his mother personally—how could I? I hadn't met the woman—but because the name Frey came with baggage. An entire cartload of it. My knowledge of the books was nonexistent and the show had become a blur after a point, but even I knew that when someone in Westeros introduced themselves as a Frey, caution was the sensible response.
Damon caught my expression at once.
"Try not to look as though I've told you she bites children," he said.
"I wasn't."
"You were."
"I was thinking."
"That's usually when you look most suspicious."
I decided not to argue because he was, annoyingly, correct.
"And your sister?" I asked instead.
That got a snort from him.
"Elyane," he said. "She's eighteen, and she's betrothed to Jon Wylde. If you have any sense at all, you'll mind your manners around her."
That made me sit a little straighter in the saddle.
Eighteen.
That was very different from the image I had formed in my head. From Damon's tone, I had expected a younger sister who spent her days tormenting servants and spying through keyholes. An eighteen-year-old noblewoman betrothed to a man of House Wylde was something else entirely. That meant she was of an age to marry, old enough to understand the games of noble courts, and likely far more dangerous than Damon had any right to say so casually.
"That warning suggests she's terrifying," I said.
"It suggests she's my sister."
"Ah," I said solemnly. "So dangerous by blood."
He gave me a flat look. "You think you're funny."
"I know I'm funny. Other people merely fail to appreciate it."
"Elyane will appreciate it right up until she uses it against you."
That, unfortunately, only made me more curious.
We rode on for another few hours before Damon finally pointed ahead.
"There," he said.
At first all I saw was a rise of land above the river and the shimmer of sunlight on water. Then the road curved, the trees broke, and Fairmarket came into view.
It wasn't Riverrun.
That was the first thing I thought, and the second was that I didn't care in the slightest.
Fairmarket was not one of the great fortresses of Westeros, but it didn't need to be. It sprawled along the Blue Fork in a way that felt practical rather than grand, as if the place had grown around trade first and lordship second. The town stretched along the riverbank in a patchwork of timber-and-stone buildings, warehouses, inns, workshops, and market stalls clustered around muddy streets crowded with carts and people. Beyond it rose the keep itself, seated on a low hill of pale stone above the town. Its walls were sturdy rather than imposing, thick enough to turn aside trouble and old enough to show their age in places, with square towers watching over the roads and the river alike.
Barges drifted along the Blue Fork. I could hear the noise of the town even from a distance—wagon wheels rattling, men shouting, dogs barking, the endless hum of commerce and daily life. Smoke rose from chimneys. A bell rang somewhere in the distance. It looked less like the seat of a noble house and more like a place where the whole Riverlands might stop to breathe before moving on.
"It looks…" I trailed off, searching for the word.
"Smaller than Riverrun?" Damon supplied.
"Busy," I said. "And rich enough to smell."
That made him laugh.
He wasn't wrong, though. Even from where we rode, I could see what he meant. Fairmarket wasn't grand in the way Riverrun was grand. It had no sweeping walls rising from the water, no towers fit for songs. But it had movement. Trade. Life. The sort of wealth that came not from ancient glory but from roads, rivers, and people needing somewhere to buy, sell, eat, sleep, and lie to one another.
I liked it immediately, which was probably foolish.
"Try not to stare too openly when we go in," Damon said as we approached the town. "You already did that at Riverrun."
"At Riverrun I was in pain."
"You're in pain now."
"Yes, but now I have experience."
"That does not reassure me."
We rode through the town first, and that alone nearly made me forget the misery of the saddle.
Fairmarket was bigger than any place I had ever seen up close. Stalls lined the streets selling everything from onions and salt fish to ribbons, knives, and bolts of cloth. Smiths worked at their forges with sleeves rolled up and faces red from the heat. A woman sat gutting trout by the roadside while two boys chased each other around a cart piled high with apples. I smelled horse dung, river mud, fresh bread, ale, tallow, sweat, and smoke in one glorious assault on the senses.
And people—gods, there were people everywhere.
Merchants in fine wool arguing over prices. Smallfolk hauling sacks of grain. A septon picking his way around a puddle with the expression of a man personally offended by mud. Men-at-arms in Vypren colors keeping a watchful eye on the flow of traffic. A pair of girls carrying baskets of laundry who stopped dead to stare at Damon and then at me, no doubt wondering why a noble boy was traveling with what looked suspiciously like a stablehand that had learned to talk.
I stared back with equal interest.
The keep stood at the far end of the town, where the ground rose gently above the river. Its outer wall enclosed a broad yard and the main hall beyond it, along with stables, kitchens, and smaller buildings clustered around the inner bailey. It wasn't massive, but it was respectable—old stone, well-kept, practical. The sort of seat built by a house that had no need to boast because its coin and its position did the boasting for it.
The guards at the gate recognized Damon immediately. One of them called for the gate to be opened while the other bowed from the saddle, and just like that Fairmarket's keep swallowed me whole.
The yard within was no less lively than the town outside. Stableboys hurried forward to take the horses. Servants crossed between the hall and kitchens carrying baskets and barrels. Men-at-arms drilled near the wall, their practice blades cracking together in the late afternoon sun. Somewhere off to the side I heard the ring of hammer on metal from a smithy.
My stomach gave a small, unpleasant lurch.
That would be me soon enough. Not the smithy, thankfully. But the drills, the errands, the endless opportunities to embarrass myself before important people—those, certainly.
One of the stableboys reached for my horse's reins, and I dismounted with as much dignity as a seven-year-old with bruised legs could manage. Which is to say: not much. My knees nearly gave out when my boots hit the ground, and I had to catch myself on the saddle.
Damon saw, of course, because the gods despised me.
"Still planning to poison my horse?" he asked mildly.
"No," I said. "I think it's already trying to poison me."
He laughed, then jerked his head toward the hall. "Come on. My father will want to see you before supper."
That sentence did not improve my mood.
I had met Lord Hoster Tully and somehow survived, but Hoster had been a liege lord amused by a story. Lord Lucias Vypren would be different. He was the man whose household I was entering, whose son had taken a chance on me, whose patience I would be relying on every day from now until I either proved useful or made a disaster of myself.
No pressure.
The great hall of Fairmarket was long, warm, and less grand than Riverrun's, but no less impressive to me for that. Sunlight spilled through tall windows, catching on polished wood, rushes strewn over the floor, and the banners hanging from the rafters. The trout-and-vines sigil of House Vypren appeared everywhere: stitched into wall hangings, painted onto shields, carved into the backs of chairs.
At the center of the hall stood three people who had apparently been interrupted in the middle of discussing something.
Lord Lucias Vypren was tall and lean, with light brown hair touched by silver at the temples and a clean shaven face. His clothes were fine without being ostentatious, the sort worn by a man who had no need to wear half his treasury to prove his worth.
Beside him stood Lady Lythene Frey.
She was not what I had expected.
In truth, I wasn't sure what I had expected. Something sharp-faced and fox-eyed, perhaps, with the permanent expression of a woman silently calculating dowries and murder. Westeros—and my memories of it—had not exactly encouraged charitable assumptions about the Freys.
Lady Lythene, however, was elegant rather than severe, with dark grey/black hair pinned high and clear brown eyes that missed nothing. She wore a gown of dark green trimmed with silver, and though there was no softness in the way she held herself, there was no cruelty either. If anything, she looked like the sort of woman who could run a household, manage accounts, host a feast, and dismantle a man's pride in three sentences without ever raising her voice.
Which, in its own way, was far more terrifying.
And then there was Elyane.
She stood near her mother, not with the careless posture of a girl still waiting to become a woman, but with the easy self-possession of someone already being prepared for another household. She was beautiful in the way noblewomen in songs were supposed to be beautiful, though there was more sharpness to her than softness. Her hair the same as her mothers, and fell in careful curls down her back. She had the same brown eyes as Lady Lythene, but where her mother's gaze was measured and knowing, Elyane's was cooler, more deliberate, as if she had already learned to look at people and weigh what use they might be.
She wore pale blue trimmed with white embroidery, a silver chain resting lightly at her throat. Everything about her was arranged with purpose, from the calm tilt of her chin to the way she held her hands before her. She did not look like Damon's troublesome younger sister. She looked like a lady who would soon be married into another house, one who had spent years learning how to move through halls like these without ever seeming uncertain.
And she was betrothed to Jon Wylde.
That little fact only made her feel more distant somehow, more firmly part of the world of nobles and alliances and marriages made for politics rather than affection. She wasn't merely Damon's sister. She was a daughter of House Vypren already being measured for the role she would play elsewhere.
When her gaze settled on me, I had the deeply uncomfortable feeling of being inspected like a horse someone was considering buying.
Oh, this was going to be dangerous.
Damon crossed the hall and bowed. "Father. Mother."
"Damon," Lord Lucias said. His voice was calm and deep, but there was enough authority in a single word to make my spine straighten. "Your message said you would return today. We had not expected you quite this early."
"The roads were kind," Damon said.
Lady Lythene's gaze passed over him and settled on me. "And this must be Talion."
There was no point delaying my doom.
I stepped forward, dropped to one knee, and lowered my head. "Talion, my lord. My lady."
"Son of Edward of the Crossroads Inn," Lord Lucias said.
I blinked and looked up before I could stop myself. "You know my father?"
"I know of your father," he corrected. "Damon wrote ahead. Lord Tully wrote as well."
That sent a pulse of alarm through me. Lord Hoster had written about me? Why? To warn them? To congratulate them? To describe in detail how their son had recruited a muddy little cheat with no sense of honor and questionable survival instincts?
Lady Lythene's mouth curved slightly, as if she could see the panic blooming behind my eyes.
"Rise, Talion," she said. "No one has condemned you yet."
Yet was not an especially comforting word.
I stood.
Lord Lucias studied me the way a man might study a young hound he had not yet decided whether to keep. Not unkindly, but thoroughly. I did my best not to squirm under it.
"You're younger than I expected," he said at last.
I had no idea whether that was good or bad.
"I'm told I'll grow out of it, my lord."
Silence.
Damon made a sound somewhere between a cough and a prayer for patience.
Then, to my immense relief, Lady Lythene laughed.
It wasn't loud, but it transformed her face all the same, and suddenly she seemed less like a Frey-shaped threat sent by the gods to test me and more like a real woman trying not to smile at a boy making an ass of himself.
Lord Lucias did not laugh. But I thought—thought—I saw the corner of his mouth twitch.
Elyane's expression shifted too, though only slightly. Not a smile, exactly, but the sort of faint amusement one might allow when a child said something unexpectedly clever.
"Damon," Lord Lucias said, eyes still on me, "did you collect him from the road or win him in a wager?"
"I found him at an inn, Father."
"Somehow that raises more questions than it answers."
"It raised the same concerns for me," Lady Lythene murmured.
Elyane spoke then, her tone smooth and composed. "This is the boy who beat Damon with a stick?"
Traitor. Informants everywhere.
Damon closed his eyes for a moment, as if hoping the floor might open and spare him.
"With a little help from dirt," Lady Lythene added, now very clearly amused.
I stared at Damon in disbelief. "You told all of them?"
"I told Father," Damon said through clenched teeth. "Mother has ears."
"And tales tend to travel quickly through a household," Elyane said, her gaze still on me. "Especially unusual ones."
There was no mockery in her voice, which somehow made it worse. I felt as though I were being discussed at court rather than in a family hall.
"I did what worked," I said, deciding honesty was safer than dignity.
A flicker of approval passed over Elyane's face before it vanished. "Practical, then."
That was all she said, but somehow it felt like being assigned a label and filed away for later use.
Lord Lucias folded his hands behind his back.
"Whatever the method," he said, "Damon believes you worth the trouble. Lord Tully appears to agree. That is recommendation enough for now." His expression hardened slightly. "But understand this, Talion: being accepted into my household is not a reward. It is an opportunity. One you may yet lose if you prove lazy, insolent, or incapable of learning your place."
My back straightened on instinct. "Yes, my lord."
"You will serve first as a page. You will learn your letters if you do not know them, attend where you are told, train when commanded, and hold your tongue unless invited to use it. You are not here to play at knighthood. You are here to make yourself useful."
"Yes, my lord," I repeated, more firmly this time.
"And if Damon has misjudged you," Lord Lucias continued, "I shall hold that against him, which I assure you he will not enjoy."
Damon looked long-suffering. Lady Lythene simply watched me. Elyane's expression remained calm, but I had the distinct impression she was measuring how I responded to being warned.
I swallowed.
"I won't waste the chance, my lord."
For a moment no one spoke. Then Lord Lucias nodded once, a small motion but somehow weightier than a shouted proclamation.
"See that you don't."
Lady Lythene stepped forward then, rescuing the moment before I could say something catastrophic.
"You've been riding all day," she said. "Morya has already been told to prepare a room for you. You'll wash, eat, and rest tonight. Tomorrow you may begin discovering how little romance there is in service."
I hesitated, then bowed my head. "Thank you, my lady."
"Don't thank me yet," she said lightly. "Wait until after Morya has seen the state of your boots."
That, I discovered, was the wrong thing to hear while still standing in front of one's new lord and lady, because I made the mistake of glancing down at said boots.
They were muddy. Very muddy. The sort of muddy that suggested I had kicked my way through half the Riverlands and then wiped my feet on the floor of the great hall for good measure.
When I looked up again, Elyane's gaze had followed mine. She did not laugh, but one brow lifted just slightly, and somehow that was worse.
Wonderful. I had been in the keep less than an hour and had already made an impression on the lord's daughter by looking like I'd crawled out of a ditch.
Damon clapped a hand to my shoulder before I could embarrass myself further. "Come on," he muttered. "Before you start apologizing to the furniture."
"I wasn't going to apologize to the furniture."
"You were thinking about it."
"I was assessing the furniture's feelings."
That earned a quiet laugh from Lady Lythene and another of those faint, composed almost-smiles from Elyane, the kind a lady might permit herself in private company but never at court. Lord Lucias, meanwhile, regarded me as though he had not yet decided whether I was a promising page or a prolonged headache sent to test his household's patience.
Damon, on the other hand, was absolutely reconsidering every decision that had brought me here.
He steered me toward the side door of the hall while a servant appeared as if summoned by magic to take my bundle. Just before I stepped through, I glanced back.
Lord Lucias was already speaking quietly to Lady Lythene, no doubt about me. Elyane had not moved at all. She stood where she had before, poised and self-contained, one hand resting lightly against the back of a chair, watching me leave with that same cool, assessing expression.
Gods help me. Damon's sister was not the childish menace I had half expected.
No, this was much worse.
She was clever, observant, older than me by more than a decade, and already promised to another noble house. She belonged to the sort of world I could barely even see yet, let alone understand—a world of alliances, marriages, and careful words spoken with smiles. And for some reason, I had the uncomfortable feeling that she had already taken note of me.
As the door shut behind us and Damon led me deeper into Fairmarket, one truth settled in my mind with startling clarity:
Riverrun had been the threshold.
This—this hall, this family, this bustling river town with its old keep, sharp-eyed lord, Frey-born lady, and dangerously perceptive noble daughter—this was the place where my new life would actually begin.
And if I had any sense at all, I would learn very quickly where the furniture stood on the matter.