The eastern sky was rose and gold as the sun broke over the Vale of Arryn. Catelyn Stark watchedthe light spread, her hands resting on the delicate carved stone of the balustrade outside her window.

Below her the world turned from black to indigo to green as dawn crept across fields and forests. Palewhite mists rose off Alyssa’s Tears, where the ghost waters plunged over the shoulder of themountain to begin their long tumble down the face of the Giant’s Lance. Catelyn could feel the fainttouch of spray on her face.

Alyssa Arryn had seen her husband, her brothers, and all her children slain, and yet in life she hadnever shed a tear. So in death, the gods had decreed that she would know no rest until her weepingwatered the black earth of the Vale, where the men she had loved were buried. Alyssa had been deadsix thousand years now, and still no drop of the torrent had ever reached the valley floor far below.

Catelyn wondered how large a waterfall her own tears would make when she died. “Tell me the restof it,” she said.

“The Kingslayer is massing a host at Casterly Rock,” Ser Rodrik Cassel answered from the roombehind her. “Your brother writes that he has sent riders to the Rock, demanding that Lord Tywinproclaim his intent, but he has had no answer. Edmure has commanded Lord Vance and Lord Piper toguard the pass below the Golden Tooth. He vows to you that he will yield no foot of Tully landwithout first watering it with Lannister blood.”

Catelyn turned away from the sunrise. Its beauty did little to lighten her mood; it seemed cruel for aday to dawn so fair and end so foul as this one promised to. “Edmure has sent riders and made vows,”

she said, “but Edmure is not the Lord of Riverrun. What of my lord father?”

“The message made no mention of Lord Hoster, my lady.” Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers.

They had grown in white as snow and bristly as a thornbush while he was recovering from hiswounds; he looked almost himself again.

“My father would not have given the defense of Riverrun over to Edmure unless he was verysick,” she said, worried. “I should have been woken as soon as this bird arrived.”

“Your lady sister thought it better to let you sleep, Maester Colemon told me.”

“I should have been woken,” she insisted.

“The maester tells me your sister planned to speak with you after the combat,” Ser Rodrik said.

“Then she still plans to go through with this mummer’s farce?” Catelyn grimaced. “The dwarf hasplayed her like a set of pipes, and she is too deaf to hear the tune. Whatever happens this morning, SerRodrik, it is past time we took our leave. My place is at Winterfell with my sons. If you are strongenough to travel, I shall ask Lysa for an escort to see us to Gulltown. We can take ship from there.”

“Another ship?” Ser Rodrik looked a shade green, yet he managed not to shudder. “As you say,my lady.”

The old knight waited outside her door as Catelyn summoned the servants Lysa had given her. Ifshe spoke to her sister before the duel, perhaps she could change her mind, she thought as theydressed her. Lysa’s policies varied with her moods, and her moods changed hourly. The shy girl shehad known at Riverrun had grown into a woman who was by turns proud, fearful, cruel, dreamy,reckless, timid, stubborn, vain, and, above all, inconstant.

When that vile turnkey of hers had come crawling to tell them that Tyrion Lannister wished toconfess, Catelyn had urged Lysa to have the dwarf brought to them privately, but no, nothing woulddo but that her sister must make a show of him before half the Vale. And now this …“Lannister is my prisoner,” she told Ser Rodrik as they descended the tower stairs and made theirway through the Eyrie’s cold white halls. Catelyn wore plain grey wool with a silvered belt. “Mysister must be reminded of that.”

At the doors to Lysa’s apartments, they met her uncle storming out. “Going to join the fool’sfestival?” Ser Brynden snapped. “I’d tell you to slap some sense into your sister, if I thought it woulddo any good, but you’d only bruise your hand.”

“There was a bird from Riverrun,” Catelyn began, “a letter from Edmure …”

“I know, child.” The black fish that fastened his cloak was Brynden’s only concession toornament. “I had to hear it from Maester Colemon. I asked your sister for leave to take a thousandseasoned men and ride for Riverrun with all haste. Do you know what she told me? The Vale cannotspare a thousand swords, nor even one, Uncle, she said. You are the Knight of the Gate. Your place ishere.” A gust of childish laughter drifted through the open doors behind him, and her uncle glanceddarkly over his shoulder. “Well, I told her she could bloody well find herself a new Knight of theGate. Black fish or no, I am still a Tully. I shall leave for Riverrun by evenfall.”

Catelyn could not pretend to surprise. “Alone? You know as well as I that you will never survivethe high road. Ser Rodrik and I are returning to Winterfell. Come with us, Uncle. I will give you yourthousand men. Riverrun will not fight alone.”

Brynden thought a moment, then nodded a brusque agreement. “As you say. It’s the long wayhome, but I’m more like to get there. I’ll wait for you below.” He went striding off, his cloak swirlingbehind him.

Catelyn exchanged a look with Ser Rodrik. They went through the doors to the high, nervous soundof a child’s giggles.

Lysa’s apartments opened over a small garden, a circle of dirt and grass planted with blue flowersand ringed on all sides by tall white towers. The builders had intended it as a godswood, but the Eyrierested on the hard stone of the mountain, and no matter how much soil was hauled up from the Vale,they could not get a weirwood to take root here. So the Lords of the Eyrie planted grass and scatteredstatuary amidst low, flowering shrubs. It was there the two champions would meet to place their lives,and that of Tyrion Lannister, into the hands of the gods.

Lysa, freshly scrubbed and garbed in cream velvet with a rope of sapphires and moonstones aroundher milk-white neck, was holding court on the terrace overlooking the scene of the combat,surrounded by her knights, retainers, and lords high and low. Most of them still hoped to wed her, bedher, and rule the Vale of Arryn by her side. From what Catelyn had seen during her stay at the Eyrie,it was a vain hope.

A wooden platform had been built to elevate Robert’s chair; there the Lord of the Eyrie sat,giggling and clapping his hands as a humpbacked puppeteer in blue-and-white motley made twowooden knights hack and slash at each other. Pitchers of thick cream and baskets of blackberries hadbeen set out, and the guests were sipping a sweet orange-scented wine from engraved silver cups. Afool’s festival, Brynden had called it, and small wonder.

Across the terrace, Lysa laughed gaily at some jest of Lord Hunter’s, and nibbled a blackberry fromthe point of Ser Lyn Corbray’s dagger. They were the suitors who stood highest in Lysa’sfavor … today, at least. Catelyn would have been hard-pressed to say which man was moreunsuitable. Eon Hunter was even older than Jon Arryn had been, half-crippled by gout, and cursedwith three quarrelsome sons, each more grasping than the last. Ser Lyn was a different sort of folly;lean and handsome, heir to an ancient but impoverished house, but vain, reckless, hot-tempered … and, it was whispered, notoriously uninterested in the intimate charms of women.

When Lysa espied Catelyn, she welcomed her with a sisterly embrace and a moist kiss on thecheek. “Isn’t it a lovely morning? The gods are smiling on us. Do try a cup of the wine, sweet sister.

Lord Hunter was kind enough to send for it, from his own cellars.”

“Thank you, no. Lysa, we must talk.”

“After,” her sister promised, already beginning to turn away from her.

“Now.” Catelyn spoke more loudly than she’d intended. Men were turning to look. “Lysa, youcannot mean to go ahead with this folly. Alive, the Imp has value. Dead, he is only food for crows.

And if his champion should prevail here—”

“Small chance of that, my lady,” Lord Hunter assured her, patting her shoulder with a liverspotted hand. “Ser Vardis is a doughty fighter. He will make short work of the sellsword.”

“Will he, my lord?” Catelyn said coolly. “I wonder.” She had seen Bronn fight on the high road; itwas no accident that he had survived the journey while other men had died. He moved like a panther,and that ugly sword of his seemed a part of his arm.

Lysa’s suitors were gathering around them like bees round a blossom. “Women understand little ofthese things,” Ser Morton Waynwood said. “Ser Vardis is a knight, sweet lady. This other fellow,well, his sort are all cowards at heart. Useful enough in a battle, with thousands of their fellowsaround them, but stand them up alone and the manhood leaks right out of them.”

“Say you have the truth of it, then,” Catelyn said with a courtesy that made her mouth ache.

“What will we gain by the dwarf’s death? Do you imagine that Jaime will care a fig that we gave hisbrother a trial before we flung him off a mountain?”

“Behead the man,” Ser Lyn Corbray suggested. “When the Kingslayer receives the Imp’s head, itwill be a warning to him.”

Lysa gave an impatient shake of her waist-long auburn hair. “Lord Robert wants to see him fly,”

she said, as if that settled the matter. “And the Imp has only himself to blame. It was he whodemanded a trial by combat.”

“Lady Lysa had no honorable way to deny him, even if she’d wished to,” Lord Hunter intonedponderously.

Ignoring them all, Catelyn turned all her force on her sister. “I remind you, Tyrion Lannister is myprisoner.”

“And I remind you, the dwarf murdered my lord husband!” Her voice rose. “He poisoned theHand of the King and left my sweet baby fatherless, and now I mean to see him pay!” Whirling, herskirts swinging around her, Lysa stalked across the terrace. Ser Lyn and Ser Morton and the othersuitors excused themselves with cool nods and trailed after her.

“Do you think he did?” Ser Rodrik asked her quietly when they were alone again. “Murder LordJon, that is? The Imp still denies it, and most fiercely …”

“I believe the Lannisters murdered Lord Arryn,” Catelyn replied, “but whether it was Tyrion, orSer Jaime, or the queen, or all of them together, I could not begin to say.” Lysa had named Cersei inthe letter she had sent to Winterfell, but now she seemed certain that Tyrion was the killer … perhapsbecause the dwarf was here, while the queen was safe behind the walls of the Red Keep, hundreds ofleagues to the south. Catelyn almost wished she had burned her sister’s letter before reading it.

Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers. “Poison, well … that could be the dwarf’s work, true enough. OrCersei’s. It’s said poison is a woman’s weapon, begging your pardons, my lady. The Kingslayer,now … I have no great liking for the man, but he’s not the sort. Too fond of the sight of blood on thatgolden sword of his. Was it poison, my lady?”

Catelyn frowned, vaguely uneasy. “How else could they make it look a natural death?” Behind her,Lord Robert shrieked with delight as one of the puppet knights sliced the other in half, spilling a floodof red sawdust onto the terrace. She glanced at her nephew and sighed. “The boy is utterly withoutdiscipline. He will never be strong enough to rule unless he is taken away from his mother for a time.”

“His lord father agreed with you,” said a voice at her elbow. She turned to behold MaesterColemon, a cup of wine in his hand. “He was planning to send the boy to Dragonstone for fostering,you know … oh, but I’m speaking out of turn.” The apple of his throat bobbed anxiously beneath theloose maester’s chain. “I fear I’ve had too much of Lord Hunter’s excellent wine. The prospect ofbloodshed has my nerves all a-fray …”

“You are mistaken, Maester,” Catelyn said. “It was Casterly Rock, not Dragonstone, and thosearrangements were made after the Hand’s death, without my sister’s consent.”

The maester’s head jerked so vigorously at the end of his absurdly long neck that he looked half apuppet himself. “No, begging your forgiveness, my lady, but it was Lord Jon who—”

A bell tolled loudly below them. High lords and serving girls alike broke off what they were doingand moved to the balustrade. Below, two guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks led forth Tyrion Lannister.

The Eyrie’s plump septon escorted him to the statue in the center of the garden, a weeping womancarved in veined white marble, no doubt meant to be Alyssa.

“The bad little man,” Lord Robert said, giggling. “Mother, can I make him fly? I want to see himfly.”

“Later, my sweet baby,” Lysa promised him.

“Trial first,” drawled Ser Lyn Corbray, “then execution.” “then execution.”

A moment later the two champions appeared from opposite sides of the garden. The knight wasattended by two young squires, the sellsword by the Eyrie’s master-at-arms.

Ser Vardis Egen was steel from head to heel, encased in heavy plate armor over mail and paddedsurcoat. Large circular rondels, enameled cream-and-blue in the moon-and-falcon sigil of HouseArryn, protected the vulnerable juncture of arm and breast. A skirt ............