Chapter 201

The Vale. The Eyrie, 300 AC.

Eyris Claw.

The Eyrie was, deservedly, considered the most unassailable castle not merely in Westeros but arguably in the whole world. Unlike the seats of the Great Houses, the Arryn residence was significantly smaller than its rivals (Winterfell, Casterly Rock, Highgarden, and so on). Even Riverrun, Tully's castle, itself a third the size of Winterfell, still stood nearly twice the size of the Eyrie. Yet listening to such comparisons, people somehow always forgot one simple fact: a great lord's castle remains a great lord's castle, and such things are simply never small.

The Arryn stronghold could comfortably house seven hundred souls of every rank and station. Sadly, over the past twenty years the Eyrie's population had suffered badly under one upheaval after another. In Jon Arryn's day, the previous Lord of the Vale, the castle had held close to six hundred people. When Axel Arryn took his rightful place, he had cast out every unnecessary soul, and the castle's population dropped by more than a hundred as a result. During the Rotten Fish's rebellion, half the loyalists sympathetic to the Falcon's eye had been thrown through the Moon Door, and once the rebellion was crushed, Axel Arryn found he could no longer trust anyone who had lived through Lysa Tully's reign, so the already thin population was cut down once more.

The time following the rebellion's suppression allowed the ranks of trusted staff to swell back up to four hundred, and the Eyrie stopped resembling a ghost castle. Guards kept their watches, servants carried out their duties, officials moved between chambers and offices, and children ran about the grounds playing at knights. Life had filled the castle once more, and a steady run of victories and rich plunder from the Riverlands had lifted the spirits of the whole region and everyone in it. So it had been, until recently.

It was commonly believed across Westeros that the Starks were the first to feel Winter's approach. That was not, in fact, true. The Eyrie was the first place where every soul in the castle felt Winter's coming. Even the season's first snowfalls and winds turned the mountain paths treacherous and near impassable. Whenever that happened, everyone at the Eyrie relocated down to the Gates of the Moon, the Arryns' winter seat. Moving house was no quick affair, and it wore everyone down thoroughly, Ser Eyris Claw, commander of Axel Arryn's household guard, most of all.

"...which is why Ser Dollard could not reach you in time when summoned, my lord, and is currently at the Gates of the Moon, awaiting your orders." Another excuse, another apology, another vague assurance of something or other.

"My thanks. Tell Ser Dollard that should there be one more failure, he will not be speaking with me next time, but with Lord Arryn himself." The messenger went pale; the Falcon's eye had, after all, built quite the reputation for settling such matters.

" Lord Robert Arryn to see you," the guard announced, and Eyris very nearly groaned in irritation.

Eyris had never agreed to serve as nursemaid to every noble child in the castle. Even mid move, plenty of children of every age still ran about the Eyrie, but only three held the standing to "pester" Eyris: Myrcella Baratheon, Brandon Stark, and Robert Arryn. Of the three, the captain of the guard genuinely enjoyed the princess's company alone. The boys, on the other hand, still stirred in him the urge to take a switch to them, with the faint, hopeless wish that it might change something. Mostly they buried him in questions about the war: who, how, against whom, and to what result. Nothing out of the ordinary, but the sheer pile of it wore on a man dreadfully.

"Let him in." There was no avoiding it; the boy was his lord's own younger brother.

Robert walked calmly into the study, doing his level best to look confident. The Falcon's eye's discipline, followed by handing full authority over to Eyris, had turned a spoiled child into a young man showing real promise. The fair Arryn hair, Tully blue eyes, the hooked nose, and a physique well trained for an eight year old boy. Anyone who had known Axel as a child would have sworn Robert was his very image. The small lord sat down across from him and waited for something.

"What brings you here?" Eyris's head already ached from the weight of his duties; he had no patience left for guessing games.

"Is it true?" Catching his mentor's eye, Robert added, "Is it true Axel's coming home?"

Eyris leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The information was hardly a secret; plenty of people already knew it. But discussing it with a talkative child... that was another matter entirely. Then again, Robert already knew, so nothing much would change either way.

"Who told you?" Silence answered him; Robert had no wish to give anyone away, and Eyris, in truth, could not care less. There was no shortage of loose tongues in this castle. "Ah, well. Yes, it's true."

In the next instant, Eyris watched the boy's shoulders drop with relief, a breath of pure happiness escaping him. Such a reaction left him baffled; Axel and Robert's relationship hardly ran warm enough to justify such joy over his older brother's homecoming. If anything, the young Arryn would likely have welcomed word that his elder kinsman had died in the war. So Eyris asked the natural question, and Robert, after some hesitation, gave his answer:

"I'm glad Axel didn't kill my mother." Coming from the boy, the answer was disorienting, but it did at least clear up a few things that had puzzled him.

That Axel burned to gut Lysa Tully was common knowledge to anyone of any standing in the Vale. Robert, the Rotten Fish's own son, naturally wanted no such thing, though he had no power whatsoever to sway his brother's wishes. Before the Riverlands campaign, all had seemed well enough; the young Arryn had felt certain his mother was safe, that Riverrun's walls would shield her. Then came a string of successful assaults, and the boy's unformed mind had begun to fear the worst: the storming of Riverrun, his mother's death. Word that the Vale's army was marching home meant, automatically, that Lysa Tully was safe... or so Robert believed.

"Any other questions?" There were none. " How is Princess Myrcella keeping?"

However carefully Eyris had filtered the news out of King's Landing, the death of her mother, her brother, and several other kin had struck the princess hard. Myrcella had taken it deeply to heart, collapsing right there in his study when the news reached her. Denial had followed, then rage at the Targaryens, then a search for some scrap of hope, an unfounded faith that things would come right, then a slide into weeping despair, poor eating, and listlessness. Through all of it Eyris had lived in genuine dread that the Baratheon girl might do something drastic: throw herself through the Moon Door, hang herself in her chambers, take poison. No shortage of options, and none of them boded well for Claw; Lord Arryn would have gutted him over the death of his beloved princess.

"She's fine now," the boy muttered. Robert and the Starks held no particular fondness for the princess, but they never crossed any real lines with her either. "She's stopped crying, eats more regularly, spends a lot of time sitting in the garden by Alyssa Arryn's statue, and that's all I know. You'd have to ask Diana."

Eyris would ask the maid regardless, but hearing it from an unguarded young witness had its own uses.

The young Arryn withdrew to his chambers, leaving Eyris alone once more. Had an ordinary hedge knight ever dreamed he would become the trusted right hand of the single most powerful man alive? Never, not once. Eyris had always assumed household knight to some middling lord was the ceiling of his ambitions, but fate had a taste for surprises. During the rebellion he had taken service with the young Arryn heir, and later followed him across to Essos. There he had proven his wit, his skill, his loyalty, and earned his rightful place. His companions, the men closest to Lord Arryn, might boast greater talent, nobler blood, or more raw power, but it was Eyris, and no other, who stood as the Falcon's eye's most trusted man. He took great pride in that, and held it dear.

And so he would do everything in his power to live up to his lord's expectations.