The Riverlands. Riverrun. 299 AC.
Robb Stark.
Betrayal always hurts, but betrayal by blood hurts twice over. And when your own kin fails to understand that, it gives you a headache on top of everything else. Uncle Edmure was a brave man, even a noble one, but he had one terrible flaw: he was hopelessly naive. The way southerners thought about the straightforwardness of northerners was roughly how Robb thought about Edmure's simplicity.
"Say that again, uncle." After everything he had been through, Robb was mentally exhausted, and what he was hearing sounded like incoherent nonsense.
"The conquest of Lannisport and the Rock gave us far too much in the way of spoils. The treasury at Riverrun could not hold even a third of it. So I was advised to distribute the gold among the keeps of my vassals. It is far better than leaving such wealth sitting in an open field."
Edmure was clearly quoting someone else word for word.
"And nothing about that struck you as wrong?" The Young Wolf had no anger left in him. He simply wanted to know whether his uncle possessed a functioning mind.
"The Lannisters will certainly try to recover their property. Riverrun would become the priority target. In that situation I could not have kept your wealth safe, but by distributing it among several castles we prevent the lions from concentrating on any single point."
The words coming from Lord Tully's mouth sounded almost reasonable, even logical on the surface, but to Robb they had the unmistakable ring of leeching vassals who had talked a naive liege lord into exactly what suited them. A year and a half of war had seen his father and King Stannis knock most of the boyish enthusiasm out of him in the effort to make him see things clearly and rationally. He could not claim to have been a particularly apt pupil where politics was concerned, but Robb had been learning, and every part of this situation sat badly with him. In the face of millions in gold dragons, even northern lords who had never chased material wealth in their lives were capable of extraordinary fits of greed. Southerners went without saying.
"Beyond the idea of protecting the gold, was there anything else?" Robb already knew the answer. He needed to hear the worst confirmed.
"On your behalf I extended credit to the Brackens, the Pipers, the Blackwoods, the Vances, the Darrys, the Goodbrooks, the Rygers, and several knightly houses for the restoration of their lands, at favorable terms. The Freys, the Butterwells, the Pemfords, and the Deddings also wished to borrow, but their lands had not been touched by the war, so I refused them." So much satisfaction in Tully's voice, as though he had single-handedly founded the Iron Bank.
"And you..."
"And I, as Lord of Riverrun, serve as the intermediary and guarantor between you and the borrowers." That last sentence sent Robb's mood plummeting past the floor of the Narrow Sea.
There were reasons why the Iron Bank of Braavos had come to monopolize the banking system of the known world. Reputation, for one: not a single misstep across its entire history since its founding. The Braavosi saying, "The Iron Bank will have its due," illustrated the situation perfectly. Then there was force. No man could count how many presumptuous kings, magisters, lords, and rulers the Bank had destroyed, or how many it had raised up to new stations so that they might repay the debts of their predecessors. And finally, anonymity. King Stannis had once cited the image of a temple in which every stone represented a worker: when one stone crumbles, another takes its place, and so they hold their shape for thousands of years. You cannot negotiate with them. You cannot run from them. And if you have no wish to be ground to dust, you pay.
Did Lord Edmure Tully possess any of these qualities, or anything comparable? Unfortunately, no. Not reputation, not martial distinction, not alliances, not high office, not strategic acuity: none of it was present, or what had once existed was gone. Collecting on debts requires strength, and House Tully possessed none at the moment. The marriage pacts old Hoster had built his entire strategy around had failed. They had once guaranteed the paramount lords of the Trident the support of the Starks and the Arryns, but the latter now nursed a grievance, and the former had simply run out of strength.
The situation recalled the days of Tytos Lannister and his emboldened vassals. The Young Wolf did his best to lay things out plainly for his uncle, and though Tully was skeptical for the first few minutes, he believed his nephew completely by the end. Edmure made no effort to hide his fury and wanted to set about correcting his mistake immediately. The trouble was that he had no idea how.
"Uncle, send letters to your vassals demanding the return of the borrowed funds and their appearance at Riverrun to settle the credit arrangements." Though some might genuinely have taken the money for legitimate purposes. After a moment's thought Robb added, "We will also need to assemble a force to extract repayment from those who refuse."
"A small force cannot compel the stronger lords to do anything. They may simply refuse, and then it comes to civil war," Edmure observed.
"We cannot show weakness, but I need time to deal with the problems of the North, and dragging this out is itself a form of weakness." The answer came quickly. "Collect debts first from the knightly houses and the weaker vassals."
"I still hope I will not have to draw steel on men I fought beside against the Lannisters," Tully said, allowing himself that much.
Robb would have gladly punished the traitors himself, but what remained at his disposal was three thousand exhausted northerners. Not a force with which to set conditions for proud southerners. His brother Jon had made clear in his letters that no reinforcements could be sent, as every available man had been committed to the defense of the Wall. So all that was left to Robb was to return north with whatever gold his uncle had managed to keep intact and whatever honest lords remained, sort out the most pressing problems at home, and use the spoils to rebuild the North's fighting capacity. His sister's warning fit neatly into that plan: the Falcon's eye had his sights on the gold from the Rock. Robb was certain that in his search for it, Lord Arryn would pass through the traitors' castles with fire and sword.
Perhaps not by his hand, but the southerners would be punished for their greed and betrayal all the same.
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