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Lie thou there! For here comes a trout that must be caught with tickling -- Twelfth Night
Ropes creaked as the draft horses strained to pull the barge along the canal, their huge hooves kicking up clouds of dry yellow dust on the grassy banks. Upstream the lock gates swung slowly outwards while the lock keeper turned the enormous wheel with his brown, calloused hands. A light breeze played above in the leaves of the sycamore trees, and Brynden Tully fingered the pieces in his back row.
"Your move," his brother said. "Another minute and I'll call forfeit."
Brynden took a long swallow of ale from the stein at his elbow and studied the board once more. He could see the chain of moves in his mind, but he knew Hoster could see them too, trained by the same master. Their father had been clever and stern, and beating him at games had been a rare and treasured victory in Brynden's childhood.
"I doubt the ale is clearing your mind," Hoster said, "though you may use that as an excuse to save your honor later."
"It's just a game, brother," said Brynden, and pushed a piece into position.
Hoster saw the trap and won the game in four moves, collecting Brynden's ebony pieces and depositing them triumphantly in a neat stack behind his own ivory ones. There was a smile on his narrow face that reminded Brynden of a certain departed lord of Riverrun.
"Your problem," Hoster said, stretching out his legs, "is that you always have to do something clever. Sometimes the old ways are followed for a reason."
Brynden's hand tightened on a handful of pieces as he cleared the table. Hoster had a way of talking that reminded him of the Tumblestone, smooth flowing waters with stones and rotting wrecks always waiting just below the surface to rip into the keel of an unwary ship.
"Sometimes breaking traditions is the only way to create new ones, brother," he said carefully. "How else can we move forward?"
"Some things are not worth changing," Hoster said. "Not when there is a perfectly sound reason to carry on the tradition."
"Such as?" Brynden asked. There was a silence.
"Your duty -- "
"My duty, and yours, is to serve our house. As the eldest brother, you are called on to produce heirs. My task is to help our people as best I can, and I am of more use on the battlefield than in the marriage-bed."
"Gods damn it, I'm not talking about heirs," Hoster said. "The wench could have a womb like the southern desert for all I care. But she brings huge -- "
"Tracts of land?" Brynden said, unable to resist as he gestured at his chest to complete the old bawd and grinned. The blank incomprehension on his brother's face made him recall that Hoster had most likely not wasted much coin on tavern mummers' shows.
"Huge influence with the Targaryens," Hoster said, slowly and deliberately. "There is a certain amount of … unrest at King's Landing, and her family is closer to the Red Keep than we are. It would be wise to keep more than one card in our hand in these times."
"That's no way to win," Brynden said. "It takes a hand full of knaves to take the trick, not knaves mixed with kings and queens."
Hoster frowned at him, not amused. "This isn't a game. Our lands lie between many powerful houses. It is to our advantage to be on friendly terms with more than just the knaves."
"And what of the kings?"
Hoster leaned away from the table, staring over the bow. The untethered horses trudged up the hill, and the barge had entered the stone chamber of the lock. Oarsmen on deck tossed ropes up to men at the top of the walls, securing the boat against the tide that rose steadily now that the gates had closed behind them.
"We must always consider the kings," Hoster said, nearly shouting to be heard over the rushing water. "They trump the knaves and the queens."
"But not the aces," Brynden shouted back. Hoster's frown turned into an outright glare.
"And from whence come your aces?" Hoster asked, his raised voice making his question seem an angry roar. "There are only four in the deck."
Two men pulling on a rope wrapped around a pillion above turned to look, startled, and the boat swung out into the lock and back again with a thump against the wall as their grip slackened. Hoster looked rather abashed himself, as though he had not meant to make such a show of temper.
Brynden rose from the table and went around to speak more quietly into his brother's ear.
"We don't know for certain what cards to keep until all is revealed," he said. "But this early in the game, I wager it's best to wait and see a few more of them. That's the traditional way to play."
Hoster pulled back to study his brother's face. "Cards can be exchanged," he said, and turned away to go below-decks.
Brynden returned to his chair, watching the men guide the barge through several more locks. The canal had been an engineering marvel when it was dug fifty years ago to cross the plains from the Pinkmaiden to the Golden Tooth, and none of the newer ones were so long as this. Casterly Rock and Riverrun had each opened their coffers to fund the project, along with the merchants who would grow rich traveling on the new route. Now the livelihood of the lock keepers depended on the tolls, and the towns which had sprung up to surround markets and shops depended on the passing barges. Commerce had bloomed here, where previously farmers had worked sour soil and herders had raised only those animals hardy enough to live on tough grass, and all of this had been born of the cooperation of the two great houses of the west.
"The trick isn't finding the aces," he said to himself. "It's keeping them all in your hand."
Brynden rose to help a youth secure the line he had been struggling with, and drowned his thoughts in the roar of the falls.
***
On the carriage ride to the party Brynden had wondered if the best form his duty to their house might take was indeed the form his brother suggested. Loyalties among houses could be fickle, and marriages were the favored way of shoring up the foundations, being cheaper than the enormous loans which strengthened bonds even further. Marriage might not, after all, be the chore he dreaded; if Hoster didn't care one way or another about heirs, there would be nothing to stop Brynden from spending most of the year in the saddle or at King's Landing. He did not have much of a taste for diplomacy, but perhaps he could bargain with Hoster to exchange his presence in the marital home for a pair of eyes at court.
On the carriage ride back from the party Brynden decided that nothing short of open war upon Riverrun would induce him to marry.
"She agreed with everything I said," he growled at his brother. "Just kept nodding her foolish head and smiling."
"Some consider that to be an attractive quality in a wife," Hoster said dryly.
"Eventually I began to speak absurdities just to test her," Brynden went on. "She agreed that the darkest day of winter surpassed the warmest day in summer, and later that Maidenpool, Oldtown, and Lannisport were each separately her favorite cities for the book markets. As if she'd ever read a book in her life!"
"In her defense, I believe that ladies are taught to be agreeable, and are rarely exposed to literature," Hoster said. "The former keeps the domestic peace and the latter encourages them to mind their duties as a mother."
"I don't want her to have any motherly duties," Brynden said. "If neither you nor I care if I sire heirs, what good is a vacant doll if all she knows is how to change a nappie?"
"Because her father owes fealty to Tywin Lannister and her brother rides with the Kingsguard," Hoster snapped.
"Are we reduced to marrying the daughters of Tywin's bannermen in order to curry favor with him?" Brynden snapped back. "It seems that marrying our children to his would be a more fitting way. You forget the honor of our house."
"I know the honor of our house!" Hoster said. "Tywin's children and mine are too young to forge alliances, and you have missed your chance, Brynden, to marry the scions of any other great house. Feel fortunate that I haven't sought out one of the daughters of Mace's farmer-lords instead."
"I don't care if you rope in the loveliest princess of Sunspear or the most pock-marked Frey at the Twins," Brynden said, folding his arms. "If this is how a lady of Westeros is taught to behave, I'd sooner marry my horse."
"You ride a stallion," Hoster pointed out, acidly.
"Indeed," Brynden said.
There was a long silence. Hoster looked out the window at the dark, forested landscape passing by, and Brynden stared fixedly at his brother's knees.
"You truly will not respect my wishes on this matter?" Hoster asked.
"No," Bryden said, quiet but firm. "It goes against every instinct. I will not spend my life miserably shackled to a woman who thinks only to please me with empty words and to nurse children I have no interest in."
"You would place your happiness over your house's safety?"
Brynden sighed. "I cannot believe our house's safety turns upon so small a matter as this. If you are so concerned, brother, then build walls. Build an army from your lords' peasants. Sign marriage contracts for your children, and for the sake of the Maiden and the Mother, train your daughters to care for more than embroidery and idle conversation. If the Rock chooses to strike at us, they can do it as well from the front as from the rear."
"And you?" Hoster asked, anger tight in his voice. "While I protect Riverrun and all that we hold dear, where will you be?"
"Alongside you," Bryden said with a shrug. "Who do you think will train that army? The young knights of our lords must have a leader. I promise you, Hoster, that I care as much for the safety of our lands as you. My road to duty is simply different from yours."
Hoster was silent.
"And I might add, your road does come with certain benefits, o Lord of the Trident," Brynden added with a twisted smile. "I doubt you prefer a bivouac to the luxuries of domestic bliss in your own hall."
Hoster's mouth quirked as though he could not quite contain his own smile. "Truly, Brynden, you are the most wayward and stubborn black sheep our family has ever had."
Brynden glanced up at the coat of arms painted above Hoster's head. "A fish instead of a sheep, I should think."
At this Hoster did smile, the same smile that had crossed their father's face when Brynden had won at draughts with some particularly clever trap his father had not foreseen. It was hard, but not unkind.
"Then I pray you will swim in waters close to home, little brother," Hoster said.