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i.
Jaime has no desire for a squire, but it seems that sacrifices must be made even in victory.
Edmure Tully is an eager boy, pretty as his sisters were, and desperate to do well. Jaime supposes it could be worse.
ii.
Little Tully answers to Fish on the yard, and has half the city wrapped around his little finger by the time he has been at court a year. Jaime is proud of his popular, clever little squire, even if Edmure will never make a great tourney knight, and has only three-quarters a head for tactics.
Edmure beams, equally proud, when Jaime compliments him even slightly. He is easily pleased, for a Lord Paramount's son.
iii.
"Tell me, Edmure," Jaime says as they ride out to war, Jaime in white and Edmure in chequy red-and-blue, "what do you hope to gain in this war?"
Edmure thinks about this, long and hard, and this is Jaime's first indication in all their years together that perhaps Edmure deserved a different knight-master.
“Respect,” Edmure says thoughtfully. “I would ride through Riverrun’s gates having rightly earned my knighthood, ser, and able to stand beside my uncle unashamed.”
iv.
Edmure is a tall, powerful youth, with a long reach and a fearsome swing. He acquits himself well on Pyke. He may not be a great tactician, but given clear orders and a firm goal, he is dogged and determined, and never fails to see to his duty.
He kneels in the bloodied muck below Balon Greyjoy’s walls to receive his knighthood, his bright hair a beacon in the gloom of dying light and fading bloodlust, and Jaime is struck by a bolt of affection. His squire has so impressed all these men from across the Seven Kingdoms, his training has made this of round-cheeked Edmure Tully.
“If it please Your Grace,” Jaime says, surprising himself more even than Robert, the fat oaf, “I would be honoured to knight Edmure Tully myself - he has been my squire, after all.”
Robert has other knighthoods to dole out, and would do anything to speed proceedings along so he can get to drinking and fucking, and so it is that Jaime stands above Edmure, golden sword to chequy shoulder, and pronounces him Ser Edmure.
Edmure rises, still knob-kneed and gangling, five-and-ten and now a man, and grins. Jaime cannot help but smile in return.
“Will you ride directly for Riverrun?” he asks, nudging Edmure along ahead of him, out of the newborn rain. “Or perhaps take the time to visit your sister, at Winterfell?”
Edmure’s face falls, a picture of confusion, and then he smiles.
“My sister will keep,” he says. “Her lord husband told me that she is newly delivered of another child - she will not be travelling much for now, I think.”
Edmure’s smile widens, and Jaime shakes his head - that smile means mischief. He has come to know it well, over these past years.
“Besides,” he says, “now that I am a squire no longer, there are many things I wish to try in King’s Landing - perhaps you might guide me now in more adult pursuits, ser, than before?”
Mischief indeed, Jaime thinks, and laughs.