The Direwolf banners of the North finally vanished from view of Seaguard.
Suleiman stood atop Seaguard's walls, the sea wind stirring his black hair.
He watched the army depart for Riverrun, his feelings complicated.
Eddard Stark.
A good man wrapped in honor.
A good man so pure he was unsuited to live in this world.
He had no political sense at all. In that regard, he was probably even worse than his wife.
Lymond Lychester had summoned the lords to Harrenhal, an obvious usurpation of the governor's authority.
He had even led the welcome for the king, something only House Tully had the right to do.
In Westeros, authority and responsibilities were muddled. Eddard could easily have taken temporary control of everything in the Riverlands as Warden of the North and son-in-law to House Tully.
All it would have taken was an order: the Ironborn in the Riverlands had been cleared out, and Lymond Lychester was to disband his army of lords and return to his lands.
That would have turned Lymond Lychester's gathering at Harrenhal into a joke.
Even if he delayed Hoster Tully's funeral and went to Harrenhal,
his relationship with Robert Baratheon might have let him avert House Tully's crisis with just a few words.
Suleiman lightly tapped his fingers against the cold stone battlement.
Hoster Tully was dead.
His son Edmure Tully was still a child, and there was no way he could handle the postwar chaos and urgent redistribution of the Riverlands.
His younger brother, Brynden Tully, the Blackfish, was an excellent warrior, but had no ambition.
Hoster Tully could never have imagined that the two safeguards he had left for his family—
his two daughters, Catelyn Tully and Lysa Tully, had married Eddard Stark and Jon Arryn, respectively.
Yet those two most powerful men