Lymond Lychester stared into his wine cup. A stranger's face looked back at him, pale and hollow-eyed.
The assassination attempt had drained half the life he had left.
A hair's breadth closer, and he would have died.
Rage and humiliation burned through his chest like fire, scorching him from within.
When Stark came to visit with his Tully wife, Lymond Lychester wanted to roar.
He wanted to overturn the table, draw his sword, and demand to know why the Warden of the North had betrayed his trust and tried to kill him.
But he could not.
He could only follow Suleiman's instructions: straighten his collar, stand in the middle of the tent, force out a few gentle words, and wear a proper smile. Every hair had to be in place as he acted utterly untroubled before the man he believed had tried to kill him.
As though the dagger that had pierced him at the feast in Riverrun, the attack that had nearly taken his life, had been nothing more than a harmless joke.
Suleiman was right. He was not strong enough yet.
Hearts were hard to read, and fortunes could turn without warning. In the struggle for power, it was kill or be killed. There was no third choice.
He was so weak he could not even vent his anger. So weak he could not make those who wanted him dead pay the price.
That humiliation stung more sharply than the dagger itself.
The Tully guard captain, a knight named Robin Leger, had been locked in Riverrun's dungeon.
Lymond Lychester sent someone to listen to the questioning.
Robin Leger's answers were laughably simple.
"Lord Lychester and I had a private grudge from our youth."
"What grudge?"
"The kind that could only end with one of us dead."
Further questions