"A magnificent castle for worthy lords. House Piper truly shines as one of the most vital noble houses in the Riverlands," Edmure remarked, layering the flattery thick as he toured the battlements with the Maester of Pinkmaiden.
While his tongue wagged with courtly platitudes, his eyes were performing a cold, architectural audit. The tour was a convenient shroud for his true objective: mapping escape routes. He cataloged the guard rotations, identified potential choke points, and narrow defensive slits designed to keep an intruder out, which he viewed as anchors for a desperate exit.
After thirty minutes of scrutiny, he narrowed his options to two. The first involved a dash through the training yard to scale the northern wall, followed by a leap over a secondary curtain wall to reach the stables. The second was more extreme: a vertical sprint toward the Lord's solar in the inner keep, followed by a twenty-meter plunge into the castle moat.
He leaned toward the second plan. If his threat detection flared, he would grab Hoster and bail. The fall was daunting, but with his Verticality perks, Edmure was confident he could survive the impact. Hoster was the variable, but Edmure was willing to bet that the Lord of the Trident knew how to tuck, roll, and swim.
His logic was ruthless. Hoster was his key to power; everyone else was a bonus. As long as Hoster lived, Edmure's claim was ironclad. If they had to vanish into the wilderness for a year to survive, so be it. He would carry his father on his back if necessary, returning later to reclaim Riverrun as a matter of succession.
"Lord Edmure, the feast will begin shortly," the Maester interrupted his thoughts. "Shall we proceed to the main hall, or would you prefer to rest in your quarters?"
Edmure opted for his room. Once inside, he began padding his attire with thin steel plates. Hoster had provided him with a dagger and a suit of hardened leather before they left Riverrun. In Westeros, accidents were a staple of the social calendar, and seasoned lords knew how to dress for such party.
Edmure had previously asked for a poison vial for defensive purposes, but Hoster had only met the request with a chilling glare. Using poison was considered a Dornish dishonor; had Rickard Stark been a man of venoms rather than rigid honor, perhaps he wouldn't have to suffer such a fiery end in the capital. To compensate for the lack of a vial, Edmure relied on his Healing and Threat Detection levels, hoping to sense any toxicity in the air or the wine before it touched his lips.
However, the paranoia proved unnecessary. Either the Pipers were genuinely loyal, or Petyr's reach was not yet long enough to orchestrate a betrayal here. Without the knowledge TV show, Edmure saw Pinkmaiden as the perfect place for a strike. If he and Hoster fell, the seat would likely pass to Brynden Tully, the Blackfish. But in the TV show, Brynden was a man of duty, not ambition; he had forsaken his home to serve Lysa in the Vale. The power vacuum would have left Catelyn or Lysa as the heads of the house—both easily manipulated by Petyr.
Edmure realized he might be playing a high-stakes game of chess against himself, becoming twitchy and melodramatic. Yet, he preferred this over the blind trust that would eventually lead his future nephew, Robb Stark, to a bloody end.
The dinner passed with little friction. Lord Piper was surprisingly agreeable to Edmure's plans for infrastructure repair within the Piper domain. Vyman exchanged scholarly notes with the local Maester, while Ser Desmond Grell remained uncharacteristically stoic, his eyes never leaving the room's entrances.
That night, Edmure refused to sleep. To pass the hours of vigil, he began drawing detailed maps of Pinkmaiden's defenses. If the Tullys ever needed to siege this place, he would know exactly where the stone was weakest. When he got bored of drafting, he picked up a discarded tavern book—a flowery love story written in the Common Tongue with Reach corruptions. He expected boredom, but as he scanned the prose, a notification chimed in his mind:
[Learning: Level 12]