[CENTER][sup][h1][center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/66/d0/11/66d011832b6ad310026f8dda47102f6c.jpg[/img][/center][b][center][color=black] T H E   R I V E R L A N D S[/color]
[color=#8B1A1A]T H E   R I V E R L A N D S[/color][/center][/b][/h1][/sup]
[color=#8B1A1A][sup][i]The Twins[/i][/sup][/color][/CENTER]
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[INDENT][color=darkgray]Three days out of the Reach the roads turned bad. Not from neglect — the drainage ditches had been kept clear, the verges cut back. The ruts were fresh and ran deep, the kind left by wheels with weight behind them.

They passed a mill outside Stonebridge where the wheel was turning but the yard was empty, grain sacks stacked against the wall and no one moving between them. A woman watched them from an upper window and did not step back when Maekar looked up.

He kept the pace even. Twelve men, no colours. On the fourth night they stopped at a holdfast whose lord was away at war and whose steward offered them a meal and a barn and the careful courtesy of a man who had been doing the same for every armed party that had passed through regardless of whose name they rode under. Maekar ate what was put in front of him. In the morning he rode north before the household was properly awake.
The Twins announced themselves before the horizon gave the river up.

Two squat grey towers rising out of the flatlands, closer to monuments of function than any expression of pride. Maekar had seen finer fortifications by Andallords with more ambition than sense, and yet there was something in the Freys' twin keeps that resisted that contempt. Their plainness was purposeful. They sat astride the Green Fork and simply were, as the river was, and the ford, and the slow cloudy sky pressing down over all of it.
The bridge guards had been told to look neutral. Maekar could see the effort it cost them.

He kept his pace even as the column crossed onto the Frey planking, timber loud under hooves, the Green Fork running dark and fast below. Wind off the water cut through the gap in his riding cloak and he did not adjust it. On the far bank the courtyard had the kind of welcome that had been rehearsed, grooms appearing at the right moment, a steward visible in the gatehouse arch, a junior lordling hovering at the kind of careful distance that announced he had been positioned there. 

He looked for the Northern banners, straight as a man standing to attention rather than a man at ease. He wondered who might have come themselves and who might have sent sons. There was some humor to that, he, of course, was a distant son himself. His father had a better excuse than most, given he had a war to fight while his son dealt with Northern opportunism.

At the gate the steward bowed with the depth appropriate to a prince and no deeper.
"Your Grace. Lord Waltyr bids you welcome to the Crossing. Chambers have been prepared, and the lords are assembled in the great hall when you are ready to receive them."

When you are ready. The phrasing had been chosen carefully. An offer of delay, should he want it. Should he want to enter that hall later, tired from the road, having given them more time to settle into whatever arrangements they had made among themselves before he arrived. He swung down from the saddle and handed the reins off without looking.[/color]

[color=#A52A2A]"I am ready now."[/color][/INDENT]