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She couldn’t stop fidgeting.
Smoothing her hands down across the soft material of her new, beautiful dress, rubbing at her knees out of habit, then catching herself and bringing them back up to curl into fists against her lap. And inevitably repeating the whole process just a minute or two later. Thankfully there wasn’t anyone else in the carriage to glare at her for the annoyance, or Walda’s fretting might have doubled in intensity.
If he’s so intent on fucking the Kingslayer, then I’m not bothering to waste the one pretty girl I’ve got, her father had said, his way of announcing Roslin wouldn’t be sent off to marry the King in the North. He can have Fat Walda instead, save me some money in the kitchen.
A hard knock came from the front wall of the carriage, making her jump. “Moat Cailin’s just ahead,” one of the guards called.
Walda nodded, before she remembered to call back a ‘thank you’. But her throat and mouth were so dry the words hardly came out louder than a whisper, and she couldn’t work up the nerve to try again.
Not long after, the rumbling of the carriage wheels changed, as greater noise filtered inside, people and animals making a great ruckus. They came to a sharp halt, voices speaking nearby, and then the door opened. “The Lady Walda Frey,” one of her guards announced.
She stood, smoothing down her dress one more time, and squeezed through the narrow opening. Two creaking wooden steps, then hard cobblestones beneath her feet. The expected tittering didn’t come; rather, a hush fell over everyone nearby, as Walda glanced around worriedly.
Several soldiers in leather and mail stared at her, disbelief on their faces, a few with growing outrage. Servants with direwolf patches on their clothing paused in getting down Walda’s two small trunks of baggage. And immediately in front of her- oh, in front of her, a handsome young man wearing fine clothing lined with fur, an older woman who looked like him dressed in dark blue, as well as a pair of knights, one fair with golden hair and armor, the other taller and, well, significantly less fair, wearing burnished blue plate. None of the four of them looked pleased, but- at least there weren’t open sneers.
The younger man took a step forward, his chin dipping in a nod. “Lady Walda, I am Robb Stark, King in the North. Welcome to Moat Cailin.”
She quickly curtsied, dropping her gaze. “Um, thank you, your Grace.”
“I’m afraid you’ll only have one night of rest from your journey; we leave for Winterfell in the morning.”
“Oh, that’s fine!” Walda quickly said. The faster and further she got away from her father’s house, the better.
King Robb quickly introduced his mother, Lady Catelyn, as well as the two knights behind them: Ser Jaime Lannister, which Walda supposed she ought to have guessed, and Lady Brienne of Tarth, who was the first to smile at Walda as she bowed. A small smile, awkward and probably forced, but still.
Lady Catelyn took her arm and led Walda inside the main keep, speaking quietly of the journey ahead, asking if she needed anything for the night, other than the room prepared for her. Sparse, the lady called it, but Walda looked about at the fine bed and warm hearth and insisted it would do quite well. At home she’d shared a chamber with three of her sisters and no hearth, so even if Lady Catelyn didn’t think much of it, the guest room was already a luxury by comparison.
“Is there anything I can do?” Walda couldn’t help but ask, when the lady made to take her leave. It was only just past mid-morning, after all. “I, um, I kept the tables, at the Twins.” A punishment once, when she’d been little, for something she’d done that annoyed an elder sister, but it turned into work Walda enjoyed, not least because she could nibble throughout the day.
The king’s mother blinked at her, before slowly saying, “I suppose, you can take a look at the kitchens here. We aren’t- there isn’t much in the way of supply for anything other than stews and porridge, but...”
Stews and porridge meant stretching, and Walda knew quite well how to stretch a little into a lot, with how tight her father’s withered old hands remained on his pursestrings. So she insisted, and Lady Catelyn accepted, and within an hour Walda found herself taking charge of a hall full of cooks and assistants. She couldn’t do much about the mid-day meal, thin meat and hard bread for the most part, but with several hours until dinner? Walda pulled on an apron over her lovely soft gown and set to the task.
The king invited her to dine at his high table that night, which meant she got an up close chance to watch his face with the first bite. Robb Stark blinked, chewed, and actually groaned. A similar sound came from Ser Jaime, seated on his other side, and even Lady Catelyn hummed pleasantly.
By the end of the night, men up and down the table, as well as throughout the whole hall, were raising their cups to her efforts, and Walda could feel the warm delight curling from her face all the way down to her toes. She never received such praise at home - satisfied expressions, certainly, but not a word of thanks, no spoken appreciation.
Some of her sisters had tried to snidely tease as she packed her meager things for the journey north, Roslin especially. You don’t think the king will take one look at you and turn his nose up? Even if he didn’t have a gorgeous man like the Kingslayer in his bed, I expect he’d grab any other person before letting you into it.
Well, Walda didn’t need to be in the king’s bed, not really. As long as she got to keep managing the kitchens, far away from her family and surrounded by northmen who let their compliments flow freely, she’d be content.
So it came as a surprise, after dinner, when Robb himself escorted Walda back to her guest room and said, “I feel I need to apologize to you, my lady.”
She blinked. “You do?”
“I do,” he huffed. “You’ve not been here a full day and have already made your talents a gift to my men, when I’ve done nothing to account for that gift. Instead, there’s-” His words halted for a moment, a conflicted expression crossing his face, and in a flash Walda understood where the apology was coming from.
“Oh, I don’t mind!” She exclaimed. “About the kitchen, or the Kingslayer either!” King Robb twitched, staring at her almost befuddled, and Walda felt the abrupt urge to giggle. “It was my father’s choice to send me, but I’m glad for it. Even if you- if we never-” She fluttered the fingers of her free hand, “Spend all that much time together, I suppose, I’m still just happy to be away from them all! No one at home has ever said such wonderful things about my food like tonight.”
“...well,” the king finally said, as they reached the door of her chamber. “I suppose I’m glad to hear it.” Then he lifted her hand and kissed it, and all the warmth she felt during dinner came together in a shimmery heat in Walda’s belly. “Goodnight, my lady.”
“Thank you,” Walda replied, suddenly faint. Once alone in her room, she held that hand against her bosom and dropped to sit on the bed, staring at the cheery fire with a wide grin for some time.
“I suppose I can’t be annoyed about it, at this point,” Jaime grumbled when Robb returned to their shared chamber, causing the younger man to snort. “You’d be mad not to marry her, just to keep food like that on the table. Gods, I’d forgotten what a decent meal tasted like.”
“Good to know,” Robb snickered, sliding beneath the bedsheets to join him. His good humor faded after a moment, though. “She said she didn’t mind, being sent to marry a man already in bed with another.”
“Coming from a house like hers, I’m not surprised.” The silence lingered, until Jaime groaned and grabbed a pillow to shove against Robb’s face. “The girl’s going to marry a king, Stark, stop feeling guilty about the matter.”
It took several more points about the difference of living under the miserly Walder Frey’s roof versus being Queen in the North, as well as some physical effort, but eventually Jaime managed to drag Robb’s attention to other matters.
The next morning, Robb didn’t have time to spare a thought for feeling guilty about his future bride, the young king too busy organizing his people and setting off on their march up the Kingsroad. Jaime didn’t get to forget the matter, though, seeing as someone else decided to remind him.
“I’ll not let you interfere in this marriage, Lannister,” Catelyn Stark flatly informed him, in the few minutes before she’d go and join Walder Frey’s daughter in a better carriage than the ramshackle affair the girl arrived with. “Once Robb and Lady Walda are wed, I expect them to go to their marriage bed and stay in it, by themselves, at the very least until there is a child coming.”
She didn’t wait for his reply before sweeping off, which Jaime appreciated, because he found himself hard-pressed to think of a decent one. The decades-long rage that came of standing outside Robert’s door when he fucked Cersei, banked when the man died and doused further still after he and Robb fell in together, wanted very strongly to reignite at Catelyn’s remark. So what if the girl set a lovely table, turning rationed field supply into the next best thing to a true feast? Jaime was the one who’d actually protected Robb, taking out the assassin sent to strangle him, then guarding his back in battle, on Pyke and at Winterfell and Moat Cailin. He’d also been the one in the king’s bed for months, by that point, and the implication it would soon be off-limits without so much as a ‘by your leave’-
“You look ready to stab someone,” another voice said, making Jaime twitch. He turned a sharp gaze on Brienne, who met it and merely stared back.
“Not to worry,” Jaime managed to say in an airy tone, “If I do, it won’t be your liege lady or her new charge.”
When they first met, such a comment would have set the woman to frowning with her nostrils flared. After several months of travel and quite a few shared battles under their belts, though, Brienne simply sighed at him.
And of course that wasn’t the end of it, either, because once they’d mounted up and gotten on the road, riding close enough to guard Robb but enough paces back to speak without his hearing, Brienne said, “You did know he’d need heirs at some point.”
Jaime scowled at her. “I should think one would suffice just fine.”
“With nearly all his siblings lost, and the only remaining one gone to Highgarden to marry Loras Tyrell? Even setting aside the matter of the crown, House Stark can use all the children it can get.”
A year ago, he’d have snapped back with something along the lines of shouldn’t you be more concerned with children for your own house, Lady Brienne? But maybe there was something to be said for regularly getting to fuck and be fucked in turn, because Jaime only grit his teeth and looked away from her.
Two days after they received word of a Frey girl joining Robb Stark at Moat Cailin and riding off north with him, a ship from the Stormlands arrived, and Tyrion went down personally to meet it.
Or rather, to meet the man coming off of it: one Selwyn of Tarth.
“Lord Selwyn,” Tyrion greeted, as soon as the aged widower came within a respectable distance. “Welcome to King’s Landing.” They exchanged a few brief pleasantries, Selwyn gruff but hardly rude, and began the journey up to the castle itself with a mixed escort of Tarth men and goldcloaks, who eyed one another warily the whole way.
By the time Tyrion led his guest up into the Tower of the Hand, though, they’d shed the guards, and he took a moment to say, “Have you heard anything of your daughter in recent months, my lord?”
“A few letters,” Selwyn replied shortly. Tyrion didn’t press.
The introduction to his father went reasonably smoothly, and then Tyrion was able to take a seat with a cup of wine and let himself be ignored. This would hardly be a conversation he wanted to listen to, but better he remained on hand in case any, delicate intervention might be called for.
At least his father got straight to business. “You are aware, I’m sure, than my son Jaime remains in the North with Robb Stark, overseeing our new treaty to keep the peace.” Selwyn nodded, nary a sly remark to be seen. Tywin continued, “I understand he’s become close with your daughter, Lady Brienne.”
‘Close’ might be a stretch, considering where Jaime spent his nights. But spy reports sent to Varys seemed to indicate that, while most of the northern lords and knights appreciated Jaime fighting for them on the battlefield, they remained appropriate leery of his sharp tongue the rest of the time - Brienne of Tarth being one of the few exceptions.
Selwyn took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before he spoke. “I can guess well enough why I’ve been summoned to speak with you, Lord Tywin. My girl’s no great beauty. Not much for elegant turns of phrase, either, unless she’s calling someone out for trying to insult her. She took to arms and swordplay as an escape, as a child, and after her brother died I didn’t have the heart to keep her from it.”
“A wise enough choice in hindsight, I should think,” Tyrion’s father said.
“Perhaps so,” Selwyn agreed passively, as if his daughter hadn’t personally slaughtered some two dozen ironborn on Pyke, while holding open a door long enough for Jaime and Robb Stark to get there with reinforcements. That single entry point into the Great Keep led to Balon Greyjoy’s death, far quicker and less bloody than Robert and Ned Stark’s assault more than a decade past. “If that’s the kind of woman you want married to your son, I’m not about to argue. I’m simply wary of any ill feelings afterward, if Brienne doesn’t measure up to your expectations for a lady of a Great House.”
Tywin raised an eyebrow. “Are ill feelings truly so great a concern for you?”
The lord of Tarth held off answering for a moment, taking a sip of wine. “Do you know why I declared for Renly, Lord Tywin?”
Tyrion almost choked on his own drink. Most people were not foolish enough to bring up such things in front of the Hand of the still-reigning King, much less a man with Tywin Lannister’s reputation for vengeance, and so far he’d yet to think Lord Selwyn a fool. But the man only waited patiently, for the long moment it took Tyrion’s father to reply, “I do not.”
“Wasn’t because I thought him better for the job. Renly was a nice enough lad, years ago, and I don’t doubt he became a nice enough man, but that’s hardly enough qualification for being king. No,” Selwyn sighed, “I took his side because of Brienne.”
He went on to describe a visit, some time past, with his daughter still a gangly, ugly girl not yet grown into her arms and armor when the young Lord of Storm’s End arrived. But unlike most tittering highborn, Renly apparently treated her quite kindly, even dancing with the girl, and in her eyes afterward he attained the same pillared status as a fairytale knight who defeated unjust foes and swept maidens gently off their feet.
“Tarth sees a fair amount of merchants come through our straits, on their way here or to Storm’s End, but we’re hardly wealthy,” the man continued. “We do well enough to defend ourselves from the odd pirate or ironborn raid, but there weren’t hardly any men I could spare when the call to muster came. But Brienne went. She wanted to, so badly - we both knew by then Renly never would’ve taken her for a wife, couldn’t have, but she still wanted to give something back to him.”
So Brienne of Tarth entered herself in a melee competition, winning quite handily by most accounts, even taking down Loras Tyrell of all people as her final opponent. And afterward, her one request of Renly was to join his Kingsguard, a position where the sting of never finding a kind man to marry her wouldn’t hurt so much, and she could still serve and protect the lord she so admired.
“And then Stannis killed him.”
That grim pronouncement gave Tyrion pause, and he could see his father blink as well. According to what Varys had found out afterward, the only people present when Renly died in his tent were Selwyn’s daughter, and Catelyn Stark.
“I know what the rumors insisted,” Selwyn said, seeing the looks on their faces, “But I believe my girl. Brienne wrote to me after she went north, said a shadow made of magic crept into that tent, wearing Stannis Baratheon’s face. Her sword couldn’t touch it, but it killed Renly easily enough, and vanished afterward. A creature sent by that red witch, however she did it.” But of course, no reasonable person would believe in shadows coming to life as assassins, which left Brienne of Tarth in the unenviable position of being covered in Renly’s blood when two guards entered, and escaping with Catelyn Stark became the only option.
Selwyn reached for the pitcher in the center of the table to refill his cup, and Tyrion took the opportunity to speak. “I take it until or unless Stannis admits arranging his brother’s death, your daughter doesn’t intend to return within his reach.”
The large man snorted. “I doubt such a thing’s occurred to her. Wouldn’t matter if Stannis forever held his tongue - if she wanted, my girl would find a path to make him face justice for Renly, one way or another. No, Brienne’s only not come back south because she found a worthy cause to throw herself into following, and won’t be swayed from it.”
A cause that so far seemed to involve guarding the Starks, and making a name for herself fighting for them too.
...maybe matching the woman with Jaime wasn’t too big of a stretch after all.
“Would an offer of marriage be enough to sway her?” Tyrion asked.
“I can’t say for certain. She’s never been given a serious one before.”
Well, that was both pitiful and entirely unsurprising. Still- between Cersei and Robb Stark, Tyrion was willing to bet a significant amount of wealth on his brother being attracted to danger and foolhardy ideas more than mere beauty, and he’d done his level best to convince his father of the same. Better to try and arrange a match between Jaime and someone he’d fought alongside, than spend more fruitless months (if not years) of attempting to send one highborn girl or another to spend her days in the cold north, only to like as not be ignored in favor of Robb Stark’s cock.
Brienne needed to read the letter from her father a full three times before she could begin to make sense of it. And even then, she was halfway through a fourth, when Lady Catelyn asked if it were bad news, at which point Brienne simply handed the scroll over and resigned herself to staring blankly at the far side of the tent.
The lady made a startled noise. “They’re not- this cannot be meant in earnest-”
“It is,” Brienne heard herself say. “My father wouldn’t- he’s not the sort to tell me a lie. Not his own, nor anyone else’s.”
So of course, Lady Catelyn drew herself up from her seat and marched out of the small tent where they’d been dining. It took Brienne entirely too long to collect her wits and go after the smaller woman, because Lady Catelyn went straight to the king’s tent, interrupting whatever had been going on inside judging by the loud yelps. At least the guards outside looked amused, as Brienne hurried past them.
“-can take ten minutes to not be all over one another and deal with this,” Lady Catelyn said sternly, eyes narrowed as her son hastily pulled on a shirt. Ser Jaime didn’t bother; he continued to sprawl on the edge of Robb’s bed, bare-chested with the laces of his trousers obviously loose, and if it hadn’t been for the letter Brienne wouldn’t have given him a second look-
Well. Alright, she would have looked, but it wouldn’t have gone any further than that. But with the words spinning around her mind, the Lannisters want to know if you’d be willing to marry the Kingslayer, Brienne found herself staring for several moments longer than she should have. And to make matters worse, Jaime saw her staring. He blinked, and then grinned, and Brienne could feel herself blushing furiously even as she tore her gaze away to focus on Lady Catelyn- handing Robb the letter.
She could track his eyes as the king scanned it, paused, then returned to the top of the scroll to read it more closely. His eyebrows rose with obvious surprise.
“What is it?” Jaime asked, rising and sauntering closer.
“My father was summoned to King’s Landing,” Brienne managed to say, and whatever was in her voice, it made the man stop and look at her with alarm. “For an audience with your father.”
The alarm grew. “What’s happened? Has he been arrested, hurt?”
“No,” Robb said slowly, as Brienne blinked, taken aback by Jaime’s questions. “Tywin wants to arrange a marriage.”
“For who-?” The words were hardly out of his mouth before Jaime made the connection, head jerking ‘round to stare at Brienne, then back towards his king. “-what?”
Lady Catelyn sniffed. “Ridiculous, of course. Just because Brienne has made a name for herself, Tywin Lannister thinks he can intimidate his way into making a match-”
“That’s not what this is,” her son interrupted. “Tywin isn’t throwing his weight around. He’s desperate. He can’t force Jaime into marriage at this point, and like as not he doesn’t want to risk ending up with a daughter-in-law from the North, with a family he can’t control and wealth he can’t touch. Learning about Brienne must have seemed like a godsend, and now he’s trying to play nice with her father, and cajole an agreement for marriage.”
“All the more reason not to go along with it!”
But Robb didn’t acknowledge his mother’s protest, instead looking to Brienne herself. “It’s your choice before anyone else’s,” he said softly.
Except- if it was, truly, her choice, Brienne would say no. No, for the sake of Tywin Lannister’s meddling, more-so than any actual objection to Jaime himself, after months of seeing the man slowly pull himself out of the cloying mud of his family’s idea of ‘honor’, Robb’s love a welcome source of clear water with which to clean himself and emerge as someone better. But Brienne couldn’t afford to only think of herself - not when the offer was coming through her father, likely still in King’s Landing, surrounded by Tywin’s power, to say nothing of what would happen to Tarth should her father die without a clear successor.
So. Instead of ‘yes’ or ‘no’, Brienne carefully murmured, “I think- I need to consider the matter, your Grace.”
Robb nodded, as if he hadn’t expected any less, even as Lady Catelyn’s expression twisted up, and Jaime’s went entirely blank.
Walda wished she knew how to help matters.
It took two days before Lady Catelyn came out and told her about the letter from Lady Brienne’s family, but it wasn’t hard to notice the change before then. Brienne and Ser Jaime usually rode together, stayed close as they watched over the Starks, until the king and his mother parted ways from one another at the end of each day. But since the letter, they stopped idly chatting with one another, kept their horses apart, ceased exchanging any sort of looks or glances throughout the day. When the army took an afternoon of rest, they didn’t even spar like usual, which Walda truly considered a shame. She wasn’t much for tourneys or anything, but there was something in the way Jaime and Brienne moved when fighting one another that was captivating to watch. She knew even the king thought so, Robb often lingering where he could observe, sometimes to ask questions later about moves they’d made but just as often to catch Jaime and join him in washing up.
The new silence and tension didn’t sit well at all.
So. When the army next stopped for a full day of rest on the banks of the White Knife, Walda did the only thing she could think of.
Her new friends amongst the cooks were all too happy to help, and one of the page boys brought in a beautiful trout he’d caught just that morning, to which Walda added as many non-ration foodstuffs as she could lay hands on at short notice. It wasn’t a terribly grand meal, by any means, but large and filling nonetheless.
Jaime looked appropriately astonished when Walda brought the fish and accompanying dishes personally to the tent he and Robb shared, and then one deep breath put an almost lustful expression on his face. “You can’t eat yet,” Walda cautioned, directing her pair of pages to arrange the trays just so. “It would burn your mouth with the first bite - and besides, we’re still waiting for Lady Brienne.”
The golden knight turned immediately wary, and even the king paused in pulling out his chair with a hesitant expression. “My lady...”
Whatever Robb had been about to say, a word of caution or outright objection, it stalled when the woman herself stepped through the tent’s entrance, her face pinched with concern. Brienne stopped short at the sight of the meal, until Walda sent the pages off and tugged on her arm towards the extra chairs. “Come on, then. I might not be able to help with anything else, but I at least know the value of good food to help put tensions at ease.”
It took some further cajoling to get all of them seated, but finally, the fish did its job, putting blissful expressions on their faces as the king and knights ate. Walda only took a few bites for herself, more invested in watching where the others glanced, what flickers of emotion appeared. She filled the silence with some idle talk, mentioning her helpers, the gossip that went round the cooking fires, a few of the compliments she’d received lately and new ideas for different dishes, when they gained access to additional supplies. Until, finally, the last bites of greens and meat were scarfed down, and Walda made her move before anyone else could flee.
“I always thought I’d spend the rest of my life in the kitchens at the Twins,” she said softly, twisting a napkin in her lap. “And that it was just another joke, when my father first announced I’d be the girl sent to King Robb. But the joke’s turned out to be on him, and all my family - even on the road, these last few weeks have been the most contented I’ve ever felt in all my days. I think I could go on being content, maybe even properly happy, if the four of us remain honest with ourselves, and each other.” A quick check around the table revealed Brienne frozen, Jaime gone blank, but Robb- Robb smiling at her. Walda’s heart fluttered, and that same delicious warmth from Moat Cailin crept back into her belly, better than even the finest of meals.
Brienne managed to speak next, even without looking up from the table. “I made myself stop hoping for a good match, many years ago. Told myself I would either make the best of a bad one, or get along well enough without. But- no longer hoping isn’t the same as- as not wanting.” Her face grew steadily more red as she went on, brilliant blue eyes never moving from where they stared at a whorl in the woodgrain.
Jaime went next, trying and failing to make himself sound indifferent. “And you think we would be a good match, my lady?”
“Of course you would,” Robb immediately snorted. “Watching the two of you go at one another in the sparring ring is one of the more impressive sights I’ll ever see - it might take some effort, on both your parts, but that’s no reason you couldn’t take the same coordination and turn it into a frightful partnership even off the battlefield.”
That managed to make even Jaime blush, just a hint of red creeping onto his cheeks, and Walda took it as her opportunity to add, “And it isn’t as if anything would have to stop, either - we just need to communicate, as I said, concerning who’s going to be in which bedchamber at night.”
Robb coughed to hide his laugh, Brienne choked a little, and finally, Jaime’s gaze took on a bit of a speculative gleam.
Tyrion’s unending cycle of good luck mixed with ill managed to see him in the Tower of the Hand with his father when a raven arrived, two weeks after word of Robb Stark’s return to Winterfell, with the news the northmen had celebrated a double wedding: Robb to his Frey girl, and Jaime to Brienne of Tarth. And yet, what should have been a source of great relief to Tywin Lannister came as a double-edged blade, because their spies reported that both couples managed to end up spending the following night in the same bedchamber, with Jaime and Robb joined by either or both of their new wives more evenings than not afterward.
Torn between bemusement and disbelief himself, Tyrion supposed he’d better double the shipment of wine he’d been planning on sending up to Winterfell as a wedding present.