The cog scraped against the new pier at the mouth of the Weeping Water as the sun bled out behind the Mountains of the Moon, turning the narrow sea the colour of fresh bruises. This was no Gulltown dock, fat with Braavosi galleys and stinking of fish. This was Edric's own harbour: raw stone quays still smelling of fresh mortar, pine cranes creaking in the wind, warehouses roofed in grey slate that had never known a gull's droppings. The closest deep water to the Eyrie, carved from a reluctant slice of Corbray land two years earlier. Edric had paid in silver stags and golden dragons earned by his own forges, looms, and northern grain contracts (more than fair, yet Lyonel Corbray had haggled like a Pentoshi spice merchant and only signed when the last chest made his steward's knees buckle).
Lyonel Corbray waited alone on the pier, torchlight flickering across a plain white doublet. Three black ravens in flight clutched three bleeding red hearts over his breast. Lady Forlorn rode his hip, the pale ripple of Valyrian steel catching the last light like a promise of violence.
"Welcome home, my lord," he said, dipping his head just enough.
Edric swung down from the black destrier. The salt wind snapped his sky-blue cloak; the silver falcon clasp flashed once. Behind him fifty Steel Falcons dismounted in perfect silence, sky-blue cloaks swirling like a single wing.
"It is good to be back, Lord Corbray." Edric's voice was quiet, but every dockhand within twenty yards suddenly found urgent work elsewhere. "You came yourself. That is rare."
"Your new courier posts outrun wildfire," Lyonel said without smiling. "A raven reached Heart's Home at first light. My son Gwayne (twelve namedays) is summoned to the Eyrie for this officer training of yours." His hand rested easy on Lady Forlorn's hilt. "I would hear it from your lips: is my heir a student… or a hostage?"
Tom, hulking at Edric's left shoulder, cracked his scarred knuckles once. The sound carried like a warhammer on oak.
Edric let the silence stretch until the gulls themselves seemed to hold their breath.
"You mistake me for my father, Lyonel," he said at last, voice low, calm, colder than the wind off the bay. "Jon Arryn ruled with courtesy and parchment. I rule with steel and fire. The age of fat lords raising ragged levies and praying the clans stay drunk is finished. Every heir above twelve winters spends four years at the Eyrie. They will learn letters, numbers, the pike square, the composite bow, supply roads, siege mathematics. They return as officers who can break an army or build a kingdom. Or they do not return lords at all."
Lyonel's jaw worked. "Many will name it tyranny."
"Many will be replaced by men who can count past ten.
Edric stepped closer, close enough that the torchlight painted both their faces in blood and shadow.
"Your house rode out with my father against the dragon," he said softly. "When half the realm knelt to Aerys and his fire, House Corbray saddled up and followed Jon Arryn to war. That took iron in the spine. But courage without vision is just noise. Will House Corbray cling to the old world and fade, or will it learn to fly higher than the Giant's Lance itself?"
A long breath hissed between Lyonel's teeth. Something shifted behind his eyes (recognition of a predator who had already outgrown the cage).
"House Corbray will rise, my liege," he said, and snapped a crisp two-finger salute sharp enough to draw blood if it had been steel.
Tom watched him ride off into the dusk. "Swallowed the hook, line, and bloody sinker."
"He'll choke on it later," Edric answered. "Mount up."
Four hard days followed: the narrow gorge of the Weeping Water, cliff paths where one slip meant a thousand-foot scream, high alpine meadows where sheep stared with yellow eyes, the Bloody Gate looming like mailed jaws. On the fifth dusk the Giant's Lance stabbed the sky ahead, black and merciless.
Three riders in matte black leather and steel cuirasses intercepted them at the foot of the mule path—no banners, no colours, only tiny silver falcon pins glinting at their throats like drops of frozen moonlight. The Wardenate: Edric's shadow hand, forged in the image of the darkest earthly powers he had studied from books and histories of his first life. —half Gestapo, half KGB, all Vale. They spoke softly, moved softer, and when they came for a man he was simply gone before the moon changed.
Sable sat the middle horse, hunched like a spider spun from nightmare, corpse-pale skin glowing in the torchlight, lank black hair framing a grin too wide and too full of teeth. His two companions might have been statues carved from midnight; only their eyes moved, measuring distances, counting heartbeats.
"My lord," he rasped, voice like a knife across wet stone. "The Council of Ascendants awaits."
Edric took the sealed roll Sable offered. "Young Lyas Corbray?"
"Sang like a virgin on his wedding night," Sable said happily. "Littlefinger's coin trails, dates, a brothel in Gulltown used as a dead-drop. The list is… delicious."
Edric tucked it inside his breastplate next to his heart. "Good."
They rode the last mile to the octagonal council house crouched at the mountain's root: single storey, thick granite walls, no windows on the ground floor, roof slits for ravens alone. Inside, oil lamps burned steady. Seven men rose as one.
First to step forward was Ascendant of Words—Harlan Grandison, once a lesser son of Grandview, lean, ink-stained fingers, eyes bright with the zeal of a convert.
"My lord, literacy in the Vale has risen twenty-fold since you began the primers. Children read the conquest of Artys Arryn like it happened yesterday. But some hedge knights and hill lords beat their smallfolk for 'wasting daylight on books'. They call it treason against their rights."
Edric's gaze slid to Sable, who nodded once, eager. "Send the Wardenate. Root out which bannermen whisper rebellion in their halls, who think my commands are wind. Remind them Who their rightful Lord is."
Harrold cleared his throat, pressing on. "The university sept rises apace on the Eyrie's lower slopes—stone arches already vaulting the library wing. Essosi tutors arrive by the sloop: a Pentoshi grammarian, two Myrish illuminators. The Citadel fumes, of course. Archmaester Ebrose sends a raven: he's sailing himself to 'discuss' your theft of knowledge."
"Let him come," Edric said. "I will see him and Discuss whatever concerns the citadel has."
"What of the Vale histories? The First Men tales, bound in blue vellum?"
"Presses labour day and night, my lord, but demand outstrips the ink. We've ten thousand copies circulating—Arryn falcon on every cover—but your goal of one in every hut needs thrice that. The smallfolk devour them. Boys especially; they trace the runes of the Bronze Kings, dream of pikes against the Andals. Pair it with the full bellies from your plows, and they call you Artys reborn."
"Very good, Harrold. But truth over honey—always. No sycophants here. If the presses falter, requisition more hands from the forges. I'll sign the warrants."
Edric waved him back. Next came the Ascendant of Law—Eustace Hunter, of the Redfort Hunters, broad as a barrel with a russet beard forked like an arrowhead, his voice a rumble from years commanding hill watches.
"The uniform code, my lord—it's poison to them. We rode to a half-dozen keeps: Waynwood's Ironoaks, Royce's Runestone. 'One law for the Vale?' they scoff. 'Robert Baratheon sits the throne; our hearths rule our hearths.' They cling to their noose-rights like drowning men."
Edric leaned on the table, gauntlets creaking. No flicker of frustration crossed his face—only the cold calculus of a boy who had planned this since his fists first clenched in the Red Keep.
"Then we lay roots in secret, Eustace. Train your clerks—lads who can parse a charter without flinching. Copy the code until your hands blister. When the hour strikes, and the Vale needs justice swift as a falcon's stoop, the soil will be tilled." He straightened, eyes raking the circle: Harrold's zeal, Sable's hunger, the others' quiet steel. "Hear me, all of you. What we build topples thrones older than the Wall. Expect thorns. Expect screams. Outlast them. We change the world, or it breaks us trying."
He spent the rest of the day in that sealed chamber, dissecting reports like a maester's corpse: grain silos bursting at the new concrete mills below the Eyrie, composite bows shipping to the outposts by the thousand, the first steel-plated galleys taking shape in the harbour slips. Ravens came and went through the roof slits, wax seals cracking under his thumbnail—Bronze Yohn pledging more rune-forged plate, Lady Anya Waynwood grumbling but compliant on the literacy edicts.
When the lamps guttered low, Edric stepped into the mountain chill. The Giant's Lance towered above, a black blade against the stars, while far below, the new city flickered like a forge-heart, never sleeping. The ride up the mule path tomorrow would test even his legs, but rest was for the dead.
Tom yawned from the shadows, scratching his shaggy beard. "Bed, my lord? Even falcons perch sometime."
"Four hours," Edric said, eyes on the distant Eyrie lights. "Then we climb."