Early 289 AC
The waiting was the hardest part. Months bled into one another, turning the muddy slush of spring into the humid haze of a Riverlands summer. Rykker continued his work, but the atmosphere in the Twins had shifted.
Word had leaked. Servants talk, and in a castle as crowded as the Twins, walls didn't just have ears; they had mouths. The news that "The Accountant" had petitioned for legitimacy spread like a pox through the family.
Rykker felt the change in the dining hall first. Usually, he sat at the far end of the lowest table with the other bastards and household knights. But now, when he took his seat, the space around him cleared.
His half-brothers, Hosteen and Danwell, glared openly from the high table. To them, every legitimate Frey was another slice taken out of the inheritance pie. A bastard becoming trueborn was theft.
"They're going to try something," whispered Maester Melwys one evening in the rookery. The old man was feeding the ravens, his hands trembling slightly more than usual.
"Let them," Rykker said, checking the inventory of message parchments. "If they kill me, the brickworks deal collapses. The guild contract has a clause—it requires my signature for the quarterly audits. If I die, the gold stops."
"You put a dead man's switch in a trade contract?" Melwys chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "You have a wicked mind, boy."
"I have a survival instinct," Rykker corrected.
The hostility wasn't just silent glares. A week later, Rykker returned to his small chamber to find his bedding slashed to ribbons and his few personal books soaked in urine. It was petty, childish, and a clear warning.
Instead of cleaning it up, he left it. He slept on the floor wrapped in a cloak.
The next morning, he walked into the Great Hall for breakfast, smelling faintly of the ruined room but holding his head high. He ate his porridge while staring directly at Black Walder, who smirked over a cup of ale.
Rykker didn't react. He knew that reacting was what they wanted. They wanted a fight so they could claim self-defense. He wouldn't give it to them.
He spent his time cementing his value. He reorganized the kitchen rotations, reducing food waste by twenty percent. He brokered a small but profitable deal with a traveling mummer's troupe to perform at the Twins, taking a cut of the gate fees—something old Walder appreciated, as it kept the restless younger sons entertained and less prone to fighting.
He also spent time with Olyvar Frey. Olyvar was two years older, a squire, and unlike the others, he was kind. They met in the library often.
"Why do you want it so bad?" Olyvar asked one rainy afternoon, looking up from a book on heraldry. "The name? It just makes you a target."
"I'm already a target, Oly," Rykker replied, sketching a diagram for a new crane mechanism for the docks. "But as a Rivers, I'm a target made of straw. As a Frey, I'm a target made of wood. It's harder to break."
"It's just a name," Olyvar murmured. "We're all just meat in the end."
"Names are stories," Rykker said, thinking of the history books he knew from another life. "And stories are what people believe. If they believe I am a Frey, I have power. If they believe I am a bastard, I am nothing."