Chapter 11: What Lord Eddard Found in the Records Room

The records room of the Tower of the Hand occupied the lowest habitable floor of the building, below the administrative chambers and below, one suspected, the tolerance of anyone who did not consider the genealogical registers of Verentshire's noble houses a source of pressing personal interest. It was reached by a staircase that smelled of cold stone and old candle wax, and it was furnished with the austere generosity of a space designed for function rather than comfort: three long tables, twelve chairs of varying degrees of hostility to the human spine, and shelves that ran from floor to ceiling on every wall with the unbroken ambition of a library that had never learned to edit itself.

Lord Eddard Starkton descended to it for the first time on the Wednesday evening following the betrothal announcement, carrying a candle, an inkwell, and a copy of the inquiry notes left by Lord Arryn — the previous Hand of the Crown, dead of a summer fever at sixty-three, as the palace physician had determined and the palace had reported, and as Eddard had not, since the first evening of the journey south, entirely believed.

He had not told anyone where he was going. Vayon, his steward, had noted the direction of his descent with the careful non-observation of a man who has learned that the Hand's evenings are not always his own. The household was abed or occupied elsewhere. Eddard set his candle on the nearest table, located Arryn's inquiry notes — which had been filed, with what he was beginning to recognise as typical Crown efficiency, in the section labelled Miscellaneous Administrative Correspondence — and sat down.