Jaime had been avoiding his visit to the Frey camp all day. He didn't like them, and he especially did not like that he was here doing their dirty work. He approached the camp and the sight of their sigil - two grey towers connected by a bridge - almost made him chuckle. The house words "we stand together" were a joke. The Freys loved infighting almost as much as they loved betrayal. If left alone in a room together, Lothar Frey and his brother Walder would murder each other over which side of a table to dine on. He was not looking forward to this in the least.
He and Bronn had sat in the Lannister camp until long-past sundown watching the sky behind Riverrun shift from blue to yellow to crimson and then to black. He'd told Brienne that she could have until nightfall to persuade the Blackfish, and he was not going to budge - he at least owed her that. Even with the Freys screaming for action, he would not be moved. Bronn had looked at him pitiably once the stars had begun to come out and their breath could be seen in the cool darkness. She had failed, and now it was up to Jaime to make good on his promise. "Well, that's that." Jaime frowned. Bronn didn't have many social graces, let alone tact. He looked sidelong at the former sellsword. "Yes, it would appear to be...that."
Bronn sensed Jaime's discomfort and looked him full in the face. "Y'know she's fine." "What?"
Oh you're in my veins
Bronn rolled his eyes. "Ya lady. She kin hold 'er own." Jaime looked at him askance. "She's not my lady." "No, you'd rather fuck a mirror, wouldn't ya?" Jaime scowled and stared at the sky. "If they were gonna kill'er, she'd be hangin from the top'a th' bloody bell tower by now. So she's either escaped and non'a these cunts've noticed, or she's waitin' for you to come and beat down th' door. So what's th' plan?" Jaime swallowed and stared at the top of the castle. He knew they were being watched, but he couldn't tell by how many. There was only one way to do this honorably - he would need to lie. "I need to see Edmure."
Jaime nodded to the men standing guard outside the tent where Lord Edmure Tully was being kept. The prisoner was not happy to see him. Jaime tried first to go the easy route, but he should have known that Lady Catelyn's brother would not delight in his promises of freedom and a happy life for his family. Lord Edmure was least inclined of anyone to take Jaime at his word. Had the Lord simply ignored him, Jaime might have found some middle ground. But Tully took the low road and said something that Jaime would remember for the rest of his life.
"Tell me, I want to know," he implored, "I truly do. How do you live with yourself?" This struck Jaime to the heart and he looked away while Edmure continued, "All of us have to believe that we're decent, don't we? You have to sleep at night. How do you tell yourself that you're decent after everything that you've done?" His words, at odds with Brienne's, struck Jaime in his core.
He saw that there was no way forward with him that ended pleasantly, so he took the unpleasant route and threatened his young son. Jaime's conscience, locked away in Riverrun now, would not betray him this time. Edmure was not the Blackfish, and he would not see through the disguise. If Jaime wanted him to believe that his family would come to harm, Catelyn's brother was going to believe it. "You and your son don't matter to me, he said. "The people in the castle," he added, his voice breaking but going unnoticed, "don't matter to me." The prisoner bought the lie.
It was the only way to get through this without bloodshed. Edmure, having inherited Riverrun at his father's death, was the true Lord. The Tully forces would have to recognize that, let him into the castle, and obey him when he told them to lay down their swords and open the gates to the Lannister army. If the Blackfish's hold on the castle was as strong as he seemed to think it was, this wouldn't work. But Jaime didn't believe that. If given the choice between dying for the losing side and laying down arms, most people would choose to surrender. Jaime was counting on that for all their sakes. Hopefully Brienne would follow suit and defer to Lady Catelyn's brother. "Trust me," he whispered to no one, willing her to hear him across the field and through the stone walls.
He thought back to when he'd started that journey with her - before losing his hand, among other things. How he'd managed to grab one of her swords and had fought with her on that bridge in the middle of nowhere, thinking to kill her. She'd knocked him to ground more than once and then, when Locke and his men had appeared, he'd looked up from the dirt and she'd been standing over him protectively, sword drawn, ready to fight them in his defense. He'd never seen something so magnificent.
And I cannot get you out
If this works, Jaime thought to himself, and they were able to take the castle without killing anyone, the Freys will get Riverrun and Edmure back - that should satisfy them. Then he would make a show of exiling the Blackfish to the wall and charging Brienne with taking him there so that she could fulfill at least part of her mission for Sansa, and he could have done something truly decent. Cersei wouldn't like it, of course. She'd see right through what he'd done. But so long as Brienne was headed back North she'd be far away, and safe from Cersei's claws.
The guards walked Edmure out of the tent, appropriately clothed, and unbound. Jaime nodded to him and watched as he made his way toward the castle. For several tense minutes, nothing seemed to happen. And then finally, the drawbridge opened.
A/N: I do not own Game of Throne or these characters; some dialogue may be taken verbatim from HBO's Game of Thrones or George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Lyrics used are directly from Andrew Belle's "In My Veins" (C) 2010.