A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Catelyn I

Catelyn waits at Riverrun for judgment for freeing the Kingslayer, sitting at her father's deathbed as he calls a name no one knows: Tansy.

The chapter retold

At Riverrun, Catelyn Stark sits a deathwatch and a punishment in the same chair. Her father Hoster Tully is fading by the hour, and her son Robb has not yet decided what to do with a mother who freed the Kingslayer on her own authority ÔÇö a decision the whole castle treats as a betrayal even though Catelyn made it to buy back her daughters. Hoster drifts in and out of the fever, calling for people long dead, and once for a name nobody in the room recognizes: Tansy ÔÇö a stray thread from a young lord's life that Catelyn cannot place and does not get to ask about before he sinks again.

The scene does two things at once: it establishes the emotional cost of Catelyn's gamble with Jaime ÔÇö isolation from her own son, disapproval she cannot argue her way out of ÔÇö and it humanizes Hoster Tully in his last competent hours, planting an unanswered mystery that will surface again at his funeral. Underneath both is the book's opening argument: the war has made honorable people do compromised things for good reasons, and nobody around them is inclined to grade on the curve.

This movement: Wolves at the Crossing

• Brienne rows the Kingslayer downriver under a flag of lies; the banter starts sharpening into respect.
• Robb returns to Riverrun with a Westerling bride and a broken treaty; the Freys go home cold.
• Beyond the Wall, the survivors of the Fist stagger to Craster's; Sam earns the name Slayer with a dragonglass dagger.
• Dany sails for Astapor, where an army that feels nothing is sold by men who feel less.