"Just a babe," he said, "and so I can take comfort in the fact that she is much more interested in her wet nurse than she is in me." Not that she had had the chance - Arys supposed depending on what was happening at court he may be home for the part where she became interesting enough to smile and babble. "Harder to leave my eldest - though he took it well enough, means to guard the Eyrie in my absence and protect his grandmother and aunt. I did not have it in me to break it to him that the mountain clans don't normally come up the mountain."
The city smelled worse than Gulltown and he had not been here since he was a squire - his lord Father had never bothered to take him because he never shifted himself from atop the Mountain but Lord Royce had taken his second wife from a House in the Crownlands - Arys might remember who if he had not been so entirely drunk at the wedding. "It is a difficult time for many," he said, "but I would not have my royal cousin doubt the Vale's loyalty."